Archive for October, 2004
Airstrike Kills al-Zarqawi Aide in Fallujah
Just days after another staffer promoted to fill a dead man’s position was captured, another top figure in Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s organization was killed by a US airstrike.
The hotspot of Fallujah may be reaching boiling point.
In London, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said the interim government is working to achieve a political solution to the military standoff around Fallujah.“We are trying to exhaust all political channels and avenues before any final decision is made,” Zebari told British Broadcasting Corp. radio. “Fallujah is one hot spot that we need really to resolve before getting to elections” scheduled for January.
A masked gunman, meanwhile, warned in a videotape that insurgents will attack all Iraqi and multinational military and civilian targets with “weapons and military tactics they have not experienced” if U.S. troops try to storm the city.
In the videotape obtained by Associated Press Television News, the gunman, dressed in an old-style Iraqi army uniform, read the statement on behalf of the “factions of the Islamic Resistance Movement in Iraq.”
The speaker, who appeared with seven other masked, armed men, accused the Iraqi government of “aborting a peaceful solution with the people of Fallujah.”
He warned all Iraqi military personnel and government employees to quit their jobs, otherwise they “will be permissible targets for our fighters.”
Despite the Iraqi foreign minister’s words, I don’t think Iraqi elections will be delayed if Fallujah isn’t online by January.
And, despite the fact that most folks don’t recognize al-Zarqawi’s name like they recognize Osama bin Laden’s name, al-Zarqawi is probably a more important figure to capture, kill, or at least de-fang right now.
Rooney: Too Many Weapons? (with video)
Andy Rooney thinks we have too many weapons in the US military. Or that we spend too much money on them. Or he’s mad that we don’t use them more often. Or something.
Near the top he says
We have enough nuclear weapons to wipe out civilization. No one should have any, but I’m enough of an American to be glad we do.
This seems reasonable enough to me. But it’s genuinely bizarre for him to say it considering what he’s going to follow it with.
The Air Force flies 30 different kinds of airplanes. That’s good for the airplane industry, not so good for the rest of us who have to pay for them. Twenty different planes wouldn’t have been enough?
Once upon a time, this “old $250-a-month sergeant” (as he refers to himself) was in the Army and as a Stars and Stripes correspondent flew on B-17s over Germany. You know, Andy, we could have cut the number of planes in the WW2 Air Corps significantly if we hadn’t bothered with fighter escorts for those bombers.
Multi-role planes have their place. The F/A-18 is a shining example. But multi-role planes are, as a necessity, a compromise. Look at the A-10. It can’t do much besides KILL EVERYTHING ON THE GROUND. But it does that very, very well, saving many American lives in the process. The F/A-22 is being shoe-horned into the ground attack role as a means of justifying its existence. Now, at about a quarter of a billion dollars each, I imagine that the F/A-22 wouldn’t make Andy’s shortlist of good military investments. But it is meant to take the place of several single-role aircraft. Never mind that, even at the price, it won’t be very good at close air support even if some damn commander is fool enough to let it down where the ground pounders play. Maybe in Andy’s world things that do more do them better AND more cheaply?
The Pentagon doesn’t scrimp on the Navy either. Over the years, we built 69 battleships, even though battleships never did much except get sunk. The last one cost $3 billion. The good news is the Navy no longer uses battleships.
These are mothballed now, just rusting away.
Andy, besides getting the count wrong, seems to not have realized when the last US battleship was launched. 1944, Andy. And a couple of them served as recently as the 1991 Gulf War. How’s that for mileage? (I will simply ignore his claim that battleships weren’t ever good for much as sheer ignorance. Feel free to point out why I’m wrong and he’s right in the comments.)
We have nuclear submarines for sneaking up on enemies under water. One nuclear submarine costs $1.6 billion. We have 50.
DIVE. DIVE. They don’t dive in sand.
I guess the point he’s getting at is that nuclear subs can’t actually patrol the streets of Fallujah. I’m not really sure. Maybe he doesn’t think we need a navy? Maybe he’s not sure what a navy’s for? Maybe he doesn’t realize what subs actually do? In any case, he certainly seems to miss the point that particular missions require particular types of equipment at particular times.
