"Well, wouldn't they be right? After all, 'human rights' violations can be found in any number of countries. If that's the only threshold for unilateral war, you can invade almost the entire planet without international consent."
"Yeah, see, that's the reaction we were worried about. People don't understand that the United States would never invade a country that didn't deserve it."
"So you expected that rest of the world would just trust your judgment, and allow the U.S. to decide at any given point who the U.S. would invade?"
"Yes. It's not like we're bad people."
"But what about international law?"
"What about it? International law doesn't mean anything if the U.S. has to compromise its security. We had to disarm the madman--the U.N. refused to do it. They had us in a really tight spot."
"But the U.N. provided an inspections regime, and they were ready to toughen it. The new inspections were barely in progress when you invaded. How are you so certain that a war alternative could not have panned out?"
"Well, see, this wasn't primarily about disarmament anyway..."
"You're ducking that essential question--how is it that you jumped into war when an alternative strategy had so clearly not been exhausted?"
"We thought people would just trust our judgment on that--we knew it was never going to work out."
"But that's just arrogant. You can't tell the entire world, 'Trust me, I see the future.' You launched a war without international consent. Do you see why the rest of the world could not let you remain a superpower?"
"I don't know why they didn't just trust us. We're not bad people."
"But all empires say that. No empire has ever been lauched in the name of evil. Don't you see that breaking with international law, on such a transparently false rationale that you were directly acting in self-defense, was itself reason to turn against your nation?"
"No, you don't understand. We're not bad people. I can understand that you wouldn't let someone else act without permission. But the U.S.? We would never do something unless it was right."
"But that's how it starts. A leader claims he feels another country is up to something, so he lauches a 'preventive' war, then when that works out, he targets another country, and before you know it, any country is fair game. Because once you allow the standard to slip below a certain threshhold, there really is no standard."
"That's crazy. Of course there were still standards. We would have only attacked a country that posed a security risk."
Article comments
1 - Eric Olsen
I guess I'll have to be the one to break the comment ice: compelling drama Brian, even though you know I disagree with the moral.
I am afraid the shoe will on the other foot in 10, 20, 30 years: we will be wondering how the UN became so irrelevant, which is not to anyone's advantage.
I am not anti-UN, I see colective world action as the only reasonable path of the future, but I fear that the body's inability to make difficult decisions, and more importantly, to carry out the decisions they do make, will render it irrelevant for anything other than sponsoring conferences on desert sand ecology, and diplomatic traffic citation waivers.
2 - Brian Flemming
I think they did make a difficult decision, Eric. We just didn't like the result. The law means nothing if we only follow it when we like it.
Robin Cook, resigning:
"I applaud the heroic efforts that the Prime Minister has made in trying to secure a second resolution. I do not think that anybody could have done better than the Foreign Secretary in working to get support for a second resolution within the Security Council. But the very intensity of those attempts underlines how important it was to succeed. Now that those attempts have failed, we cannot pretend that getting a second resolution was of no importance."
Michael Kinsley:
"If the United Nations wants to be 'relevant,' [Bush] said, it must do exactly as I say. In other words, in order to be relevant, it must become irrelevant. When that didn't work, he said: I am ignoring the wishes of the Security Council and violating the U.N. Charter in order to enforce a U.N. Security Council resolution. No, no, don't thank me! My pleasure!!"
Continuing with the U.N. would have been frustrating. Very frustrating. I would have been frustrated by the slowness of due process right along with everyone else. But clearly the new inspections, backed appropriately by our gunships in the area, were working. And clearly the stage was set to make them work even better.
There's no question we were on a road to this possibility--and clearly it was a better alternative to war. War proponents will no doubt forever cling to France's supposed intractable position, but that's just a rationalization. Yeah, Chirac farted out an unwise comment, but he did backtrack. It would have taken more wrangling, more diplomatic work, more compromise, yes. There would have been confrontations with Saddam, more lies, more toughness required to get him to comply. It would have happened slower than we would have liked. We would have felt like goddamned babysitters dealing with the worst brat ever bred.
But it would have been good enough. There is such a thing as "good enough," especially when the alternative is war. And more especially when the alternative is the utter polarization of the planet. (Are you not upset at all about the unprecedented worldwide goodwill that has turned into unprecedented worldwide fear?)
Coercive inspections followed by monitoring would have neutralized the threat and contained Saddam. And as far as this rescuing-people-from-a-dictator thing goes--yeah, we could have worked on that with similar methods as we use with every other dictator on the planet.
