Asymmetrical Information

Interesting. My mother used to say, "If you don't think you want to hear the worst possible answer, then don't ask the question." Seems like the US doesn't want to get Veto'd, so they're not even to bother asking the question.

That seems like an attempt to salvage the UN. Take them out of the loop now before they do something really self destructive.

Oh, well. I was hoping for a negative UN vote just so that we could go in defiance. The UN's got to go. We must do what is right. And what's right is not determined by world opinion polls.

The amazing part to me is that at this late date, with Iraq still not having accounted for their Vx or anthrax supplies and with some number of those al-Samoud missiles still needing destruction, the left continues to insist that U.N. Security Council Resolution 1441 doesn't make perfectly clear that military action is, in fact, sanctioned by the U.N. (last week I had this debate with a colleague who hadn't even read 1441!) and that, somehow, United States sovereignty is subject to the U.N. The latter claim is sufficient reason to withdraw from the U.N. unto itself, as if there weren't a plethora of better reasons for doing so.

If nothing else comes of this, having proven the United Nations to be the irrelevancy that some of us have suspected it to be for decades now will likely have been worth it.

The UN still provides a remarkably wide range of useful services, including statistical publications. Failure of the current security council is not reason to write the whole thing off; it's just a good reason not to take that part of it seriously.

It's not like another organization of this type isn't going to ultimately disintegrate the same way. May as well take the good and shrug off the bad.

In his comments above, Paul Snively makes the same fundamental error of logic that the Bush administration is guilty of; Calling the United Nations "irrelevant" while at the same time citing Iraq's violation of UN Resolution 1441 as a rationale for unilateral military action by the United States. You can't have it both ways....

I only mention 1441 because so many of our friends on the left go on and on about how they would support military action against Iraq if it were sanctioned by the U.N. Security Council. The appropriate response to these claims is "so what's wrong with the prior 18 such resolutions? I'm even willing to forget about 17 of them; let's just look at the most recent one." That doesn't make the U.N. more relevant; it merely calls into question the veracity of those who claim that they would act in the presence of a U.N. Security Council resolution.

Paul Snively,
If you will read www.talkingpointsmemo.com's entry for March 18 at 2:11 AM (sorry - don't know how to do the link), I believe you'll see that, as even U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. John Negroponte conceded at the time, 1441 does NOT (and was not understood by the Security Council to) sanction military action, by any U.N. members, without further action by the S.C. 1441 says Iraq faces "serious consequences" if it doesn't disarm immediately, but it does not, contrary to your implication, state unambiguously what those consequences would be, nor does it say that the U.S. would be warranted in launching a unilateral invasion if it decided that Iraq was not in compliance. Rather, it was generally understood that if Iraq did not comply, the S.C. would have to meet and decide what steps to take in response. As Josh Marshall has the honesty to point out, 1441 is deliberately vague, and is open to the interpretation that the next step is invasion, but it seems disingenuous of you to maintain that that is the only possible interpretation of a resolution that was deliberately left vague in order to command unanimous support.

Peter Jung wrote:

"In his comments above, Paul Snively makes the same fundamental error of logic that the Bush administration is guilty of; Calling the United Nations "irrelevant" while at the same time citing Iraq's violation of UN Resolution 1441 as a rationale for unilateral military action by the United States."

Actually Peter Jung is the one making a fundamental error of fact when he tries to paint a coalition of over thirty nations who support disarming Iraq as engaging in a "unilateral military action."

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