Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Eashoa' M'sheekha who wrote (53287)	10/19/2002 11:42:39 PM
From: bela_ghoulashi	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

I put "International Community" in quotes because it sounds so cozy in the abstract, but when you stop and really take a look at it, there's nothing particularly wise, pure, sacrosanct, objective, altruistic, disinterested, or even communal about it. In my view, it's really as much a rhetorical device for the sake of bloviation as anything else. That's the source of my disdain. If the "International Community" gets a stomach-ache, they'll either do something about it, or they won't. Their track record indicates they won't. The Cheney-Condi-Rummy tri-axis has not been booed off the stage by a majority of the American people. That, again, is wishful thinking. And what I mean by "wishful thinking" is declaring something to be so that isn't exactly so. Any leader, like Bush, has the choice of following the inertia of the status quo, of business as usual because everyone is comfortable with it, or acting to propel events toward a different line of momentum. Bush is acting to change momentum, to alter the status quo. It is hardly surprising that so many countries, governments, bureaucrats, pundits, social science professors, etc., whose self-interest may depend on maintaining the inertia of the current status quo don't like it enough to rouse themselves from their usual routine dithering long enough to say so. The animosity you're so concerned about is going to be there regardless. There's not always a nice way to get people to do difficult things or grapple with ugly problems ahead of time in a manner that may actually change them if they're content to simply ignore them. re the idiots in Iraq: the only possible way to prevent them from making whatever moronic claims they feel may serve their purpose is to take their microphone away. I'm not accusing you personally of anything. I just disagree with some of your assumptions: 1. I think the world will fight terrorism because terrorism will ultimately give it no other choice. The issue is really not America and 9/11. It is from our standpoint (we Americans, that is), but ultimately the "World Community" will need us as much as we need them on that score. I believe events will bear that out. How we deal with Iraq will have no practical impact on other nations' willingness or desire to combat terrorism. The idea that it will is, I believe, a bogus argument. But that won't stop anyone from insisting on it, because there's the illusion of some powerful, leveraged argument there. 2. The "credible threat of an outright attack" (you did not quote me fully), the persuasive demonstration that some consequences may actually exist for failure to comply with its "will" as an august body, is exactly what the UN lacks. Therefore to suggest that the UN will [actually, in fact] gain credibility and respect through debate and continuing to write resolutions that it has no will, power, means, or possibly even intention to enforce on its own, while at the same time the United States will lose credibility and respect because it does have the will and the means to enforce it, is to daydream, in my view.