29 replies to this topic

[DJS]

Mr. Charles Krauthammer, along with his protege Rich Lowery, are two of my favorite conservative commentators. Mr. Krauthammer is a gifted writer and a formidable talking head. Rich Lowery doesn't write as much, but he is one of the best talking heads out there.
Mr. Krauthammer has the habit of being brutally analytical and dismissive to naive conjecture. He is also a lover of chess. Basically he is me thirty years from now. I'm going to use this thread to post some articles by the two and try to get some feed back from you guys on their commentary.
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By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, January 31, 2003; Page A27 --Washington Post
My son long ago introduced me to the joys of the Onion, the hilarious Web site that features such parodies of the news as "Clinton Deploys Vowels to Bosnia; Cities of Sjlbvdnzv, Grzny to be First Recipients." So when, on the night of the State of the Union address, my son handed me an Internet printout headlined "Iraq to Chair U.N. Disarmament Conference," I was sure he'd been dipping again into the Onion.
"It's better than that, Dad," he said. "It's off CNN."
I should have known. You can't parody the United Nations. It inhabits -- no, it has constructed -- a universe so Orwellian that, yes, Iraq is going to chair the May 12-June 27 session of the United Nations' single most important disarmament negotiating forum.
Iran will co-chair.
Defenders of the United Nations will write this off as a simple accident, pointing out that the chairmanship rotates alphabetically under the U.N. absurdity that grants all member states equal moral standing. Fine. How, then, do U.N. defenders explain the recent elevation of Libya to the chairmanship of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights?
You couldn't make this one up either. It was no alphabetical accident. Libya was elected, by deliberate vote, by overwhelming vote -- 33 to 3. The seven commission members from the European Union, ever reliable in their cynicism, abstained. They will now welcome a one-party police state -- which specializes in abduction, assassination, torture and detention without trial -- to the chair of the United Nations' highest body charged with defending human rights.
This is the United Nations. This is the institution whose support Democrats insist the United States must have to validate the legitimacy of its actions, such as the forcible disarming of Saddam Hussein. This is the institution to which they turn to test the worthiness of decisions taken by the president and Congress of the United States. It is a kind of moral idiocy: the greatest defender of freedom on the planet, enjoying the freest institutions, seeking its moral yardstick in the looking-glass values of a corrupt, perverse institutional relic.
When President Bush finished his stirring State of the Union case for war on Hussein, the last redoubt of his Democratic opponents was this: Well, yes, Hussein does appear to have weapons of mass destruction, but we cannot go it alone, we must have the United Nations behind us. (Sen. Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia has already introduced a resolution to that effect. Several House Democrats are planning to follow suit.)
These protestations are ritual, and mindless. How would the vote of Syria, member of both the Security Council and the State Department's list of terrorist states, confer legitimacy on America's actions? Or the vote of China? Or, for that matter, France, whose president called the president of Syria to coordinate Security Council strategy, and whose interest in stopping the war is a matter of finance (to protect its huge contracts with Saddam Hussein) and vanity (to be the one European ex-power that tames the American cowboy).
The great lament of the president's critics is that "Europe" is against us. This is a fiction. Britain is with us, as are Spain and Italy, as are Portugal and Denmark, as are Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and the other Central Europeans. The opponents are France and Germany, with Belgium and Luxembourg poodling along behind. By my count, that is four. When the United States asked NATO to convene to give military support to (fellow member) Turkey in the event of war with Iraq, 14 members said yes; only the Rhineland Four objected.
The Rhineland Four have been undermined, however, by, of all people, the mild-mannered Hans Blix. Blix never really found anything big in his scavenger hunt through Iraq, but he reported to the Security Council that Iraq's regime had failed to cooperate and disarm.
Under Resolution 1441, that is a material breach. It is a casus belli. The French got around this inconvenience by changing the meaning of the very resolution they had negotiated just 90 days ago. Things are going swimmingly, they say, because with Blix in country, Iraq is contained. But the resolution says nothing about containment. It demands disarmament.
After the Blix report, France has nowhere to hide. It is the moment of truth for France, and, in a larger sense, for the United Nations. The United Nations is on the verge of demonstrating finally and fatally its moral bankruptcy and its strategic irrelevance: moral bankruptcy, because it will have made a mockery of the very resolution on whose sanctity it insists; strategic irrelevance, because the United States is going to disarm Iraq anyway.
Having proved itself impotent in the Balkan crisis and now again in the Iraq crisis, the United Nations will sink once again into irrelevance. This time it will not recover. And the world will be better off for it.
© 2003 The Washington Post Company

Edited by Kissinger, 01 February 2003 - 08:40 AM.

[DJS]

Couldn't have said it better myself.

[DJS]

The Anthrax Slander--Rich Lowery

Is Saddam’s bio-weapons program our fault?

It is a sign that Saddam Hussein has truly entered the pantheon of the world's great evils that his creation is now, in sophisticated quarters, being blamed on the United States.

"We shipped seven strains of anthrax to Iraq between 1978 and 1988," New York Times writer Nicholas Kristof maintained in a recent column retailing the budding conventional wisdom about Saddam's unconventional weapons program: Namely, it's all our fault.

America did, in an understandable strategic calculation, back Saddam in his war in the early 1980s with the Ayatollah's Iran, a regime that called the United States the "Great Satan," took hundreds of American hostages and practically invented contemporary Islamic terrorism.

But to leap from this fact to the notion that the United States aided the Iraqi bio-weapons program is a slander. It is a convenient lie that undercuts the case for war by making President Bush's anti-Saddam campaign seem a fickle bait-and-switch, and bolsters the sly anti-Americanism of so many doves on Iraq.

"I think it's absolute nonsense," Richard Spertzel, the former head of the United Nations' biological inspections team in Iraq, says of the bio-weapons charge. "To help the program implies doing something consciously. There is absolutely no indication whatsoever that the U.S. did anything to help the Iraqi biological-weapons or chemical-weapons program on a knowledgeable basis."

The American Type Culture Collection, a Manassas, Va.,-based nonprofit that makes biological cultures and products available for research purposes around the world, shipped anthrax strains to Iraq in the 1980s — providing the basis for the charge that "we" gave Saddam anthrax.

But the culture collection isn't an arm of the U.S. government. Nor did it intend to give the material to Iraq for nefarious purposes. The transfers occurred at a time when anthrax was still primarily thought of as a veterinary disease.

"Anthrax is found in nature," explains Michael Moodie of the Chemical and Biological Arms Control Institute. "People who want to do research for legitimate medical or other reasons have these strains."

Anthrax is caused by the spore-forming bacterium Bacillus anthracis and infects mostly cattle, sheep and the like, although humans can get it from infected animals.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, it is common in agricultural regions in South and Central America, Southern and Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa, the Caribbean and the Middle East — including Iraq.

So it wasn't unusual for Iraq to gather strains of anthrax in the 1980s, as it did not just from the American Type Culture Collection, but also from the Paris-based Pasteur Institute.

One of the destinations for the strains was the University of Baghdad, which at the time, according to former inspector Spertzel, had a solid reputation.

It only seems scandalous that Iraq got anthrax from a U.S. source if today's attitude toward the disease is projected back 20 years. Anthrax began to secure its association with terror only with the revelation that the Soviet Union had a massive biological-weapons program and the discovery of the Iraqi program in 1995.

Iraq now maintains that its program used the anthrax strains from the United States, a way to score propaganda points by stamping its terror weapons "Made in the U.S.A." This, however, appears to be untrue.

"I found no hard indication that said that the U.S. strains were used in the program," says Terence Taylor of the International Institute for Strategic Studies and a former weapons inspector. "And I'm not alone in that point of view."

All this aside — what if the United States did knowingly advance Iraqi unconventional weapons programs in the 1980s? Would that make it OK for Iraq to have these weapons programs now?

Of course not.

By pointing out the U.S.-Iraq anthrax connection, doves aren't making a serious policy point so much as reinforcing their attitude to American power, which they consider always in the wrong — wrong when it supposedly gives Saddam anthrax, and wrong when it prepares to take it away.

[DJS]

February 14, 2003
The Boomerang Effect
Be careful of what you wish for.


The Security Council is a funny place. I watched the Chinese ambassador grimace at Mr. Powell's speech — and thought of the entire country and hallowed culture of Tibet, now swallowed by his government. Not far away was a functionary from Syria, which has simply absorbed Lebanon. The Russian ambassador voiced pacifist objections too — whose country recently flattened Muslim Grozny. The French dignitary was waving his arms about preventing precipitous unilateral action… Well, you get the picture.

Since September 11 we have seen an array of strange developments illustrating the law of unintended consequences. Hypocrisy, irony, and parody — however we wish to characterize these surreal events — at least bring surprising moral clarity and, with it, real wisdom.

THE U.N.
It used to be that some well-intentioned Americans thought the all-wise U.N. should supersede the efforts of the big powers that had once acted unilaterally and without the approval of lesser — and more moral? — states. No longer. Through the efforts of post-Marxists, radical Islamists, anti-Semites, and an array of old-fashioned authoritarians in the General Assembly and the Security Council, the U.N. now unfortunately reflects the aggregate amorality of so many of it members.

