Jinn of Current Events

ABC News: The foreign ministers of France, Germany and Russia said they will "not allow" passage of an American-backed U.N. resolution to authorize war against Iraq... These three countries have sold the huge majority of weapons to Iraq over the past 30 years. All three continue to trade with Iraq, despite UN sanctions. All three have been lobbying the UN to completely lift these sanctions. France and Russia have signed huge oil contracts with Saddam Hussein; these contracts will reap billions of dollars, if and only if Saddam remains in power. In fact, what these three countries oppose is the liberation of Iraq, because they believe it is in their interest to preserve Saddam's dictatorship and thereby realize their juicy contracts for oil and weapons. It's beneath contempt. 

What would the Bard think about the war? 

Winston Churchill introduced the "Iron Curtain" expression on March 5, 1946. First, here is his general admonition: Do not let us take the course of allowing events to drift along until it is too late. ... Prevention is better than cure.

And here is the crux of the speech: A shadow has fallen upon the scenes so lately lighted by the Allied victory. Nobody knows what Soviet Russia and its Communist international organization intends to do in the immediate future, or what are the limits, if any, to their expansive and proselytizing tendencies. ... From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia, all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and, in many cases, increasing measure of control from Moscow.

It took 43 years of world-wide confrontation, with the ever-present threat of nuclear annihilation, to free Central and Eastern Europe. Untold millions were murdered and persecuted by the communist dictatorships. Shall we learn from history?