[yshavurah] Fwd: FW: Different Man, Different Moment

Didn't look this up for verification, but it is an interesting article.
-c


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From: Andrea Herman <ozonern@xxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Fwd: FW: Different Man, Different Moment
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v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);}o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);}w\:* 
{behavior:url(#default#VML);}.shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} 
February 7, 2003

  
Different Man, Different Moment

By ADLAI E. STEVENSON III

HICAGO ? Pundits and officials in Washington have dubbed Secretary of State 
Colin Powell's attempt to make a case for war against Iraq in the United 
Nations Security Council an "Adlai Stevenson moment." 

I couldn't disagree more. My father was Adlai Stevenson, who in 1962, as 
President Kennedy's representative to the United Nations, presented the 
Security Council with incontrovertible proof that the Soviet Union, a nuclear 
superpower, was installing missiles in Cuba and threatening to upset the 
world's "balance of terror."

That "moment" had an obvious purpose: containing the Soviet Union and 
maintaining peace. It worked, and eventually the Soviet Union collapsed under 
its own weight. This moment has a different purpose: war. The Bush 
administration clearly rejects the idea of containing Iraq through committed 
monitoring by the United Nations, even though this course is the better option.

With so much comparison between Secretary Powell and my father, I've been 
trying to think back to the days leading up to my father's famous moment. While 
his appearance became the stuff of historical legend, he rarely talked about it 
with his family. One weekend, he merely announced that he had to go to 
Washington because something important had come up. (President Kennedy, we 
learned later, was giving him his marching orders.) There was no visible worry 
or excitement. Maybe he was saving up for his moment. 

After all, his entire adult life had been defined by seeing to it that the 
Soviet threat was contained ? preventing it from erupting into war. My father, 
President Kennedy and others remembered the lessons learned from the 
assassination of the Austro-Hungarian archduke and his wife in 1914. Serbian 
nationalists behind the killings expected a reaction. But they did not expect 
to bring down the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Politically motivated terrorists are 
fanatics, not fools. Yet the empire delivered an ultimatum to Serbia, bringing 
on World War I and its own demise.

My father visited the military cemeteries in Europe as a young man. France lost 
a quarter of its men between the ages of 18 and 30 during World War I. He 
remembered Woodrow Wilson's efforts to create a world order that preserved the 
peace, and the hopes destroyed by the old guard in the Senate, which defeated 
that League of Nations.

Veterans of World War II, men like my father and Presidents Eisenhower and 
Kennedy, went on to pick up where Wilson had failed. The old guard was 
defeated. The United Nations was established. A new world order contained the 
Soviet Union, controlled the strategic arms race and preserved peace. America 
was a real superpower then, its embassies the outposts of hope and security. 

Clearly, we live in a different world now. But would going to war truly make it 
a safer one? A contained Saddam Hussein would remain a pariah in the Middle 
East. A Saddam Hussein under attack would win sympathy on behalf of his 
long-suffering people and perhaps the support of terrorists inflamed by the 
mighty reach of the United States. A war could also set back Iraq's oil 
production and destabilize other oil-producing states. The economic 
consequences of war and reconstruction are incalculable; the federal budget is 
already plunging into deficit from surplus at the fastest rate in history, 
without even provision for war.

Why, then, the enthusiasm for war? Even top officials at the Central 
Intelligence Agency have acknowledged that Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass 
destruction are only a threat if Iraq is attacked. And Iraq's government, after 
all, is the same Baathist regime aided by the Reagan administration when 
Baghdad used chemical weapons in its bloody war against Iran. If anything, Iraq 
was stronger and more dangerous then. (I first became acquainted with this 
regime in 1976 when its minions tore toenails from the feet of my driver, a 
Kurd, in Baghdad ? apparently for having been insufficiently forthcoming during 
a periodic interrogation). 

Many curious explanations are circulating for suddenly making this infamous 
regime a unilateral casus belli of the United States while North Korea ? which 
may take advantage of the administration's preoccupation with Iraq to develop 
more nuclear weapons ? is an object of relative indifference. Maybe the most 
plausible is Iraq's purported link to terrorism.

