Bill, I generally like these Reason pieces. Their writers generally know how to do the evidence and argument bit.
This one is also well done, not my position, but well done until the last two paragraphs.
George W. Bush may not share his father's instinctive sympathy with the United Nations and other international bodies. But he seems to realize, as his father did in 1990, that international bodies charged with defending the peace (the League of Nations, the United Nations) become positive threats to peace if their hollow pronouncements become the skirts for ambitious dictators to hide behind. So the younger Bush has, in effect, offered to put American power at the U.N.'s service, not just for America's sake, but to save the U.N. from a dangerous impotence.
It only looks that way from Bush's point of view; not from almost any other place in the world right now. The author needed to bring that perception into the argument. Perhaps he could have maintained that last sentence but I doubt it. Bush wants the UN as cover not to save it. We all know that.
The last paragraph is simply a gratuituous hit that could have been left out and the article could well stand alone. But we just have to take another hit at the lefties. And it comes of as a whine.
The Kyoto global-warming agreement, the International Criminal Court agreement, and all the other multilateral agreements by which the self-styled "international community" sets such store would, even taken together, do much less to strengthen enlightened internationalism than would concerted action to make the U.N.'s Iraq resolutions stick. The United Nations and its friends had better think hard before snubbing the lifeline Bush has just thrown them, because they may not get another. |