The Army has 8,000 Abrams tanks. How effective was one of these $3 million vehicles in Baghdad?
In the video, he shows us pictures of what’s apparently a burning US tank while he says this. I guess unless your weapon system is 100% effective at all times against all enemies and 100% invulnerable to all things, it doesn’t cut the mustard in Andy’s Army. Also not lost on me is the irony of immediately following criticism of subs because they cannot operate in the deserts of Iraq with criticism of M1 tanks. (He apparently needs to have his dosages checked.)
The most effective weapon we have in war is still that poor dogface crawling forward on his stomach with a rifle in his hand.
I’ll avoid the obvious reply to this by not asking what good a poor dogface rifleman is in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, at 25,000 feet in the air, or at 2,000 feet below the surface of the sea. I’ll also just mention in passing the fact that he’s claiming our entire military depends more or less exclusively on the same foot soldier that he claimed was not worthy of the tag ‘hero’ last time I mentioned the esteemed Mr. Rooney on MO.
Andy Rooney apparently thinks we need more foot soldiers and fewer planes, fewer ships, and fewer tanks.
Seems to me that everyone has tried that before. 1914 seems about right. Didn’t really work out so well. Especially for the poor dogfaces.
I’m sure Andy doesn’t mean we should return to those bad old days. But I’m not sure I know what he DOES mean.
Yes, he plays the old trick of wondering aloud if it wouldn’t be nice to spend the money we used on Stealth Bombers and Abrams tanks to pay for teachers or for interpreters instead. That’s a fair question, I guess. If you’re into hackneyed debates of utter banality, I guess you can dive in. (For the record, if everyone would just be nice, we could spend all the money we currently waste on police officers for more welfare dollars. But that’s beside the point.)
So what’s Andy getting at?
Apparently, besides the poor dogface, the only weapon he likes is the nuclear bomb. I guess because it works in the sand.
One reason that Andy might like the nuclear bomb is because of its deterrence value. I don’t really know any other really good reasons to like nuclear bombs. (And never mind that we only used two of the thousands and thousands we’ve made.)
But isn’t the best return on your military dollar the ability to retire the weapons unused? He showed us some shots of a boneyard filled with retired planes. Would he have been happier of more of those planes had seen combat? Last week I noted that the Phoenix missile was retired without ever having scored a kill. Only a couple were ever fired in combat. Would Rooney rather that most of the 5,000 built had been used? That would have meant the Rooskies were taking potshots at our carriers. Would the world be a better place if we had been able to better utilize our stockpile of Phoenix missiles?
He doesn’t like subs? But he likes nuclear bombs. I wonder what he thinks about nuclear missile subs, then. Without those, I imagine things would have been quite different. But as far as Rooney’s concerned, we don’t even need a navy.
I’ll be the first to say we don’t always make the best decisions when it comes to military procurement, and if you read this site with any regularity you’ll know that already. And it seems that often the poor dogface IS short-changed while major programs command the big bucks. But Rooney is criticizing a pretty wide range of things without (apparently) understanding the first damn thing about them.
And this passes the smell test and makes it into what was once the most-respected news program in America.
(You may have noticed more than the usual Murdoc snarkiness in this post. My first attempt at it, which I’ll readily admit was far, far better than this, was lost forever due to some error or another while posting. After actually heading to off bed in disgust, I decided to try again. I hope it was worth the effort.
And no disrespect to dogfaces. I’m simply using Rooney’s term of endearment.
For that matter, I wonder if any current or former dogfaces would care to comment on Andy’s theories. Comments are open.)
Well, another nefarious scheme by some ballot designer or another is apparently not all that nefarious after all. The Ohio ballot SNAFU mentioned earlier on MO and all over most of the Conservative hemisphere of the blogosphere appears to be nothing more than a combination of confusing design, misunderstanding of the process, and photoshopping jerks.
