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Back in Uncle Sam's Pocket
by Diana Johnstone
 One of the best known fables by the 17th century French poet Jean de la Fontaine tells of a fly that buzzed around a horse pulling a heavy coach up a steep hill.
When the horse made it to the top, the self-important fly gave himself, and his buzzing, credit for getting the coach to the top.
The new French foreign policy of Nicolas Sarkozy looks like that. Flies buzz around, looking for some event they can claim to influence.
Act One : Cécilia and the Bulgarian nurses
In July, Sarko
found something exciting for his visibly bored wife, Cécilia, to do. In
a surprise trip to Libya, the former fashion model was photographed
with Moammar Gaddafi, who also knows how to dress. This was a photo
opportunity with a humanitarian message. According to the script, the
Mona Lisa-like Cécilia (whose distinctive style is to wear no obvious
makeup, no broad smile) charmed the old desert fox into sparing the
lives of six Bulgarian medical workers unjustly convicted of infecting
children with HIV virus.
Indeed, the five women nurses and the
Palestinian-born male doctor were not only saved from the firing squad,
they were allowed to leave Libya and go home, free, to Bulgaria.
The happy ending was real. But the rôle of Cécilia?
In
reality, the release of the Bulgarian nurses was a foregone conclusion.
It had been negotiated behind the scenes by European Union and German
diplomats. But "behind the scenes" is not the Sarko way of life.
Stealing the scene is more to the point.
When I was in Libya
last January, I asked people about the Bulgarian nurses. Everyone
assured me the death penalty would never be carried out. But what
surprised me was the widespread belief among lawyers and other
professionals, none of them great admirers of Gaddafi, that the nurses
were "not altogether innocent". How could intelligent, seemingly
reasonable people believe what seemed obviously preposterous?
The
explanation I heard was certainly not convincing, but did tell me
something about the real story, which differs from the Western media
tale of the evil dictator cynically holding nurses for ransom in order
to extort money from the West.
When the story began eight years
ago, Gaddafi was high on the U.S. hit list. After having unsuccessfully
tried to kill Gaddafi in a bombing raid, the United States accused his
agents of blowing up Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in
December 1988. To force Gaddafi to turn over two accused agents for
trial, the United Nations imposed economic sanctions on Libya that
seriously impeded its development. Gaddafi gave in, and in January
2001, Libyan agent Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi was convicted and jailed
for 27 years. Without admitting guilt, Gaddafi agreed to pay out over
two billion dollars in compensation to families of Lockerbie victims.
Back
in 1999, Islamic militants were leading a violent insurrection against
Gaddafi in Benghazi, the capital of the eastern end of the vast north
African country. Benghazi, close to Egypt, is historically less
developed and more troubled than the western part of the country around
Tripoli. The insurgents were widely assumed to have been incited by
outside agents, as part of what is seen throughout the region as a
Anglo-American-Israeli subversion strategy to subjugate the Arab nation
by breaking it up into sectarian fragments.
In this tense
situation, the sudden infection of over 400 children with HIV virus in
Benghazi hospital was quickly seen as yet another Western-instigated
destabilization plot. Suspicion fell on foreign health workers in the
hospital where the children were infected. The five Bulgarians and a
Palestinian doctor who had treated the unfortunate children were
accused of having deliberately injected the virus. But what could be
their motive? Money from Anglo-Americans was the charge. Why? To
discredit the regime and to carry out experimentation.
This
sounds crazy in the West. But not in Africa, where several rare but
highly publicized cases have been uncovered of European doctors using
African patients for harmful experimentation. Western experts say that
the HIV virus was introduced into the Benghazi hospital by guest worker
patients from sub-Saharan countries struck by the AIDS epidemic. Re-use
of insufficiently sterilized syringes did the rest. But in Benghazi,
foreign sabotage seemed more credible. Anguished parents of dying
children were outraged, and the police were under pressure to find
perpetrators.
So they interrogated the medical workers. The
hapless Bulgarian nurses and the Palestinian doctor were cruelly
tortured into making confessions. The conviction of the Bulgarians took
the pressure off the Libyan authorities to account for the tragedy. The
Gaddafi family foundation moved in to provide more comfortable
incarceration for the unfortunate scapegoats.
But then the
Libyan regime found itself under a counterpressure, as the affair of
the Bulgarian nurses turned into an obstacle to reconciliation with the
West. Since 2003, to escape from sanctions, Gaddafi not only paid
billions of dollars to Lockerbie victims, but officially ended a
program of "weapons of mass destruction" (which may never have
existed), turned his attention away from the explosive Middle East to
sub-Saharan Africa, and in general showed himself to be cooperative
with the United States and its NATO allies.
Very discreetly,
the conviction of the Libyan agent for the Lockerbie massacre has been
unraveling. It may well be overturned in the near future.
