February
5, 2003, 2:30 p.m. Twilight
Falls
Without hyperbole,
Powell makes the case.
By Tom Nichols
here is only one thing to say about Secretary Powell's presentation at
the U.N.: If this doesn't do it, nothing will. If the Security Council
and the Europeans will not act on the evidence they heard today, then
the U.N. will finally be entering the twilight of its era as the most
important international institution in the world. Powell's speech was
direct, detailed, and relentless. It was free of hyperbole; the facts
themselves were stunning enough to render high-flown rhetoric unnecessary.
There were warnings ahead of time that there would be no "Adlai Stevenson
moment" of the kind in 1962 when Stevenson confronted the Soviets
over Cuban missiles. And it's true that there was no single moment like
that: rather, there were several of them.
Iraqi commanders
discussing the need to hide things from the inspectors. Orders to stop using
the words "nerve agent." Photographs of chemical weapons being
moved practically out from under the U.N.'s nose. Bulldozing a site —
removing the "crust of the earth" itself, as Powell pointed out
— to hide any possible trace of forbidden toxins. Corroborated information
from al Qaeda detainees. A litany of stories from defectors detailing the
existence of mobile-weapons factories. And proof that somehow, the Iraqis
are being tipped off to inspections, exposing the whole sad business as
the farce it always was.
The evidence that
al Qaeda and Iraq are in cahoots was also delivered point-blank, and Powell
wisely took the Council through the chain of evidence that shows that
the primary impact of that collaboration is falling, for now, on Europe.
Unfortunately, he's almost certainly telling the Europeans things they
knew already but would rather not face, and it's unlikely that this addition
to Saddam's crimes will tip the scales there. But it was important to
present the evidence to the rest of the world and to the American people,
and to put a stop to the charade engaged in by so many that terrorism
is only America's problem, and to discard the fiction that Iraq isn't
involved in it in any case.
Although Secretary
Powell ended this description of Iraq's "web of lies" by warning
the Council that time is short, both he and U.K. foreign minister Jack
Straw really seemed to be indicating that time is not short, but up. In
reality, it is long past time to deal with Iraq, but when the U.S. and
U.K. act, the members of the United Nations Security Council after today
cannot claim that they were not given enough evidence, or that they were
denied one more opportunity to seize the chance to be on the side of peace
and security. Unbelievably, the Chinese, French, and German delegates
have already responded by calling for more inspections; either they are
being disingenuously obstructive, or they weren't in the room this morning.
But if these reactions, which are at best dense and at worst dishonest,
are at all representative of the Council membership, it means the coming
end of any need to take the U.N. seriously. Saddam's "last chance"
was given three months ago. The U.N.'s last chance came today.
—
Tom Nichols is chairman of the Department of Strategy and Policy at
the U.S. Naval War College, and the author of Winning the World: Lessons
for America's Future from the Cold War. The views presented are his
own.
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here is only one thing to say about Secretary Powell's presentation at
the U.N.: If this doesn't do it, nothing will. If the Security Council
and the Europeans will not act on the evidence they heard today, then
the U.N. will finally be entering the twilight of its era as the most
important international institution in the world. Powell's speech was
direct, detailed, and relentless. It was free of hyperbole; the facts
themselves were stunning enough to render high-flown rhetoric unnecessary.
There were warnings ahead of time that there would be no "Adlai Stevenson
moment" of the kind in 1962 when Stevenson confronted the Soviets
over Cuban missiles. And it's true that there was no single moment like
that: rather, there were several of them.
