{"id":65406,"date":"2002-12-30T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2002-12-30T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/2002\/12\/30\/doutes-et-re-doutes\/"},"modified":"2002-12-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2002-12-30T00:00:00","slug":"doutes-et-re-doutes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/2002\/12\/30\/doutes-et-re-doutes\/","title":{"rendered":"Doutes et re-doutes<\/em><\/strong>"},"content":{"rendered":"

Doutes et re-doutes<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\t30 d\u00e9cembre 2002 L’ann\u00e9e se termine dans quelque chose qui commence \u00e0 ressembler \u00e0 l’amertume des promesses d\u00e9\u00e7ues. Nous citons ici ce texte de Mark Steyn, dont nous avons d\u00e9j\u00e0 signal\u00e9 l’importance \u00e0 notre point de vue, dans la rubrique Nos Choix<\/a>. Ce texte, publi\u00e9 dans l’excellent Spectator<\/em>, num\u00e9ro du 28 d\u00e9cembre (il paraphrase significativement le titre du dernier film inachev\u00e9 de Marilyn Monro\u00eb, \u00ab Something’s got to give<\/em> \u00bb), est tr\u00e8s significatif d’une inqui\u00e9tude, jusqu’\u00e0 maintenant sourde et qui pourrait s’affirmer plus bruyamment, chez les partisans les plus d\u00e9cid\u00e9s de GW et de la guerre irakienne.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tMark Steyn est le collaborateur le plus extr\u00e9miste, le plus extr\u00eamement faucon, pro-GW, etc, du Spectator<\/em>. Nous ne savons pas s’il est Am\u00e9ricain et nous croyons plut\u00f4t qu’il est de ces Britanniques qui sont v\u00e9ritablement Anglo-Am\u00e9ricains, et plus Yank<\/em> que les Yankees<\/em> eux-m\u00eames \u00e0 force d’\u00eatre pro-am\u00e9ricain ; quoiqu’il en soit, correspondant US du journal et qui ne m\u00e2che pas ses mots. Il est pour le matraquage sans d\u00e9lai et sans retenue de Saddam et des autres ; pour lui, il n’y a que quelques pays qui m\u00e9ritent droit de cit\u00e9 et droit \u00e0 la parole, \u00ab just the serious countries America, Australia, Britain<\/em> \u00bb. Et ainsi de suite. Et alors, justement, lorsqu’un Steyn, qui n’est pas d\u00e9pourvu de jugeotte par ailleurs (malgr\u00e9 tout ?), se met \u00e0 nous exposer certains doutes pour notre fin d’ann\u00e9e, et concernant l’essentiel, l’attaque contre l’axe du Mal, nous nous devons de les \u00e9couter et d’observer que c’est un \u00e9v\u00e9nement significatif. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\t\u00ab This is the real change of the last year. Nobody thought 52 weeks ago, when the Yanks were mopping up in Afghanistan and Hamid Karzai had just put together his broad-based government, that that was it. Intermission. A selection of snacks, ice-creams and beverages will be available in the stalls bar for the next 12 months, but do make sure you take your seat in plenty of time for Act Two in early 2003, well, maybe late spring, whatever. In his State of the Union address last January, identifying Iraq, Iran and North Korea as the axis of evil, the President warned that time is running out. Well, someone evidently jammed a big ol’ sausage in the hourglass, because it stopped running out round about August and, indeed, much of the sand seems to have run back in again. A year ago, few conservatives, including yours truly, would have bet that today Saddam would be sitting in Baghdad still enjoying his Quality Street, HP Sauce and digitally remastered Songs for Swingin’ Lovers. On its face, this is very difficult to explain, though a lot of us go to a lot of trouble trying to. The endless postponement of the Iraqi D-Day, now as routinely rolled over as those Soviet five-year plans, is all part of some cunning Bush rope-a-dope’ strategy. So is Colin Powell’s recent statement that the administration isn’t looking for regime change in Baghdad. So is the ongoing mantra of the Saudis are our friends, no matter how many of us they kill.<\/em> <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00bb It’s true that lulling the enemy into a false sense of security can be very cunning; but only if the sense of security does, indeed, turn out to be false. And a lot of what the Bushies do barely falls into the lulling category. When Princess Haifa, wife of the Saudis’ Washington ambassador, was revealed to have funnelled money, unwittingly or otherwise, to the 9\/11 killers, why did Alma Powell and Barbara Bush rush to phone her to commiserate? The connection between Saudi charitable giving and terrorism is well known. The most benign explanation is that the Princess is an idiot, and Americans are dead in part because of her idiocy. The wife of the Secretary of State and the mother of the President have no business comforting a stooge of their country’s enemies.