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It is in the breaking news sidebar!
Posted on 04/14/2003 9:21:25 AM PDT by knighthawk
WASHINGTON - As freedom comes to Baghdad, America's friends and enemies are wondering: Who's the next target in the war on terror? The right answer should be: the United Nations.
The United Nations is now trying to insinuate itself into the reconstruction of Iraq. Earlier this week, Kofi Annan announced that only a UN resolution could give "legitimacy" to the American liberation of Iraq, and this view is echoed by liberal-minded pundits around the world.
The truth is that the UN has no legitimacy to give. In the world's three-decade long struggle with terror and terror states, the UN has with rare exceptions been an instrument of the wrong side.
In the three decades since the PLO attack on the 1972 Munich Olympics, the UN has passed dozens of resolutions condemning Israel -- but never once has it delivered an unambiguous condemnation of the terrorist attacks against the Jewish state.
Meanwhile, the UN aid organizations inside the Palestinian towns and refugee camps in Lebanon, Jordan, Gaza, the West Bank and elsewhere have been exploited to sustain hatred and resentment. UN officials lead Palestinian children on tours of Israeli cities and tell them that the wealth they see is rightfully theirs. They distribute hateful textbooks and co-operate with terrorist groups in the administration of social welfare programs.
The UN is as responsible as anyone for the survival of Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq. Yes, the Security Council voted to eject Iraq from Kuwait in 1991. But that same resolution was also understood to forbid the United States, Britain, and their allies to follow the Iraqi army out of Kuwait and finish the job by freeing Iraq as well. To this day, President George H.W. Bush cites the terms of the UN resolution as the single most important reason he halted the war short at the Kuwait-Iraq border.
Over the next few years, the UN-authorized regime of inspections plus sanctions gradually fell apart. Yet every time the United States and Britain mobilized to force Iraq to comply, the UN and Secretary-General Kofi Annan interceded to protect Saddam. When Saddam finally forced the inspectors out of Iraq altogether in 1998, France and Russia warned they would veto any war resolution -- and President Clinton backed down.
The UN's oil-for-food program, originally intended to protect the people of Iraq from the worst effects of sanctions, was swiftly transformed into a tool of the Saddam regime. Saddam siphoned billions out of the program to buy weapons and enrich his supporters -- and UN officials looked the other way.
Now Saddam is finally gone, no thanks to the United Nations, and the United States and its allies must begin the work of building a peaceful, decent, post-Saddam regime. Nobody would dream of inviting Saddam's local allies into that regime. How then would it make sense to give power to his closest foreign allies -- not just France and Russia, but also temporary Security Council members Germany and Syria?
French companies helped Saddam evade sanctions. German companies sold Saddam the ingredients for his poison factories. Russian companies provided him with arms and ammunition. The government of Syria gave refuge to his top aides -- and may now be hiding some of his weapons of mass destruction. And these are the people who are supposed to confer legitimacy on Iraq's new leaders?
A UN role in Iraq means a French veto over Iraq. Such a veto would have large consequences for Iraq's future.
For example: Many people suspect that the Iraqi archives contain interesting revelations about the relationship between Saddam and French President Jacques Chirac. A UN role in Iraq would enable Chirac to keep those documents secret. You can see why such secrecy might appeal to the French government -- but would it "legitimate" Iraq's?
For another example: Some of the oil contracts between Iraq and France are hugely disfavorable to Iraq. Saddam seems to have believed that these special deals would win him France's political support. A new Iraqi government might want to renegotiate or even cancel these contracts -- how would it benefit the Iraqi people for that to be prevented?
Behind all of these problems is a larger one: The UN is inherently incompetent to deal with the problem of terrorism. The UN Charter forbids states to use force against other states -- which was the UN's excuse for condemning Israel for bombing Iraq's French-built nuclear reactor in 1981. But the Charter has nothing to say about the use of force by non-states or quasi-states -- which is why the UN kept silent when Hezbollah, with Iranian help, bombed the Jewish community center in Buenos Aires in 1994, killing more than 100 people.
There are circumstances where the UN can play a useful role. But political legitimacy is not a gift from the UN. Political legitimacy comes from the consent of the governed. Iraq's government will be legitimate when it is elected.
And the allied war in Iraq is justified by the rightness of the allied cause and the horrors of the tyranny that the allies overthrow -- and that the UN bureaucracy and so many UN Security Council member states worked so hard for so long to preserve.
dfrum@aei.org
No more UN for US-list
If people want on or off this list, please let me know.
Ken, why in the world would we want to do that? SC veto is a two-way street. Any resolutions France, Russia, et.al. could and probably should be vetoed by the US...not only regarding Iraq but also other issues as well.
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