We built the arena, the players came — and, for many Americans, it now seems almost time to leave: Syria on the Security Council; Iran and Iraq overseeing the spread of dangerous weapons; Libya a caretaker of human rights. How about a simple law to preserve a once hallowed institution: To join the U.N.'s democratic assembly, a country must first be democratic? Why should a U.N. diplomat be allowed to demand from foreigners the very privileges that his government denies to its own people?

The more pictures television brings us of world citizenship at the U.N., the more frightening becomes the entire idea of being subject in any way to approval from anyone like the Husseins, Assads, Qaddafis, Mugabes, mullahs, Chinese Communists, and a whole array of other not very nice people, who either by chance, protocol, or vote have suddenly found themselves very prominent on an assemblage of U.N. boards and committees.

When I was growing up in rural California, the only people who viscerally distrusted the U.N. were right-wing extremists who also liked to spin conspiracy tales about their drinking water and precious bodily fluids. Yet now — thanks to the macabre nature of so many in the U.N. — their view has proved disturbingly prescient, and threatens to become mainstream among the American people. That took a lot of doing on the part of the General Assembly and Security Council.

NOBEL PRIZES
The same irony arises with the awarding of the Nobel Peace prize. If the committee thought in the past that their judges were ethnocentric, blinkered, and had given too many awards either to Europeans and Americans or to traditional diplomats — still, at least one could make the argument that the prior winners were not killers, scoundrels, or naïfs. But Le Doc Tho (who refused the honor) and Yasser Arafat really were really deplorable figures. It is hard to see how Kim Dae-jung ("Chairman Kim, to my surprise, had a very positive response…") brought peace to the Korean peninsula — perhaps easier to see how his use of bribery did.

Mr. Carter should ask himself why 20 years of exemplary and distinguished charity work did not impress the panel, but suddenly and quite publicly attacking his own president in a time of war — in the words of the committee itself (Mr. Berge: "[the award] should be interpreted as a criticism of the line that the current administration has taken") — most surely did. I pass on Mr. Mandela and his recent racist outbursts. So the Nobel committee got its wish of being nontraditional — to the point that many now believe the award reflects either political opportunism at best or conveys discredit at worst.

THE EU
European bureaucrats have lectured about the EU's utopian accomplishments, which supposedly have alone saved a war-torn continent and given it 50 years of peace. But thanks to their proclamations and their recent loud behavior, we have had a long, second, and very good look at Brussels. And what we have learned is depressing — from its foreign policy to the elevation of an unelected bureaucracy over local popular councils.

And we don't buy their Trotsky-like airbrushing away of Americans in their new history; instead, we are more likely to believe that peace in Europe since 1945 was preserved only by a United States military that kept allies on the same team and Russians out — and not by French and German managers. Never was the moral contrast more evident than at the recent NATO meeting in Germany, when Senators McCain and Lieberman and Secretary Rumsfeld talked of history, resoluteness, and a determination to stop evil, while the French and Germans countered with thinly veiled self-interest and overt fear.

When the Cold War ended, the EU flunked its first test — 200,000 pour souls were butchered on its own doorstep. In contrast, the U.S. Constitution, a strong American military, and a sense of national character and confidence — not some borderless "North American Union" — have ensured both peace and our own autonomy on our own continent. Without the visions of supranational apparatchiks, we have managed not to go to war with Canada since 1812 and with Mexico since 1846. But if we were to open all our borders, adopt a socialist style of government, disarm, and turn our freedom over to 80,000 transcontinental Canadian, Mexican, and American bureaucrats, then I imagine things would heat up very quickly. Thank you, EU, for providing a model of international diplomacy and interstate relationships that we most definitely do not wish to emulate.

BASES
Most Americans didn't pay too much attention to where our troops were stationed. But thanks to the German Way and the Sunshine Policy, millions now are beginning to take notice — and what they are learning might not be what our foreign hosts intended. A pragmatic, no-nonsense American would perhaps ask Mr. Schroeder please to follow through with his promises of a "German Way," and thus to click his heels and kick out troops eastward into Poland or Czechoslovakia.

And if we really are obstacles to tranquility in Korea, after a half-century millions of Americans would be only too happy to get out of the way there as well. We can give peace a chance quite easily from afar in Japan, or on carriers — or perhaps from home. If the United States is disturbing the peace in Korea, then perhaps China could do better with a nuclear Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea who, if threatened by its lunatic client state, will eventually turn out frightening weapons of deterrence as easily as Toyotas.

REMOVING FASCISTS
For years, critics of John Foster Dulles Realpolitik decried our support for unsavory tinhorn dictators. Idealists instead called for "human rights" in our foreign policy, an engagement that would resonate with those persecuted and oppressed by authoritarian regimes.

Well, with the fall of the Berlin Wall, there is no longer any fear that today's soft-spoken socialists will become tomorrow's hardcore Stalinists. Right-wing fascists like Noriega, Milosevic, the Taliban, and Saddam are either gone or going thanks to the United States — not France or Cuba or China. Consensual governments, not generals with chests of pot-iron medals, more often followed their demise. Remember, leftists of the past called not for isolationism, but for active support for national liberationists.

Good — we are finally convinced. Now their moment of solidarity has at last arrived. We have plenty of freedom fighters and democrats in Kurdistan and throughout Iraq who seek their support for grassroots, anti-fascistic movements. And?

PREEMPTION AND UNILATERALISM
After Vietnam, Americans were chastised into conceding that preemption and unilateralism were things of the past. Then we learned of slaughter in Bosnia and Kosovo — committed by Europeans and tolerated by Europeans. Mr. Clinton did not make the argument that Mr. Milosevic threatened the U.S. — imagine the outraged reaction, had Madeleine Albright with slides and intercepts proved that Serbia was seeking gas and germs that could threaten Americans.

Instead, we adopted preemption — unilaterally, without Congressional approval, and quite apart from U.N. decrees — and bombed Serbian fascists into submission. In fact, Mr. Clinton and Ms. Albright ordered bombs to be dropped almost everywhere — Kosovo, Belgrade, the Sudan, and, yes (remember General Zinni's 1998 Operation Desert Fox) — Iraq. I suppose the moral lesson caught on, and so now we are doing the same once more to Saddam Hussein. Thanks in part to Mr. Clinton, unilateralism and preemption to try to protect us in advance, while saving innocents from monsters — in Bosnia, Kosovo, Somalia, and Haiti — are now good, while the wobbliness and moral equivocation of multilateralism and U.N. approval are deemed bad. Or at least I think they are.

What accounts for these transparent contradictions? The fact that the U.N. building in New York was not reduced to rubble? Or that — so far — the Louvre has escaped a hijacked suicide Airbus? But these paradoxes become explicable if you remove the element of deductive anti-Americanism or, at home, the anti-Bush subtext. Keep that and there are no contradictions at all — only deep and age-old motives like envy, jealousy, rivalry, pride, fear, and insecurity.

The U.N. beats up on the United States because it accepts that — unlike China or Syria — we are predictable, honorable, and committed to acting morally. Thus it finds psychic reassurance and a sense of puffed-up self-importance — on the cheap — by remonstrating with an America that wishes to stop a criminal regime from spreading havoc, rather than worrying about the demise of million of Tibetans, Syria's brutal creation of the puppet state of Lebanon, or Africans who complain that France has, without consultation, determined their fate. It is always better for a debating society to lecture those who listen than those who do not.

So too a petulant, though wealthy, Germany and South Korea resent their dependence as American protectorates, reflecting their own sense of impotence through face-saving unease with the same benefactors who kept psychopaths like Milosevic and Kim Jong II out of their comfortable and opulent havens. Gnash your teeth at an American who saved Germany, never a Russian who tried to flatten it — the ex-KGB Putin is now more welcome in Berlin than is the ex-NATO official Mr. Rumsfeld. And so it goes. A lip-biting Clinton's bombing of a mass murderer is one thing; a Texas-drawling, Bible-reading Bush is another.

Still, besides the revelation of hypocrisy, the effect of all this has also been quite remarkable in creating a growing sense of American solidarity — precisely in terms of being so unlike those who criticize us. Has anti-anti-Americanism fueled a growing new sense of Americanism? We owe the U.N., the EU, the radical Islamic world, Mr. Mandela, the French, the Germans, and a host of others, I think, some thanks in this hour of crisis. By reminding us so often that they are not like us and often don't like us, we of all political persuasions and backgrounds finally are remembering that they were perhaps right all along — we really are a very different people.

[Lazarus Long]

The UN hasn't lost legitimacy just because you most obviously wish it did. With a significant sector of the American Public the UN has never had legitimacy.

Politicos such as H.C. Lodge and his group that destroyed the League of Nations before (and BTW, along with Lindburgh were petitioning to join the war on the side of the Germans right up until Pearl Harbor) did come back into vogue during the era of McCarthyism but they actually HAVE NEVER BEEN THE MAJORITY in the United States. And they still aren't despite the massive PR campaign underway designed to try and move the American Public away from our legitimate interest in having and promoting the United Nations.