As I wrote earlier:
Before everyone gets all revolutionary about this, we need to find out which (if either) of the pictures represents the actual ballot.
What I wanted to see, in order to verify claims that the order of candidates rotated and/or that John Kerry wouldn’t always be the beneficiary of the confusing ballot, was a picture of a different ballot.
Gail, who also commented on my site earlier with some good info, sent him a pic of one of these alleged ballots with candidates in a different order. Go check out the Politburo Diktat for the goods.
Curiously, this version of the ballot also seems to fit the 4-6-8-10-12 pattern IF you put ’1′s in front of some numbers. (Well, the theory actually held that the candidates were numbered 6-8-10-12-14, but you get the idea.) I find that a little weird, and the photoshopping claims against some earlier versions (some of which appear to be ‘real’ photoshops(?)) would also apply to these.
Of course, this ‘Gail’ could just be John Edwards putting in a little OT trying to convince us the nefarious plot isn’t so nefarious after all. Now THAT would be nefarious.
(Speaking of ‘nefarious’, have I mentioned that the Democrats are going to make an electoral quagmire out of Ohio?)
In any event, I’m a little relieved that this is just ‘normal’ election confusion instead of ‘intentional’ election confusion. I think.
Last month I noted at Michigan absentee ballot with, shall we say, ISSUES. That one turned out to be a legitimate problem, ostensibly due to an unintentional error at the printer. Supposed, the error was corrected and correct ballots were sent out.
Now we have claims of similar, though maybe even more glaring, errors in the absentee ballot in Cuyahgoa County, Ohio. It seems that numbers, arrows, and common sense are all out the window on this one. There are currently at least two pictures of the ballot circulating:
(Click either for a closer view)
The one on the left surfaced first (as far as I know) and shows that following the arrows instead of the numbers will lead to Kerry votes going to Kerry, Peroutka votes going to Peroutka, and all other votes going to someone besides the candidate the arrows seem to indicate. I haven’t heard a rational explanation for the colored boxes, though I’m assuming that they were shaded by the person who posted the pic to call attention to the correct boxes for the presidential election and are not present on the actual ballot.
The one on the right surfaced later as a simple “explanation” of how the first picture was a hoax. In it, ones have been added to the numbers for Badnarik and Bush and the arrows line up with the box indicated by the number. Seems reasonable.
Except that the ’4′ in the box for ’14′ isn’t aligned correctly in the second version. It is aligned correctly in the first version.
What a mess.
It seems that there are not supposed to be arrows at all on the absentee ballots. The arrows are for use with butterfly ballot voting machines at polling stations. Absentee voters are simply supposed to punch out the correct numbers on the card.
Simply.
Another theory claims that the order of the candidates on the ballots rotates.
Before everyone gets all revolutionary about this, we need to find out which (if either) of the pictures represents the actual ballot.
As I mentioned earlier, it really appears to me that the Dems are setting the stage to challenge the Ohio results if Bush wins. If Ohio is close, and the electoral vote is close, I fully expect the Dems to claim disenfranchisement of poor and minority voters by Republicans who require people to vote in the correct precinct. Among other things.
It’s like an NFL coach that throws the red flag on a play that even he knows only has a very slight chance of being overturned in a game that he’s behind in. It’s a pain in the axe for everyone, but he’s got nothing to lose and everything to gain, so he challenges and prays.
Joe Gibbs has done this several times this season for the Redskins. None of the challenges have been upheld.
Ohio will be twice the mess that Florida was in 2000.
If it’s close. I’m not so sure that it will be.
And for more coverage of the Ohio ballot issue, see
Wizbang
Wizbang again
Powerline
Sleeping Monkey
Carnivorous Conservative
Rooftop Report
Free Republic
UPDATE: Well, the Columbus Dispatch says the one with the messed up arrows is the real one, though they don’t show a picture.
UPDATE 2: Meanwhile, back on the farm: Judge OKs lack of paper records in Fla.
“WE’RE DOOMED!”
