Posted on 06/28/2004 9:44:09 AM PDT by dead
Johannesburg
When US President George W Bush launched his military assault on Iraq, he launched a parallel assault on the way the world conducts its affairs.
In what history will regard as a dangerous fit of hubris, he trusted his native intelligence. In so doing, he placed the unilateral interests of his country above the concerns of multilateral institutions such as the United Nations.
He arrogated to himself and his narrow political coterie the right to arbitrate over world affairs and to determine the destiny of distant peoples.
On June 30, he will hand over the remnants of a shattered country to a ruling council that suffers a massive legitimacy crisis and is in the throes of a hideous civil war.
Iraq and the fraught region it inhabits will become the stage for a protracted and bloody battle between extremists and opportunists of all shades, with democracy but a distant dream.
Perhaps this terrible miscalculation will at least leave behind lessons that the world and - we can only hope - the US establishment will take to heart.
The first of these is that, however painful and tortured its machinations, the UN ought to be the body which arbitrates on military action against a member state.
It should be remembered that the UN was not opposed to military intervention in Iraq.
It differed with the US over the conditions under which an intervention ought to take place.
Had the weapons inspections (remember Hans Blix?) been allowed to follow their course, one of two scenarios would have emerged: weapons of mass destruction would have been uncovered and military intervention would have been justified, or - as now seems more likely - they would not have been found and the UN would have had to take a more patient approach to curbing the excesses of Saddam Hussein.
In both scenarios, the UN would have acted with the weight of world opinion behind it. Militarily, this would have meant more and better resources, the accession of neighbouring countries to the necessity of conflict, and a greater capacity to isolate Iraq from those who are now fuelling the flames of conflict.
As it transpires, Bush has weakened the authority of the US military in ways of which Saddam Hussein could only have dreamt.
The US Army now suffers a serious credibility crisis over torture. It has been exposed as hopelessly incapable of performing peace-time policing duties.
Its prevailing military doctrine - hi-tech bombardments and rapid armoured deployment accompanied by perspiring network television anchors - is the laughing stock of all but the most ignorant hayseeds.
It has been exposed as incapable of containing civil uprisings and weak in the face of guerrilla insurrection.
Its intelligence has been exposed as a string of ever-escalating exaggerations worthy of typing-pool gossip.
Bush has played global policeman like a Keystone Cop. And the criminals have never had it so good.
At the very least, the surprise early turnover is likely to throw the press off their game plan.
And, unfortunately for them, it might throw a little cold water on the bombings and give the press less dead bodies they can gloat over.
Can you imagine the hissy the author of this swill must be having this morning after hearing about the hand-off? ROTF!
Massive legitimacy crisis? The UN security council approved the new government 15-0. Hideous civil war? There might have been 10,000 people killed max to liberate 26 million. You want hideous? Try Sudan, last seen trying to kill another million people while they sit on the UN Human Rights Commission.
That's not just hideous - that's obscene. As is this stupid editorial that downplays the ouster of a dictatorial regime.
True. The UN wanted the ambient temperarture in hell to be below zero before we went in.
They are either with us or with the terrorists.
But I don't hear a lot of cowboys crying this morning. Quite a few of us are laughing, in fact, laughing at fact that pumped-up fools like this editor are staring into the face of a new Iraq with egg on their own.
"Can you imagine the hissy the author of this swill must be having this morning after hearing about the hand-off? ROTF!"
And Saddam being given to the new Iraqi government?
He he he.....it is funny, reading this already knowing what occured in the last 12 hours.
And now the UN wants to send weapons inpectors back into Iraq. I hope the Iraqis keep the UN the heck out.
We TOLD the world: You harbor the enemy, and you BECOME the enemy.
Bush didn't make the decision.
A South African editorial? Delicious irony.....
"...and the UN would have had to take a more patient approach to curbing the excesses of Saddam Hussein."
The murder, rape and torture of tens of thousands of people are mere "excesses." Ya just gotta love those lefties!
I say the Iraqis take advantage of those newly repaired irrigation systems and use the weapon inspectors for fertilizer.
Interesting concept of human rights they have, isn't it?
"Its prevailing military doctrine - hi-tech bombardments and rapid armoured deployment accompanied by perspiring network television anchors - is the laughing stock of all but the most ignorant hayseeds."
Funny, I don't seem to remember the Taliban, the Republican Guard, Al Sadr's militia, or Al Queda laughing when us "ignorant hayseeds" came a rolling in with our "military doctrine".
We captured a large country with a large military in lightning speed with very few causualties. The fact that this guy thinks that is to be laughed it tells everything I need to know about his intellegence.
"Interesting"
Yes it is..........(cough,cough).
These Third World editorialists live in a dream world fueled by jealousy, an education system dominated by Leftists, and yes, racism -- hatred of all things white.
this particular cowboy is smiling from ear to ear.
political commentary from a south african? spare me.
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