Quote:
Originally posted by Vick@Feb 28 2003, 02:33 PM
JR- Great post
You have a better perspective from your travels and living in different cultures than most would/do
I am a little conflicted on a few things in the post though, maybe with more information I can better understand
" there is proving to be a legitimate need to keep a check on US power and global influence" Why? According to whom?
and
"to most who can only helplessly sit back and watch the worlds most powerful nation, most powerful military and most technologically advanced fighting force go around the UN and arguably international law, to attack a country, it doesn't."
But at the same time you understand a country's need to serve it's own interests as it sees fit
Why should the US concern it's self with international law (if there even is such a thing as international law) when we need to serve our own interests (I'm not even going to throw in the democracy agreement)
and who is responsible for creating and upholding these international laws?
I'm pretty much to the point where I believe the US should lessen it's involvement with the UN. As much as I'd like to see it the US can not totally remove it's self from the UN
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In General: If you accept the patently absurd notion that UN failure to issue the Bush Administration a blank check to attack Iraq as some sort of "interference with America's soverignty" then you have a curious notion of what soverignty is, and an almost paranoid view of what UN membership entails. You better put your tinfoil hat back on and tune your scanner to the helicopter frequency before you read any more.
Vick -
I don't see working through the UN and defending America's interests as mutually exclusive. President Bush is using Saddam's defiance of the U.N. as one of his reasons for going to war. President Bush is attempting to work through the U.N. for a resolution to the confrontation with North Korea (and he better find one there, or someplace else diplomaticly, because that's a clusterfuck that makes Iraq look like a Sunday School picnic). The U.S. cannot possibly solve every problem with military power. Further withdrawal from the UN could only damage our credibility when we need them - India/Pakistan comes to mind first, but there could be other situations.
In 1950 the US invoked the UN to oppose the invasion of South Korea. In 1956, 1968, and 1979 the United States blasted the Soviets at the UN and elsewhere for invading small countries when they felt their interests were threatened. In 1956 President Eisenhower blasted our allies France, Britain and Isreal for invading Egypt and using force to solve an international dispute (the quote you correctly identified the other day). That's not top secret information - that's recent world history. We now appear to be abandoning that position. I think that's where some of the feeling that "there is proving to be a legitimate need to keep a check on US power and global influence" is coming from.