Thursday, June 03, 2004
The UN - as relevant and important as ever
Aren't you glad that the Security Council members have nothing but the best interest of Iraqi people at heart? I get all warm and fuzzy reading stuff like this:
I guess at least France, Russia, China (and the current non-permanent members of the Security Council, Germany, Chile and Algeria) are consistent - they didn't give a flying fuck for the people of Iraq when Saddam was in power, and they still don't, now that he's gone. Furthermore, they're not actually interested in doing anything constructive to help Iraq, whether within or outside the UN framework. So once again, the world's premier political forum has become merely the arena for "get America" games. I'm sure that this what the UN's founding fathers had in mind as its main purpose back in 1945.
But at least we have the definition of "international legitimacy": a cynical and half-hearted approval by the disinterested and the impotent for somebody else to do something that the whole international community should be doing instead. Why do we still bother?
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"As the United States struggles to win world support for its transfer of authority in Iraq, the Bush administration is running into diplomatic payback at the United Nations, senior U.N. diplomats said yesterday..."But they are now wary"? As opposed to before the invasion, when they were so supportive?
"Demands for further changes [in the draft resolution on Iraq], the U.N. envoys said, reflect the diplomatic cost the United States incurred when it intervened in Iraq without U.N. approval: Security Council members want to help Iraq, but they are now wary of the Bush administration and do not want to let the United States easily get its way on this resolution without more detailed pledges of long-term intent."
I guess at least France, Russia, China (and the current non-permanent members of the Security Council, Germany, Chile and Algeria) are consistent - they didn't give a flying fuck for the people of Iraq when Saddam was in power, and they still don't, now that he's gone. Furthermore, they're not actually interested in doing anything constructive to help Iraq, whether within or outside the UN framework. So once again, the world's premier political forum has become merely the arena for "get America" games. I'm sure that this what the UN's founding fathers had in mind as its main purpose back in 1945.
But at least we have the definition of "international legitimacy": a cynical and half-hearted approval by the disinterested and the impotent for somebody else to do something that the whole international community should be doing instead. Why do we still bother?
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