Zeno's Paradox: Irked by Iraq and North Korea

Zeno's Paradox

February 25, 2003 - Irked by Iraq and North Korea

I don't post about politics as much as I should here -- I don't feel like alienating anyone or anything like that -- but the international community has irked me enough recently that I might as well rant a bit.

Ok, so the big deal now is whether the US will go to war or not in Iraq. I waffle back and forth between the pro and con positions on the subject. I would be more gung-ho for the war if Bush and Co. were setting a better example of their nation-building in Afghanistan. No money in the proposed budget, what the hell is the deal with that?!? On the other hand, I think that Bush and Co.'s reasons for going to war against Iraq are strong and numerous enough that if conflicts were to start, I would be rooting for the USA to oust Saddam. No matter what spin you put on it, he has openly defied the UN Security Council and is in breach of Resolution 1441 and the one that established the cease-fire after the Persian Gulf War. I'm all in favor of removing the man from power so that we can start dealing with Iraq as a civilized nation and we and they can get on with their lives. War may be a bit drastic to accomplish that goal, but no-one has suggested a better alternative that has any chance in hell of working. I read this morning in the NY Times that he may not destroy the missiles as ordered by the UN by a Saturday deadline. I can see Saddam's hesitation to do so given the prospect of a US invasion, but that is not a reason that should be considered legit by the UN Security Council. If the missiles are not gone by Saturday, France and Germany will have lost all credibility with respect to more inspectors being a workable alternative to war.

However, the thing that gets to me is that while I am not a fan of the Bush administration by any means (I'll be voting them out this next election.), I'm less so a fan of the cadre of diplomats and politicians that make up the representatives of the rest of the world. I read this morning that North Korea fired a missile into the sea as the new South Korean president was being inaugurated. This is clearly a provocative move upon the part of the North Korean government. Given the crisis there, one would be expecting the world community to be supportive of the US's desire for multilateral negotiations given the preening and posturing about the evils of unilateralism with respect to Iraq. However, no one seems to be behind the US's desire to bring the issue to the world forum. Russia downplays the North Koreans' actions while its influential neighbor China is sitting on its hands. It almost seems that the "world community" is unwilling to get involved in a more serious issue than Iraq. I don't see how it want to be so involved in Iraq and interject it's international league of nations reaching a consensus on how to deal with one regime, while doing everything in its power to avoid a more dangerous regime. It's as if they are picking their battles -- the easy ones. I guess I'm so fed up with this mentality that I'm a fan of either more unilateralism or more isolationism. More unilateralism would at least allow us to do something -- and something definitely needs to be done in Iraq, North Korea, and other places -- without the French throwing wrenches into the works in an effort to remain relevant on the world stage. Isolationism is attractive as it allows other people to see what positive things that the US has done for them. We always hear about the downside of United States involvement, I would like to hear about the upsides for once. In that vein, if South Korea wants the United States out of its country, as the Roh election indicated, we should pull out. But when we pull out, we should make damn clear that should North Korea send it's army over the border, they are on their own in that respect. Ditto for Germany, though Germany appears to have no threatening neighbors in the near future.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that the while the US remains one of the most criticized nations in the world with respect to how it carries out its foreign policy, the people doing the most criticizing are as guilty of the criticisms as the party they are criticizing. I'm particularly amused by the elevation of France and Germany in the eyes of the left for their objections to Iraq. I find it funny that the champions of fair trade, human rights, and equality are so proud of two nations that continue to prop up and funnel money and supplies to an oppressive regime that has a terrible record with respect to basic human rights and equality. "Oil for blood" is a oft-quoted phrase by the protesters of any military action in Iraq. I guess if you look at it that way, France's policy is a long and drawn out oil for blood policy (France and Germany have billions in dollars of debt owed to them by the Iraqi regime and rights to oil fields that would be forfeit should the US unseat Saddam.) where the people are continually oppressed while sanctions are still in effect (Hint: the sanctions will not be lifted with Saddam in power, nor should they be.), while the US solution is to take care of this conundrum and move on. I'm not advocating that the US solution would be a simple matter of nation building at all, but at least something positive can start to happen once Saddam is out of the picture.