In 1978, I led the first in-depth Congressional study into the growing threat 
of terrorism and how to combat it. Such a threat reaches far back into history, 
beyond the label of terrorism. In 1962, President Kennedy read Barbara 
Tuchman's book "The Guns of August," a history of the unintended chain of 
consequences that led to the devastation of World War I. He wanted to avoid 
similar missteps. 

The Bush administration would benefit by the same lesson. Sept. 11 was not all 
that different from Sarajevo at the turn of the century. The 19 men armed with 
box cutters did not expect to bring down all of America. Only America can do 
that. They expected a reaction. The one they should get is to be treated as 
criminals, hunted down and brought to justice. Bringing war only confirms 
complaints that the United States is waging a war against Islam. It can also 
give terrorists the reaction they seek. 

Whether made by Al Qaeda or Saddam Hussein, today's threats require a 
multidimensional response, including efforts to address the widening gap 
between the haves and the have nots, the horrible conditions in which most 
people around the world struggle to survive. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict 
is a good place to begin. The United States loses credibility when perceived as 
supporting terror in one part of the Mideast, while professing to fight it 
elsewhere.

I like to think that if my father were in Secretary Powell's shoes, he would 
have presented proof of an aggressive deployment of weapons of mass destruction 
and evidence that Iraq was closer to obtaining nuclear arms ? a claim the 
administration made not so long ago. The Bush administration would have 
supported the United Nations, its inspectors and international containment of 
Iraq under Saddam Hussein. Members of the Security Council and other nations 
would not have to be cajoled into going along. The international community, for 
which this administration still presumes to speak, would support the United 
States, as it did in October, 1962, when America waged peace.


Adlai E. Stevenson III is a former United States senator from Illinois.