Last
June 28, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission decided to let
the case of the convicted Libyan go before an Appeal Court of five
Scottish judges. The appeal court will not be under the heavy pressure
from media, Western governments and victims' families that weighed on
the Scottish judges who convicted Al Megrahi in a special court set up
in the Netherlands specifically to confirm Libyan guilt.
Indeed,
the mainstream media that for years trumpeted Gaddafi's responsibility
for Lockerbie have so far looked the other way as leading actors in the
case have openly admitted that the whole thing was a frame-up. [During
the trial, CounterPunch's Andrew Cockburn scooped the world's press by
detailing the whole deception and frame-up in our newsletter, Editors.]
The
Lockerbie charges were trumped up to put pressure on Libya, according
to Michael Scharf, who as a legal expert helped the State Department
devise both the accusations and the sanctions against Gaddafi. Scharf
said the case was based on testimony by a "nut-job" liar furnished by
the CIA, was "so full of holes it was like Swiss cheese" and should
never have gone to trial.
Scharf, who helped set up both the
International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia and the Iraqi
prosecution of Saddam Hussein, explained that the case against the
Libyans had a "diplomatic rather than a purely legal goal".
"Now
Libya has given up its weapons of mass destruction, it's allowed
inspectors in, the sanctions have been lifted, tourists from the US are
flocking to see the Roman ruins outside of Tripoli and Gaddafi has
become a leader in Africa rather than a pariah. And all of that is the
result of this trial," Scharf said, as quoted in the Scottish
newspaper, The Sunday Herald.
"Diplomatically, it has been a huge
success story."
Robert Black, professor of Scots law at
Edinburgh University and the principal architect of the Lockerbie trial
in the Netherlands,jas frequently described the Lockerbie case as "a
fraud", and the conviction as "a disgrace for Scottish justice". Lies
were told, evidence was planted, and now the whole flimsy structure is
tumbling down.
 Meanwhile, the Bulgarian nurses posed a new
problem. For Western governments, the plight of the Bulgarian nurses
was a human rights violation that could inflame public opinion against
the newly restored relations and business deals with Libya--especially
since the public impression of Lockerbie guilt will outlast any legal
reversal of the case. For the Libyan government, the families of the
HIV-infected children posed a domestic political problem that had to be
treated delicately.
So a solution was worked out. In return for
compensation comparable to that paid to families of the 270 Lockerbie
victims, the Libyan families of the 438 HIV-infected children would
agree to the sparing the lives of the convicted Bulgarians. The
symmetry was not perfect: most of the compensation to the children's
families was actually paid by the Libyan government itself. Bulgaria
paid $44 million in the form of debt forgiveness. The European Union
agreed to donate nine and a half million euros to upgrade the
children's hospital in Benghazi.
Cécilia was, as the French say, the cherry on the cake.
In
France, criticism of the Cécilia show has been largely beside the
point. Left-wing critics, cartoonists and commentators blasted the
Sarkozys for "dealing with dictators", not for stealing the show. In
fact, the deals were happening anyway, and Sarkozy does not deserve
either blame or credit for the arms sales or the French firm Areva's
important energy infrastructure contracts in Libya, which preceded his
presidency. The French media have totally ignored the collapse of the
Lockerbie accusation, and continue to portray Gaddafi as a bloodthirsty
master-mind of international terror. The anti-dictator stance makes it
impossible to observe that the outcome, which lets the Bulgarians go
home and improves health care for children in Benghazi, is a reasonably
humane compromise--which owes nothing to Sarkozy and his wife.
Act Two: The Thief of Baghdad
Bernard
Kouchner was feeling left out. He is foreign minister, remember? To
steal back into the limelight, on August 19 Kouchner arrived for a
surprise visit in Baghdad's Green Zone and started uttering the
off-the-wall declarations for which he is renowned.
But what
could this chronic Americanophile say in such a desperate situation?
The situation is terrible, "sinister", he recognized, while hoping that
things may be starting to improve. "This is an Iraqi problem which must
be solved by Iraqis", he said, which is true enough in a way--but not
in the way he meant. For, without reversing France's official
disapproval of the U.S. invasion, the thrust of Kouchner's remarks was
to suggest that the current chaos in Iraq is the fault of the Iraqis
themselves, and their "6,000 years of violence". He blamed the United
States, not for its violence against Iraqi people, for its illegal
invasion and destruction of Iraq, but rather for not applying the
Kouchnerian doctrine of humanitarian intervention properly. Sometimes,
he told Newsweek, the "right to interfere" has been applied well, for
instance in Kosovo--alluding to his own stint as United Nations
administrator of the occupied protectorate, which left the province a
seething cauldron of ethnic hatred run by gangsters. But "in Iraq it
was applied horribly".
