While the genocide against black Muslims continues in Sudan, and
Iran’s race to obtain nuclear arms comes near its end, the U.N.’s
Secretary General has set his sights on what really matters most:
calumniating against President Bush, Britain’s Blair, Australia’s
Howard, and the rest of the leaders of the coalition that overthrew
Saddam Hussein.
Last week, speaking to the BBC about the U.S.-led overthrow of
Saddam Hussein’s regime, Secretary General Kofi Annan said, “I have
indicated it was not in conformity with the U.N. charter…from
the charter point of view, it was illegal.” In one awkward
sentence, Annan declared the Iraq war illegal, attacked the U.S.
Constitution, and labeled the President of the United States an
outlaw. Uttered less than a week before the U.N. speech Mr. Bush
will deliver tomorrow, Annan’s statement was a direct slap in the
president’s face. It was a political attack designed to influence
the U.S. and Australian elections.
Howard’s Australia thinks more highly of the U.N. than does
Bush’s America, so his chances of reelection are more likely to be
damaged. Facing an election less than three weeks away, Howard
fired back saying the U.N. was “paralyzed” and incapable of dealing
with international crises. That’s right, of course. But Howard
wasn’t Annan’s principal target. Annan aimed at Mr. Bush, and our
Constitution.
The Constitution gives the Congress power to declare war and
makes the President commander in chief, charging him with the
prosecution of our wars. Annan knows that. There is nothing in the
Constitution that mentions any other entity in respect to America’s
sovereign right to go to war, pre-emptively or otherwise. Annan
knows that, too, and the reason for it. America’s government is
accountable to American voters. The U.N. is not. Annan’s statement
is a direct challenge to the Constitution. The inescapable meaning
of his statement is that the U.N. Charter overrides the
Constitution and that the actions of the Security Council determine
the legality of what the U.S. Congress does. If Annan wanted to
precipitate a crisis over U.S. membership in the U.N., there are no
better words he could have chosen.
Annan knows the principal reason the U.S. didn’t join the League
of Nations. It was precisely this: that the League’s charter gave
it war-making powers supposedly binding on its members. For that
reason alone, and despite Woodrow Wilson’s dreams, the Senate
rejected the League’s charter. The U.N.’s creators specifically
avoided that, but Annan wants to reverse their intent and establish
the U.N.’s sovereignty over America. He’s preparing to do so if the
November election turns out to his liking.
Last year, Annan announced one of his “panels of eminent
persons” to review, among other things, the functions of the
Security Council and recommend “reforms.” He said the panel “will
have to discuss questions of when preventive war is acceptable,
under what rules, and who approves.” That’s what’s important to the
EUnuchs, the terrorist nations, and Mr. Annan. What rules the
United States must follow — as defined by the U.N., not the
Constitution — when chooses to prevent terrorist attacks. The
panel’s report was rumored to be released this month, but is now
apparently delayed until December. What comes out depends on who
wins the White House.
MR. BUSH HAS REACTED appropriately by ignoring Annan’s statement.
The president of the United States should not lower himself to
debate a bureaucrat on the merits of constitutional government for
the United States. Mr. Bush must be firm and at least barely polite
when he delivers his speech to the U.N. on Tuesday. The President
should outline what the U.N. can do now, and what the U.S. will do
with or without it in the next four years.
The next presidential term will be as important as any other
such period in the history of our nation. The threat of jihadist
terrorism is the biggest, but not the only, threat our president
will have to deal with. Mr. Bush needs to set out his view of the
coming four years, and how he as president will deal with these
problems. He reportedly plans to ask — again — for help in Iraq.
He will be turned down. He would do better to not ask, and not play
into Mr. Kerry’s hand. Kerry wants Americans to believe that anyone
who isn’t named Bush can ask the U.N. for help, and get it. It’s
nonsense, but by asking again Mr. Bush recharges Kerry’s drained
batteries.
As to Sudan, Mr. Bush should call upon the U.N. to take up the
challenge without more delay. The U.N. should not be debating yet
another ineffectual sanctions regime. It should be calling upon its
190 other members to mount an intervention, and military mission
unlimited by time, to remove the Sudanese regime and protect the
people of Darfur. The U.N. should — as I’ve written before —
resolve not only to intervene quickly in Sudan, but also to end the
Sudanese membership in the U.N. until a new legitimate government
is installed there. And it should do so without American
participation.
For Iran, the President should chastise the U.N. for delaying
the few measures it can take. For Iran to insist that their nuclear
program is only aimed at peaceful generation of electricity is a
lie worthy of the Soviets, and Mr. Bush should say so. He should
make it perfectly clear that regardless of the U.N.’s decisions,
America will do whatever it takes to prevent Iran from achieving
its nuclear weapons ambition.
MR. BUSH SHOULD EMPHASIZE that the U.N. has — as Annan said
earlier — reached a fork in its road, and it must do better than
to follow Yogi Berra’s advice to take it. The President should lay
out America’s challenges to the U.N. in three terms.
First, the U.N. has become what the League of Nations was, a
debating society incapable of action. If it is to have any
relevance to world events, it must resolve itself to do more, to
decide and to act in the interests of peace. He should pose the
example of the U.N.’s longstanding failure to deal with the primary
issues of terrorism. The U.N. has — since 9-11 — failed to even
agree on a definition of terrorism. While terrorist regimes are
members of the U.N., how can we ever expect better?
Second, the U.N. has become an instrument of those who worship
stability, even where stability is U.N. desirable. The oppressed
peoples of the world can gain no hope from the U.N.’s devotion to
stability because to them, stability means the continuation of
slavery and even, as in Sudan, the continuation of genocide. Mr.
Bush’s use of that word will be good for the U.N. to hear. The
pretense of U.N. legitimacy in world affairs cannot stand when it
sits silent — as it did in Rwanda — in the face of genocide.
Third, Mr. Bush should tell the U.N. that Americans recognize
that diplomacy works much better outside of the U.N. than within
it. The Proliferation Security Initiative — the quasi-military
alliance now interdicting the shipment of WMD and missiles between
and among terrorists and rogue nations — is responsible for the
nuclear disarmament of Libya. Mr. Bush should say that we will
continue to work outside the U.N. with coalitions of nations
willing to act, and that we will never fail to act against grave
threats to our own security while the U.N. stands idle. Mr. Bush
should tell the U.N. that when it fails to make decisions and act
to enforce them diplomatically, it makes diplomacy fail. And when
diplomacy fails, war is upon us. As it now stands, the U.N. is the
agent of war, not peace.
Mr. Bush’s speech will change nothing in the U.N.. The U.N. will
not awaken to its responsibilities, it will not decide, and it will
not act. But by saying — in terms so clear that none can miss his
meaning — that America will do all those things, Mr. Bush can
continue to lay the foundation for the U.N.’s successor. That new
organization will be what it must: a coalition of democracies
willing to act in the interests of peace and prosperity, Unhampered
by the whims and caprices of the despots, dictators and appeasers
who dominate the U.N. And it will be free of their faithful
functionary, Mr. Annan.
TAS Contributing Editor Jed Babbin is the author
of Inside the Asylum: Why the U.N. and Old Europe Are Worse
Than You Think (Regnery Publishing).