---------------------------------
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<BLOCKQUOTE>
<DIV class=Section1>
<P class=MsoNormal><?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = 
"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" /><st1:date Year="2003" Day="7" 
Month="2"><B><FONT face=Arial size=3><SPAN>February 7, 
2003</SPAN></FONT></B></st1:date><FONT face=Arial><SPAN><BR><IMG 
id=_x0000_i1025 height=40 
src="http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/article/header/nytlogoleft_article.gif";
 width=184 border=0><BR><IMG id=_x0000_i1026 height=40 
src="http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/article/header/sect_opinion.gif"; 
width=400 border=0>&nbsp; <IMG id=_x0000_i1027 height=1 
src="http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/misc/spacer.gif"; width=4 
border=0><BR></SPAN></FONT><B><FONT face=Arial size=5><SPAN>Different Man, 
Different Moment<BR><BR></SPAN></FONT></B><B><FONT face=Arial color=black 
size=2 FAMILY="SANSSERIF"><SPAN>By ADLAI E. STEVENSON 
III</SPAN></FONT></B><FONT face=Arial color=black 
FAMILY="SANSSERIF"><SPAN><BR><BR><IMG id=_x0000_i1028 height=34 
src="http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/dropcap/c.gif"; width=31 
border=0>HICAGO ? Pundits and officials in Washington have dubbed Secretary of 
State Colin Powell's attempt to make a case for war against Iraq in the United 
Nations Security Council an "Adlai Stevenson moment." <BR><BR>I couldn't 
disagree more. My father was Adlai Stevenson, who in 1962, as President 
Kennedy's representative to the United Nations, presented the Security Council 
with incontrovertible proof that the Soviet Union, a nuclear superpower, was 
installing missiles in Cuba and threatening to upset the world's "balance of 
terror."<BR><BR>That "moment" had an obvious purpose: containing the 
</SPAN></FONT><st1:place><FONT face=Arial color=black><SPAN>Soviet 
Union</SPAN></FONT></st1:place><FONT face=Arial color=black><SPAN> and 
maintaining peace. It worked, and eventually the </SPAN></FONT><st1:place><FONT 
face=Arial color=black><SPAN>Soviet Union</SPAN></FONT></st1:place><FONT 
face=Arial color=black><SPAN> collapsed under its own weight. This moment has a 
different purpose: war. The Bush administration clearly rejects the idea of 
containing </SPAN></FONT><st1:country-region><st1:place><FONT face=Arial 
color=black><SPAN>Iraq</SPAN></FONT></st1:place></st1:country-region><FONT 
face=Arial color=black><SPAN> through committed monitoring by the United 
Nations, even though this course is the better option.<BR><BR>With so much 
comparison between Secretary Powell and my father, I've been trying to think 
back to the days leading up to my father's famous moment. While his appearance 
became the stuff of historical legend, he rarely talked about it with his 
family. One weekend, he merely announced that he had to go to 
</SPAN></FONT><st1:State><st1:place><FONT face=Arial 
color=black><SPAN>Washington</SPAN></FONT></st1:place></st1:State><FONT 
face=Arial color=black><SPAN> because something important had come up. 
(President Kennedy, we learned later, was giving him his marching orders.) 
There was no visible worry or excitement. Maybe he was saving up for his 
moment. <BR><BR>After all, his entire adult life had been defined by seeing to 
it that the Soviet threat was contained ? preventing it from erupting into war. 
My father, President Kennedy and others remembered the lessons learned from the 
assassination of the Austro-Hungarian archduke and his wife in 1914. Serbian 
nationalists behind the killings expected a reaction. But they did not expect 
to bring down the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Politically motivated terrorists are 
fanatics, not fools. Yet the empire delivered an ultimatum to 
</SPAN></FONT><st1:country-region><st1:place><FONT face=Arial 
color=black><SPAN>Serbia</SPAN></FONT></st1:place></st1:country-region><FONT 
face=Arial color=black><SPAN>, bringing on World War I and its own 
demise.<BR><BR>My father visited the military cemeteries in 
</SPAN></FONT><st1:place><FONT face=Arial 
color=black><SPAN>Europe</SPAN></FONT></st1:place><FONT face=Arial 
color=black><SPAN> as a young man. 
</SPAN></FONT><st1:country-region><st1:place><FONT face=Arial 
color=black><SPAN>France</SPAN></FONT></st1:place></st1:country-region><FONT 
face=Arial color=black><SPAN> lost a quarter of its men between the ages of 18 