This one from the Orangeburg, South Carolina Times and Democrat. I noticed it because it registered a Google hit on “interceptor body armor”. This story is about Orangeburg’s Derek Fogle, a soldier in Alpha Company (the “Gators”) 1-21 Infantry, part of the 25th Infantry Division’s 2nd Brigade. (The Times and Democrat calls it the “121st Infantry Regiment”, but this is apparently a misunderstanding of “1-21″, a common journalistic error when covering the military.)
Like almost every single newspaper story on a local soldier back from Iraq, this one notes that the soldier thinks things aren’t nearly as quagmirous as some would have us believe.
In the 10 months since they’ve been in Iraq, the Gators have learned what is a genuine attack and what is a feint. Using what Derek calls a “spray and pray” tactic, terrorists use the nearly indestructible AK-47s, which are practically everywhere, he said.“We get pot shots taken at us every day. Until they engage us, we don’t pay attention (to the single shots),” he said. “But if they want to get into a fight, we welcome it because we will win every time.”
And
As for those living in Iraq, Derek said he believes the Iraqis are misunderstood by the American people.The Iraqis — men, women and especially children — are generally friendly towards Americans, Derek said. It’s the outsiders, terrorists, who have moved into Iraq that are the real problem. Derek said he and his family fully support America’s part in ousting those people.
“You’ve got to look at the big picture; there’s a lot of reasons we’re over there,” he said. “The people we’re fighting in Iraq? They’re not Iraqis. They’re from Jordan, Iran, from all over the world. We’re just using Iraq as a kill zone. The Iraqis love us; kids just hug all over us.” (emphasis mine)
Who probably knows better: Michael Moore or Derek Fogle?
As I’ve noted before, the overwhelming majority of stories in smaller news outlets covering local soldiers has these exact same things to say. Does a local guy talking to a local reporter have a reason to lie? Does the small newspaper staff writer have a major agenda that he can advance with his story? Why is the picture painted by the big media as reported by big-name celebrities on major news outlets so different?
Also of interest to MO readers might be this passage:
Even as the Gators were taking the place of the 173rd Infantry Regiment earlier this year, they received their baptism of fire. While members of the 173rd took the Gators on a tour of their patrol area, a gunman concealed in a nearby building opened fire on the U.S. soldiers.“I saw them (the 173rd soldiers) swing the 50 cal. around and open fire on the warehouse, and it opened up a huge hole in the side of the building,” Derek said. “We didn’t get shot at anymore that day.”
Peace through victory.
UPDATE: Check out the A/1-21 IN GATORS photo album.
Senior Terrorist Arrested in Iraq
(Via Enter Stage Right)
I particularly like this part:
Intelligence sources said the man captured was previously thought to be a relatively minor member of the terror network. But because so many of al-Zarqawi’s associates have been captured or killed, he moved up to take a more important role. (emphasis mine)
Climbing the corporate ladder with the help of the US military.
UPDATE: Forgot to mention that if what’s going on around Fallujah lately is a “pause” until after the election, the entire damn city better keep its head down beginning November 3rd…
Ohio provisional ballot ruling reversed: Ballots cast outside voters’ own precincts won’t be counted
Where’s the OUTRAGE? A federal appeals court has taken the outrageous step of requiring that Ohio voters actually go to THEIR PROPER POLLING LOCATION to cast a vote in the upcoming election. I don’t know for sure, but I suspect that the same thing was required in NAZI GERMANY.
The ruling by the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals supports an order issued by Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell. Democrats contend the Republican official’s rules are too restrictive and allege they are intended to suppress the vote.
Requiring people to go to their proper polling station is “suppressing the vote”? Suppressing the fraudulent vote, perhaps, but hardly an inconvenience for legal voters. It’s almost as if the Democrats want to make it easier for someone to vote two or twenty-seven times.
The state’s Democrats had filed a lawsuit challenging Blackwell’s directive instructing county elections boards not to give ballots to voters who come to the wrong precinct and to send them to the correct polling place on Election Day.Blackwell has said allowing voters to cast a ballot wherever they show up, even if they’re not registered to vote there, is a recipe for Election Day chaos.
