Posted on 11/10/2002 2:04:09 AM PST by kattracks
The United States is going to war.On Friday, minutes after the United Nations Security Council passed its Iraq disarmament resolution, President Bush made that it clear that Saddam Hussein must get rid of his weapons of mass destruction, or else.
Else is inescapable. There is absolutely no way Saddam will comply with the UN's demands. He can't. At the first sign of weakness, his people will tear him to shreds.
Not, it must be said, out of any deep hunger for freedom. No Arab society anywhere has ever manifested the slightest desire for freedom as we understand it.
Arab students demonstrate for more state and religious repression, not less. Arab crowds march for war, not peace. Arab leaders like Jordan's first King Abdullah and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat are assassinated because they are considered too liberal, not too harsh.
The Iraqis have their own reasons for wanting to do away with Saddam. His family, tribe, sect and faction have ruled them ruthlessly and stolen them blind. Now they would like the chance to murder Saddam's family, tribe and faction - and enrich themselves. This is the pattern of what is known as modern Arab political reform. There is no other.
Bush has tried to frame the impending invasion of Iraq as national liberation. "The time has come for the Iraqi people to escape oppression, find freedom and live in hope," he said Friday. The Yanks are coming to create Paris on the Euphrates.
There is nothing wrong with this sort of rhetoric, as long as Bush doesn't actually believe it. The tribes, clans, sects and oligarchies of Iraq have their rivalries, but they, like Arabs everywhere in the Middle East, are not anxious for freedom as it is understood in the West.
Open debate, religious equality and secular democratic government are regarded by the best people - from Morocco to Iraq - as subversive and unnatural.
Iraqis of all persuasions, after a brief moment of ritualistic rice-throwing and candy-tossing at the conquering G.I.s, will turn against American troops and denounce Washington as an imperialist occupier. Doves see this as an argument against going to war. In fact, it is just the opposite. It illuminates why war is necessary - and why Iraq is just the beginning.
Less than 60 years after decolonization, the Arab Middle East is (by Western standards, to be sure) the world's most backward, xenophobic and irrational region. These characteristics, when married to state sovereignty and the weapons that sovereignty can afford, are life-threatening.
There is nothing the United States can do in the short term to improve the collective mental health of Arab societies. It can't make people embrace values they despise or accept practices they consider satanic.
What the U.S. can do is take missiles and bombs away from the Middle East's most hostile and deranged regimes and their terrorist proxies.
This is, obviously, a much more ambitious goal than the disarmament of Iraq. It involves giving the Arabs and Iran a stark choice: In the age of nuclear weapons, they can have sovereignty or jihad (in its secular or religious forms), but not both.
On Friday in the Rose Garden, Bush began putting this into words. The United States, he declared, will no longer "live at the mercy of any group or regime that has the motive and seeks the power to murder Americans on a massive scale."
Starting, but not ending, with the government of Saddam Hussein.
As it SHOULD be!!
Yes, you're right. I didn't mean to do that. I know I was lucky that Desert Storm turned out to be a cakewalk, back when I was of prime drafting age.
This is a softball question,class, anyone have an answer for Carry_Okie?
Ok, I will answer it.
Anyone at anytime can tell (demand) something from us, but unless they have the means to enforce their demands, nothing will happen.
Do you want to add under what conditions the UN would make such demands on us? If you set up enough conditions, it is possible we would roll over and expose our bellies to them, but by that time the United States as we know it would be over anyway.
This is, I think, because the leftists in the west, and many western-created institutions like the U.N. are so extremist in their pacifism (peace at all costs, even to the death) that those of us who recognize the necessity of war and fight to make others understand that necessity end up having to be as vociferous and pointed in our views as the rabid pacifists.
I live in Olympia, Washington, where there are -- a rabidly leftist town where there are "Peace Protests" every weekend by a few hundred completely wacko pacifists. There was another one yesterday in a downtown park. My wife and I were downtown having lunch and parked along the street where the protest occurred. As we walked to our car we heard a shrewish, leftist woman with a megaphone shouting about how the "great Jim McDermott, the successor to Ghandi, has been so horribly treated in this country". My wife got pissed royally and yelled at the top of her lungs: "Jim McDermott is an Asshole!"
The cops who were standing by monitoring the protest started laughing so hard they broke decorum. My wife just said to the cops as we passed "these people make me so mad" -- which just made the cops laugh even harder.
The right people are on our side.
