When Secretary of State Colin Powell went to the Security Council in February 2003, however, he was decisively rebuffed. Despite its determined efforts to twist arms, the US was only able to muster the votes of the UK, Bulgaria, and Spain. Rather than face the humiliation of such a paltry showing, the White House withdrew the proposed resolution and proceeded with the attack.
Bush’s so-called “coalition of the willing” was a threadbare arrangement that provided little military help. The massive scale of public opposition prevented many countries from joining and convinced most of those that did to limit their role to noncombat duties. The US Army history says the coalition was “largely unsuccessful” at the operational level, with American troops doing almost all of the fighting and suffering 93 percent of the casualties.
Colin Powell’s disingenuous presentation to the UN about the “WMD”, weapons of mass destruction, when the UN’s own inspection team headed by Hans Blix had not found any evidence of was the end of Powell’s political career and brought shame to the government of the U.S. in the international community.
Further, the lie that the war into Iraq was a multinational affair has been exposed even though it goes unacknowledged by the American people. These lies which attempt to justify military aggression by the United States need exposure if the American people are to learn from their mistakes and make amends for the harm they have perpetrated. As the chorus in the old folk song Where have all the flowers gone? “When will we ever learn? When will we ever learn?” The time is now. Non violent resistance is a path to raising our cultural consciousness and lead to better social policies.
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