WASHINGTON: If you want to get a feeling for why America’s allies are rapidly peeling off from supporting the ‘war on terrorism’, the following personal account may help.

It started when a voice from my German audience startled me with the flat statement: “You are in Afghanistan for the oil.” When I responded in shock, “Oil?” he corrected himself, “Well, for the pipeline.” (He was referring to a pipeline some corporations are considering running from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to a port on the Arabian Sea.)

I was in Germany debating this issue as one of the 60 intellectuals who signed a letter from America supporting the war. The United States justified the war on three grounds: protecting innocents from harm (as distinct from sheer self-defence), a clear and present danger (not just a questionable threat), and that the situation cannot be plausibly mitigated through negotiations.

But back at the debate, organized in Berlin by the Aspen Institute, Ekkehart Krippendorff from the Free University, a well-known, left-leaning professor, argued that it is wrong in principle for intellectuals to support a government. “They should be critical; you never know what a government will do with its power,” he said.

During a dinner after the debate, Andrea Fischer, a member of the German parliament from the dovish Green Party, argued that any moral blessing of a war was at best troublesome. “Just say it is in self-defence,” she said.

At a meeting at the Center for Social Science in Berlin later the same day, a colleague quoted a counter-statement issued in the US by the left, mocking ours, calling us “celebrants of war,” and arguing that the US had appropriated the right of self-defence.

I asked the audience, “fair enough, you are critical of what the US is doing. If it is ever justified to go to war, what are your criteria for a call to arms?” When I found no takers, I asked if fighting Hitler was just. This got me a lot of positive nodding, but also a voice from the back of the room: “Saddam is no Hitler; Sharon comes close.”

In Afghanistan, the US had some very regrettable collateral damage, but also collateral gain. While the US did not set out merely to liberate women denied the right to work, to education, and to leaving their homes unescorted - or help all to enjoy some form of culture other than prayer — America did bring liberty to millions of Afghans.

The US needs to consult with its allies more about the next moves in the ‘war on terrorism’, although America must make clear that if all the allies do is veto what the US considers must be done, without suggesting viable alternatives, America shall go it alone at the end of the day.—Dawn/The Christian Monitor News Service.