That's life in a world ruled by the world. Perfection just isn't going to show up. Unless one thinks war is perfection. Some people in our government who are gifted with "moral clarity" no doubt do see it that way.
And patience is a necessity in a world ruled by the world. George W. Bush was tragically impatient. A patient man, like George H.W. Bush, would have dealt with the U.N., valuing peaceful relations with the world over getting things to happen exactly his way.
Well, the U.N. wouldn't do things exactly his way. And rather than accept a compromise, GWB chose war.
Utterly needless. It's one of the most shameful things the U.S. has ever done, and we'll be paying for it for a long time.
The radical, U.S.-hating left knows this, by the way. They are far more tuned in to international opinion than most Americans are. They're already sounding optimistic, knowing that the world is no doubt going to respond to U.S. arrogance somehow. They think the resulting tension/disaster will be the end of the "U.S. empire."
I think it's going to be the end of U.S. hope. We could have been, unquestionably, the greatest country that ever existed. We could have been instrumental in bringing about worldwide peace and freedom. I fear we may have blown this opportunity right here. It may all be over now. We'll never export our best values in a world we rule by fear.
3 - LKM
> but I fear that the body's inability to make difficult decisions
Well, I guess you want them to wage war against any nation in violation of un resolutions? I guess then Israel must be next.
Seriously, though, I'm afraid that this *is* the beginning of the end of the USA's position as the only global super power. The might of the USA is based on its military power, which, in turn, is based on its economic power. No strong economy, no money, no strong military. But the economy is seriously in the bin, especially in the USA. The school system is fubar, and the USA, more than anyone else, needs progress to stay ahead. Nowadays, third world countries can produce stuff cheaper, at better quality, and european countries have better schools, so the USA will lose on the production *and* on the innovation front.
That's bad, and *that's* the real problem, not Iraq.
4 - J. Jackiw
What I find touching is our politicians' tender insistence that we "support the troops." These are the "statesmen" who formulate the policy to place them in harm's way to begin with. Then when people object to and demonstrate against the policy, they hide behind the troops. Many of them had respectfully declined to enforce the policy of their predecessors in Vietnam. Rush Limbaugh, by the way, suffers from hemorrhoidal cysts and thereby obtained his deferral. Rather than assume responsibility for their actions, they invoke the patriotic necessity of political unity. Of course, when the smoke clears and the bodies are buried and the troops return the politicians step forward from the ranks to accept the accolades of a grateful nation. There's nothing morally clear about any of this. It's called moral cowardice.
5 - natasha
LKM - Not only do we depend on our economic power, but our economic power depends on foreign capital. Hugely. Our money is propped up by the fact that all oil sales are transacted in dollars, and that every country in the world must have dollar reserves. Our economy is supported by massive inflows of capital to what has been, up to know, one of the most stable investment climates in the world. It's supported by the fact that American companies are given favorable contracts all over the globe.
In fact we've come to rely so much, every day, on the good will and opinion of the world, that we've been comfortable becoming debtors. After WWII we were the world's biggest creditors. Today, if all accounts were called in, we'd be in dire straits.
6 - J. Jackiw
This was one of the reasons our government decided to invade and occupy Iraq, and appropriate their oil reserves. Iraq had recently concluded contractual agreements with France, Germany, Russia and China to denominate their petroleum purchases in Euros once the sanctions were relaxed, thereby breaking the economic stranglehold which a dollar-denominated energy economy imposed upon the world economy.
As for weapons of mass destruction, those which weren't used or destroyed during the war with Iran (with American, Israeli and European assistance) or the first Gulf war (with prior American assurances of "indifferance" to Iraqi grievances against Kuwait) were degraded during the subsequent siege of Iraq. Residual stockpiles of chemical, biological or nucleur weapons in Iraq are insignificant compared to those in Israel or the US. Hussein needed only to wait out the sanctions which a worldwide shortage of petroleum would have ended. Like Sharon, Bush decided to deliberately provoke and antagonize an impotent adversary in order to promote an imperial, unjustified conflict. The likelihood of subsequent terrorist attacks have thereby increased significantly.
The wingnuts are wack.
7 - Lorne Iverson
I like to say when its to someones own good to get into reality, or you are so far out of reality. I drive taxi for a civil enforcement agency, as well have the right to buy and possess rifles in Canada.