THE US, THE UN AND THE IRAQIS THEMSELVES, V. 7.0

Creating an organization with only your friends and allies would put us right back where we were before the collapse of the Soviet Union. With it spheres of influence and possibly a cold war.

And how, pray tell, would your 'new UN type organization' be different?
Only select countries need apply? All members have to cross their hearts and promise to be oh so good?

I suppose just hearing from members of the red persuasion that any international organization would be permissable is an improvement over the long, loud, and overly simplistic calls for the USA just to get out of the UN, but it's not.

It's just another indication of the lack of vision on their part. International relationships are always messy, filled with mis-understandings, hidden agendas, crimes, frauds and occasionally diplomacy, but it is only through diplomacy that we as human being have a chance at creating peace amongst the nations. Finding allies in a war-torn world is only half the task, finding ways to convert your enemies is the hard part. Red thinking begins erroneously by believing we have the only truth and if we can't force others to see that, well, we ought to just pick up and get out of the UN, maybe form a new UN type organization. Yeah, that oughta work.

Joe

Craven de Kere wrote:

Any suggestions? ;-) The status quo is the status quo because people are having a hard time coming up with practical suggestions for this catch 22.

Yep (crazy inferences be damned ). Redefine the rules of entry so that State's who sanction human rights violations and/or lack a minimum amount of civil liberties for their citizens are not only excluded from membership, but barred from doing any business whatsoever with members. States refusing to come under compliance should be targeted for regime change when feasible (Iraq), or simply left on the outside looking in until they get with the program (China). The carrot and the stick. The offer you can't refuse. I believe the carrot would be sufficient for the vast majority of Nations to accept the charter fairly readily… and the stick too scary to even contemplate for long.
Over time, the US would lose its dominating position of power because, after all, we are only 5% of the population. However, in a global economy with global security there would no need to be the boss (consider the relative differences between the "mighty" California and the "tiny" Rhode Island)… And, there would be no conceivable use for WMD (well, maybe breaking up asteroids). Go ahead and tell me I'm crazy. I'll make it easier for you to do so: I predict that anything short of this scenario will eventually lead to the destruction of all mankind. In the Human Race: Technology has left our Humanity in the dust.

Bill: I think the idea has merit and as soon as we release or hold open trials for all the prisoners being held at Guantanamo, we'll be eligible for membership.

But we strongly object to American prisoners of war being put on trial by their captors. Wouldn't the same apply to the prisoners at Guatanamo?

Still Worlds Apart on Iraq

Foreign ministers from all the right countries were present. The timing - two months before the scheduled date of Iraq's all-important elections - was promising. The Mideast location was symbolically apt. Too bad, then, that this week's big international conference on Iraq in the Egyptian seaside resort of Sharm el Sheik, bringing together all of Baghdad's neighbors and every permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, did so little to change the dismal overall equation.

The ministers came, they dined and they endorsed the familiar uncontroversial list of desirable goals. They encouraged free elections. They condemned terrorism. They endorsed Iraq's territorial integrity. They reiterated the importance of humanitarian assistance. Then, still fundamentally disagreeing about how to achieve these goals, they flew off again, without committing themselves to anything likely to make any real difference.

International conferences like these can be quite useful when the participants start out with some basic agreement about the nature of the problem and the outlines of some possible solutions. On Iraq, there is still no such agreement. More than 20 months after the United States unilaterally assumed responsibility for Iraq's future by invading without the support of the Security Council or most neighboring countries, it still finds itself largely on its own, with much of the rest of the world watching skeptically from the sidelines.

This is not a healthy situation - for Iraq, for the United States, for the Middle East or for the international community. How things go in Iraq over the next few months will probably have widespread and lasting consequences for all. And they are unlikely to go very well unless all, or at least most, of the governments represented at Sharm el Sheik begin actively working together.

But don't expect that to happen any time soon. The newly re-elected Bush administration seems more determined than ever to rely on military force to crush the Sunni insurgency, even if that means going ahead with elections next January that are not broadly inclusive. Most of the rest of the world, doubting that this strategy can bring security, legitimacy or real sovereignty, seems equally determined to remain largely aloof.

The preferred strategy seems to be to hope for the best and offer such low-risk gestures as forgiving bad Iraqi debt that would surely never be repaid anyway. But even debt relief, which Western and Japanese government creditors agreed to last weekend, is further than Iraq's major Arab creditors, like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, are now prepared to go. That makes it far more difficult for the new Iraqi government to obtain the credit it will need to revive and rebuild a devastated country. And so far only Romania and tiny Fiji have offered soldiers for the protective force needed to send more election workers to Iraq.

That leaves America still going it almost alone. Apart from the British, most remaining multinational troops are more symbolic than militarily significant. Washington's other main partner is Iraq's interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, who has not done enough to reach out to the estranged Sunni minority and now may be in danger of losing Shiite support to the new anti-American alliance of the former rebel leader Moktada al-Sadr and the former Pentagon favorite, Ahmad Chalabi.

The newly trained Iraqi security forces the administration likes to talk about still do not exist in large enough numbers to safeguard polling places in January, nor has their reliability under fire yet been convincingly demonstrated. The more than 135,000 United States troops now on long-term occupation duty cannot remain there indefinitely without seriously eroding America's worldwide readiness and credibility.

To begin changing this bleak picture, the Bush administration will have to work much harder at international bridge building than it did in its first term. Simply soliciting support for current American policies will not be enough. Washington must also be willing to consider changing some of those policies as part of a renewed process of international consultation. That might lead to more productive international conferences in the future.

Well frankly my dear, I don't give a damn what anybody else thinks so long as we are doing the best we can.

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--Foxfyre