Newsgroup: it.politica.polo
Titolo: Come i falchi USA trattano il berlusca

Notate come nell'articolo che segue, scritto sul NYT da un americano
sostenitore del'intervento USA in Iraq, si citino UK, D, F,e Spagna, ma il
ruolo di berlusconi sia tranquillamente ignorato.
Vorrà dire che forse nonostante il berlusca eviteremo il Italia ripetersi di
qualche macello stile Madrid...
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The New York Times
Axis of Appeasement
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/18/opinion/18FRIE.html?th
Published: March 18, 2004
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Columnist Page: Thomas L. Friedman
Forum: Discuss This Column
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he new Spanish government's decision to respond to the attack by Al Qaeda by
going ahead with plans to pull its troops from Iraq constitutes the most
dangerous moment we've faced since 9/11. It's what happens when the Axis of
Evil intersects with the Axis of Appeasement and the Axis of Incompetence.
Let's start with the Axis of Evil. We are up against a terrible nihilistic
enemy. Think about what the Islamist terrorists are doing: they are trying
to kill as many people in Iraq and elsewhere as possible so the U.S. fails
in Iraq, so Iraq collapses into civil war, so even a glimmer of democracy
never takes root in the Arab world and so America is weakened.
But if they are so bad, why aren't we doing better? It has to do with the
pigheadedness of the Bush team and the softheadedness of many allies.
Regarding the Bush team, let me say yet again: We do not have enough troops
in Iraq, and we never did. From the outset, the Bush Pentagon has treated
Iraq as a lab test to prove that it can win a war with a small, mobile
high-tech Army. Well, maybe you can defeat Saddam that way, but you can't
build a new Iraq - and control its borders to prevent foreign terrorists
from coming in - with so few troops, especially when you disband the Iraqi
Army on top of it.
Don't tell me we have enough troops in Iraq when our soldiers are getting
picked off daily by roadside bombs, when our aid workers are getting
murdered and when Iraqis are getting massacred by suicide missions. Don't
tell me we are not fighting this war on the cheap when our diplomats in
Baghdad don't have enough armored cars, cellphones, bulletproof vests or
escort troops to protect them as they try to travel around the country. We
are now paying for the contradiction between Mr. Bush's two great projects:
his war on taxes and his war on terrorism.
Yes, we can still win this, but right now, despite Paul Bremer's heroic
success in helping Iraqis forge a progressive interim constitution, we can
still lose it. If we do, it will be largely due to the Pentagon's inability
to secure Iraq, which has encouraged Iraqis to turn to sectarian militias
for security, undermining nation-building and planting the seeds of civil
war. Second, it will be because we have so few real allies. As Spain proves,
we had a few friendly governments, but most people in Europe and Asia have
never been with the Bush team - especially when it continues to insist that
we are going to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq to justify the war.
It's time for the Bush team to admit it was wrong about this and move on.
Unless President Bush dispenses with his discredited argument for the war -
W.M.D. - no one will hear or listen to what I believe was always the only
right argument for the war and is now the only rationale left: to depose the
genocidal Saddam regime in order to partner with the Iraqi people to build a
decent government in the heart of the Arab-Muslim world - because it is the
pathologies and humiliations produced by Arab misgovernance that are the
root causes of terrorism and Muslim extremism.
Spain is planning to do something crazy: to try to appease radical evil by
pulling Spain's troops out of Iraq - even though those troops are now
supporting the first democracy-building project ever in the Arab world.
I understand that many Spanish voters felt lied to by their rightist
government over who was responsible for the Madrid bombings, and therefore
voted it out of office. But they should now follow that up by vowing to keep
their troops in Iraq - to make clear that in cleaning up their own
democracy, they do not want to subvert the Iraqis' attempt to build one of
their own. Otherwise, the Spanish vote will not be remembered as an act of
cleansing, but of appeasement.
My dream is that the U.S., Britain, France, Germany and Spain announce
tomorrow that in response to the Madrid bombing, they are sending a new
joint force of 5,000 troops to Iraq for the sole purpose of protecting the
U.N.'s return to Baghdad to oversee Iraq's first democratic election.
The notion that Spain can separate itself from Al Qaeda's onslaught on
Western civilization by pulling its troops from Iraq is a fantasy. Bin Laden
has said that Spain was once Muslim and he wants it restored that way. As a
friend in Cairo e-mailed me, a Spanish pullout from Iraq would only bring to
mind Churchill's remark after Chamberlain returned from signing the Munich
pact with Hitler: "You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You
chose dishonor and you will have war."


La risposta è semplice: il governo americano considera Berlusconi alla
stregua di un servizievole zerbino, pronto a far qualsiasi cosa pur di farsi
invitare per un week end ospite nel ranch di Bush con relativa foto ricordo.
Di conseguenza - avendone il governo una considerazione cosi' bassa - i
giornalisti che si occupano di politica interna ed estera (attingendo a
confidenze ed indiscrezioni provenienti da fonti interne all'esecutivo) sono
naturalmente portati ad ignorare Berlusconi e l'Italia stessa.