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

To: frankw1900 who wrote (109248)	8/1/2003 1:36:47 PM
From: GST	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

1) There is no world government -- only an international community with institutions such as the UN and the UN Security Council that we helped to establish after the devastation of the second world war to provide some basis for making decisions to prevent future wars and to deal with threats to international peace and security. The Security Council was designed precisely to deal with issues of war on behalf of the international community. The UN Security Council was designed to deal with issues such as Iraq. 2) The United States does not exist alone. The United States is inextricably connected to other countries. We engage in a vast set of agreements mediated by international institutions and institutional arrangements. Few countries are as reliant on the international community as is the United States for its economic well-being. 3) The US has no special authority outside of the boundaries of United States. We are merely an individual country. We have no special moral authority in the international community. We do not have the moral authority to run the world. We cannot speak for anybody but ourselves. 4) We did not invade Iraq under circumstances that the international commnity could support. We did not interene to stop a war. We did not invade to halt an aggression. We did not invade to stop genocide. We did not invade to stop a civil war. We did not invade because there was a threat to us. We invaded and we now occupy a sovereign nation. We did this in the face of clear opposition from the UN Security Council. 5) We do not now enjoy the support of the international community. 6) We have the most powerful military in the world, and behave as if that gives us the right to do whatever we want to whomever we want whenever we want. There is nothing moral about our weapons. Our special position in the world is one of firepower. Our behavior (as of our invasion of Iraq) signals to other countries that our values are the values of raw power and aggression -- not moral authority. We extend our sovereignty beyond our borders to occupy another country and to establish their government in any way we like because we have military power. 7) In any terms recognizable to the international community, the invasion of the Iraq by the US was conducted without moral or legal authority.