I guess I'll take our approach over that of the "international community" most days of the week. I'm also so sick of this entire situation that I want it to be resolved one way or another. The current status quo is unacceptable and a new one must be reached.

I realize that this is ranty and all that, and I know that some people reading this will disagree with my thoughts. I'm trying to reach a more solid position on this topic, and have thought about it from about forty different angles before arriving at the thoughts above. If your viewpoint makes more sense to you for whatever reason and you're feeling charitable, please post your thoughts. I'm not looking to start an argument, and I'm interested in how the rest of the world thinks. Maybe I'm all wrong about this, but given the amount of honest thinking I have done about this, I'm ready to reach a resolution on how to look at this situation once and for all.

This (QuickTime) movie is pretty funny though. :-)

Posted by br284 at 07:28 AM

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Well, your point of view is of no surprise (I am Jack's complete lack of surprise). I'm sorry, but there is nothing new about it. The only question is HOW should it be done. When I was to the US this summer, it was already then when the war propaganda started out. I really think people in the US should listen not to the US newspapers and radio, but to some other mass media all over the world. For instance, when I got a satellite here, in St-Petersburg, Russia, at the beginning, it was a shock: the point of view on the same problem on BBC differs so much from that what we have on russian tv... As soon as you get used to this difference, you at least try to understand the other side. This is the first step towards consensus. And what was on US radio and what you write is: well, we do not understand them, we do not want to understand them, why not kill them, and build some other state we can operate with which won't be so hostile to us concerning Israel things/ Oil. Oh, yes, oil! This is another thing. When an american fills up the car, he does not think of how much it is. And that is completely different in Europe: my brother in law (lives in Germany) says that he always has to think how much and where to fill up, since the price of gaz as related to a pretty good european salary is fairly high. Remember, to get the tanker to the US costs a bit more than to Europe, so think... where do the money come from? two sources: 1. The US has fairly low "green" taxes. 2. The US has other taxes that are somehow headed to pay the difference in some shady way. This is what makes people (not politics) think different.

Another thing is that the US had never had any sort of war on their territory (Perl Harbor does not count) in the nearest past, whereas Europe, Russia and staff had it. That makes another difference in understanding the problem. In Europe everybody would say: everything is better then war. And this is what the US administration does not understand. My relative, who lives in Israel now, says, that the most likely scenario in case of war would be:
the US/England attacks. Iraq does not fight back. It launches all the missiles to Israel instead. That means a lot of people die. And, as my relative says, the current mood in the country is that Israel fights back. And that means that all the Arab countries are against Israel and the US/England. And that means pretty much everything starting with an open conflict ending with no oil sources, cause Iraq is likely to burn all the open oil lakes and the other Arab countries are likely to stop pumping oil out. This is actually the reason why the US administration has not yet ordered to start the campany. BTW, everybody in Israel is against war, well, you know why.

There is another misunderstanding: the US adm always says if the UN does not support us, we do everything on our own. This is, for some reason, concerned as a threat on the UN/NATO. Wrong. This is a threat on the whole political/economical stability in the whole world, including US. Suppose the US acts without the UN -- that means the UN/NATO is not necessary at all. Just because it has no other functions. If some country would say: @#$% NATO, i act on my own, why should all the other countries still consider NATO as something valuable? That leads to complete instability everywhere. Markets too. In a such a situation some small and proud country could say: why not attack US? It really does not matter whether it does so or no. It's just the impact these words can cause that frightens me. Remember, all this is backend by extremely high prices on oil. This is what Europe tries to avoid.

There is a bad thing about the US to start the war: it means the US says that it lost another war, the diplomatic one. And, to tell the truth, I don't know, what is worse, because then all the latter decisions (particulary in Europe) would be taken without the US participation.

