Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-03-20-Speech-4-032"
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"en.20030320.2.4-032"2
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"Mr President, having won less than a quarter of the electorate’s vote, George W. Bush is the least well-supported president in US history. Although he is in power, he does not represent the American people, to whom Europe owes a great deal and with whom we share so many values. It is precisely these values that Bush is scorning, with his warmongering cronies and his disregard for Europe.
The primary victims of this war are the pre-eminence of international law, the necessary respect for all human life and the need to work towards a fairer, more peaceful world, which imposes the essential requirement that force be used only as a last resort. Bush wanted this war. His target is indisputably an unacceptable regime, but there are other dictatorships that also deserve to be eradicated. The universal reign of democracy and human rights, however, will not be established through the use of weapons and cultural violation.
President Bush will certainly succeed in bringing down Saddam Hussein’s regime by military force. It will, however, be at the cost of many innocent victims and significant collateral damage in Iraq and the surrounding area. Those, like the stock markets, who are expecting a short, clean, clinical war should recall why Bush Senior, who did have the backing of the international community, did not at the time take military action to the point of overthrowing the Baghdad regime. In fact, Bush Senior knew that he would get bogged down in a quagmire, that the fall of Saddam Hussein would lead to ethnic and religious confrontations that could not be managed from outside. The risk of an extremely costly, prolonged conflict is clear. Such conflict would be punctuated with terrorist incidents and suicide attacks, leading to further division and a consequent spiral of violence in the region and beyond. The economic cost as well as the human cost could exceed the intrinsic cost of the war, which is estimated at USD 100 billion.
The world economy has been experiencing a minor recession for the past three years. The financial markets have seen stock losses exceeding a trillion dollars. Banks, insurance companies and pension funds have been weakened. International trade has slowed down. Civil aviation, tourism and other economic sectors will suffer on account of the climate of insecurity and the speculative explosion in the price of certain raw materials, particularly oil. If consumers in the United States and Europe were to lose confidence, internal demand would collapse and lead the global economy into a prolonged recession. Not only will the weapons conflict cause desolation and ruin in Iraq, it will also affect the social and human condition of hundreds of millions of men and women all over the world.
Mr President, history will look harshly upon those who have chosen military action over a promising diplomatic process supported by the United Nations."@en1
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