Thisis a needed campaign on the part of the Conservative Right precisely BECAUSE the general public favor the NEED for UN Sanction.

In addition you can't have it both ways, if you desire the legitimization to go into Iraq based on UN Sanctions then you must respect the Institution or lose the legitimacy behind the Invasion. If we invade without UN sanction expect the World to rise up against our Interests everywhere and then our situation will only worsen.

Do you want a solution to the current problems or a just showdown power grab and genocide figuring that we will win by default?

If we commit genocide then we will never, so long as we live, and that includes as immortals, will never know any peace and we can expect unending conflict. Which by the way is exactly what I think you want. The Military Industrial Establishment is after guaranteed profits and frankly this is just Corporate Welfare, like when we bailed out Chrysler.

Eventually we sold that to the Germans too. [ph34r]

[DJS]

Holiday From History
Charles Krauthammer
Friday, February 14, 2003; Page A31

The domestic terror alert jumps to 9/11 levels. Heathrow Airport is ringed by tanks. Duct tape and plastic sheeting disappear from Washington store shelves. Osama bin Laden resurfaces. North Korea reopens its plutonium processing plant and threatens preemptive attack. The Second Gulf War is about to begin.

This is not the Apocalypse. But it is excellent preparation for it.

You don't get to a place like this overnight. It takes at least, oh, a decade. We are now paying the wages of the 1990s, our holiday from history. During that decade, every major challenge to America was deferred. The chief aim of the Clinton administration was to make sure that nothing terrible happened on its watch. Accordingly, every can was kicked down the road:

• Iraq: Saddam Hussein continued defying the world and building his arsenal, even as the United States acquiesced to the progressive weakening of U.N. sanctions and then to the expulsion of all weapons inspectors.

• North Korea: When it threatened to go nuclear in 1993, Clinton managed to put off the reckoning with an agreement to freeze Pyongyang's program. The agreement -- surprise! -- was a fraud. All the time, the North Koreans were clandestinely enriching uranium. They are now in full nuclear breakout.

• Terrorism: The first World Trade Center attack occurred in 1993, followed by the blowing up of two embassies in Africa and the attack on the USS Cole. Treating terrorism as a problem of law enforcement, Clinton dispatched the FBI -- and the odd cruise missile to ostentatiously kick up some desert sand. Bin Laden was offered up by Sudan in 1996. We turned him away for lack of legal justification.

That is how one acts on holiday: Mortal enemies are dealt with not as combatants but as defendants. Clinton flattered himself as looking beyond such mundane problems to a grander transnational vision (global warming, migration and the like), while dispatching American military might to quell "teacup wars" in places such as Bosnia. On June 19, 2000, the Clinton administration solved the rogue-state problem by abolishing the term and replacing it with "states of concern." Unconcerned, the rogues prospered, arming and girding themselves for big wars.

Which are now upon us. On Sept. 11, 2001, the cozy illusions and stupid pretensions died. We now recognize the central problem of the 21st century: the conjunction of terrorism, rogue states and weapons of mass destruction.

True, weapons of mass destruction are not new. What is new is that the knowledge required to make them is no longer esoteric. Anyone with a reasonable education in modern physics, chemistry or biology can brew them. Doomsday has been democratized.

There is no avoiding the danger any longer. Last year President Bush's axis-of-evil speech was met with eye-rolling disdain by the sophisticates. One year later the warning has been vindicated in all its parts. Even the United Nations says Iraq must be disarmed. The International Atomic Energy Agency has just (politely) declared North Korea a nuclear outlaw. Iran has announced plans to mine uranium and reprocess spent nuclear fuel; we have recently discovered two secret Iranian nuclear complexes.

We are in a race against time. Once such hostile states establish arsenals, we become self-deterred and they become invulnerable. North Korea may already have crossed that threshold.

There is a real question whether we can win the race. Year One of the new era, 2002, passed rather peaceably. Year Two will not: 2003 could be as cataclysmic as 1914 or 1939.

Carl Sagan invented a famous formula for calculating the probability of intelligent life in the universe. Estimate the number of planets in the universe and calculate the tiny fraction that might support life and that have had enough evolution to produce intelligence. He prudently added one other factor, however: the odds of extinction. The existence of intelligent life depends not just on creation but on continuity. What is the probability that a civilization will not destroy itself once its very intelligence grants it the means of self-destruction?

This planet has been around for 4 billion years, intelligent life for perhaps 200,000, weapons of mass destruction for less than 100. A hundred -- in the eye of the universe, less than a blink. And yet we already find ourselves on the brink. What are the odds that our species will manage to contain this awful knowledge without self-destruction -- not for a billion years or a million or even a thousand, but just through the lifetime of our children?

Those are the stakes today. Before our eyes, in a flash, politics has gone cosmic. The question before us is very large and very simple: Can -- and will -- the civilized part of humanity disarm the barbarians who would use the ultimate knowledge for the ultimate destruction? Within months, we will have a good idea whether the answer is yes or no.

[DJS]

If we commit genocide then we will never, so long as we live, and that includes as immortals, will never know any peace and we can expect unending conflict.

Genocide? What are you talking about? You used the term too loosely.

The UN is morally bankrupt and nothing you can say will change that fact. It has been infiltrated by the Arab League. Case in point--Libya being the head of human rights, Iran/Iraq co chairing the disarmament commission. Conservatives couldn't have your alleged PR campaign if they weren't supplied with the ammo. Just deal with it. Your precious world body is a joke.

Also, the reason the general public supports the UN is because they realizes it grants us some measure of legitimacy on the world stage (its a foreign policy tool). They don't support the UN as a body that weakens American sovernty. Stop spinning your facts.

Edited by Kissinger, 19 February 2003 - 04:56 AM.

[Lazarus Long]

No it is not too loosely. Perhaps you prefer "Ethnic Cleansing"

When you talk about killing a "Billion of Them before they hit US" you are using a tied and true ancient polemic of genocide.

They used it on the Jews in Germany and the Cherokee right here.

You have demonstrated a cavalier lack of respect for innocent people and tried repeatedly to just literally "Write Them Off" as "Collateral Damage" and as a sort of neccessary extermination, like the killing of pests. It is time you looked into the mirror and realized how close to being nothing more than a thinking thug you are at risk of becoming.

I actually do like you, and I respect your intelligence but I also believe you have grossly erred and that you won't understand this until too much damage has occurred to be repaired.

I know, I know, you think the same about me.

But here is one very important difference, I have more to lose and greater responsibilities than you do. I already hold other people's lives as my responsibility.

You still have a ways to go yet.

Some things do change with age.

[DJS]

You have demonstrated a cavalier lack of respect for innocent people and tried repeatedly to just literally "Write Them Off" as "Collateral Damage" and as a sort of neccessary extermination, like the killing of pests.  It is time you looked into the mirror and realized how close to being nothing more than a thinking thug you are at risk of becoming.

Let me explain this to you again. I do not like collateral damages. I really don't get my jollies out of seeing people blown up. However, I view collateral damages as sometimes necessary. I am loyal, first and foremost, to the sovernty of the United States. Sometimes distinctions are necessary in life. One of the distinctions I make is between American life and non American life. 200 years from now this will probably be looked upon as barbaric, but right now it is the reality of the world. Further, maintaining the right to use ultimate force is not only sensible, but essential to maintaining world order. You and I have fundamental differences here. What it comes down to is this, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there aren't people out to get you. If I have to decide between my civilization and someone elses---I choose mine, every time.

I think you believe that if we lay down our arms and set the example that others will follow. You really believe that a process of de escalation is possible. I simply do not. I see no historical precendent for your belief in de escalation. I am not willing to take the chance.

All of this, when broken down into its most basic components begs the question, "What is human nature, and can we trust each other?" On this most fundamental question we come to very different conclusions, and from there all of our disagreements arise.

[DJS]

A Costly Charade At the U.N.
By Charles Krauthammer
February 28, 2003


America goes courting Guinea, Cameroon and Angola in search of the nine Security Council votes necessary to pass our new resolution on Iraq.

The absurdity of the exercise mirrors the absurdity of the United Nations itself. Guinea is a perfectly nice place and Guineans perfectly nice people. But from the dawn of history to the invention of the United Nations, it made not an ounce of difference what a small, powerless, peripheral country thought about a conflict thousands of miles away. It still doesn't, except at the Alice-in-Wonderland United Nations, where Guinea and Cameroon and Angola count.

For a day. As soon as their votes are cast, they will sink again into obscurity. In the meantime, however, we'll have to pay them off. Their price will be lower than Turkey's, but, then again, Turkey is offering something tangible -- territory from which to launch a second front. Guinea will be offering a raised hand at a table in New York.

The entire exercise is ridiculous, but for unfathomable reasons it matters to many, both at home and around the world, that the United States should have the permission of Guinea to risk the lives of American soldiers to rid the world -- and the long-suffering Iraqi people -- of a particularly vicious and dangerous tyrant.