Chaos? Well, who would benefit from election day chaos? Not the person with the most votes.
Supporters of the provisional ballot measure contend that requiring people to vote at the proper location discriminates against “the poor and minorities” because they tend to move more.
What a C-R-O-C-K.
If they move more often (which is almost certainly the case, generally speaking) they should also update their voter registration more often. Do they change their mailing address when they move? Their phone number? Why?
Because if they don’t, they don’t get things that are important to them.
Same thing with voter registration. If voting is important enough to them, they will have changed their address and been listed in the correct precinct. If they haven’t taken the time to alter their registration, they’ll have to take the time to travel to their correct polling station. Simple enough.
This election isn’t a big surprise. If someone thinks its important enough to vote, it’s their responsibility to take the time to make sure they can do so properly. Why is it the election board’s responsibility to clean up the mess that irresponsible voters make?
“To avoid any confusion, we are not going to appeal this ruling,” David Sullivan, voter protection coordinator for the Ohio Democratic Party, said in a statement. “That way we can ensure that voters and election officials understand that voters must be in the proper polling place before casting a vote.”The 6th Circuit did rule that the Democrats had a right to file the lawsuit.
Color me cynical, but this tells me that Democrats either know they cannot win the appeal or that they will not win Ohio regardless. My guess is that they are preparing a post-election legal challenge to the Ohio results, with this latest ruling part of their ammunition for trying to shoot down what I expect to be Bush’s win in the state.
And it’s not just Ohio.
Similar court battles are under way in other states. In Florida, a federal judge ruled Thursday that the state must reject provisional ballots if they are cast in the wrong precinct.In Michigan, a federal judge said those ballots must be counted if cast by voters at the wrong precinct but in the right city, township or village. That decision also has been appealed to the 6th Circuit, but the appellate court has yet to issue a ruling in that case.
In Missouri and Colorado, judges have ruled that votes in the wrong place don’t have to be counted.
I would expect the 6th Circuit to rule the same in Michigan, based upon the explanation given for the Ohio ruling. I also expect the Democrats to cry ‘foul’ over this decision when it comes.
On a personal note, I myself was directed to vote at my proper polling station once upon a time when I lived in Colorado. I had moved recently, and had not thought to change my registration. It seems to me that it must have been the 1990 elections. I had voted for the first time in 1988, and probably didn’t vote in 1989, so being young and clueless it had never occurred to me to change my registration when we moved that summer or fall. I wasn’t thrilled about turning around and heading to my previous station, but I did it and I cast my vote. Then I updated my registration. Lesson learned.
You know, for all the talk I’ve heard from the Left over the past couple of years about the Republicans’ plans to cheat the election using electronic voting machines designed and built by companies owned by Republicans, the past two months have shown us a lot of fraudulent voter registrations and groundwork for post-election lawsuits and challenges. I might be biased (okay, I’m TOTALLY biased) but it seems to me that the Democrats have more than their fair share of these schemes going on.
I imagine you missed it, but Afghanistan held elections the other weekend. They were filled with charges of fraud and wrong-doing, but everything seems to be moving along according to plan.
Is it possible that Afghanistan is farther along the road to Jeffersonian Democracy than we thought?
UPDATE: Paul at Wizbang has this to say about the Dems’ decision not to appeal the decision:
Suddenly the party with thousands of lawyers decided to give it a pass. What happened to their concern for the voters? What about the minorities? Why give this up so easily?
Because they do not want to go to the Supreme Court in an obvious attempt to steal the election before it even starts. It would be a PR disaster that would cost them the election. People would see thru the scam and take it out on Kerry in the voting booth.
If they thought they had the moral high-ground (or could spin it so they did) they would be appealing the ruling and whining on CNN about how Republicans are trying to disenfranchise people. Instead, they tried to set it up so they could steal the election then skulked away when they got caught.
A BIG THANKS to the reader who tipped me off to trouble.