If we choose to subcede our choice to topple a sovereign nation to UN aegis, we are legitimizing the claim of international order to control our exercise of military action. So if in subsequent years, if the ICC rules against us on a matter of our sovereignty, what will we do? Ignore it? I hope so, but I doubt that a Slave Party president (such as the Hildabeast) would given the record of growing precedent. To do so would mean the end of that "relevance" anyway.
There would be consequences, especially in terms of how much help we would get toward preventing the planet from toppling into convulsion due to our having become either militarily or financially over-extended. I am not certain how long we can remain economically competitive while bearing the cost of global cop. Even if we robotized such power the perils to liberty might be worse than the current threats from the UN. Such power would eventually be too much temptation to prevent its use against US citizens by its own government because its actors have neither conscience nor rights of their own to protect.
Global conquest has always had its attractions.
The UN is either the global government it was intended to eventually be or it is a debating society with no force of law. There really is no in between, except for the fact that that's exactly where we are and have been for fifty years. Given that I vastly prefer the latter (else without sovereignty my vote and my rights mean nothing) I don't like seeing actions taken that legitimize the former and I look for their propensity to be used as precedent for global institutions.
That was the question, and it was no softball.
International law has next to no force. Whether it is the UN or other agreement, it exists only so long as it suits the parties involved. There is no comparison to the laws of a sovereign state within its own boundaries.
At least the US should be consistent and treat all other nations equally? That doesn't wash, either.
Here's a clue, they never are. "Police action" inherently carries no conclusion because the sovereign doesn't acknowledge a discontinuity of authority.
International law has next to no force.
Tell that to the people who lose control of their land to the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act, or current efforts to steal water rights from farmers and ranchers, ALL of which derive their claim to unconstitutional powers by virtue of treaty law. Treaty law is being used to coerce people all over the world, in part because their own government bureaucracies find it a very useful means to increase domestic control of their citizenry. International law is a vehicle to consolidate power in the hands of the politically dominant classes and nothing more. Unfortunately, it is a very powerful legal vehicle being enforced in US courts at the expense of civic respect for Constitutional rights.
This unconstitutional treaty is the root of the proliferation of "sub-species." It is the cited authority for the powers exerted by Federal Agencies through the courts. Proponents for such multilateral treaties claim that they supercede the Constitution, per Article VI, Clause 2:I'm the author of that book. Maybe you should read the Constitution."This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding."
This claim of treaty authorization ignores the facts that treaties are authorized UNDER the Constitution. Therefore, any treaty that violated it would be void, because:
1. The Constitution and the Declaration of Independence acknowledge property rights as unalienable and stated that the purpose of government is to secure those rights. Supreme Court decisions have prohibited treaties that violate Constitutional provisions because government lacks the authority to conclude an agreement that violates Constitutional rights.2. The officers who negotiate and ratify treaties take an oath to abide by the Constitution. They do not have the legal authority to negotiate, ratify, or enforce an illegal document.
The Constitution specifies treaties concluded among sovereign nations. It is not possible to conclude a treaty with an unspecified composition of governments capable of post facto reservations or changes in scope and application. Post facto changes are effectively changes in the terms of the treaty after ratification. Suits in Federal Court to extend the scope and application of the ESA citing the an extended interpretation of a treaty are in violation of the 11th Amendment that prohibits extending any suit by or for a foreign power, to any of the United States.
If that is your point, then I agree with with you.
However, if at some future date, someone attempts to use that fact to attempt to disarm the United States, expecting us to do so just becase it is the "legal" thing to do, is not going to happen.
Unless there is overwhelming force behind the request, the American People will not allow it, and if there is overwhelming force, any pretext of legality is pointless.
Clause 2: He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.I would change that phrase, of the Senators present to of living Senators by recorded vote. There have been WAY too many historic abuses of the historic super-majoirty reqirement.
Not quite, but close. My objection was the manner in which the President went to the UN for support. He could have said, 'If we choose to go, we'll go. We would like your support, you have every reason to enforce your resolutions, and you can come along if you wish, but it won't change what we'll do.'
The point is that George Bush must abide by the Constitution as held by his oath of office. He is not authorized by the people of the United States under the Constitution to conduct war under the aegis of a foreign power.
However, if at some future date, someone attempts to use that fact to attempt to disarm the United States, expecting us to do so just becase it is the "legal" thing to do, is not going to happen.
We're on our way. Consider that lovely document concluded under the Kennedy Administration, Program for General and Complete Disarmament in a Peaceful World.
You single-quoted what the President could have said and supposidly did not. Why don't you give us a double quote on what the President actually did say that proves your point -- he surrenders our sovereignty on matters of our defense and Iraq.
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