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Now May be the Ideal Time to Withdraw from the United Nations

Peter J. Hutnick

Thursday, March 20, 2003

So, here we are, at war[1] with Iraq. There is ample punditry on that topic, but the underlying cause warrants comment.

At the end of the day the blame lies on Saddam Hussein's shoulders, and on those of the Iraqi people for giving him the power that he has. We have sincere sympathy for the Iraqi people, but it is a moral failure of a people to allow a tyrant to commit evil deeds in their name.

But that is all outside of our control.

Closer to home President Bill Clinton is culpable for allowing that tyrant to abandon the UN Gulf War Armistice with impunity. It is possible that he had no politically viable alternative. Maybe it is likely that he lacked the moral willpower do take a politically risky course for no better reason than it was the right thing to do.

It is, in any case, the UN Gulf War Armistice. For over a decade the UN has willingly played along with Saddam Hussein's NBC [2] shell game. The UN has proven itself to be an impotent organization. It was formed at the hands of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the aftermath of WWII for the expressed purpose of stopping tyrants before they could unduly affect the world.

The miserable failure of diplomacy was on the part of the UN. The UN failed to convince President Bush, and the American people, that we should abandon our interests in favor of allowing the shell game to continue and the threat to grow.

Perhaps this President subscribes to a philosophy of foreign relations with more in common with Theodore Roosevelt than Franklin.

[1] Of course, I use the term war in the literal, not the legal, sense. It appears that the power to declare war has been abandoned by the Congress and taken on by the Executive.

[2] Nuclear Biological and Chemical (weapons).

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