Review and Outlook, The Wall Street Journal, Updated September 12, 2002
The
U. N. 's Resolution
President Bush takes America's case against Iraq to the
United Nations today, but the story to watch isn't whether he is
persuasive enough to win Security Council "permission." The big
question is whether the U.N. will take itself seriously enough to enforce
the many resolutions that Saddam Hussein is already violating with
impunity.
In a corker of a speech Tuesday to trade unionists, British Prime Minister
Tony Blair said Saddam Hussein "is in breach of" no fewer than
"23 outstanding U.N. obligations requiring him to admit inspectors
and to disarm."
For starters, there is Resolution 687 passed in April 1991, which required
Saddam to agree not to construct or seek to acquire chemical, biological
or nuclear weapons -- which he has been flouting almost since day one.
Under Resolution 678, America and its allies were authorized to use
"all necessary means" to oust the dictator from Kuwait and
enforce not only prior resolutions but the ones imposed on him after the
cease-fire. Today Saddam's military continues to shoot at aircraft
enforcing the U.N.-authorized "no-fly zone," and he has failed
to honor all his cease-fire promises to disarm.
Unless it has taken a secret vote, the U.N. hasn't repealed any of these
resolutions. But it has done nothing at all to enforce them, at least not
since Saddam humiliated U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan in 1998 by
conning him into negotiating over inspectors and then throwing them out of
the country anyway. How can anyone take seriously a body that wants to
devise a new world order but walks away from its most important
"order" of the past 20 years?
Far from trampling U.N. prerogatives, Mr. Bush is proposing to save them
from irrelevance, à la the League of Nations. The League effectively died
when Italian dictator Benito Mussolini defied it to invade Ethiopia. A
U.N. that can't, or won't, enforce its own dictates even against an
international pariah like Saddam can only be considered feckless.
As political scientist Walter Russell Mead has pointed out,
"Ironically, the Bush Administration's hawkishness on Iraq is the
last, best hope of all who believe that verifiable international treaties
are the world's best defense against the proliferation of weapons of mass
destruction."
Now, we'll admit to some ambivalence about the first President Bush's
decision to request U.N. approval in 1990. We supported the move at the
time, but mainly as a way for the U.N. to live up to its original ideals.
Left to its own devices, even the Security Council turns into a tower of
babble.
This is clearly not why critics of the Bush policy are demanding that he
go to the U.N. again now. Their goal is tie the U.S. down like Gulliver in
Lilliput -- if not with an outright veto by China or France, then by
forcing the U.S. to negotiate for permission in such a way that gives them
leverage over American policy. Who knows what Vladimir Putin might demand
from Mr. Bush in return for Russian approval; maybe a U.S. wink at the
next Chechnya sweep?
Our view is that Mr. Bush already has all of the U.N. authority he needs
to act against Saddam. But if he does propose a new resolution today, we
hope it's one that does not tie America's hands in any way but rather
challenges the U.N. to enforce its own past Iraq obligations. The best
argument for this course is tactical, as a way to give Mr. Blair and
French President Jacques Chirac the political cover they need at home to
support the U.S. (Not that the formidable Mr. Blair seems to need it,
though he does lead a center-left coalition.)
The U.S. President speaks at the U.N. every autumn, and this year it only
makes sense for Mr. Bush to use the forum to speak candidly about the
Iraqi threat. But his reception will be more revealing than his speech. If
the U.N. members and officials are wise, they will realize that Mr. Bush
is only challenging them to live up to their own self-declared principles.
War and law: Attorney General statement
Mr. President, walk away from the U.N.
They were still Saddam's useful idiots