I think that more nations' power elites could have been bought off, despite the overwhelming oppositions of the masses they rule, but Washington has gone cheapskate, conduct unbecoming of an empire. Washington offered Turkey only 6 billion dollars, whereas the last Gulf War cost Turkey more than 40 billion dollars. Post-9.11 steel tariffs, farm subsidies, and other economic slaps in the face of the world didn't help either.
***** March 14, 2003
George W. Queeg By PAUL KRUGMAN
...Mr. Bush's inner circle seems amazed that the tactics that work so well on journalists and Democrats don't work on the rest of the world. They've made promises, oblivious to the fact that most countries don't trust their word. They've made threats. They've done the aura-of-inevitability thing - how many times now have administration officials claimed to have lined up the necessary votes in the Security Council? They've warned other countries that if they oppose America's will they are objectively pro-terrorist. Yet still the world balks.
Wasn't someone at the State Department allowed to point out that in matters nonmilitary, the U.S. isn't all that dominant - that Russia and Turkey need the European market more than they need ours, that Europe gives more than twice as much foreign aid as we do and that in much of the world public opinion matters? Apparently not....
<http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/14/opinion/14KRUG.html> *****
The Bush junta's geopolitical ambitions -- to remake the Middle East, among other things -- are out of keeping with the post-Vietnam US economic position in the world, which can only finance Clinton-style "humanitarian imperialism." -- Yoshie
* Calendar of Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://solidarity.igc.org/>