There is another difference: the US says: Iraq has to disarm, has to show good will to disarm, present evidence that it has disarmed. True, from one point of view. Have you ever seen a boy that was threatend to give out his toys. What does he do? Hide them. I don't have any toys. What does the mom do? Put him to closet for that? No, just find the toys, take the toys. This is what is the best thing to happen, and what the France/Germany/Russia are trying to do: if Iraq has weapons, try to find them and destroy them. Yes, it has nothing to do with 1441. No, it's not true that the inspectors can't find them, just because they are hidden/mobile or something. The situation totally differs from that in the Gulf War, because now the Iraq knows: the inspectors search for weapons, there in basically no way to prevent them from doing so, because that leads to war immediately, under the UN/NATO umbrella. Another small boy analogy: he would better tear the toys then give them away.

Well, to me it looks like everybody in Europe/Russia/China would be happy if all the decisions are taken under the UN/NATO umbrella. Even a decision to disarm Iraq with force.

To kill Hussein is a stupid idea -- another Hussein would come up.

A tiny question at the end: Why, under the circumstances the US was in summer, when, according to the US adm it already knew where the weapons in Iraq were located, when it basically controlled the territory from air, when in Europe nobody cared when the US planes had already bombed some suspicious targets in Iraq, why, under such good circumstances the US didn't just destroy the weapons (in any way, including an invasion with support from air) and live in peace with the whole other world?

P.S. The dual Xeon I just bought is great -- a complete intel box. I'm now playing with paralleling everything... This would be a good experience, I hope

Posted by Alexey Voitylov on February 25, 2003 11:58 AM

Thanks for the comment. I hope that you're enjoying that dual Xeon :-)

I'll try to answer as best as I can the points you bring up.

Regarding the media outside the USA... The primary source of most of my information is either outside the USA or media outlets that are not part of the corporate cartel of media interests that comprises American media companies (with the exception of the New York Times, which I read quite a lot). I get a lot of my news from BBC, guardian.co.uk, and other sources when I can find them. I'm very much aware of the sad state of "mainstream" media outlets such as FOX, CNN, and the American evening "news". Furthermore, I have made a substantial effort to get as much information firsthand, including watching sessions at the UN live and reading other such sources. However, with that in mind, I still came to the conclusions above.

Oil -- I'm well aware of the evils of petroleum. :-) I guess my biggest beef with this part of the argument against the US is that while the anti-war protesters say that we should be more like Germany and France (and Russia to an extent), and not try to get the oil from Iraq, I think that the states that they are holding in such high esteem are just as beholden to the oil question as the USA. It is no leap of logic to say that the USA won't gain from control of the petrol reserves in Iraq. However, no-one talks much about "Old Europe's" (if I may steal Rumsfeld's name for the European opposition) interest in maintaining the status quo so that they profit from Saddam's regime and the billions in debt that Iraq owes them and the juicy contracts that their companies (TotalElfFina) will get by working with this regime. To me, arguing the oil question is like bragging about what a great person you are, while stealing from your neighbor and screwing his wife.

Regarding the question of America's lack of war on their own soil and how war is so bad that it's uncivilized to consider it a civilized response to a problem. It's true that Europe knows war, but the question that I would raise in return is how many European lives would have been saved had France or some other European country declared war on Hitler as he violated the Treaty of Versailles and started growing his army? How big and how many weapons do we allow the Iraqi regime to obtain before an even bigger war happens? The current behavior of Iraq seems to be very similar to pre-WWII Germany in the 1930's. They are building new weapons and ignoring their obligations to the international community to disarm.

Regarding international consensus and the US acting unilaterally - you say that if the US goes to war, it will be acting to make things unstable because there will not be the predictability that the UN provides. However, the counter is that if the UN cannot be bothered to enforce its own resolutions, how is that situation any different? Instead of the US acting unilaterally against other nations, these other nations act unilaterally on their own behalf in developing these weapons. How is the US's potential unilateral action of toppling the Iraqi regime any less than the Iraqi regime's action of creating and testing weapons that violate the UN cease-fire agreement after the first war? The UN must do something, else it becomes irrelevant. Furthermore, the jobs of the inspectors is not to find weapons in Iraq (hide and seek), their job is to provide verification that Iraq has destroyed those weapons in compliance with the UN. I'm not making this up or just spouting Bush's line about this -- this role is the one that the inspectors themselves acknowledge. I guess we'll see how well the inspection idea works out if Iraq destroys the missiles it has in violation of the UN resolution (Hans Blix's words, not mine) by the Saturday deadline. If Saddam destroys them, then the inspection idea has merit -- if not, the inspection idea is a complete failure.

