Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-04-09-Speech-3-250"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20030409.5.3-250"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spokenAs | |
| lpv:translated text |
"Madam President, I think that all the members of the European Parliament are over 18 years of age, our average age is 40 or 50, so surely we should be playing with toy soldiers. I am not a general and am not therefore in a position to judge; I simply did my military service without even becoming a non-commissioned officer. However, as I speak to you now, I cannot erase from my mind's eye the photograph on the front page of
showing where these preventive wars lead. Nor can I erase from my mind's eye what I saw on the television five minutes ago; a nation which has not only been bombed for days on end, but which has been driven to the very extreme of indignity, with looting, thieving and everything else that we are seeing on our televisions. This being so, are we really going to sit here, in front of visitors, in front of journalists, in front of the interpreters, debating armaments and mechanisms, instead of looking at where we stand? Can we ever accept paragraph 17, which talks of the ‘crisis prevention character’ of military action, when a preventive war is what Bush and Blair have waged in Iraq? Can we accept paragraph 9, which says that terrorism has made the notion of geographical limitations for military engagement obsolete and that the traditional distinction between foreign and domestic security policy has been blurred? What are we doing? We ourselves are throwing open the gates for war in Syria, Iran, North Korea and, later on, in France, Mr Morillon.
In this sense, this is a useful debate. To see where we stand. Not to say it is wrong for us to disagree. To say which of the two sides in the European Union was right. The side which violated the principles of the Charter in the UN Security Council or the side which accepted and supported action under the auspices of the UN? To examine the political basis on which we shall ground a European Union which will not be a caricature of the United States, but a pole of peace, diplomacy and calm action in the 21st century, which must not in any way resemble the 20th century."@en1
|
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples