An interview with Richard Perle [Foreign affairs MUST READ, and I don't say that lightly]

Intl Herald Tribune ^ | 4/12/3 | Richard Perle

[Carry_Okie]

NNY> I noticed that too. I think he was making a rhetorical point, and not endorsing the notion of a "living constitution".

Perle I think we should begin with trying to restructure the United Nations. It is an institution set up in the aftermath of a great event and thoroughly dominated by the immediate memory of that event. It would be rare for an organization so constituted to function effectively 60 years later in an entirely different world without change. And yet there has been no change to the charter of the United Nations since it was founded. It is not a living constitution like the American constitution, interpreted to reflect the times.

This is no rhetorical point. Perle clearly believes in a situational Constitution and organizing the UN to be capable of violating national sovereignty. That would include ours.

There is nothing in the UN charter now that authorizes collective preemption. That has to change if the UN is going to be effective and relevant. That would solve the problem of the United States having to act alone.

Perle wants the UN to be "effective and relevant." No thank you. It's done enough damage.

The problem with the UN is not just structural, it is principle. Concentrating power in one entity without recourse for citizens virtually guarantees a lack of accountability to the people. Look at the way the US Constitution is being treated like expensive toilet paper. The Federal government ignored its ennumerated powers almost before the ink on the Constitution was dry. If even the US, comprised of superior structure to the UN and manned with a cultured and educated citizenry, proceeded to develop institutions that violated their accounability to and social contract with the people, how then could the UN, NO MATTER HOW IT WAS STRUCTURED, comprised of a majority of nations with no history of liberty and controlled by tyrants, EVER constitute itself to be accountable to the governed?

It can't be done, because with global government there can be no recourse. To make such an attempt is paradoxical. Unless nations have sovereignty, they cannot exercise or be held accountable to the will of their people. If the rules must be the same for all nations, then no nation is sovereign. All power would drift to centralized authority, and we all know how badly that works. It's global socialism.

Extranational authority is thus necessarily destructive to the liberty of citizens and accountability of government AT ALL LEVELS. To make such an attempt is therefore foolish and destructive. Crooks, thugs, and manipulators alike may want a system like that, but I don't. No matter how beneficent we as a nation are, and even if we had we the power to order the UN to meet our expectations, it would be akin to an attempt to impose liberty. The power to impose liberty is the power to destroy all respect for individual unalienable rights.

[Valin]

The fallout of this war in Iraq will be when G. Bush gets on the phone to Ashad of Syria and mentions that America is...concerned about the camps in the beka valley he WILL take note.

[WaterDragon]

I agree. Begin by kicking the U.N. out of New York City. Paris would be better and more fitting. Or Brussels would do. Or Moscow. And they all can pay the freight from now on.

This is an excellent, excellent article by Perle. He's great.

[SBprone]

"There is nothing in the UN charter now that authorizes collective preemption. That has to change if the UN is going to be effective and relevant. That would solve the problem of the United States having to act alone."

I don't love him, but then I don't know that much about the guy. The above quote really gives me pause. There is no way I want that UN collection of dictators and demagogues collectively intervening in anything.

Why does he find it necessary to kowtow to those who think the UN has a future? I suppose there is some point to his statements and perhaps you can enlighten me, but
if Perle thinks he can manipulate this collection of weasels for the common good then he is either deluded or he is the reincarnation of Machiavelli.

[aruanan]

That essential idea is preemption.

I wish people would just use the word "prevention". We're not going to wait until they hit us with weapons of mass destruction before we act to secure our safety. We're not going let them continue to launch terrorist attacks. We're going to prevent them from doing that. Now that we've stomped Saddam, we may be able to prevent some things with just the hairy eyeball since at least some folks now know what it can be followed up with. If we know that certain people are really immune to warning or to being able to learn that what happened to Saddam could happen to them, we ascertain the degree of the threat and then use sufficient force to eliminate it. It's true that we probably do not know how regions will be "destabilized" as a result of the elimination of threat by preventive action, but we'll be sure that that particular threat doesn't exist any longer. And we'll be in a position to exercise some degree of influence in a possible, more likely than not to be temporary, state of chaos following. Sometimes it's easier to rebuild than to remodel.

Let's continue to swing the wrecking ball at terrorist states.

[Terpfen]

"Europeans will be rolling on the floor laughing. For German or French reader, Perle destroyed his own credibility."

Destroyed credibility over a geography screw-up? That's usually what we call a "stretch." Bush has misspoken far more... extensively, I guess you could say, and yet he holds far more credibility than Chirac or Schroeder. Why would Perle lose credibility over his mistake of adding instead of subtracting?

[alancarp]

Under my proposal, EITHER house can unite to 'do the right thing' -- you wouldn't need both House and Senate. 3/5ths, IMHO, is sufficient to temper "going to war on a whim", as well. But whenever the DEMs take control both House and Senate again, we've got bigger problems at home!

But I shouldn't go too far here - I don't really wish to take away from the main post with what amounts to a stealth vanity posting (that's why I waited to post this reply).

[Cold Heat]

The point about Iraq and Afghanistan is that twice now the United States will have used force to deal with a threat that could not be managed in any other way. So the message to those on the who’s next list is, give us another way to manage the threat.

This thought says it!

This one single statement outlines American foreign policy for the next 50 years.

[mabelkitty]

The man most feared by the Left.

[justshutupandtakeit]

Bingo.

The best way not to have to use the Military is to use the military.

[Valin]

Paris would be better and more fitting. Or Brussels would do. Or Moscow.

Actuallly I'm think Nouakcchott Mauritania. I understands lovely this time of year.

[js1138]

According to CIA factbook, Iraq has 437,072 sq km, France has 545,630 sq km and Portugal has 91,951 sq km.

This would be a bad mistake in a published paper, but as presented in an unscripted interview, it's a trivial error. Perhaps he meant Spain and Portugal.

[tuna_battle_slight_return]

"Jacques Chirac and Vladimir Putin ... opposed the one thing that might have led to the discovery of those weapons."

[Frumious Bandersnatch]

It is not a living constitution like the American constitution, interpreted to reflect the times.

Uhoh. This guy's a living fool - as interpreted to reflect the times.

[Valin]

What's the old saying?
They who desire peace must prepare for war.

[WaterDragon]

LOL! Perfect graph!

[Stultis]

An absolutely fantastic interview with one of the smartest people on the planet.

Was this a recent, telephone interview? I have it on Mark Steyn's authority that Perle was otherwise engaged immediately prior to the publication date:

Mark Steyn - Welcome to Anglo-Saxon reality

Well, this whole quagmire seems to be getting worse, eh? I see the Yanks have now been reduced to staging fake scenes of supposed jubilation on the alleged streets of what the Pentagon assures us is Baghdad. If you pause the video, you'll see the guy on the right jumping up and down thwacking his shoe on the head of Saddam's toppled statue is actually Richard Perle disguised as an Iraqi cab driver and the woman standing next to him ululating "Blessings be upon you, o great Bush" is David Frum in a chador.