EUROPEAN/AMERICAN RELATIONS: WHO LEADS?
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in mind. With Amer ica supplying the air forces and Israel the ground
forces, the war against Iraq would be quite short. I think all concerned
know that. But it has to be kept under wraps for the time being.
Fred Siegel:
But Conor, where does that leave Europe?
David Pryce-Jones:
I agree that the war against Iraq would be very
short. The Iraqis-they're no more foolish than the next fellow and
~ill
go home. They didn't want to die in
1991,
either. Those are politicized
armies, not citizen armies. They know perfectly well that they are being
asked-they are Shia and Kurds in the main part-to die for a Sunni dic–
tator. One shouldn't be afraid of the campaign against Iraq. One should
be afraid of the Europeans. In
1991,
about January
17,
when the war
was pretty much over,
Le Monde
had the headline
"La France et ses
allies foncent vers Baghdad"
(France and its allies are marching on
Baghdad). General Schwarzkopf wise ly put the French out on the left
flank, in the desert, which was very sensible. All they were doing, in
fact, was marching roughly toward the city border.
If
you remember,
they sent their famous aircraft carrier, which was equipped to take
twenty-four Exocet firing missiles and they forgot to put the planes on
the carrier, which led Jean Fran<;ois Revel, one of my friends whom 1
much admire, to say "It would have been better had they put the blue
belle girls on the deck." But this time around, there will be demonstra–
tions in front of every American embassy. All the press will come out
screaming, and there will be a tremendous surge of all that stuff about
Texans and cowboys and all the rest of it. It will be very awkward
indeed. And I think we must expect Americans to be insulted. The para–
dox will become absurd because there still will be British marines fight–
ing in Afghanistan. Nobody will be able to reconcile the contradiction
between the fact that we are fighting terrorism while there are huge
mobs in front of the American Embassy in Grosvenor Square. It's an
emotional attitude because Europe is going downhill. We are now led by
people who are, apparently, incapable of thinking straight. They are not
only fools, but they have no view of history and they have no cultural
background of any sort. They are just a lot of political pygmies. They
don't understand what they're doing.
Audience Member:
Although our subject at the moment is Europe's
reaction to the Middle East, would anyone care to discuss briefly the
Saudi, Kuwaiti, Egyptian, and Jordanian roles in the game and the
degree to which they have a vested interest in cooling things, to which