and 30 during World War I. He remembered Woodrow Wilson's efforts to create a 
world order that preserved the peace, and the hopes destroyed by the old guard 
in the Senate, which defeated that </SPAN></FONT><st1:place><FONT face=Arial 
color=black><SPAN>League of Nations</SPAN></FONT></st1:place><FONT face=Arial 
color=black><SPAN>.<BR><BR>Veterans of World War II, men like my father and 
Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy, went on to pick up where 
</SPAN></FONT><st1:City><st1:place><FONT face=Arial 
color=black><SPAN>Wilson</SPAN></FONT></st1:place></st1:City><FONT face=Arial 
color=black><SPAN> had failed. The old guard was defeated. The United Nations 
was established. A new world order contained the </SPAN></FONT><st1:place><FONT 
face=Arial color=black><SPAN>Soviet Union</SPAN></FONT></st1:place><FONT 
face=Arial color=black><SPAN>, controlled the strategic arms race and preserved 
peace. </SPAN></FONT><st1:country-region><st1:place><FONT face=Arial 
color=black><SPAN>America</SPAN></FONT></st1:place></st1:country-region><FONT 
face=Arial color=black><SPAN> was a real superpower then, its embassies the 
outposts of hope and security. <BR><BR>Clearly, we live in a different world 
now. But would going to war truly make it a safer one? A contained Saddam 
Hussein would remain a pariah in the </SPAN></FONT><st1:place><FONT face=Arial 
color=black><SPAN>Middle East</SPAN></FONT></st1:place><FONT face=Arial 
color=black><SPAN>. A Saddam Hussein under attack would win sympathy on behalf 
of his long-suffering people and perhaps the support of terrorists inflamed by 
the mighty reach of the </SPAN></FONT><st1:country-region><st1:place><FONT 
face=Arial color=black><SPAN>United 
States</SPAN></FONT></st1:place></st1:country-region><FONT face=Arial 
color=black><SPAN>. A war could also set back 
</SPAN></FONT><st1:country-region><st1:place><FONT face=Arial 
color=black><SPAN>Iraq</SPAN></FONT></st1:place></st1:country-region><FONT 
face=Arial color=black><SPAN>'s oil production and destabilize other 
oil-producing states. The economic consequences of war and reconstruction are 
incalculable; the federal budget is already plunging into deficit from surplus 
at the fastest rate in history, without even provision for war.<BR><BR>Why, 
then, the enthusiasm for war? Even top officials at the Central Intelligence 
Agency have acknowledged that Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction are 
only a threat if </SPAN></FONT><st1:country-region><st1:place><FONT face=Arial 
color=black><SPAN>Iraq</SPAN></FONT></st1:place></st1:country-region><FONT 
face=Arial color=black><SPAN> is attacked. And 
</SPAN></FONT><st1:country-region><st1:place><FONT face=Arial 
color=black><SPAN>Iraq</SPAN></FONT></st1:place></st1:country-region><FONT 
face=Arial color=black><SPAN>'s government, after all, is the same Baathist 
regime aided by the Reagan administration when 
</SPAN></FONT><st1:City><st1:place><FONT face=Arial 
color=black><SPAN>Baghdad</SPAN></FONT></st1:place></st1:City><FONT face=Arial 
color=black><SPAN> used chemical weapons in its bloody war against 
</SPAN></FONT><st1:country-region><st1:place><FONT face=Arial 
color=black><SPAN>Iran</SPAN></FONT></st1:place></st1:country-region><FONT 
face=Arial color=black><SPAN>. If anything, 
</SPAN></FONT><st1:country-region><st1:place><FONT face=Arial 
color=black><SPAN>Iraq</SPAN></FONT></st1:place></st1:country-region><FONT 
face=Arial color=black><SPAN> was stronger and more dangerous then. (I first 
became acquainted with this regime in 1976 when its minions tore toenails from 
the feet of my driver, a Kurd, in Baghdad ? apparently for having been 
insufficiently forthcoming during a periodic interrogation). <BR><BR>Many 
curious explanations are circulating for suddenly making this infamous regime a 
unilateral casus belli of the 
</SPAN></FONT><st1:country-region><st1:place><FONT face=Arial 
color=black><SPAN>United 
States</SPAN></FONT></st1:place></st1:country-region><FONT face=Arial 
color=black><SPAN> while </SPAN></FONT><st1:country-region><st1:place><FONT 
face=Arial color=black><SPAN>North 
Korea</SPAN></FONT></st1:place></st1:country-region><FONT face=Arial 
color=black><SPAN> ? which may take advantage of the administration's 
preoccupation with </SPAN></FONT><st1:country-region><st1:place><FONT 
face=Arial 
color=black><SPAN>Iraq</SPAN></FONT></st1:place></st1:country-region><FONT 
face=Arial color=black><SPAN> to develop more nuclear weapons ? is an object of 
