Thus, the lesson that the US Government learned from the Iraq invasion isn’t that the US Government should never again lie about what the evidence actually shows, in order to invade a country, but instead that the US Government should simply ignore the UN whenever the evidence doesn’t persuade other Governments that an invasion would be authentically defensive instead of purely an act of international aggression.
What might turn out to have been “The Most Important UN Security Council Vote Ever” was the 10 April 2018 UN Security Council’s failure to require the US and its allies to provide evidence to prove that Syria’s Government had gassed its own people in Douma on April 7th as the US and its allies alleged, before the US and its allies could, with even just possible legal justification, launch massive bombing of Syria as supposed punishment for the gas-attack that they were alleging. The question of whether or not the UN would authorize the American invasion wasn’t even being raised; the question was only whether the alleged gas-attack needed to be independently verified before an invasion might possibly legally be launched — and no proposal was passed. Unlike in the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the US never tried to win UN authorization to invade Syria in 2018, but simply invaded, casually ignoring all laws, and even denying the need for evidence to back up its allegations against Syria.[1]
Notes
[1] "How US Has Virtually Destroyed UN." By Eric Zuesse , Stretegic Culture, 4/17/18 (bold text added).
I've nothing good to say about the UN - we'd be better off leaving it and forcing them to decamp NYC and relocate to one of the countries they've 'helped'. But the Syrian 'gas attack' and subsequent bombing stink to high heaven. Isn't it nice to know that you and I have to justify our finances six ways from Sunday this time of year, yet our betters in the government can do this on what's basically a whim to get some good PR.
ReplyDeleteI'm not a student of the U.N. and my dominant impression of it is that it's morphed into a global busybody with grandiose plans for us the unwashed.
ReplyDeleteI'd also like to seem it headquartered somewhere else and for us to stop bankrolling it and all its hair-brained activities.
I do see it as THE mechanism established after WWII to preside over the most important issue imaginable, namely, war between sovereign nations. People with direct and fresh experience of modern (i.e., stupid) warfare came up with a clunky and wildly skewed institution to try to keep the peace. Amen to that and the possibilities inherent in the General Assembly for discussion and prioritization of international action.
The Syrian war crime fits perfectly into this slot and it is precisely here that the U.N. is thought, properly I think, to have special competence with, yes, all the frustrations inherent in having the major powers owning a veto power.
Were it operating as planned NOW a lot of the arrogant, aggressive conduct of the U.S. would be shut down and about all the U.N. served to do now is to hold up the actuality of the (binding) provisions of the Charter beside the actuality of the Western powers' determination to act unilaterally and illegally.
The ability of the beautiful people to act free of democratic constraints is one of the great tragedies of our time. It just kills me to see those fools making tragic, monstrous mistake after mistake and the poor citizen is left to watch our very civilization go under the waves or third-world primitivism.