October 15, 2002
Paris conversations on the Bush war
(this continues "How George W. Bush is playing in Paris," BR 22 October 2002)
"The impasse between the United States and France," reported the October 14 New York Times, "over military action in Iraq has deepened in recent days after an effort to reach a compromise stalled, with the French insisting that the Americans must come back to the United Nations Security Council before they can use force, diplomats said today."
It's not just France: nearly all European heads of state consider Saddam a menace but balk at the idea of letting George Bush set the agenda for a war they are convinced cannot help but involve them all. Le Monde had a front page story on Wednesday, October 4, about French Premier Jacques Chirac joining German President Gerhard Schröeder in refusing to back Bush unless action was authorized in a two-step process by the United Nations. The first step would set the new conditions for inspection; the second would determine when Saddam had gone so far that military action was necessary and what military action would then be appropriate.
When I was in Paris in early October I found people less anxious than they'd been a few months ago to talk about George Bush and his war moves. In July, the writers, editors and academics with whom I met freely offered their opinions about what was going on; this time, with only one or two exceptions, I had to ask.
It's not that they didn't have strong opinions. Rather, there was a fatality about it, a sense that the American government wasn't going to listen to anybody else, didn't care about anybody else. And there was also some embarrassment: "It's difficult to talk about that without seeming anti-American," one writer said to me, "and I'm not anti-American. But I am angry. Who is he to do this to us, to drag us into this without listening to us?"
A cartoon just under the front page banner of the same issue of Le Monde depicted Bush piloting a jet plane rigged with rockets
under the wing and a huge bomb under the belly. What seem to be flowers grow out of his helmet. A monkey with a bowler hat sits in his lap—graphic shorthand for Tony Blair, who is frequently referred to in Europe now as Bush's pet. Bush's teeth are bared in frustration and anger as he looks back at the two parachutes coming out of the plane's tail and slowing him down. One parachute has the German flag, the other the French flag.
Even people who dislike Chirac were liking him that day.
No one I spoke with took seriously the claim that Bush's passion to wage war had more than marginal relationship to Saddam's dangerousness or his disregard for UN disarmament edicts. I heard again and again all of the arguments mounted by the opposition here at home: Saddam has no nuclear weapons; he has no missiles that could reach Europe, let alone the United States; Bush keeps talking about Saddam and September 11 but he's come up with no evidence that Saddam had anything to do with September 11; Bush's UN speech was just innuendo and old knowledge repackaged; etc.
"You don't start a war and invite fifty years of terrorism because someone might do something bad," one writer said. "Not even Bush. This is about something else."
So why, I asked, do you think Bush is doing this? His first answer was one I heard from nearly everyone: "Oil. The same reason for his father's Gulf war."
A cartoon in that week's Le Canard enchainé expressed that attitude pretty well. The title was "Bush: La guerre, ça se prépare" (Bush: mobilizing for war"). The cartoon depicts the White House with a carpet rolled out in front and a small figure—presumably
Bush—standing at a lectern. On the far right are three satellite dishes. To their left, a double row of television cameras. Behind the cameras are eight cowboys on horse. In the middle are two rows of soldiers, behind which are four kids, behind which is a stagecoach. On the left are a few people, two missiles, two helicopters, two tanks, three limousines, and six people. The balloon over Bush says "Je vous promets du sang, des larmes, et du pétrole...": "I promise you blood, tears, and petroleum."
It's important to keep in mind that few French intellectuals are dilettantes when it comes to politics. You would never have to explain, as one often must here, a passionate conversation about some governmental action or policy with a line like, "Oh, those two are just terribly involved in politics." In France it's the other way around: it is rare to meet an educated person who isn't current on and caring about major international political issues and on the key players in national elections abroad.
Most people with whom I talked were aware of the delicate balance in the U.S. Congress right now and how a few shifts in either house could radically alter Bush's ability to get his way. After protecting petroleum sources, the explanation of Bush's velocity in all of this always came back to the upcoming U.S. elections. If this were truly about Saddam, they would then say, why the flight from diplomacy? Why anger everyone else? Why not be like his father and first build a coalition?
There was considerable unhappiness over what many felt was a deliberate and unnecessary erection of barriers by the current administration. "It is very difficult for scholars, students and artists to visit the United States now," a professor said. "What used to take minutes to arrange, now takes weeks or months or doesn't happen at all."
That connected to a common perception about increasing political repression in the U.S. "Aren't you afraid to write about these things?" a journalist asked me. "From here, it looks like you're entering a new McCarthyism. Be careful."
The saddest thing I heard was said by a political person now in his '80s, a decorated Resistance fighter from World War II, a man who remembers well France's bitter military and political wars over Algeria and Indochina.
"Bush," he said, "he looks more and more like a boy who was beaten, who has problems with his father, with the guys from the school. He looks like a poor guy. But in fact he's not a poor guy. And when he's speaking! How is it possible that the States could have elected him. This may be one of your worst presidents. Yes, he may be."