relative indifference. Maybe the most plausible is 
</SPAN></FONT><st1:country-region><st1:place><FONT face=Arial 
color=black><SPAN>Iraq</SPAN></FONT></st1:place></st1:country-region><FONT 
face=Arial color=black><SPAN>'s purported link to terrorism.<BR><BR>In 1978, I 
led the first in-depth Congressional study into the growing threat of terrorism 
and how to combat it. Such a threat reaches far back into history, beyond the 
label of terrorism. In 1962, President Kennedy read Barbara Tuchman's book "The 
Guns of August," a history of the unintended chain of consequences that led to 
the devastation of World War I. He wanted to avoid similar missteps. 
<BR><BR>The Bush administration would benefit by the same lesson. Sept. 11 was 
not all that different from </SPAN></FONT><st1:City><st1:place><FONT face=Arial 
color=black><SPAN>Sarajevo</SPAN></FONT></st1:place></st1:City><FONT face=Arial 
color=black><SPAN> at the turn of the century. The 19 men armed with box 
cutters did not expect to bring down all of 
</SPAN></FONT><st1:country-region><st1:place><FONT face=Arial 
color=black><SPAN>America</SPAN></FONT></st1:place></st1:country-region><FONT 
face=Arial color=black><SPAN>. Only 
</SPAN></FONT><st1:country-region><st1:place><FONT face=Arial 
color=black><SPAN>America</SPAN></FONT></st1:place></st1:country-region><FONT 
face=Arial color=black><SPAN> can do that. They expected a reaction. The one 
they should get is to be treated as criminals, hunted down and brought to 
justice. Bringing war only confirms complaints that the 
</SPAN></FONT><st1:country-region><st1:place><FONT face=Arial 
color=black><SPAN>United 
States</SPAN></FONT></st1:place></st1:country-region><FONT face=Arial 
color=black><SPAN> is waging a war against Islam. It can also give terrorists 
the reaction they seek. <BR><BR>Whether made by Al Qaeda or Saddam Hussein, 
today's threats require a multidimensional response, including efforts to 
address the widening gap between the haves and the have nots, the horrible 
conditions in which most people around the world struggle to survive. The 
Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a good place to begin. The 
</SPAN></FONT><st1:country-region><st1:place><FONT face=Arial 
color=black><SPAN>United 
States</SPAN></FONT></st1:place></st1:country-region><FONT face=Arial 
color=black><SPAN> loses credibility when perceived as supporting terror in one 
part of the </SPAN></FONT><st1:place><FONT face=Arial 
color=black><SPAN>Mideast</SPAN></FONT></st1:place><FONT face=Arial 
color=black><SPAN>, while professing to fight it elsewhere.<BR><BR>I like to 
think that if my father were in Secretary Powell's shoes, he would have 
presented proof of an aggressive deployment of weapons of mass destruction and 
evidence that </SPAN></FONT><st1:country-region><st1:place><FONT face=Arial 
color=black><SPAN>Iraq</SPAN></FONT></st1:place></st1:country-region><FONT 
face=Arial color=black><SPAN> was closer to obtaining nuclear arms ? a claim 
the administration made not so long ago. The Bush administration would have 
supported the United Nations, its inspectors and international containment of 
</SPAN></FONT><st1:country-region><st1:place><FONT face=Arial 
color=black><SPAN>Iraq</SPAN></FONT></st1:place></st1:country-region><FONT 
face=Arial color=black><SPAN> under Saddam Hussein. Members of the Security 
Council and other nations would not have to be cajoled into going along. The 
international community, for which this administration still presumes to speak, 
would support the </SPAN></FONT><st1:country-region><st1:place><FONT face=Arial 
color=black><SPAN>United 
States</SPAN></FONT></st1:place></st1:country-region><FONT face=Arial 
color=black><SPAN>, as it did in October, 1962, when 
</SPAN></FONT><st1:country-region><st1:place><FONT face=Arial 
color=black><SPAN>America</SPAN></FONT></st1:place></st1:country-region><FONT 
face=Arial color=black><SPAN> waged peace.<BR><BR><BR>Adlai E. Stevenson III is 
a former </SPAN></FONT><st1:country-region><st1:place><FONT face=Arial 
color=black><SPAN>United 
States</SPAN></FONT></st1:place></st1:country-region><FONT face=Arial 
color=black><SPAN> senator from </SPAN></FONT><st1:State><st1:place><FONT 
face=Arial 
color=black><SPAN>Illinois</SPAN></FONT></st1:place></st1:State><FONT 
face=Arial 
color=black><SPAN>.</SPAN></FONT><o:p></o:p></P></DIV></BLOCKQUOTE><p><br><hr 
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