February 06, 2003

Let's quit the U.N.
Mark Steyn says America has no place in a body whose Human Rights Commission is headed by Colonel Gaddafi.

The last (of many) great 'graphs:

So I say: go ahead, Jacques, make my day. Wield your veto, and let the Texan cowboy and his ever-expanding posse go it ‘alone’. I don’t know whether a haughty Gallic ‘Non!’ would be enough to finish off the UN once and for all — these institutions are like those nuke-proof cockroaches — but I do know that another UN-sanctioned war would enshrine the principle that only the UN can sanction war. Maybe Katie Couric has stumbled on an appealing notion: ‘an airborne United Nations’. If you have to send people to the furthest reaches of the galaxy, let’s start with Kofi and co.

Mark rocks!
And George Will comes to the same conclusion from the other more elegant, cool direction in his WaPo column today called "Disregarding the Deniers":

But the president would find it more difficult to wage preemptive war without the coloration of international legality, which the United Nations supposedly incarnates. So an irony stands out:

It would be more difficult for the president to wage war against Iraq if the United Nations did not exist. But if the United Nations, having passed 1441, now refuses to authorize war, the United Nations will essentially cease to exist.

In essence, SoS Powell presented the case against Iraq yesterday and basically asked the U.N., not to pass another resolution condemning Iraq for not disarming, but quite simply: "Will you be now irrelevant?", echoing President Bush.
And, save for Britain, they answered back, "Yes, we will. We are incapable of doing anything but passing toothless resolutions to which noone pays attention."
NY realtors would be well advised to put the "For Sale or Lease" sign up at U.N. headquarters.
I'm sure Donald Trump could do something fun with it!