Regarding the summer situation with US/UK bombing -- the US/UK bombing is limited to anti-aircraft batteries that would be a danger to the US/UK pilots patrolling the northern and southern no-fly zones that were set up by the UN to protect the minorities in the north and south (Shiites and Kurds, I believe.) They can bomb the AA batteries because it's a threat to the no-fly zone. Anything else would not be supporting that no-fly zone and as such is out of their orders and mandate.

Now, something that I noticed missing from your post is when Russia, France, and the Germany are telling the US to work with the UN on Iraq -- why are they refusing to get involved in the North Korea situation? The US has wanted to defer this to the UN, but Russia, China, and South Korea say that they want the US to handle the situation. Why the total disconnect?

Thanks again for posting. I apologize if I get to zealous dissecting your arguments against Iraq -- I just want to have a solid understanding of the situation and that means a few questions. I hope that all is going well where-ever you are. (Where are you, by the way?)

-Chris

Posted by Chris Karr on February 25, 2003 12:35 PM

Yes, France and Russia have/had enormous contracts with Iraq. To a certain extent, this can be considered as some protection of their own interests in the country. But, the deeper I dig, the less logical that seems. The point is that the overall price of Iraqi oil consists of 1. Digging price 2. Transportations to the tankers or by tubes. 3. Taxes on oil in Iraq. 4. Transportation in tankers or tubes 5. Fee to the countries where the tubes go. 6. Taxes in the destination country. Companies can do two things: provide equipment and transport oil from Iraq, after some UN committee approves oil is legal and "buys" it from Iraq - when I say buys I mean exchange it on some other goods. That means no company operating after the UN "buys" it can in any way interfere in what is going on in Iraq. The Iraqi market is closed from that point of view. And what people think is that companies operate in Iraq. That's wrong. Just think: to fill a car in Iraq costs less then 1$. Think what happens if this market becomes open... It will just never happen - additional taxes will be introduced on pumping oil out of Iraq. The market inside Iraq can be of no profit for foreign companies, they just can make money on transportation -- a lot more money then on pumping it out - it is not profitable. What the US says is: we will bring democracy, open up the markets. The last is what I will never believe, no matter who says it - it is just too simple to control some country introducing export taxes.

I really doubt that Iraq can, in any case, be compared to Hitler's Germany. Take a look at some maps - the missiles are too short range. The only country which can be considered as a target is Israel. It was said a 100 times: even if Iraq has WMD, they have no efficient delivery systems - it does not really matter, 93 or 100 miles. The fact that these missiles could fly to 100 miles was in the declaration December, 7, mentioned the fact that these tests (where missiles flew 100 miles) were guided without a targeting system - some weight impact. And, in any way this has nothing to do with 250 miles to Israel. If the US really has any evidence, why didn't Powell present it? Yes he did not present any evidence. Even BBC said that. Blix said that. And when reading the US newspapers later I could only laugh. I really can not believe that no secret service in the world (including Europe, Russia, China etc, sure they did their own digging) could present any real evidence to the security council if Iraq had any big program to build up weapons. That does not sound well. What was presented is crap. The US says: if we disclose what we know, they'll move it. I think if they had it, they moved it a 100 times already.
Who the hell told you "the UN cannot be bothered to enforce its own resolutions"? Right now the next resolution is to be held in March. Should you carefully read the resolutions, nothing in there indicates there has to be war if Iraq does not comply. www.un.org The way how these resolutions are written assures no indication of any kind that noncompliance leads to any kind action. Little tricks, you know. Read them all (yes, starting with resolutions 6xx). That means there has to be another resolution that would refer to some UN law, by which the campaign has to be started. There were a lot of examples when somebody did not comply with resolutions, and the result was that no restrictions were taken, because the situation changed. Even now, if Iraq does not comply, they have to make another resolution to start the campaign. This does not contradict with anything. The UN does not have to enforce its resolutions, although usually does.