It is only slightly less absurd that we should require the assent of France. France pretends to great-power status but hasn't had it in 50 years. It was given its permanent seat on the Security Council to preserve the fiction that heroic France was part of the great anti-Nazi alliance rather than a country that surrendered and collaborated.

A half-century later, that charade has proved costly. In order to appease the French, we negotiated Security Council Resolution 1441, which France has thoroughly trashed and yet which has delayed American action for months.

Months for the opposition to mobilize itself, particularly in Britain, where Tony Blair is now hanging by a thread. Months for Hussein to augment his defenses and plan the sabotage and other surprises he has in store when the war starts. Months, most importantly, that threaten to push the fighting into a season of heat and sandstorms that may cost the lives of brave Americans. We will have France to thank for that.

France is not doing this to contain Iraq -- France spent the entire 1990s weakening sanctions and eviscerating the inspections regime as a way to end the containment of Iraq. France is doing this to contain the United States. As I wrote last week, France sees the opportunity to position itself as the leader of a bloc of former great powers challenging American supremacy.

That is a serious challenge. It requires a serious response. We need to demonstrate that there is a price to be paid for undermining the United States on a matter of supreme national interest.

First, as soon as the dust settles in Iraq, we should push for an expansion of the Security Council -- with India and Japan as new permanent members -- to dilute France's disproportionate and anachronistic influence.

Second, there should be no role for France in Iraq, either during the war, should France change its mind, or after it. No peacekeeping. No oil contracts. And France should be last in line for loan repayment, after Russia. Russia, after all, simply has opposed our policy. It did not try to mobilize the world against us.

Third, we should begin laying the foundation for a new alliance to replace the now obsolete Cold War alliances. Its nucleus should be the "coalition of the willing" now forming around us. No need to abolish NATO. The grotesque performance of France, Germany and Belgium in blocking aid to Turkey marks the end of NATO's useful life. Like the United Nations, it will simply wither of its own irrelevance.

We should be thinking now about building the new alliance structure around the United States, Britain, Australia, Turkey, such willing and supportive Old Europe countries as Spain and Italy, and the New Europe of deeply pro-American ex-communist states. Add perhaps India and Japan and you have the makings of a new post-9/11 structure involving like-minded states that see the world of the 21st century as we do: threatened above all by the conjunction of terrorism, rogue states and weapons of mass destruction. As part of that rethinking, we should redeploy our bases in Germany to Eastern Europe, which is not just friendlier but closer to the theaters of the new war.

This is all for tomorrow. The imperative today is to win the war in Iraq. However, winning the peace will mean not just the reconstruction of Iraq. It will mean replacing an alliance system that died some years ago, but whose obituary was written only this year. In French, with German footnotes.

[DJS]

Call the Vote. Walk Away.
Charles Krauthammer
Wednesday, March 12, 2003


Walk away, Mr. President. Walk away from the U.N. Security Council. It will not authorize the coming war. You can stand on your head and it won't change the outcome. You can convert to Islam in a Parisian mosque and it won't prevent a French veto.

The French are bent not just on opposing your policy but on destroying it -- and the coalition you built around it. When they send their foreign minister to tour the three African countries on the Security Council in order to turn them against the United States, you know that this is a country with resolve -- more than our side is showing today. And that is a losing proposition for us.

The reason you were able to build support at home and rally the world to at least pretend to care about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction is that you showed implacable resolve to disarm Iraq one way or the other. Your wobbles at the United Nations today -- postponing the vote, renegotiating the terms -- are undermining the entire enterprise.

I understand that the wobble is not yours but a secondary, sympathetic wobble to Tony Blair's. Blair is courageous but opposed by a large part of his party and in need of some diplomatic cover.

But, Mr. President, he's not going to get it. Even if you marshal the nine votes on the Security Council by watering down the resolution, delaying the invasion, establishing criteria Hans Blix is sure to muddy and Mohamed ElBaradei is sure to say Saddam Hussein has met, France and Russia will still exercise the veto. You may call it a moral victory. The British left, which is what this little exercise is about, will not. It will not care what you call it but what Kofi Annan calls it, and he has already told us: a failed resolution rendering a war that follows illegitimate.

This, of course, is the rankest hypocrisy. The United Nations did not sanction the Kosovo war, surely a just war, and that did not in any way make it illegitimate. Of the scores of armed conflicts since 1945, exactly two have received Security Council sanction: the Korean War (purely an accident, the Soviets having walked out over another issue) and the Gulf War. The Gulf War ended in a cease-fire, whose terms everybody agrees Hussein has violated. You could very well have gone to war under the original Security Council resolutions of 1991 and been justified.

I understand why you did not. A large segment of American opinion swoons at the words "United Nations" and "international community." That the international community is a fiction and the United Nations a farce hardly matters. People believe in them. It was for them that you went to the United Nations on Sept. 12, 2002.

And it worked. When you framed the issue as the United Nations enforcing its own edicts, vindicating its own relevance by making Hussein disarm, the intellectual opposition to the war -- always in search of some standard outside the United States' own judgment and interests to justify American action -- fell apart.

Thus Resolution 1441, passed unanimously, bought you two things: domestic support and a window of legitimacy, a time to build up our forces in the region under the umbrella of enforcing the will of the "international community."

Mr. President, the window has closed. Diplomatically, we are today back where we were before Sept. 12. It is America, Britain, Australia, a few Gulf states, some of Old Europe, most of New Europe and other governments still too afraid to say so openly. That's enough. And in any case that is all you are going to get.

Why are we dallying and deferring at the United Nations? In your news conference last week, you said you were going to have people put their cards on the table. I thought it a lousy idea to call a vote we were sure to lose. But having made your decision, you are making it worse by waffling. The world knows you as a cards-on-the-table man. Now you're asking for an extension of time and a reshuffle of the deck.

If, for Blair's sake, you must have a second resolution, why include an ultimatum that Blix will obfuscate and the French will veto? If you must have a second resolution, it should consist of a single sentence: "The Security Council finds Iraq in violation of Resolution 1441, which demanded 'full and immediate compliance by Iraq without conditions or restrictions.' "

The new resolution should be a statement not of policy but of fact. The fact is undeniable. You invite the French to cast what will be seen around the world as the most cynical veto in the history of the council, which is saying a lot. They may cast it nonetheless. They are, after all, French. But then they -- not you -- will have to do the explaining.

That's all you need. No need for elaborate compromises, stretching the timetable, or a tortuous checklist for Hussein to dance around. One sentence. One line. Cards on the table.

No more dithering. Every day you wait is an advertisement of hesitation and apprehension. It will not strengthen Tony Blair. It will not strengthen the resolve of our allies in the region. It will only boost the confidence and resolve of the people you are determined to defeat.

If the one-line resolution passes, the violation triggers 1441, which triggers the original resolutions ending the Gulf War. If it fails, you've exposed the United Nations for what it is: the League of Nations, empty, cynical and mendacious. Mr. President: Call the vote and walk away.

[DJS]

An interesting event happened today, something that probably slipped under the radar screen of most avid geo-political junkies.

I watched the Japanese ambassador to the UN state the Japanese position on the current crisis in the UN. It was almost, verbatim, the position of the United States. And here's the kicker, it was said in English (not Japanese!). Coincidence? I think not. Change is in the air, the Japanese smell opportunity a brewing.

Proposition: A new security council with permanent member status granted to Japan and India, and the French and English chairs (and the rest of Europe) consolidated into an EU chair.

Permanent members of the future Security Council...

US
EU
China
Russia
Japan
India

We must utilize Japan more effectively. Giving them a chair on the security council would do this and also put them more in our debt. Besides, they are much more afraid of a growing China then we are. By consolidating an EU chair we would increase European ambiguity/moderation on matters of global security, which is to our benefit since all we are asking for is acquiescence.

Of course, this is the compromise position, the neo-con position on international political bodies is "hostile" to say the least. Of course, having some semblance of an international body is essential in the modern world. Our ideal UN would be a completely democratic UN. All undemocratic nations would be excluded. Are you grasping the ramifications Lazarus? [ph34r]

[Lazarus Long]

The only chair on the Security Council the United States has to give another Nation is its own. If the entire structure of the UN and the commitment of its constituency is not better reorganized from the top to the bottom then the likihood of surviving the next two decades for this organization are slim to nil.

In my novel the Age of Relativity I predicted that by 2006 the United States tries exactly the kind of forced reorganization of the UN you suggest, resulting in our abandonment of the Institution when the rest of the world revolts and decides its in THEIR interest to develop and maintain THEIR autonomy from us. The effect is that we succeed in defending our borders and then become relegated to history as a slowing and steadilly decaying Industrial State. We compete and stay important but become incrementally secondary to the dynamism of a United Earth that becomes the Real 1# Super Power facing us down. Like the Greek Hegemonies facing the rise of the Roman State.

