Email or username:

Password:

Forgot your password?
6 comments
Yogthos

Anne-Marie Slaughter, dean of Princeton's School of Public & International Affairs, "Good Reasons for Going Around the UN," 18 March 2003
nytimes.com/2003/03/18/opinion

What we are witnessing today is an unruly process of pushing and shoving toward a redefined role for the United Nations. Practices have to evolve without formal amendment. On Kosovo, a majority of the people, at least in the NATO countries, rejected a system that blocked a humanitarian intervention because of the political allegiances of a prominent Security Council member. In the next crisis, over East Timor, the council was once again able to reach a consensus and authorize a United Nations force.

That is the lesson that the United Nations and all of us should draw from this crisis. Overall, everyone involved is still playing by the rules. But depending on what we find in Iraq, the rules may have to evolve, so that what is legitimate is also legal.

A version of this article appears in print on March 18, 2003, Section A, Page 33 of the National edition with the headline: Good Reasons for Going Around the U.N.. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
Yogthos

Thomas Friedman, three-time Pulitzer winner and NY Times columnist, "D-Day," 19 March 2003
nytimes.com/2003/03/19/opinion

But here we are, going to war, basically alone, in the face of opposition, not so much from '"the Arab Street," but from "the World Street." Everyone wishes it were different, but it's too late -- which is why this column will henceforth focus on how to turn these lemons into lemonade. Our children's future hinges on doing this right, even if we got here wrong.

The president's view is that in the absence of a U.N. endorsement, this war will become ''self-legitimating'' when the world sees most Iraqis greet U.S. troops as liberators. I think there is a good chance that will play out.

But wars are fought for political ends. Defeating Saddam is necessary but not sufficient to achieve those ends, which are a more progressive Iraq and a world with fewer terrorists and terrorist suppliers dedicated to destroying the U.S., so Americans will feel safer at home and abroad. We cannot achieve the latter without the former. Which means we must bear any burden and pay any price to make Iraq into the sort of state that fair-minded people across the world will see and say: ' You did good. You lived up to America's promise."
Simon Brooke

@yogthos "a world with fewer terrorists and terrorist suppliers..."

Well that worked well, didn't it?

#IraqWar

Yogthos

@simon_brooke worked out the same way every neocon project works out in the end

Simon Brooke

@yogthos Not going to like that, but I acknowledge its truth.

Simon Brooke

@yogthos And what did you find in #Iraq, Anne-Marie Slaughter? Was it enough to justify the deaths of hundreds of thousands, the creation of a terrorist state, the destabilisation of the whole #MiddleEast?

#IraqWar

Go Up