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Re: [casi] POTENTIAL BLAIR GOV. UNSC TACTIC (Richard Holbrooke)



In message <F27zmfv2NkkSDEC5fHE0000d9d4@hotmail.com>, Nathaniel Hurd
<nathaniel_hurd@hotmail.com> writes
>Holbrooke is a veteran diplomat who knows how the diplomatic process works.
>In particular, as a former US diplomat, he is surely familiar with how this
>process often functions in order to favor US officials' objectives.  Note,
>e.g., in the full transcript his  comment: "[SCR] 1441, one of the best
>resolutions ever crafted in the U. N.".

I wonder, is Holbrooke also a veteran of the kind of massive protests
and civil disobedience that will take place as soon as war is declared?

Will he be happy to see TV pictures of policemen removing 80 year old
women holding photos of their grandsons from the steps of public
buildings up and down the land?

People already believe that the war is about control of resources and
they don't trust their leaders' motives.

Quite apart from greater scepticism, there is much greater multi-
cultural empathy and awareness nowadays, especially among younger
people: Iraqis are not seen as 'the enemy', cardboard cut-out style, as
may have been the case with enemies in the past - something that
governments relied on to mobilise their populace.

Today, many ordinary people in the West identify more with ordinary
Iraqis than with their own leaders - and this is something that US/UK
governments just have not grasped.

Maybe I'm wrong, but even in 1991 I don't remember getting to hear
reports of the human costs to the Iraqis until after the war - like
Maggie O'Kane's report of Iraqi women searching in the twilight for
their menfolk, looking for their loved ones among the wounded and the
dead.  In this war, alternative, independent pictures and eye-witness
reports will be circulating around the world via the internet within
hours.

Ordinary people across the world will oppose and 'defeat' this war, even
if the leaders make it seem inevitable.  The next challenge will be to
find a peaceful model for solving crises caused by aggression,
oppression and self-interested manipulation of resources, both in this
conflict and in future ones.

Cathy Aitchison


--
Cathy Aitchison

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