Ironically for my plot we could have lead but instead we instigated. We created this Hyper Power out of the UN by default and less by design and intent. In the plot we expell the institution from New York and forever regret our foolishness. Today is real, not fiction and there still exists the opportunity for the United States to truly take the high Road and to lead demonstrably.

You may not like many of the things I have been saying to you but by now I hope you are realizing that I have outlined the various measures and counter measures that would come into play with near perfect accuracy. That is what analysis is about. Before one decides upon a course be sure you have marked your navigable points well.

[kevin]

I must confess that I don't have a background in political science but I do get the distinct feeling that Bush is trying to solve problems using an approach more suited to a time which has past. Increasing globalization and interdependence have made application of old methods to complex problems difficult. I'm not sure if the administration has looked down the road far enough to see how its' current position is liable to alienate and isolate Americans in a shrinking world. Is this something the American people really want?

My feeling is that to truly 'succeed', means to reach the goal of disarming Sadaam with the cooperation and shared responsibility of the rest of the world.

I hope that Bush changes his approach and instead of asking for cooperation in conducting a war, demands cooperation in creating a relevant body that can operate effectively in situations that require a concerted effort on the part of all.

I don't think anyone is arguing that Sadaam needs to be stopped, and others like him. Surely the pressure can be kept up with the continuing disarmament of Iraq without resorting to all out war. If you pull his teeth one by one, eventually he will be toothless and much easier to deal with. The question is, what is the attention span of the US administration and what is the level of committment on the part of the rest of the world to disarm terrorist governments. It is time to ask the detractors of the US proposals to provide a realistic alternative to all out war, one that leaves Sadaam NO wiggle room and will guarantee a successful resolution to the crisis that leaves everyone on the hook for dealing with the aftermath.

America does not have to 'go it alone'. The world is a big place and threats will be a lot easier to deal with in a concerted manner with international cooperation. This is only one of the first of many challenges that will arise from the continents across the water and the developed nations need to stick together in facing them or everyone will lose in the end.

The problems that exist in the world today cannot be solved by the level of thinking that created them.
- Albert Einstein

Edited by kperrott, 13 March 2003 - 07:35 PM.

[DJS]

Hi kperrott, welcome to the discussion.

I am just going to put out my counter points to represent the other side of the argument.

I do get the distinct feeling that Bush is trying to solve problems using an approach more suited to a time which has past.

Inotherwords, war is primitive. Part of the problem with this belief is that we (are you American?) are insulated from the outside world. We believe that the rest of the world is as civilized and understanding as us. They are not. What do you do when a dictator fails to disarm? What do you do if Saddam simply refuses to disarm through peaceful means? Oh, I forgot, you pass another 18 meaningless resolution that accomplish nothing. Is war ever an option for you?

Increasing globalization and interdependence have made application of old methods to complex problems difficult.  I'm not sure if the administration has looked down the road far enough to see how its' current position is liable to alienate and isolate Americans in a shrinking world.   Is this something the American people really want?

We are not isolating ourselves. Nothing has changed since the Iraq situation has began. Nations are simply doing what is in their national best interest. The only difference between now and a year and a half ago is that the relationship between our nation and others is becoming more clear to the general public. Russia,China--they were never part of an American alliance. They're position has never changed. Another thing, don't think that the Administration is as stupid as Bush sounds lol . There are a lot of brilliant minds in this Administration who represent the other side of the argument nobly.

My feeling is that to truly 'succeed', means to reach the goal of disarming Sadaam with the cooperation and shared responsibility of the rest of the world.

That sounds great. However, when the nations of the world have opposing interests consensus is almost impossible. Without consensus, inaction is the rule rather than the exception. It all really breaks down to "balance of power". The actions of the great nations on the security council are a direct result of balance of power assessments. And don't think for a second that Saddam is not aware of this global system of governance. He has tailored his relationships with France, Russia and China (huge oil contracts) to try and protect against American aggression.

I hope that Bush changes his approach and instead of asking for cooperation in conducting a war, demands cooperation in creating a relevant body that can operate effectively in situations that require a concerted effort on the part of all.

A reassessment of the UN will take place after the war.

Surely the pressure can be kept up with the continuing disarmament of Iraq without resorting to all out war.   If you pull his teeth one by one, eventually he will be toothless and much easier to deal with.    The question is,  what is the attention span of the US administration and what is the level of commitment on the part of the rest of the world to disarm terrorist governments.  It is time to ask the detractors of the US proposals to provide a realistic alternative to all out war, one that leaves Sadaam NO wiggle room and will guarantee a successful resolution to the crisis that leaves everyone on the hook for dealing with the aftermath.

Ok, I have some major contentions on your points here. Containment rarely works (and no, Cold War containment is not the same). The containment you are referring to is more or less a quarantine. The subversion of the sanction enacted since 1991 on Saddam proves that sanction are a charade. Containment can be subverted. And let's take this a little further. Let's say that we can effectively contain Saddam. Let's say that this containment starts to begin to have the desired effect of weakening his regime. Saddam is not stupid (well, at least not a moron). He would be aware that our actions were having the effect of destabilizing his regime. CONTAINMENT WOULD ONLY HAVE THE EFFECT OF ENCOURAGING SADDAM TO PROLIFERATE WMD (CHEMICAL AND BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS) TO TERRORIST ENTITIES WHICH WOULD CARRY OUT RETALIATORY ATTACKS ON THE CONTINENTAL UNITED STATES. Inotherwords, you would be giving him the time he needs to hit us back. Are you really willing to take the chance that Saddam will proliferate WMD to terrorists?

And as far as the detractors of the US proposal coming up with a realistic alternative, I got news for you--they can't! There are none, which goes back to the Administration's initial statement, "war is the last option." This is the last option in a post 9/11 era where proliferation from terrorist states to terrorist entities is a real possibility. You can dispute this. But if you are wrong then millions of US citizens could die. I am not willing to take the chance. If you are, then I respectfully disagree.

America does not have to 'go it alone'.  The world is a big place and threats will be a lot easier to deal with in a concerted manner with international cooperation.  This is only one of the first of many challenges that will arise from the continents across the water and the developed nations need to stick together in facing them or everyone will lose in the end.

America is not going a lone. We have a coalition of over 60 nations. Second, don't just blame the United States for disunity in the international arena. Other nations are responsible as well. And thinking that the world can act in concert on anything, let alone a serious geo-strategic situation, is idealistic and a bit naive.

[DJS]

Anyway, thanks for entering the discussion kp.

Another point which I would like to raise briefly before I have to go. You are debating within the conceptual frame work that the world has created for itself. I disagree with you, but at least you are within the frame work. Lazarus is not. You will never see me use the term "meme" in matters of geo-politics. This term, and terms like it, represent a different conceptual frame work which does not exist. Lazarus is arguing for a New World Order. This is also fine, but it has about as much traction with the main stream view of world affairs as crop circles. Good day.

[kevin]

Hello Kissinger..

I am Canadian and as we have decided to send the bulk of our forces to help stabilize an increasingly destabilized Afghanistan, this crisis will not involve our forces directly, so my viewpoint comes from softer ground.

I am certainly idealistic, but hardly naive. I believe as much in the fundamental capacity of human nature to love as to harm. Given the choice and lacking evidence to the latter, I choose the former. I guess maybe that could be construed as naive but my life is the richer for it.

From the purely logical perspective, the most beneficial approach to the conflict would be to have a global effort applying increasing pressure to Sadaam until he is totally disarmed and to remove his ability to threaten the world further. If that process inevitably leads to war, with all particpants signed on, then it can be said that every avenue was attempted and the responsibility for the atrocity of war as well as the responsibility for cleaning up its' mess will be shared. Any other viewpoint is less than optimal and the reasons for putting them forward are suspect.

War should not be a topic upon which rhetoric is built. It is a last resort for the thinking humanitarian and its use should be discussed with the clinical dispassion of a doctor discussing whether surgery or radiation should be used to clear a cancer. Too much bombast and ego have gone into what is ultimately a tragic disregard for life.

If suggesting that war sucks to the point that it should only be used as a last resort, a point which I don't believe has arrived, then I am naive and in good historical and present company.

The problems that exist in the world today cannot be solved by the level of thinking that created them.
- Albert Einstein

Edited by kperrott, 14 March 2003 - 05:08 AM.

[Lazarus Long]

Memes are simply known by the more common expedient as "Beliefs" for most people and it is the reason they find to go to war, or make peace in the first place. I don't credit the rhetoric because most of it is so blatently duplicitous, and openly self serving and ovr indulgant.

History shows that even the best results were never "justified" by the chosen means to preseve and enact the MEMEs that were the motivational doctrine that underlay the decisions and actions of most societies. At best they are ratinalizations and excuses not rational explanations and just because most people don't understand the concept yet, dosen't mean it is irrelevant. It is like the fact that most people do not understand why their hearts beat but if they are stopped they take notice, for a very limited time.

[DJS]

At best they are rationalizations and excuses not rational explanations and just because most people don't understand the concept yet, doesn't mean it is irrelevant.

