“Italian chocolates are better anyway, and they’re our allies.” Republican House leaders are talking about slapping tariffs on imported French wines and bottled water, and Democrat Rob Andrews of New Jersey wants members of both parties to boycott the Paris Air Show.
It’s fun to bash the Europeans, but the fact is we need them. The Germans have more troops in Afghanistan than any other nation. When they rotate out, a NATO force will replace them, the same NATO that the Bush administration is calling pansies. Yet President Bush has consigned the Germans and French to diplomatic purgatory for not sharing his zeal to wage war to topple Saddam Hussein.
A Republican senator old enough to experience World War II calls this “the most fragile time” he can remember living through. Members of Congress were briefed this week on evacuation plans if there’s a terrorist attack. Staffers have been given biochemical protective hoods and instructed how to use them. “We’re beyond orange here, we’re whatever color is between orange and red,” says a House Democratic aide.
Paranoia is rampant on Capitol Hill. One Democratic senator takes the higher alert so seriously that she is considering having her aides carry gas masks on their hips for ready access. A top staffer for another senator is dubious. “You jack up the fear factor for the war and juice the economy with people buying all these supplies,” he shrugs, noting that hardware stores across the nation have been emptied of duct tape.
The notion that plastic sheeting secured with duct tape can protect Americans from a chemical or biological attack is nonsensical, and a White House official concedes the point. “It falls in the category of it’s better to light a candle than to curse the darkness,” he says. A public that rushes to the store and stocks up on toilet paper the minute there is four inches of snow may be gullible enough to think they’ve gotten useful advice. But for those who lived through the air-raid drills of the cold war, the helpful hints published by the Department of Homeland Security reinforce the idea that war with Iraq makes us less safe rather than more safe.
Playing hardball with the allies may be necessary, but some of the tactics seem sophomoric. A congressional delegation visiting Munich last weekend was encouraged to boycott a reception hosted by the city’s mayor, a known critic of the administration’s Iraq policy. Almost all the Republicans on the trip took the suggestion, which was offered by U.S. ambassador Dan Coates, a former senator from Indiana.
“These guys are preparing to go to war but can’t take a little criticism from a provincial mayor?” says Professor James Davis, an American who teaches international relations at the University of Munich.
Among those who braved the reception was Connecticut Democrat John Larson, who felt that it was simply common courtesy. The delegation was there for the 39th Munich Security Conference, and the mayor traditionally welcomes the group. “We’re big boys,” says Larson, who found the mayor’s remarks respectful. “He said his protest was not against America but with those opposed to war. How do you fault somebody for that?”
Polls in Europe show that people regard Bush as more of a threat than Saddam Hussein. White House officials make light of the disaffection. “The president doesn’t care what Chardonnay-swilling Frenchmen think any more than he cares what the elites in Nantucket or Martha’s Vineyard think,” says an aide.
Larson says he empathizes with the position the administration has gotten itself into even though he voted against the congressional resolution authorizing Bush to use force to disarm Iraq. Europeans chafe under U.S. hegemony and are looking for ways to curb U.S. power. Bush’s loose language has made a bad problem worse. Larson ticks off the inflammatory phrases, “Axis of evil … dead or alive … line in the sand,” and recalls with a wince how Bush initially dubbed the U.S. war effort a “crusade.”
Democrats fault Bush for obsessing over Iraq and losing sight of the more immediate threat from Al Qaeda. The emergence of a new audiotape allegedly from Osama bin Laden reminds the country of what’s at stake. In the tape, Osama expresses solidarity with the Iraqi people but not with Saddam, who he repudiates as an “infidel” and a “socialist.” The administration says the tape is further evidence of a link between Saddam and Osama. Critics like Larson aren’t buying the Bush spin. They see the tape as Osama’s effort to provoke an attack that would unify the Muslim world.
Time is running out. Unless Saddam has a deathbed conversion, the only way to avert war is “for the pope to move to Baghdad for a month,” says Vartan Gregorian, president of the Carnegie Corporation of New York. In the rush to war, Bush has united his enemies and divided his friends.
