The United Nations

Some thoughts on the United Nations.

"One is that the Bush administration has, without understanding what it was doing, created a situation in which the majority of nations see the UN as the only institution that has the possibility of checking American power and limiting the consequences of American unilateralism.

In the future, shifting coalitions of the willing are likely to work through the UN and other major international institutions and use the unprecedented means the Internet provides for mass mobilization to counterbalance or contain the United States on many economic and politico-military issues."
William Pfaff, Boston Globe

"Remember when we were told that the war would have to start by February, to get it over with before the desert turned too hot? Then, as diplomatic resistance to war mounted, nature's deadline was put off until later in the spring.

On March 7, facing a French and Russian veto in the Security Council, the U.S. did another backpedal. It amended its supposedly "final" resolution to include a deadline of March 17. All the amendment says is that Iraq must show it is disarming in good faith by the 17th. But most Security Council members, including the French and Russians, say Iraq is already disarming in good faith. So come the 17th, the Security Council will remain as paralyzed as ever. The amended resolution has no real teeth. It is another U.S. surrender.

But every time the Bush administration caves in to diplomatic pressure, the White House puts out the story that it's more determined than ever to go to war. And the U.S. media dutifully buy it. The media heralded the March 17 date as a drop-dead deadline, an absolute proof that Bush will indeed have his heavenly war, come hell, high water, or UN veto. Of course, they may be right. But if you look at what the administration does, not what it says, the evidence points in the opposite direction."
Ira Chernus, Common Dreams

Nice to note that the United Nations may not be as useless as the Conservatives often portray it.