I never said irrelevant. I said "lacking traction" with the mainstream public. I believe that crop circles are unexplained phenomenon. It doesn't matter whether it's true or false. It is not believed to be a credible theory by the main stream public and therefore it is not absorbed into the collective conscious. Hence, the "theory" has marginal value.

This is the constant problem I have with your dialectic.

I desire solutions that have a higher probability of coming to fruition.

Edited by Kissinger, 15 March 2003 - 06:39 AM.

[Lazarus Long]

I never said irrelevant. I said "lacking traction" with the mainstream public. I believe that crop circles are unexplained phenomenon. It doesn't matter whether it's true or false. It is not believed to be a credible theory by the main stream public and therefore it is not absorbed into the collective conscious. Hence, the "theory" has marginal value.

This also is exactly a description of the general public's undertanding of Theory of Relativity for almost a century but that doesn't preclude you depending on that arcane theory to power the technology you depend upon for Starategic Advantage. Popularity has little to nothing to do with science, or the potential of applicative methods for scientific understanding.

People want what they are taught to want. Madison avenue manipulates the evolutinary psycholgy of human mating ritual to sell cars. Does this mean that having a new car will make you a better lover?

The theory that sells the product subconsciously to many people is that it will at least increase your chances at finding a viable mate, and demonstrate your having the job to support offspring, but the REASON this is so may be oblivious to the average consumer but I assure you it is not irrelevant to the Advertising firm that measures its ad campaigns' success in sales.

[bobdrake12]

Popularity has little to nothing to do with science, or the potential of applicative methods for scientific understanding.

Popularity of a concept may have little to do with the facts. At one time, the general public believed that everything revolved around this planet.

Perhaps, the key is that if a leader of a country can convince the general public within his country that a lie is a fact by stating this lie over and over and over again, the leader can get his way.


bob

Edited by bobdrake12, 15 March 2003 - 04:33 PM.

[bobdrake12]

War should not be a topic upon which rhetoric is built. It is a last resort for the thinking humanitarian and its use should be discussed with the clinical dispassion of a doctor discussing whether surgery or radiation should be used to clear a cancer. Too much bombast and ego have gone into what is ultimately a tragic disregard for life.

kperrott,

In another the topic, "Causes of War", one or more articles have been posted that one of the causes of WWII was the lack of action against Hitler's early aggression.

When do you believe war is reasonably justified?

bob

[bobdrake12]

Lazarus is arguing for a New World Order.

Lazarus Long,

Is it true that you are arguing for the New World Order?

bob

[Lazarus Long]

Lazarus Long,

Is it true that you are arguing for the New World Order?

No.

I am arguing for a Rational Rule of Law that can be recognized and not imposed. If this is to be war it will be total and no quarter will be given or asked for. Those that seek a dominion this time will unite the world against them and one way or another there will come unity, as well as, or instead of mass death.

I am saying that we should demonstrate respect for our principles and LEAD this process not cower from it, shirking our responsibilities as a Global Power and Modern Founding State of these principles and simply follow the worn out paths history has shown to posses such limited potential and obvious risk. I will fight a New World Order whether imposed as a consequence of Domestic OR Foreign Policy. I also will not let myself be tar brushed with the falsehood that this is what I seek when it is obvious that it is the goal of the Neo Hawk Right Wing to impose just such a concept so long as it is they that rule.

I have more confidence in Our System and Our Rule of Law than that and I am fully aware of how tenuous our Nation's grasp of such principle has been historically. Yet against all odds Our Principles HAVE survived the test of time and now comes the true acid test of our Democratic Ideals and our popular integrity, which will determine the hard judgment of history, not just a victor's spin.

I am a Jeffersonian and a real Republican; a Technocrat, and Randian by persuasion. I am quite confident that, "that government is best, which governs least". I am a Lincoln Republican and I hold dear OUR Republic and see this concept of Empire no matter how well couched in the deception of corrupt rhetoric of security and subversion of common morality as an appeal to our avarice for power, as the most dangerous threat to the system we value since Our Nation was founded.

Scylla and Charybdis are the twin threats hidden by the Siren's song that panders to the public’s hysterical fear and lust. It is a song of fear on the one hand and a bribery of wealth and power on the other. Tie me to the mast so I may steer a course between these dangerous shoals but no matter the attraction they hold I know in full confidence that behind this lovely song is a trap that holds our doom.

Still I would be tied to the mast for I can't resist at least the temptation of hearing the song. And in hearing that song I too sing my refrain for in listening to my heart and the message of the lyrics I am better able to analyze the real threats that are before us on this course.

I do not want a New World Order that is the Neo Hawk Aspiration.

I want a Next Age of Freedom and Reason. I know Freedom is dangerous and I am willing to live with that risk. But as I have already said, I am feral and no longer domestic; such is Freedom and I would defend this even for others not so inclined to defend mine.

[bobdrake12]

I am a Jeffersonian and a real Republican; a Technocrat, and Randian by persuasion. I am quite confident that, "that government is best, which governs least". I am a Lincoln Republican and I hold dear OUR Republic and see this concept of Empire no matter how well couched in the deception of corrupt rhetoric of security and subversion of common morality as an appeal to our avarice for power, as the most dangerous threat to the system we value since Our Nation was founded.

Lazarus Long,

Thanks for the clarification.

bob

[DJS]

Let's lay down some more Krauthammer...

Kofi Annan's Offense
Charles Krauthammer
March 28, 2003


The media could use some lithium. Not since I studied bipolar disease 25 years ago have I seen such dramatic mood swings as in the coverage of the first week of the war.

It began with "shock and awe" euphoria, the hailing of a campaign of immaculate destruction. It was going to be Kosovo II, Afghanistan with embeds, another war of nearly bloodless (for us) success.

And then on Sunday, bloody Sunday, the media discovered that war is hell and descended into a mood as dark as any of Churchill's "black dogs." But the blackness came from confusing two different phenomena: war and battle. The narrow focus of the camera sees not war but individual battles, which, broadcast live, gave the home front the immediate (vicarious) experience of the confusion and terror of combat. Among the chattering classes, a mini-panic set in.

By Monday the media were in full quagmire mode. Good grief. If there had been TV cameras not just at Normandy, but after Normandy, giving live coverage of firefights at every French village on the Allies' march to Berlin, the operation would have been judged a strategic miscalculation, if not a disaster. The fact is that after a single week we find ourselves at the gates of Baghdad, servicing the longest supply lines in American history, with combat losses astonishingly low by any standard.

In the current campaign, we have suffered from two major impediments: Turkey's betrayal and our own high moral standards. Turkey's refusal to let us send the 4th Infantry Division to attack Baghdad from the north has cost us heavily. It has allowed Saddam Hussein to concentrate his defenses to the south and essentially cut in half the size of the heavily mechanized enemy he has to deal with. (The president's supplemental budget request has $1 billion in aid for Turkey. Congress should strike every penny of it.) Even more important, we've been held back by our own scrupulousness. It is safe to say there has never been a conflict in which one belligerent has taken more care not to harm the civilians of the other. And it has already cost us. We know that the "irregulars" -- the SS thugs whose profession heretofore had been torture and repression in the service of Hussein's psychopathic son Uday -- use human shields, fight in civilian disguise and attack under a fake flag of surrender. Our restraint in choice of targets and in the treatment of those who appear to be civilians and those who appear to have surrendered has cost us not just time and territory but lives.

And yet, being who we are, we do not change the rules of engagement. Which is what makes Kofi Annan's most recent pronouncement so deeply offensive. With his customary sanctimony, he said on Wednesday that he was "getting increasingly concerned by humanitarian casualties in this conflict" and then immediately cited "the report that a missile struck a market in Baghdad."

This is staggering. If indeed the market explosion was caused by a U.S. missile, Annan knows that this was both entirely unintentional and a rare exception in a campaign of astonishing discrimination and accuracy. Annan's statement is doubly disgusting because he said nothing about Iraq's use of human shields, of fake surrenders, of placing a tank in a hospital compound in Nasiriyah. He says not a word about these flagrant Iraqi violations of the laws of war. Nor does he denounce the parading of POWs on television and the apparent execution of American and British POWs. He is instead moved to speak out in response to what is at most an accident.

Tony Blair wants us to go back and deal with Annan and the rest of the United Nations when this is over. After the blood and treasure expended, why would we hand the fruits of victory to a man who tried his best to delegitimize this war before it began and now tries to cast moral taint on our conduct of it?

President Bush should tell Tony Blair, his good and courageous friend, that returning to Annan and the corrupt institution he represents is a huge mistake. It will win no hearts and minds, no more than did the futile attempt to get the second resolution out of the Security Council.

The way to win hearts and minds is not to try to appease those who wish us no good but to stay in Iraq and use the authority of the victor to build a decent and open society. We will not win the propaganda war with words. We will win it by overthrowing Hussein and exposing the nature of his barbarism -- and the shame of those who supported him and tried to shield him from the just fate American and British soldiers are trying to visit upon him today.

