Till försvar av Amerikas värden

Kanske är det hennes avskedstal till världen som Utrikesminister? Condoleezza Rice beskrev nyligen USAs relation till Ryssland i ett tal på The German Marshall Fund. Min spontana reaktion är att det är väldigt synd att Rice skall lämna politiken. Hon är unik i sin överblick av den nu mycket komplexa världssituationen.

I tisdags diskuterade jag Bronwen Maddoxs bok In Defense of America i min blogg. Jag rekommenderade denna läsning, trots att den är negativ mot Irakkriget, därför att ur svensk synvinkel ger Maddox en förhandlingsposition till ett balanserat synsätt mot USA som jag inbillar mig många svenskar, tom socialdemokrater, skulle kunna anamma. Det är mycket svårt att försvara USA i Sverige på grund av den negativitet som finns mot Irakkriget. Condoleezza Rice ger dock en förklaring till hur man kan göra en bedömning utefter hur Saddam Hussein var som ledare och motivera kostnader i liv som ett frihetskrig från den situation som han hade försatt Irakierna i.

Efter talet får Rice en fråga där vederbörande undrar om inte invasionen i Irak kan användas i Ryssland som motivation för dess invasion av Georgien. Hon svarar så här:

"As to Iraq, I think we have to be very clear here. Saddam Hussein was an international outlaw by numerous, numerous, numerous Security Council resolutions which Russia itself had voted for, including the last resolution, 1441, which called for consequences should the Iraqis not carry through on the demands of that resolution. This was a state that had attacked its neighbors, used weapons of mass destruction both against its own people and against its neighbors. It was a state that had started two major wars and that frankly was an outlaw state. And it was a brutal state to its own people. What the United States and the coalition of states that liberated Iraq did was to give the Iraqi people an opportunity to build a new and decent kind of society.

Now to be sure, it has been harder than any of us might have dreamed. But if you look at where Iraq is today, reemerging as a strong Arab state in the center of the Middle East, but a multiethnic, democratic state with a functioning parliament, with a functioning government whose neighbors are recognizing that and going back in important numbers from places like UAE and Bahrain and Jordan to reestablish embassies there, if you look at an Iraq that will not seek weapons of mass destruction like the Saddam Hussein regime, that will live in peace and security with its neighbors and that will give its own people a chance for democratic governance, I don’t think that that bears any resemblance to invading a small democratic neighbor whose only crime, apparently, was that it wished to be a part of the emerging transatlantic world."