It appears that some spammer tricked me into adding “:” to my comment blacklist, so anyone trying to post a comment got this message:
Your comment could not be submitted due to questionable content: :
It took me a few minutes to realize that that second “:” is actually the questionable content. Every comment contains “:” in several places, so everything was blocked.
I’ve removed the blacklist entry and things seem to be working fine. My apologies if this prevented anyone from posting their wisdom.
I don’t remember adding the colon to my list, but I often clean out spams while at work and the handy little email link that MT-Blacklist includes deletes the comment, rebuilds the entry, and adds offending strings to the blacklist. If you don’t pay attention, you might somehow add something you don’t want to.
Which makes me wonder if clever spammers figured out how to include common things (like a colon) in their spam so that it would get added automatically. I’m sure a lot of people out there won’t notice or figure out what’s wrong with their MT-Blacklist. They’ll only notice that their comments don’t work any more. So they drop MT-Blacklist, and the spammers have more targets.
That might be a stretch. But who knows?
So if you’ve googled on the error message above, check your List on MT-Blacklist for “:”. I found mine by sorting by date. It was the most recently added.
If it’s there, remove that entry.
UPDATE: Nice. I fix that entry, so now I’m getting bombed by spammers. What bastards.
Vacation leads to home makeover by squatter
An extraordinary behind-the-scenes look at the 2004 Kerry presidential victory reported by Newsweek’s premier political reporters (via Instapundit)
Teacher arrested after parent beaten in front of students (via FR)
School District Bans Halloween –Might offend real witches (via Joanne Jacobs)
CLINTON SETS SIGHTS ON U.N. POST (I’ve heard that residents of Security Council member nations are inelegible, but I can’t find anything substantial on that.)
OCTOBER 22 is INTERnational caps lock day!!! (via J-Walk)
I’m going home.
UPDATE: A couple more TGIF WTFs:
U2 finds missing ‘October’ lyrics after 23 years
Not being a major fan, I’d never heard of this. It seems that rewriting lyrics wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world, but I DO know how hard it is to rewrite something after a computer crash or failed post.
‘Murphy’s Law’ rules outer space… And NASA still needs to learn how to evade it
I know no one is perfect, but COME ON. (thanks to a reader for the tip)
UPDATE 2: I almost forgot about this pic, which is what prompted me to start my WTF-TGIF post to begin with:
What’s up with that???
Theresa Kerry threatens to undo at least twenty years of gains for women in politics.
Annan: January elections ‘technically possible’
On MSNBC:
It is still “technically possible” for Iraq to hold elections in January as scheduled, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Thursday, while acknowledging that the United Nations may not have enough staff on the scene to support preparations for the vote.Annan also said allegations of corruption in the U.N.-run oil-for-food program for Iraq had harmed the world body’s reputation.
Gee. Ya think?
“I want to stress that it is the Iraqis who are planning the elections, who are organizing the elections. We are offering support and advice,” he said.“There has been some question as to whether we have enough U.N. staff on the ground or not. As we move forward, it will become necessary to send in additional staff,” he said, adding that staffing arrangements would depend on either a more secure environment or “solid arrangements for protection.”
The United Nations said Wednesday that Fiji had offered 130 troops to protect U.N. staff and facilities in Iraq, making it the first country to respond to requests for a protection force separate from U.S.-led coalition forces.
Uh, isn’t it a request for protection separate from the U.S.-led coalition forces that led to the UN’s tail-between-the-legs cowardly retreat from its job almost a year ago? As I recall, the UN specifically rejected our suggestion for US protection, then ran for the hills after bad guys (I mean, who would have imagined BAD GUYS in Iraq besides US troops?) blew up some of their people.
The. United. Nations. Is. Irrelevant.
Don’t. Ask. Someone.
Just. Look. Around.
Last December, after the UN moved its Iraq operations to the Jordan and Cyprus (hey, by the way, Cyprus is a stellar example of the UN in action) offices, a commenter took me to task over my dismissal of the international body. Since about thirty people a day visited MO at that time, most of you missed that discussion. Read the original post and comments if you like.