[DJS]

NewsWithViews.com

Any international institution that votes to put Libya in charge of its Human Rights Commission -- and has Iraq in line to head its Disarmament Conference -- has sunk to such depths of moral depravity that it should be driven from the world stage.

This same institution, the United Nations, having no shame whatever, has decided the United States of America should build them a new skyscraper with an interest-free loan.

Recently it unveiled its plan for a top-to-bottom renovation of its current Manhattan-located, 38-floor building. The plans would also include building an additional 30-story tower, thus nearly doubling the UN headquarters' space. Cost of the project is estimated at $1.3 billion. The UN continually pleads poverty, but that is because there's never enough money to fund its self-imposed, ever-expanding agenda.

What to do? What does the UN always do when it needs money or anything else? It looks for that never-ending pot of gold at the end of the Potomac.

After constantly bashing the United States for its selfish, capitalist greed, the benevolent socialists at the UN want Uncle Sam to float a loan.

But not just a loan -- they want an interest-free loan!

The arm-twisting has already begun as UN officials are rounding up support for the loan at the State Department and in Congress.

According to reports, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan cornered President Bush about the issue when they met last November.

Should the United States just provide the loan, no questions asked? Since the money will actually come from the pockets of the American taxpayer, perhaps the government should act in our interest by making sure the UN actually qualifies for the loan.

A good loan officer at any bank would ask basic questions like these:

What, specifically, is the money to be used for?

Is the project necessary and fiscally sound?

What are the possibilities that the loan will be paid?

Is there a sufficient credit record to permit loaning such an amount?

For the American taxpayer, let's examine the answers.

The UN says it needs to repair its old headquarters and original plans called for "a comprehensive, systematic cost-efficient" capital master plan to bring the building up to modern building code requirements. For example, the building doesn't have a sprinkler system. In addition, say UN officials, the building has become expensive to run and is poorly equipped to handle cable lines or energy-saving devices, while most of the existing equipment has become too old to maintain. The UN, under that plan, was seeking to pay for the project incrementally, over twenty-five years. Okay, so far the applicant is asking for a loan, using fiscally sound reasoning. However, that was the plan as discussed in 2000.

Suddenly, in late 2002, it was apparently abandoned as the UN announced a grand new scheme calling for an additional 30-floor building with the whole project being financed by an interest-free loan from the United States. So we must now take a closer look at the reasons why the UN needs such a grand design, almost doubling its office space.

The UN's plans for growth aren't new. It has been working behind the scenes to expand its reach and power for the better part of two decades (editor's note: arguably almost six decades, since the 1940s).

Many Americans -- and most members of Congress -- argue that the UN's urgent mission is to provide a place for nations to hold debates and air differences as a prevention to war.

This is the UN's image, as the world focuses on the activities of the Security Council, but behind the scenes the UN is rapidly changing, expanding its reach through a series of treaties and commissions designed to create a mechanism for "global governance."

In 1995, the UN released a report from the Commission on Global Governance entitled "Our Global Neighborhood." The report set forth very specific recommendations to achieve the vision of global governance.

Once the report was issued, a network of NGO's (non-government organizations) was created to advance the report's agenda.

As a result, the agenda outlined in "Our Global Neighborhood" was reissued in a shorter, easy to read report called the Charter for Global Democracy.

Specifically, the Charter for Global Democracy outlined twelve goals necessary to achieve global governance. These included:

1) Consolidation of all international agencies under direct authority of the United Nations;

2) Regulations by the UN of all transnational corporations and financial institutions;

3) An independent source of revenue for the UN;

4) Eliminate the veto power and permanent member status of the Security Council;

5) Authorize a standing UN army;

6) Require UN registration of all arms and the reduction of all national armies;

7) Require individual and national compliance with all UN Human Rights treaties;

8) Establishment of an International Environmental Court;

9) New institutions to establish economic and environmental Sustainable Development;

10) Activate the International Criminal Court and make it compulsory for all nations;

11) A declaration that climate change is an essential global security interest that requires the creation of a "high level action team" to allocate carbon emission based on equal per-capita rights (Kyoto Global Warming Treaty);

12) Calls for the cancellation of all debt owed by the poorest nations, global poverty reductions and the "equitable sharing of global resources" as allocated by the UN.

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THIS IS WHY THE UN MUST GO. THE VERY NATURE OF ITS AMBITIONS THREATENS THE SOVERNTY OF THE UNITED STATES. DO YOU REALLY THINK THAT THE UNITED STATES, OR ANY OTHER SERIOUS GLOBAL POWER, WILL CONCEDE THEIR RIGHTS AND PRIVILEDGES TO SOME HALF BAKED, COCKAMEME, MORALLY DEFECIENT INTERNATIONAL LEGAL BODY? WHEN HAS THE UNITED NATIONS PROVEN ITSELF WORTHY OF SUCH TRUST? WHY WOULD THE US VOLUNTARILY GIVE AWAY POWER THAT IS RIGHTFULLY OURS? WHERE ARE THE FACTS THAT SUPPORT THE CONTENTION THAT THE UN WOULD BE A MORE EFFECTIVE OVERSEER OF WORLD ORDER THAN THE UNITED STATES? IS A UNIFORMED WORLD BODY EVEN POSSIBLE WHEN THERE ARE SO MANY COMPETING INTERNATIONAL INTERESTS AND SO VERY LITTLE TRUST? CAN WE CONTINUE TO IGNORE THE DIRECT CORRELATION BETWEEN UN EFFECTIVENESS ON GLOBAL ISSUES AND AMERICAN FUNDING AND SUPPORT? WHY SHOULD WE ALLOW THE UN TO CONTINUE TO GET THE CREDIT FOR OUR GENEROSITY?
KISSINGER
////

Obviously, the UN is planning to expand its operation -- from the worldwide perception of simply a place where nations can meet to air their differences -- to the implementation of a global government, complete with taxes, armies and criminal courts; actions historically undertaken only by governments.

Plans for a bigger complex of buildings would be necessary as the UN headquarters is transformed into the world capitol building.

The American taxpayers very quickly should tell their elected representatives and the State Department that any loan application from the United Nations is dead on arrival -- unless they can come up with a suitable co-signer.

Better yet, perhaps the UN should just take its business elsewhere.

© 2003 Tom DeWeese - All Rights Reserved

Tom DeWeese is the publisher/editor of The DeWeese Report and president of the American Policy Center, a grassroots, activist think tank headquartered in Warrenton, VA. The Center maintains an Internet site at www.americanpolicy.org.

Edited by Kissinger, 03 April 2003 - 03:05 AM.

[DJS]

From the objectivist center

Rejecting the Fetish of United Nations Consensus
By Edward Hudgins

Whether one favors the war against Iraq or not, one's attitude towards the United Nations' role is a revealing Rorschach test; those with a fetish for securing a U.N. consensus for American actions expose serious ethical confusion and pernicious political premises.

We're told that the U.N. is a community of nations. But what is the principle on which this community is based? The United States itself—our community—was established on the principle that each individual is endowed "with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness—That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men." It's this understanding that unites Americans—and that should unite any civilized people—that individuals should be free to live their lives as they see fit, with government protecting their liberty. The Constitution and Bill of Rights were meant to allow government to protect our freedoms but also to protect us from government abuses. It is with reference to our founding principles that we should judge whether a particular policy is wise or not.

The U.N. was established by the World War II allies as a forum to prevent future wars through diplomacy and possibly as a force to counter aggression. These goals certainly could be in America's national interest. But it became clear early on that many U.N. members did not share America's vision of a community of nations that respected the rights of their own citizens and that preferred free trade and prosperity to war and destruction. The Soviet Union was the greatest danger to the United States, world peace, and liberty everywhere. Furthermore, the governments of most countries represented at the U.N. were dictatorships of one sort or other that did not respect the individual liberties of their own citizens.

Illustrative of the nature of the U.N. was the furor raised in 1975 by then-American ambassador to the U.N. Patrick Moynihan, who referred to Ugandan dictator Idi Amin, who had called for "the extinction of Israel as a state," as a "racist murderer." U.N. diplomats were horrified that the American ambassador would be so undiplomatic as to say such a thing about Amin but were not particularly horrified that Amin was a racist murderer. After Amin's fall - he received political asylum in Saudi Arabia—his blood-soaked execution chambers, murder of as many as half a million of his own people, and the revelation that he was a cannibal who literally feasted on the remains of his enemies, simply rounded out the picture of a regime of horror that had been on clear display before the world for years. No wonder Moynihan entitled his book about his years at the U.N. "A Dangerous Place."

The moral bankruptcy of the U.N. is still on display today in so many ways. The Libyan government of dictator Muammar Qaddafi—which has been a major sponsor of terrorism and which was responsible for blowing up PanAm Flight 103—now sits on that body's Human Rights Commission.

In seeking U.N. backing for its efforts against Saddam Hussein's regime, the Bush administration risked conferring on a generally sleazy organization a seriousness and dignity that it did not deserve. But at least the administration's efforts revealed for a new generation the impotence of the U.N. and the moral bankruptcy of many of the administration's critics.