<\/em> <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00bb Meanwhile, the alternative explanation to rope-a-dope is that the Pentagon needed time to replenish stocks. This was just about believable last spring. By late November, when senior officials were allegedly leaking to the press that they might need another year just to make sure they were really fully absolutely replenished, it was looking a whole lot less plausible. I’m one of those who believe that the actual war with Iraq will be over in nothing flat i.e., the proverbial cakewalk. Military chaps generally seem to feel the same. So the question is why, after a year standing at the podium poised with his baton, has Bush still not given the downbeat? At this rate, the mullahs in Tehran will be on the run before Saddam.<\/em> \u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\tCe n’est pas la premi\u00e8re fois qu’il y a des doutes concernant l’entreprise irakienne de l’administration GW. Il y en eut, pr\u00e9c\u00e9demment, d\u00e9but novembre exactement, \u00e0 l’occasion du d\u00e9bat \u00e0 l’ONU o\u00f9 l’Am\u00e9rique ne cessait de reculer<\/a>. Ce doute avait promptement disparu avec la victoire, extr\u00eamement applaudie mais plus ambigu\u00eb et surestim\u00e9e \u00e0 l’examen<\/a> de GW aux \u00e9lections mid-term<\/em>. Encore, ces doutes du d\u00e9but novembre renvoyaient-ils \u00e0 une circonstance ext\u00e9rieure, nullement \u00e0 la r\u00e9solution de GW. Ici, Mark Steyn s’interroge in fine<\/em> sur la r\u00e9solution, m\u00eame sur la capacit\u00e9 d’agir de cette administration. Le soup\u00e7on est grave.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tIl s’interroge et, on le sent bien, c’est-\u00e0-dire on le lit bien, il commence vraiment \u00e0 s’agacer, et notamment de la panique, la crainte, la confusion, qu’il distingue derri\u00e8re ces h\u00e9sitations et ces actions d\u00e9cisives qui ne cessent d’\u00eatre remises…<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\t\u00ab Possibly the President knows something we don’t. Every so often, some well-connected Washington type, late in the conversation, spins me some dark yarn involving weaponised smallpox resistant to the vaccine, or some such. The last time this happened, the guy emailed me the following morning to say he’d been drunk and to pay no attention. Her Majesty’s Government in London, with its terrifying warnings of mounds of corpses on every Tube platform sheepishly withdrawn the morning after, would also seem to be following this pattern.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00ab I don’t know what to make of it myself. But these latest pursed lips from General Powell at Saddam’s UN document dump had better be the real thing, because this phoney war won’t work for another year…<\/em> \u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\tMark Steyn exprime un constat g\u00e9n\u00e9ral mais tr\u00e8s diffus, un doute fondamental qui concerne la puissance am\u00e9ricaine en g\u00e9n\u00e9ral. Nos lecteurs connaissent bien nombre des donn\u00e9es qui alimentent ce doute. C’est un \u00e9l\u00e9ment nouveau notable que ce doute commence \u00e0 \u00eatre exprim\u00e9 de fa\u00e7on publique, par un commentateur affirm\u00e9 comme un partisan notoire de cette puissance. Le constat est \u00e0 faire de plus en plus fermement : le sort de l’administration GW est de plus en plus li\u00e9e \u00e0 cette guerre irakienne. Il n’est pas s\u00fbr que cette position soit la plus confortable du monde.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Doutes et re-doutes 30 d\u00e9cembre 2002 L’ann\u00e9e se termine dans quelque chose qui commence \u00e0 ressembler \u00e0 l’amertume des promesses d\u00e9\u00e7ues. Nous citons ici ce texte de Mark Steyn, dont nous avons d\u00e9j\u00e0 signal\u00e9 l’importance \u00e0 notre point de vue, dans la rubrique Nos Choix. Ce texte, publi\u00e9 dans l’excellent Spectator, num\u00e9ro du 28 d\u00e9cembre… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[3198,857,3595,3766],"class_list":["post-65406","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faits-et-commentaires","tag-gw","tag-irak","tag-spectator","tag-steyn"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65406","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65406"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65406\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}