Ahem, Cough, Cough
I'd like to apologize for that last post on "Replacing the United Nations". In retrospect it was...garbage, I was a fool and I'm sorry. It is highly unlikely that the "Big Three" (the US, UK and Russia) would be any less gridlocked than the UN and would lack the legitimacy of the United Nations. I realy don't think international organizations are the solution to the world's problems anyhow. Despite all teh high minded rhetoric surrounding the UN (and before it, the League of Nations) these organizations really don't make much of a difference. I recently read the Arrogance of Power by Sen. Fullbright and I believed that he's right in arguing that the attitudes that the leadership and the masses of different countries have about each other actually matters a lot more than debating socities like the UN. I also think the Bush administration has failed with regards to the kind of public diplomacy needed ot manipulate opinion abroad. It is almost as if Bush has tried to live up to the cowboy image off him that has been appeared so often in the foreign press. The administration has really just been careless and short sighted. At every opportunity Bush has avoided mulitlateralism at all costs, opposing the Kyoto Protocalls, the Comprhensive Test Ban Treaty, the International Criminal Court, an enforcement provision to the treaty banning Chemical and Biological weapons, the list goes on and on. Some people might say that the Kyoto Protocalls were stupid (they probably were) or that the International Criminal Court might have been used against Americans (which is complete nonsense) or have quibbled over some other unimportant point regarding these agreements; but the actual content of the agreements is really irrelevant. I don't think that any of these treaties was of actual importance and I don't think that would have done any real harm to the US, which is all the more reason to support them. It looks very bad for the United States to be the only country not to oppose war crimes, nuclear war, environmental calamity, the serious lack of milk and cookies before bed or whatever problem these agreements were meant to deal with. So, in the interest of appealing to the neocons or the Birchers or whatever interest group whose votes he's after, Bush has done serious harm to the chances of ever getting international approval for this war or any other ventures he wishes to undertake.