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Kouchner's appointment and the Iraq war

Thursday, 24th May 2007

Oliver Kamm has an interesting post here about Bernard Kouchner's position on the Iraq war. Bizarrely, it has been reported that he was an advocate of war. Actually, it's not that bizarre given that the report of Kouchner's views is by one Neil Clark, for whom the word idiot was clearly coined.

I was an advocate of the war. I remain of the view that it was the right thing to do. I say that merely to give context to the rest of this post. In the run up to the war, just before it started but in that period when it was clearly imminent, I chaired a conference in Vienna (nothing to do with politics or foreign affairs - it was a gathering of heart surgeons). The keynote speaker at that conference was Bernard Kouchner, wearing his hats as a former French health minister and founder of MSF. His speech, on human rights, healthcare, and the obligations owed by those with power to alleviate the suffering of those without it, was utterly compelling. He was scheduled to speak for 45 minutes. After well over 90 minutes he drew breath; no one in the hall was eager for him to stop.

Afterwards, I was lucky enough to have dinner with him. As an advocate of military action I was used to having to defend my position in an almost entirely hostile Europe. But neither before or since was my view subjected to a more rigorous or piercing cross-examination than it was by M Kouchner, who had the table eating out of his hands like the commanding figure he is. He spent the entire dinner arguing - passionately - against the war, in private as in public.

But his position on Saddam was unambiguous: the man was an evil and dangerous dictator and had to be removed. My difference with him was that I did not - do not, still - think there was any other way beyond military action. Unlike some opponents of the war. however, Kouchner's opposition included not an ounce of knee-jerk anti-Western or anti-Americanism. It was based on a legitimate, albeit in my view wrong, calculation about the best way to bring about the removal of Saddam.

Kouchner's appointment is far from perfect from some points of view - he is a fanatical Eurofederalist, for instance. But in terms of bringing France back into the fold of decent, moral and humanitarian foreign policy, it is a wondrous move.

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Ken

May 25th, 2007 12:04am

Neil may get a few details wrong - so may I come to that - but he has been spot on as far as the big things are concerned. Kouchner was formerly the pro-consul in Kosovo, so the fact that he did not support the war against Iraq does not mean that he isn't a part of the drive to see all of us living under globalised capitalism. Besides, he went on record as saying that Saddam needed to be removed - as if that was any business of his. Neil has always pointed out that the KLA are basically a bunch of drug dealers who want to cleanse Kosovo of its Serbian and gypsy peoples - they seem to be doing rather well at all their activities. He was also one who argued that if imperialism was not stopped in Kosovo, it would go on and attack somewhere else - and he was right, wasn't he? So how is the cakewalk in Iraq coming along? I hope that it is as good for you as it is for us, but I doubt it, somehow.

Ampontan

May 25th, 2007 6:05am

This post should be required reading for everyone thinking of starting a blog, what to put in an entry, and how it should be written.

Bogdan of Australia

May 26th, 2007 7:09am

Although a great humanitarian and a commanding political figure, Kouchner displays a typical European narrow mindedness and even a kind of an intellectual cowardice while assesing strategic importance of removing Saddam Hussain from power. Firstly, he avoids, conveeniently, mentioning a destructive, sinister, behind the scenes role played by two other players on the stage: China and Russia, countries that were using Iraq before, like they are using Iran, North Korea, Syria , and other regimes now, a s tool of exhausting the US economically, but above morally, in order to push America into isolationism. Russia and China NEVER were really interested in solving the Iraq's problem peacefully and never indended to help the US to achieve that. He is also forgetting the nasty role performed by his own country, Chirac's France and then also Shroeder's Germany, who were doing everything to obstruct Bush in his drive to clear the ME a bit. If it was not for removal of Saddam, Libia's Gaddafi would be much further on his way of building the WMD, and a nuke in particular, and one has to realise that this fellow was every bit as insane and dangerous as Saddam. The proposal that the mess in Iraq and in the ME in general is a creation of Bush is just preposterous! By the way; at least Bush is trying to do something, thus he is destined to make mistakes. Only those who do nothing make no mistakes, those however who do nothing have no moral right to criticise those who try do do something and making mistakes. Perhaps Bush has made some tactical mistake in Iraq or elsewhere, but he has not done any STRATEGIC mistakes by doing nothing! Those who are criticising and undermining Bush and his policy, and those who are trying to discredit him, are in fact attempting to nobilitate their own inaction - a result of their own cowardice. There is, absolutely, no doubt in my mind that the intervention in Iraq (I refuse to call it occupation or war) was not only justified but necessary. The next obious step is Iran, and again, those who delude themself with the notion that ther is any political solution to this problem display the same intellectual, self-destructive cowardice. I'm on your side, Stephen!