Don't miss the George Monbiot analysis of the Iraq situation.

[Merlin]

It is an historically significant piece which, imo, will influence governments around the world and change the direction of events.

It is an exceptionally powerful analysis:

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/edit/archives/2003/

Beware the UN Bluewash

The UN must not let itself be used as a dustbin for failed American adventures overseas
By George Monbiot
THE GUARDIAN
Wednesday, Sep 03, 2003,Page 9

The US government's problem is that it has built its foreign policy on two great myths. The first is that it is irresistible; the second is that as time advances, life improves. In Iraq it is trapped between the two. To believe that it can be thwarted, and that its occupation will become harder rather than easier to sustain as time goes by, requires that it disbelieves all that it holds to be most true.

But those who oppose its foreign policy appear to have responded with a myth of equal standing: that what unilateralism cannot solve, multilateralism can. The UN, almost all good liberals now argue, is a more legitimate force than the US and therefore more likely to succeed in overseeing Iraq's reconstruction and transition.

...These propositions are scarcely more credible than those coming out of the Pentagon.

The immediate and evident danger of a transition from US occupation to UN occupation is that the UN becomes the dustbin into which the US dumps its failed adventures. The American and British troops in Iraq do not deserve to die any more than the Indian or Turkish soldiers with whom they might be replaced. But the governments that sent them, rather than those that opposed the invasion, should be the ones that have to answer to their people for the consequences.

<<more>>

[NJCher]

1. corrected link

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/edit/archives/2003/09/03/2003066333


Cher

[Terwilliger]

2. "oops" kick

:-)

[teryang]

3. The UN will retain legitimacy

...to the extent that it refuses to pick up the tab for the foolhardy and bloody American British misadventure in Iraq. The fascist neocons must pay the full political price for their military failures and realpolitik miscalculations.

[izzie]

5. Neo-cons will not pay but middle class tax payers will.

Am I right, that is what you really mean?

[Merlin]

6. The Neocons WILL pay.

They will face the natural consequences of their own folly. They got us into this. If the UN does not bail us out, they we will have to figure out how to get us out of it. If they can't or don't, then they will wake up the sleeping drunk called the American electorate, and pay the price at the polls.

Is America along for the neocon ride? Yes. But it's our own damn fault. We're going to have to re-learn the same freaking lesson we learned more than 30 years ago in Vietnam.

It's sad for the old USA. But if this country's voters insist on being ill-informed and swooning to the first strutting as*hole who snears and claims the easy answers will work, then we're going to have to pay the price over and over again until we get it right.

Welcome to America. Groundhog Day.

[izzie]

4. Why is it I had so much trouble with that?

I am going to copy it as I am not sure I can read it and it will stay up as the PC was all over the place.

[Merlin]

7. Wish Monbiot had proposed UN support if America ousts Bush.

Seems to me the one way we have to recover legitimacy in the world is to oust the clown in the WH, to fess up and express regrets for our arrogance toward the world, and to agree to share the booty in Iraq and cooperate with a genuine UN democratization program.

If America ousts Bush in '04, we will go along way toward restoring our cred.

[teryang]

8. Amen!

Thanks for your posts.