Posted on 02/15/2003 10:43:15 PM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach
Have people gone completely and utterly mad? Scores of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, are marching this weekend against the Iraq policies of Tony Blair and George Bush. They say that they are supporting the United Nations and marching against war. But that is absurd. How come they don't realise that they are undermining the United Nations, and making war more likely? At the core of the crisis caused by Iraq's refusal to give up its weapons of mass destruction is a simple question. Does the world have the will to enforce international law as made (time and time again) by the United Nations? Can we face down recalcitrant evil, or does the understandable hatred of war, made vocal in democracies such as ours, mean that appeasement will nearly always prevail? The awful truth is that the marchers, however well-intentioned, are in fact marching for appeasement. In attacking Tony Blair, they are, like it or not, aiding Saddam, one of the most atrocious tyrants of our times. They are encouraging him to think that the world is so divided that he can defy the United Nations - yet again. It's almost a joke to recall that Saddam agreed to give up his biological, chemical and nuclear weapons programs in 1991. It was part of the surrender deal he signed when the world expelled him from Kuwait. He agreed to disarm in 15 days. Twelve whole years later we have still failed to do it and, as a result, Iraq itself, the region and the world suffers the malign consequences of his appalling rule. Under resolution 1441, co-written by the French and passed unanimously by the Security Council last November, Saddam was given one "final opportunity" to disarm or face "serious consequences", which means war. The chief UN weapons inspector, Hans Blix, has said Iraq has failed to disarm. The British and the US say he is "in material breach" of the resolution but the French and the Germans are scurrying around, trying to avoid any "serious consequences". It's an embarrassing farce and not surprising that Washington and London now warn that if the UN cannot enforce its own resolutions against Saddam, it will go the way of the League of Nations, which failed to stand up against the dictators of the 1930s. That failure frightened Franklin Roosevelt; during World War II, he cajoled the Allies to try collective security again. When the UN Charter was adopted by unanimous vote at San Francisco in 1945, the new American president, Harry Truman, exulted, "You have won a victory against war itself". Alas, not so. War has flourished since 1945. But the UN has survived. There has never before been a world body to which all the nations of the world have had uninterrupted access to air grievances for almost 60 years. It began with 50 members; now it has 191. The charter committed them, for the first time in history, to collective action in the fields of peace and security and economic and social development. The Cold War and the Soviet veto paralysed the organisation - but the UN also helped to paralyse the Cold War. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was revolutionary when it was launched in 1948 - since then it has provided an invaluable benchmark against which both progress and tyranny can be measured. Over the decades, its specialised agencies, such as UNICEF, the High Commissioner for Refugees, the World Health Organisation, have had chequered careers, to say the least. They have helped eradicate diseases, cared for scores of millions of refugees, provided for the victims of both natural and man-made disasters. Its peacekeepers, deployed by the Security Council have, in places, succeeded. In Bosnia they failed dismally because council members did not have the will to succeed. The UN is both exploited by governments and oversold to their people. It is bound to disappoint. The General Assembly is a pomp and circumstance talking shop, not a global parliament. The bureaucracy is often crippled by self-importance and cronyism - because it is governed by national quotas which few governments will surrender. The current Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, is, in my view, the best the UN has had. His calm dignity personifies the best of the UN and he has won it many friends, including in Washington. He has tried to make more and more appointments on merit. He runs into fierce opposition, particularly from the poorer states, which see UN assignments as among the best plums they can gather. I have dozens of friends in the system who constantly despair of its shortcomings. Recently, it was the turn of Africa to chair the Human Rights Commission - and the Africans chose Libya. The rotating chairmanship is principally an administrative post, but it is nonetheless deeply offensive when you remember that Libya's leader is Colonel Gaddafi, who has terrorised his own people and supported terrorist movements in Africa. Why did Africa choose him? Because he is generous in chucking Libya's oil money in the direction of African leaders and this was payback time. Perhaps an even more absurd spectacle would have been that of Iraq now taking the Middle East's turn in the chair of the Disarmament Commission. Fortunately, it has declined to assume the position. Many people despair of the UN. But don't. We still need it. The Security Council still retains its central, vital function of trying to maintain "international peace and security". But (like the Pope) it has no divisions of its own. In the case of Iraq it has failed dismally. Since 1991 it has passed 17 binding resolutions demanding that Saddam give up his biological, chemical and nuclear weapons programs. He still has not. Kofi Annan is now in a dreadful position. He wants to enforce the law against Saddam, but to retain members' support he must try not to seem the ally of any one power, let alone of the United States. He pointed out last week that the UN was founded in 1945 "to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war", and that war "is always a catastrophe". But, he said, the UN is not a pacifist organisation. The charter contains strong enforcement provisions "to enable the world community to unite against aggression and defeat it". Iraq is the aggressor here; if it continues its defiance, says Annan, "the council will have to make (a) grim choice (and) face up to its responsibilities." Blair and Bush are doing that. Chirac and Schroeder are not. It is obvious to them as well as everyone else that Saddam is "in material breach" of resolution 1441, but they are now trying to renege on it. Instead of supporting the council, they are undermining it. No one wants war, but denying the reality of Saddam and weakening the council make it much more likely. The marchers should turn again. Be bold, be honourable, be radical - support Blair and Bush, not Saddam. If the UN is to survive, its resolutions must be enforced. Saddam must not be comforted - he must be disarmed. William Shawcross is the author of Deliver Us from Evil: Warlords, Peacekeepers and a World of Endless Conflict.
This story was found at: http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/02/15/1044927847862.html
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