Here is part of my responses, which I formed into another post:
If the UN had been serious about Iraq, that country could have been turned around in the mid-90s. Instead we were left with standoff after standoff. Even Bill Clinton went so far as to bomb them. But there we sat at the end of 2002, with more than a dozen resolutions totally ignored, playing the same old games the same old way.Why the hell hasn’t the UN fixed the Korea problem by now? They’ve had FIVE DECADES. And that’s since a UN war where US troops did most of the fighting and dying. There’s no end in sight, except maybe another unilateral “rush to war.”
In any event, the US is not in Afghanistan or Iraq for the same reasons that the UN should have been there earlier. We are there for US security first, security of our Allies second, and general world security in an indirect way third. Pacification and nation building are only weapons in our war, not the end goal we’re working for. For what it’s worth, if an iron-fisted martial dictatorship was in our best interest in Afghanistan or Iraq, I’d support the idea.
The UN has a different purpose and a different responsibility than the US government…We’re there to carry out OUR mission, partially because the UN didn’t do much of anything.
Too many people seem to think that the UN represents some sort of “world government” or has some sort of authority over its members. It’s really nothing but a designated meeting place for nations to vent. There is no “UN” as such, in and of itself. In some nebulous way, “the UN” may exist as a collective opinion of its members, but that’s all it is.
We are in Iraq conducting US-centric missions because it is in our national interest to do so. If more nations in the UN had been more willing to stand up for what’s fair and just, maybe we wouldn’t have to do what we’re doing. Or maybe we would have done it with a lot more help.
But to pretend that the UN holds some sort of authority over us (or anyone else) and that getting approval from it is critical to our success is wrong. And to complain about the US ignoring the UN is going to be as effective as complaining that North Korea or Saddam ignored the UN.
I haven’t given up on the UN. I don’t want the UN abolished, and I don’t want the US out of the UN. I’m just not expecting the UN to solve anyone’s problems at this point. If people can solve their own problems by meeting within the UN, that’s great. But condemnations and resolutions carry no weight without the threat of force when you’re talking to many nations. The only time that UN inspectors seemed to make any headway in Iraq was when we massed troops on the border.
Dialog is important, but only when both sides are willing to talk. And I’ll agree that the United States could be more diplomatic most of the time. I’ll even admit that the current administration doesn’t seem to take talking as seriously as I wish they did.
But I think that everyone has to agree that the US wasn’t the only nation unwilling to compromise in the months leading up to the invasion of Iraq. Critics make it sound like we weren’t willing to meet France and others half-way. We probably weren’t, but France wasn’t willing to meet half-way, either. The only acceptable compromise was total capitulation by the United States.
Following form and going through the motions of diplomatic games isn’t the END. It’s supposed to be the MEANS. When the means don’t justify the end, use other means. The United States and our Allies have decided that other means are called for.
Iraq is a good chance for the UN to prove that it (via its member nations) can contribute to the greater good after diplomatic channels have failed. Korea is a good chance to prove that the UN can play a positive role in heading off trouble before it erupts and interested nations are forced to take matters into their own hands.
I just don’t see it happening. I wish I did.
This is more than ten months later. Since then, we’ve seen the transfer of power to the interim Iraqi government, the establishment and first battles of a new Iraqi army, and free elections in Afghanistan.
And Kofi Annan says elections in Iraq are only “technically possible”.
Annan also made the news about the Sudan:
The impression that… which has been gained in some quarters, that if you were only to label it genocide things will fall in place, I’m afraid, is not really correct. We know what needs to be done. We need to have the will and the resources and go in and do it.
So, um, “support and advice” aren’t enough, then? Even though words aren’t enough, Kofi, you have barely even that to offer.
Meanwhile, in Korea, the threat of post-war war drags into its fifth decade.
I’d say that the reputation of the UN is suffering from far more than just the Oil-for-Food scandal.
But it’s nice to know Kofi thinks that elections are “technically possible” in Iraq.