Such detractors asserted that U.N. approval was necessary to confer moral legitimacy on the war against Hussein. In other words, rather than judging the war by asking whether it would protect the lives and liberties of Americans or even citizens of other free countries, they assumed that the goal should be to secure a consensus of representatives of governments run on principles that are often antithetical to freedom. In philosophy this attitude is called "social metaphysics," that is, placing opinions over facts. But the morality of actions, institutions, or other human endeavors should be judged by the objective need of human beings for freedom, based on our nature as rational creatures with free will, not on the confused and contradictory feelings of others. And while a morally confused individual might benefit from consulting the opinions of wise and thoughtful sages, U.N. delegates hardly fit into that category.

But a majority vote does not make morality. There was a legitimate line of argument against the war - that Hussein was a despot but if left alone would not attack America - as well as the argument that this war is necessary to head off future terrorist attacks. Yet those individuals, whether Americans or citizens of other countries, who believed that a U.N. sanction was necessary to make this a moral war display just the kind of moral nihilism that makes the U.N., in Moynihan's words, a dangerous place. And if America expects to make the post-war world one that will be more secure for Americans and all freedom-loving individuals, it must act from the principles of liberty rather than a consensus of the confused and cowardly.

Edited by Kissinger, 25 June 2003 - 09:47 PM.

[DJS]

Liberal Democrats' Perverse Foreign Policy

Charles Krauthammer
Friday, July 11, 2003


It was the left that led the opposition to war in Iraq. Now it is the left that is most strenuous in urging intervention in Liberia. Curious.

No blood for oil, it seems, but blood for Liberia. And let us not automatically assume that Liberia will be an immaculate intervention. Sure, we may get lucky and suffer no casualties. But Liberia has three warring parties, tons of guns and legions of desperate fighters. Yet pressure is inexorably building to send American troops to enforce a peace.

There are the usual suspects, Jesse Jackson and the New York Times, but the most unapologetic proponent of the no-Iraq/yes-Liberia school is Howard Dean, Democratic flavor of the month. "I opposed the war in Iraq because it was the wrong war at the wrong time," says Dean, but "military intervention in Liberia represents an appropriate use of American power."

Why? In terms of brutality, systematic repression, number of killings, relish for torture and sum total of human misery caused, Charles Taylor is a piker next to Saddam Hussein. That is not to say that Taylor is a better man. It is only to say that in his tiny corner of the world with no oil resources and no scientific infrastructure for developing instruments of mass murder, Taylor has neither the reach nor the power to wreak Hussein-class havoc. What is it that makes liberals such as Dean, preening their humanitarianism, so antiwar in Iraq and so pro-intervention in Liberia?

The same question could be asked of the Democratic Party, which in the 1990s opposed the Persian Gulf War but overwhelmingly supported humanitarian interventions in places such as Haiti and Kosovo.

They all had a claim on the American conscience. What then was the real difference between, say, Haiti and Gulf War I, and between Liberia and Gulf War II? The Persian Gulf has deep strategic significance for the United States; Haiti and Liberia do not. In both gulf wars, critical American national interests were being defended and advanced. Yet it is precisely these interventions that liberals opposed.

The only conclusion one can draw is that for liberal Democrats, America's strategic interests are not just an irrelevance, but also a deterrent to intervention. This is a perversity born of moral vanity. For liberals, foreign policy is social work. National interest -- i.e., national selfishness -- is a taint. The only justified interventions, therefore, are those that are morally pristine, namely, those that are uncorrupted by any suggestion of national interest.

Hence the central axiom of left-liberal foreign policy: The use of American force is always wrong, unless deployed in a region of no strategic significance to the United States. The war in Afghanistan was an exception, but it doesn't count because it was retaliation against an overt attack, and not even liberals can oppose a counterattack in a war the other side started. Such bolts from the blue are rare, however. They come about every half-century, the last one being Pearl Harbor. In between one has to make decisions about going to war in less axiomatic circumstances. And that is when the liberal Democrats fall into their solipsism of righteousness.

This is the core lunacy of Democratic foreign policy. Either it has no criteria for intervening militarily -- after all, if we're going into Liberia, on what grounds are we not going into Congo? -- or it has a criterion, and its logic is that the U.S. Army is a missionary service rather than a defender of U.S. interests.

What should be our criteria for military intervention? The answer is simple: strategic and moral necessity. Foreign policy is not social work. Acting for purely humanitarian reasons is wanton and self-indulgent. You don't send U.S. soldiers to die to assuage troubled consciences at home. Their lives should be risked only in defense of their country.

Should we then do nothing elsewhere? In principle, we should help others by economic and diplomatic means and with appropriate relief agencies. Regarding Liberia, it is rather odd for the Europeans, who rail against U.S. arrogance, to claim that all the armies of France and Germany, of Europe and Africa, are powerless in the face of Charles Taylor -- unless the Americans ride to the rescue.

We should be telling them to do the job, with an offer of U.S. logistical help. We have quite enough on our plate in Iraq and Afghanistan and in chasing al Qaeda around the world.

If, nonetheless, the president finds the pressure irresistible to intervene in Liberia, he should send troops only under very clear conditions: America will share the burden with them if they share the burden with us where we need it. And that means peacekeepers in Iraq. The world cannot stand by watching us bleed in Iraq, and then expect us to bleed for it in Liberia.

[Lazarus Long]

It isn't about liberal, or conservative, it is about the vestigial obligations of blatant colonialism and guess what? Liberia is an American FORMER COLONY in Africa. Damned how the past keeps coming back to haunt you.

This article is about what is going wrong that doesn't have to.

LL/kxs

US creates African enemies where none were before
July 11, 2003 edition

By David Gutelius

PALO ALTO, CALIF. – President Bush repeatedly highlighted the importance of democracy, peace, and security during his African tour this week. But, administration mismanagement of the war on terror has deeply undermined stability across Africa in the past year.

In its African incarnation, that war has managed to produce almost exactly the opposite of what was intended. The administration has allowed African partner regimes to crack down on a wide range of Muslim groups over the past 18 months, creating enemies where they previously didn't exist. The majority of Muslim leaders in Africa abhor violence as a response to government repression and coercion. They have little or nothing in common with Al Qaeda. Yet US foreign policy in Africa has inspired radicalism, discredited moderate African Muslims, and fomented political instability in key nations.

Since 2001, the administration has told African governments that they must curb Islamic terrorist groups, and that future political and economic relations weigh in the balance. The US has encouraged several governments in North, West, and East Africa to place suspected radical Muslim leaders under close watch.

Although the administration hasn't revealed details of US aid to these governments, the effects are becoming apparent. Several African governments have used the war on terror as an excuse to coerce legitimate opposition groups. Many Muslim leaders have been arrested on dubious evidence. Others have suffered threats and police beatings.

The result? The US and its partners have captured some dangerous individuals and probably thwarted terrorist acts in Africa. But this success has been costly. Several recent studies suggest that Muslims from Morocco to Kenya are increasingly convinced that they will never be allowed to participate fully in national governments, let alone practice their faith freely.

Further, a generation of younger, well-educated Muslim leaders, frustrated by political corruption, social decline, and the growing power of Westerners in Africa, are either taking over established Muslim organizations or starting their own. Many keep in close touch with the larger world through satellite TV and the Internet. And, contrary to popular Western assumptions, they generally have little respect for Saudi-style Wahhabi- inspired ideas about Islam.

Yet many of these leaders are outraged at growing repression - and increasingly link that repression to the US and their national governments. The rhetoric of reform - even among moderate Muslims - has grown more strident and less tolerant. If change won't come peacefully, a mounting number of these new leaders are willing to bring change by force.

These trends have long histories that differ with each nation. But the deeper social and political changes beneath appear to have developed rapidly over the past 18 months and share growing similarities across nations.

At several stops along his African tour, Mr. Bush touted $100 million in new funding to fight terrorism in Africa. Yet the administration appears oblivious of the effect of US policy on African Muslims. This is perhaps because few US government analysts speak local languages or have direct field experience in Africa. But if the US doesn't closely monitor how governments use this new funding, it's likely to increase political instability in a dozen African nations.

What happens next is uncertain, but the Department of State will play a key role. If the administration gives it the support, the State Department can oversee appropriate use of aid to fight terrorism in Africa and actively work to build trust among African Muslim communities. This will not only help promote democracy and goodwill, but also more effectively target genuine threats.

On the other hand, if this new infusion of money into the war on terror in Africa is handled in the same way it has been, recent violence in Mauritania, Morocco, Nigeria, Tunisia, Kenya, and Uganda will be just the opening shots of a longer, bloodier series of wars - struggles in which several important African nations may fracture along religious lines. Bush's African tour will seem, at best, irrelevant. And $100 million will seem like a bargain.

• David Gutelius is a visiting scholar at the Center for African Studies at Stanford University and a faculty affiliate at the Institute for the Study of Islamic Thought in Africa at Northwestern University.