Posted on 03/16/2003 6:55:44 PM PST by witnesstothefall
In its effort to gain support for war against Iraq, the US has failed to make a convincing case and failed in its effort to gain the support of the UN Security Council. Having failed, the US is threatening to act alone and outside the framework of the United Nations. This is the ultimate threat the US is using to intimidate and coerce world countries to gain their support. The tactics the US is using are those of despots, and dictatorships that always go beyond the law and will use any means to achieve their interests -- bribe, lie, intimidate, and if all else fails, use force. That is the state of affairs the world is in today.
The US is the dominant power in political, economic, and military affairs and holds a choke hold on many of the international institutions. As such, this political, economic and military monopoly is causing great damage to world development -- as should be expected from a monopoly. But the extent of damage has become so great that this state of affair should no longer be tolerated.
The US is giving the world an ultimatum: Either follow us and do as we say, or else we will do what we want anyway. Many countries in the world may feel helpless against such intimidating power for fear of US reprisal against them politically, economically, or even militarily. They have been conditioned to this mentality, and have accepted the status quo for a long time, with the US managing to outflank any real efforts that limits its power. But the US is now challenging the world on a grand scale, defiant of its institutions -- institutions that it has helped develop and used herself over and over again to its advantage.
So the world is before a choice: to cower and give in to the USA and let things proceed as they have in the past -- with much greater potential of degeneration as the US becomes even much more dominant, or the world can very simply and calmly reply to the US ultimatum with one of its own: If you will not respect the UN decisions and will, then get out of the UN or we will kick you out. This message should be acted on Monday, even if only symbolically as a quick start, toward achieving this goal.
The UN has been handicapped for too long by the UN Security Council, which had been totally handicapped and dominated by the USA. The world needs to have true and effective democratic institutions -- with the true sense of the word -- to resolve conflicts and manage its affairs. Nothing less than the standards of domestic institutions will suffice at the international level as well.
The biggest obstacle to this development has been the United States of America. The United States, itself, is incapable of extricating itself from the position it is in. It is a monopoly that enjoys the position it is in, and would naturally not relinquish this position by itself, while at the same time, the US knows that monopolies are not good. Clearly, there needs to be an outside force to change this situation. So let us give the United States a helping hand in forcing it to do what is right. It will not be easy and it will require courage, but it is the right thing to do, and it will produce the kind of results many want.
It is time to kick the USA out of the UN Security Council for starters, or out of the United Nations if need be. The world can do without such bullies and war mongers and international dictators. No more ultimatums to the UN. If you don't like the United Nations, then get out of it; Tomorrow is a good day to announce this. And if the USA does not announce this itself, then the countries of the world should seize the moment and understand what is going on and act. Make no mistake about it, this issue, at its core, has little to do with Iraq. This is a grandiose game that its details are not the subject of this article. In short, this is about the kind of future the world wants for itself. Here is a chance to show that you don't support dictators and their methods. Kick the USA out of the UN. Enough autocracy, let the world know true international democracy, and let the world see how fast peace and economic progress will flow everywhere; They will wonder why they waited this long; Of course, they felt they could not, because the USA was in the way, and it still is.
Time for the USA to get out of the UN. If not, it should be kicked out. This should be Monday's proposed resolutions at the UN security Council and at the UN General Assembly. Time for the United Nations to grow up and become independent of the USA, and it is time for democratic international institutions. Let a new era of world development begins.
Other nations could be gallery countries that watch, but are not allowed to vote.
This would create incentives for countries to become certified democracies.
What we should have a is a United Democracies where votes are counted on the formula of "population size" * "human rights" where human rights is on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being just barely free enough to participate in the UD and 10 being almost perfectly free. The "human rights" category should be only the most basic and most important rights, like those found in the Constitution (except maybe the 2nd Amendment, I don't think we would penalize other countries for deciding differently on that matter). This way, we wouldn't have to suck up to tiny countries like Guinea for no good reason, and we wouldn't have to suck up to dictatorships like China. We wouldn't have to worry about France because they would be too sophisticated to join a coalition if their good friend Mugabe wasn't invited. Countries not meeting human rights standards would automatically have zero votes, because of their human rights score.
We would have to divide the number of votes by some huge number like 10M or 100M or America could conceivably have 3 billion votes in the UD (which would take a hell of a long time to hand count if Gore got snippy).
This would create a direct incentive for countries to democractize and grant basic rights to the citizens, even if they are relatively free countries (like the UK, for example, which would lose some votes over free speech issues). It would not have any affect on dictators like Mugabe, because he knows he's not even going to make the floor value to get into the UD, so there's no point in his trying to democractize. But I really can't see any other international system that would encourage him to make his country freer short of threatening to do to him what Bush is doing to Hussein right now.
Where do we collect unemployment?
LOL......This is so much fun !
Can the Arabic world show anything other than despots and dictators?
Let em see the kind of places they support up close!
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