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Wednesday, March 02, 2005John Stewart and Why the UN Doesn't WorkOpinion Journal picks up on a Daily Show interview with a Democrat who accidentally wishes out loud that all this freedom stuff would stop before Bush becomes the next Reagan. What's really interesting, though, is John Stewart's grudging credit. He doesn't like Bush, but finds it hard to root against half the Middle East suddenly deciding it wants more freedom. But here's the important quote from Stewart, because it goes to the heart of what we've been up against in this fight: Do you think they're the guys to--do they understand what they've unleashed? Because at a certain point, I almost feel like, if they had just come out at the very beginning and said, "Here's my plan: I'm going to invade Iraq. We'll get rid of a bad guy because that will drain the swamp"--if they hadn't done the whole "nuclear cloud," you know, if they hadn't scared the pants off of everybody, and just said straight up, honestly, what was going on, I think I'd almost--I'd have no cognitive dissonance, no mixed feelings.This is, of course, how John Stewart feels. It's also how I felt. Those who read the TurkeyBlog back in the day know that we harped on gassed Kurds and the attempted assassination of George H.W. Bush far more than WMD. In fact, if Stewart's wondering, WMD's were a red herring. John Stewart cares about cleaning up the Middle East. I care about cleaning up the Middle East. George W. cares about cleaning up the Middle East. The UN? The UN doesn't give a flying you know what. To the contrary, it's appalled by the idea of cleaning up the Middle East. Some of its most outspoken members, lest we forget, are part of the swamp we're draining. At the U.N., the Lebanese people don't get a vote. Assad's puppet does. At the UN, the gassed Kurds didn't even get 1/4 vote. Saddam voted for them. At the UN, the families of the girls who died in a dormitory fire because they weren't allowed to leave without hair scarves don't get a vote. The Saudi ruling family that sponsors the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice votes for them. At the United Nations, the good but oppressed citizens of Chile never got to vote under Pinochet. Pinochet voted for them. And at the UN, the oppressed Palestinians in Israel don't get a vote. Sharon votes for them. I hope by now, everybody has found at least one group worthy of representation that goes unheard because of what the UN values most - sovereignty for those who have the guns to enforce it. Why the "nuclear cloud"? Syria, Saudi, Iran, Egypt, Kuwait, Libya - do any of these nations care if Saddam threatens his own people? Hell no. They threaten their own people too. They only care if Saddam threatens them, that is, the notion that their sovereignty is not inviolable. Saddam gassing the Kurds is fine by the UN, just so long as he doesn't threaten Kuwait, Saudi, Syria or any of the other tyrants in the neighborhood. And so we pushed a red herring, a nuclear cloud, to have a pretext for doing the right thing in an international community where doing the right thing counts for little but minimizing the need to change nameplates at the UN counts for all. I think a lot of us knew this in the run-up to the Iraq war. I know I harped on the need to emphasize rape videos, murders abroad and the gassing of the Kurds, so the American people would know this wasn't just about WMD, it was about destroying a culture in need of destruction. I think the American people caught the wink and the nod, which is why they have grudgingly supported Bush, even reelected him at a time when they were decidedly mixed in their feelings about him. Guess what, though? There's more fun ahead. At this crucial moment, we owe great thanks to Chirac, to Schroeder, to Putin, to all the naysayers. We've read about the European superstate for a long time. About the powerhouse it's going to be, etc. But when Chirac and Schroeder tried to shut down the Iraq effort, and then to shut down Eastern European support for it, they gave us a twofer. Eastern Europe is already wary. For forty years, the US called for their freedom and the "leaders" of the EU coughed after, "if it's not too inconvenient, of course." The Poles, the Czechs, the Slovaks, the Bulgarians and all the others... they remember. And now, the Iraqis, the Lebanese, the Syrians, the Iranis and all the others... they'll remember too. Remember 241 dead American Marines in Beirut, remember 1400 dead American soldiers in Iraq, remember how George W. Bush said we were with them and how, it turned out, we were. Not that the EU will be cut off, of course. They'll get their trade, they'll get their exchanges. But they'll also get the wary glance that makes it clear that the Europeans are folks with whom one does business, not people you trust. Which is the real reason why for all the prattle about economics, multilateralism, joint ventures, etc, the United States-Britain-Australia axis is a superpower and Europe never will be. Europe purports to stand for a lot, but it will fight for very little. When the history is finally written, this moment, like the Cold War, will be remembered as a time when the United States and her allies stood firm for their ideals - freedom, liberty and democracy - and triumphed, remaking the world for the better. History will have little to say for wiser, more nuanced nations, however, for even the glorious EU cannot be a superpower if it lacks the will to effect positive change. 
posted by gbarto at 10:41 AM |
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Day By Day© by Chris Muir.Old TurkeyBlog here.