"Instead of the US acting unilaterally against other nations, these other nations act unilaterally on their own behalf in developing these weapons. How is the US's potential unilateral action of toppling the Iraqi regime any less than the Iraqi regime's action of creating and testing weapons that violate the UN cease-fire agreement after the first war?" Wow. Iraq is in the UN, and has to comply -- true. And the US is in the UN and has to comply. But the US is also a member of the Security Council, which means there are additional restrictions. Read it's charter carefully. I did it (my sister had something to do with it, she is studying law now, so I did some UN excavations for her, they have a pretty well organized site), now everything is a bit more clear to me. And I just cannot understand, what makes a difference between this particular situation and any other resolution the UN's security council produced? Why, all of a sudden the US says the UN is wrong, whereas in all other cases it does its job?

Regarding North Korea. I don't see any difference. I can only name one: when you see what happens with Iraq concerning the resolution, it is very adequate to make the situation remain without any resolution by now. And it is not true that the UN gave this situation under the US control - some mass media things. Again, I kindly ask you to read the documents you can find on the UN site concerning North Korea.

What I really don't understand is why mass media speak so much. Most is wrong. They can treat almost any words in any meaning. This is what frightens me most.

I don't try to say that the US is right, or Iraq is wrong. I just tried to explain that reading mass media really cannot help a lot. And to point out the fact that if the US without the UN, or the UN start the campaign, nobody knows what happens next. Unpredictable. If the situation was exploited earlier, it would be better then now. And now nobody knows what to do - you can see this pretty well, a good example is the Bush adm - you can hear almost any opinion from them. This uncertainty frightens me, because everybody operates on his own.

There is another thing my friend, who is a broker, told some days ago. The US had to somehow "drop" the dollar by ~20%. Otherwise it could not pay the recent obligations. That is what it did. Now, as it did, it needs to rise the dollar up again. And the whole situation fits perfectly in the Iraq crisis. What a good luck!

Last link http://fas.org/man/

I'm home now. Preparing for exams. BTW, Intel compilers are bad. Even on Intel machines. Maybe it is just the noncommercial version, but the speed gain they provide cannot compensate the fact that they calculate wrong and give inadequate results.