So what could Kouchner do for his
American friends? Replacing U.S. soldiers with French soldiers was out
of the question, although "the role of the international community
should be developed". What could Kouchner say that would make him sound
like an influential insider?
Calls to dump Iraqi Prime
Minister Nouri al Maliki are growing in Washington. Here was a coach to
help up the hill. Interviewed by Newsweek, the fly began to buzz: "I
just had Condoleezza on the phone 10 or 15 minutes ago, and I told her,
'Listen, he's got to be replaced'." Kouchner had a replacement in mind:
Adel Abdul Mahdi, "not only because he studied in France. He's solid.
Of the people who are available, he's widely seen as the one that ought
to have the job."
This undiplomatic statement aroused
predictable protests. Kouchner was obliged to apologize to the Iraqi
prime minister. But never mind, he was in the news. More important than
his blundering words, the U.S. media interpreted his mere presence in
Iraq as a sign that the French black sheep was back in the Uncle Sam's
fold.
First in the United States, with Reagan, and now in
France, a population raised to identify action with appearing on
television has elected leaders who share the same illusion. If it's on
television, it happened. Otherwise Serious reflection is not telegenic.
In fact, you can't see it at all. So what's the point? Sarko's
Americanized Finance Minister Christine Lagarde summed up the new
doctrine: France has been a country known for thinking. Enough of that,
it's time to stop thinking and get to work.
Kouchner is an
extreme case. He seems oblivious to the fact that he is neither
thinking nor really getting anything done. Words pop out like bubbles,
burst and are followed by more words. Traditional diplomacy meant
keeping options open by saying as little as possible. Kouchner's way is
to say as much as possible in order to make the TV news. Contradictions
are the spice of life. As for facts, never mind, they'll take care of
themselves.
What is the use of Kouchner as foreign minister? So
far, the main answer could be that he makes Sarkozy look serious in
comparison.
Act Three: Let Them Bomb Iran
Back in Paris
from his U.S. vacation and Kennebunkport lunch with the Bush clan,
Sarkozy summoned French diplomats to lay down the new foreign policy
line. The media focused on his statement that "a nuclear-armed Iran is
for me unacceptable". He called for tightening sanctions, as well as an
"opening if Iran chooses to respect its obligations", as the only way
to avoid having to make a "catastrophic" choice between "the Iranian
bomb or the bombardment of Iran".
France was not threatening to
drop bombs itself, but was indirectly accepting a future U.S. or
Israeli bombing of Iran as legitimate, in contrast to Chirac's refusal
to endorse war against Iraq.
More fundamentally, Sarkozy's
policy speech subscribed to the U.S.-Israeli ideology of a "clash of
civilizations" brought about solely by unprovoked radical Muslim
aggressiveness. According to Sarkozy, the primary challenge confronting
the world today is "how to prevent a confrontation between Islam and
the West" -- a confrontation for which he put full blame on the Muslim
side: the "extremist groups such as Al Qaeda who dream of installing,
from Indonesia to Nigeria, a caliphate rejecting any opening, any
modernity, even the very idea of diversity". There is no hint here that
militant Islam might be, at least in part, a reaction to decades of
aggressive Western intervention in Muslim countries, notably in
Palestine and Iraq. The European Union must build a unified defense,
first of all to meet "the threat of a confrontation between Islam and
the West". He cited the Danish cartoon controversy as a portent of
clashes to come.
Sarkozy said he hoped to prevent the
confrontation, notably by supporting "forces of moderation and
modernity" in the Arab world. In practice, this means joining the
United States and Israel in isolating and eliminating the Palestinian
resistance on religious grounds. Sarkozy called for "reconstruction of
the Palestinian Authority, under the authority of its President",
ignoring the fact that President Mahmoud Abbas has lost almost all
popular support and that the Palestinians democratically elected Hamas.
Sarkozy called Hamas' successful resistance to the attempt by
Israeli-armed militias to take control of Gaza "the creation of a
'Hamastan' as the first step in seizing control of all the Palestinian
territories by radical Islamists."
"We cannot resign ourselves to that prospect. France is not resigned to it", he declared.
Openly
abandoning any notion of a European defense independent of NATO,
Sarkozy called for what in Washington is called greater "burden
sharing" by Europeans. There was no more talk of a "multipolarity" in
world affairs as an alternative to "unipolarity" around a U.S.
hyperpower. Rather, like the Bush administration itself, Sarkozy
rejected "unilateralism" as a failure, calling instead for "an
effective multilateralism"--starting with the Franco-U.S. alliance.
Sarkozy
better watch out. The coach he thinks he's pushing up the hill may be
about to go over the side of a cliff--taking the rest of us with it.
Diana
Johnstone is the author of Fools' Crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO and Western
Delusions, Monthly Review Press. She can be reached at
dianajohnstone@compuserve.com
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