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To: stockman_scott who wrote (154458)	3/19/2003 6:34:13 PM
From: Oeconomicus	Respond to of 164684

Nice legal theory, but any valid and workable legal system, or government for that matter, presupposes a "known and indifferent judge... to determine all differences according to established law" and government with the "power to back and support the sentence when right, and give it due execution." Or so wrote John Locke, the great grandfather if you will of our system of government, in 1690. The UN Security Council can hardly be described as an "indifferent" judge when it's decisions can be nullified by one member who may have a vested interest in the outcome. And, in any case, it completely lacks the power, not to mention the will, to enforce its judgements. So what we are left with, to use the words of another enlightened thinker (though somewhat less so IMO) who the French may be particularly fond of - Rousseau, is a government (the UN) that "exists in a vain and illusory form." The UN Security Council, thanks in part to France, but more perhaps to its structure and nature, has proved itself an incompetent governmental body, incapable of fulfilling its duties and, therefore, lacking legitimacy. And without legitimate government, we have no laws to break, so legal arguments are moot. Of course, we do not want such a potentially dangerous condition to persist - that's why the US and other countries have tried twice now to create an international body to fulfill the limited duties of government BETWEEN nations. The problem is no one has come up with a system that both works and everyone will accept. Lastly, as for US legal arguments, I'd say his is little more than academic nitpicking over Congress's skittishness about using the W-word. Everyone in the US (and most of the world) knows that, last fall, Congress declared war on Saddam Hussein's Iraq and left it to the President to figure out how best to win the war, including waiting or not waiting for a UN blessing. If attorney Dorf wants to write his congressman and tell him he needs to use the W-word to prove he's not just a weasel politician, he's free to do that.