Alexey Voitylov

Posted by Alexey Voitylov on February 26, 2003 09:22 AM

Regarding the media outside the USA... Well, as far as I know, BBC is 100% funded by the UK FCO [www.fco.gov.uk]. They just cannot say anything behind their back. Take a look at some French newspapers: Le Figaro, Le Monde, La Tribune, (http://mondediplo.com/ is the only one I found for you in English, this is a print edition) some German newspapers: Die Zeit, Die Welt (My brother in laws' favorite) http://www.dw-world.de/english -- looks pro-US though in English. When I have time sometimes some Arab channels have interviews in English. And I can't say they lack logistics or smth.
Yes, France and Russia have/had enormous contracts with Iraq. To a certain extent, this can be considered as some protection of their own interests in the country. But, the deeper I dig, the less logical that seems. The point is that the overall price of Iraqi oil consists of 1. Digging price 2. Transportations to the tankers or by tubes. 3. Taxes on oil in Iraq. 4. Transportation in tankers or tubes 5. Fee to the countries where the tubes go. 6. Taxes in the destination country. Companies can do two things: provide equipment and transport oil from Iraq, after some UN committee approves oil is legal and "buys" it from Iraq - when I say buys I mean exchange it on some other goods. That means no company operating after the UN "buys" it can in any way interfere in what is going on in Iraq. The Iraqi market is closed from that point of view. And what people think is that companies operate in Iraq. That's wrong. Just think: to fill a car in Iraq costs less then 1$. Think what happens if this market becomes open... It will just never happen - additional taxes will be introduced on pumping oil out of Iraq. The market inside Iraq can be of no profit for foreign companies, they just can make money on transportation -- a lot more money then on pumping it out - it is not profitable. What the US says is: we will bring democracy, open up the markets. The last is what I will never believe, no matter who says it - it is just too simple to control some country introducing export taxes.
I really doubt that Iraq can, in any case, be compared to Hitler's Germany. Take a look at some maps - the missiles are too short range. The only country which can be considered as a target is Israel. It was said a 100 times: even if Iraq has WMD, they have no efficient delivery systems - it does not really matter, 93 or 100 miles. The fact that these missiles could fly to 100 miles was in the declaration December, 7, mentioned the fact that these tests (where missiles flew 100 miles) were guided without a targeting system - some weight impact. And, in any way this has nothing to do with 250 miles to Israel. If the US really has any evidence, why didn't Powell present it? Yes he did not present any evidence. Even BBC said that. Blix said that. And when reading the US newspapers later I could only laugh. I really can not believe that no secret service in the world (including Europe, Russia, China etc, sure they did their own digging) could present any real evidence to the security council if Iraq had any big program to build up weapons. That does not sound well. What was presented is crap. The US says: if we disclose what we know, they'll move it. I think if they had it, they moved it a 100 times already.
Who the hell told you "the UN cannot be bothered to enforce its own resolutions"? Right now the next resolution is to be held in March. Should you carefully read the resolutions, nothing in there indicates there has to be war if Iraq does not comply. www.un.org The way how these resolutions are written assures no indication of any kind that noncompliance leads to any kind action. Little tricks, you know. Read them all (yes, starting with resolutions 6xx). That means there has to be another resolution that would refer to some UN law, by which the campaign has to be started. There were a lot of examples when somebody did not comply with resolutions, and the result was that no restrictions were taken, because the situation changed. Even now, if Iraq does not comply, they have to make another resolution to start the campaign. This does not contradict with anything. The UN does not have to enforce its resolutions, although usually does.
"Instead of the US acting unilaterally against other nations, these other nations act unilaterally on their own behalf in developing these weapons. How is the US's potential unilateral action of toppling the Iraqi regime any less than the Iraqi regime's action of creating and testing weapons that violate the UN cease-fire agreement after the first war?" Wow. Iraq is in the UN, and has to comply -- true. And the US is in the UN and has to comply. But the US is also a member of the Security Council, which means there are additional restrictions. Read it's charter carefully. I did it (my sister had something to do with it, she is studying law now, so I did some UN excavations for her, they have a pretty well organized site), now everything is a bit more clear to me. And I just cannot understand, what makes a difference between this particular situation and any other resolution the UN's security council produced? Why, all of a sudden the US says the UN is wrong, whereas in all other cases it does its job?
Regarding North Korea. I don't see any difference. I can only name one: when you see what happens with Iraq concerning the resolution, it is very adequate to make the situation remain without any resolution by now. And it is not true that the UN gave this situation under the US control - some mass media things. Again, I kindly ask you to read the documents you can find on the UN site concerning North Korea.
What I really don't understand is why mass media speak so much. Most is wrong. They can treat almost any words in any meaning. This is what frightens me most.
I don't try to say that the US is right, or Iraq is wrong. I just tried to explain that reading mass media really cannot help a lot. And to point out the fact that if the US without the UN, or the UN start the campaign, nobody knows what happens next. Unpredictable. If the situation was exploited earlier, it would be better then now. And now nobody knows what to do - you can see this pretty well, a good example is the Bush adm - you can hear almost any opinion from them. This uncertainty frightens me, because everybody operates on his own.
There is another thing my friend, who is a broker, told some days ago. The US had to somehow "drop" the dollar by ~20%. Otherwise it could not pay the recent obligations. That is what it did. Now, as it did, it needs to rise the dollar up again. And the whole situation fits perfectly in the Iraq crisis. What a good luck!
Last link http://fas.org/man/
I'm home now. Preparing for exams. BTW, Intel compilers are bad. Even on Intel machines. Maybe it is just the noncommercial version, but the speed gain they provide cannot compensate the fact that they calculate wrong.
Alexey Voitylov

Posted by Alexey Voitylov on February 26, 2003 09:34 AM