Posted on 09/08/2002 4:30:45 PM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
The United States should not ask the U.N. Security Council for permission to remove Saddam – or anything else.
If there is sufficient evidence that Saddam has, or will have in the foreseeable future, weapons of mass destruction, then the United States should do whatever is necessary to protect its citizens.
Neither the United Nations, nor any other member of the Security Council, is the target of Saddam's venom. The United States and Israel are his targets. Israel delayed Saddam's nuclear program with a pre-emptive strike in 1981. It may be time to do it again.
Two issues must be resolved: "sufficient" evidence, and the U.N.
The president should immediately ask Congress to adopt a joint resolution authorizing him to prevent Iraq from acquiring weapons of mass destruction, when the appropriate congressional committees – in closed session – concur that the evidence is sufficient.
If action against Iraq is initiated, the U.N. Security Council should learn about it when everyone else does.
Those who say we should get U.N. approval first already believe that the U.N. is a superior authority to our government, or they believe that we should appease our European allies who do.
If we ask the Security Council for permission to defend our national security, then we are admitting that the U.N. is a superior authority. Even if our motive is to appease our allies, the result is the same. The United States of America must never allow any government, anywhere, to dictate our actions – especially in matters of national security.
President Bush continues to be the target of scathing criticism for withdrawing from the Kyoto Protocol, and from the International Criminal Court, and for not attending the fiasco in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Those are among his most noble actions as president.
Nelson Mandela drew thunderous ovations when he told the Johannesburg crowd that no nation has the right to take the law into their own hands. He is wrong. Dead wrong. Every nation has the right, and the responsibility to protect its citizens without asking permission from anyone.
Richard Holbrook, former weapons inspector who was kicked out of Iraq, says we should first ask the U.N. Security Council for its approval to remove Saddam … and if they say no, do it anyway. The gesture is supposed to put us in a better light with our European allies. Hogwash.
If action needs to be taken in Iraq to protect American citizens, then the action must be taken. Our real allies will support our decision – others will not. The U.N. can do whatever it wants to do.
The United States should not withdraw from the international community, but it should certainly not acquiesce to the drumbeat of criticism from anti-capitalist one-worlders.
The United States should continue to ignore those U.N. demands that erode our sovereignty and deplete our treasury, only to further empower and enrich the anti-American, global-governance machine.
The United States should step out of the U.N. quagmire, which produces little more than global conferences in exotic places – at taxpayers' expense – as a reward for obedient delegates who agree to grandiose verbiage in documents designed to become international law.
The United States should help any nation that wants to climb out of poverty – not by pouring money into the U.N.'s sustainable (read: managed) development schemes, but by helping those nations discover the principles of freedom – private property, free markets, representative democracy, individual achievement and responsibility.
In recent years, the United Nations has shed its disguise as a forum for sovereign nations to discuss and debate their differences. It has now declared its intention to become the world government its creators envisioned more than a half-century ago.
Those who believe the United States should ask the U.N. for permission to do anything, are affirming the world government the U.N. aspires to be.
Our president is not one of these people.
His most outspoken opponents, the media and, certainly, the European Union and the developing world are all eager to see the U.N. assume the role of dictator of the global village. For the president to resist the continuing barrage of criticism and political pressure, he will need more backbone than we've seen in an American president in decades.
He will need the support of all Americans who believe the U.S. Constitution still trumps the U.N. Charter.
Thank you.
Bush has just defanged the "UN should decide this" crowd by giving the UN a chance to trip over its own shoelaces. It looks like it will do exactly that. Then, since this is a matter of the US defending its own citizens, and since the UN Charter provides in Article V for the "right of self-defense" for any nation, the deck is then clear for the US to lock and load.
By approaching the problem in this way, the UN will be left with egg on its face, and the UN uber alles crowd will be marginalized. That's a win-win proposition.
Congressman Billybob
Click for major article on turnover in the House of Representatives: "Til Death Do Us Part."
Actually, he was much stronger; he said act or consider the UN irrelevant. I really LIKE that word.
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