Quote:
Originally posted by Lanny_MacDonald@Sep 12 2004, 04:09 PM
Tranny, Ask youself this very simple question. Why is the United States always the one under scrutiny? Why does everyone hate them so much? Why are the Chinese not in the watch list? How about the Russians? How about the French? How about the Germans? How about the British? Why is it always the Americans? The Canadians do more UN peacekeeping than any other country, why is Canada not a target? Why is the US the country that everyone hates?
BTW... the US did the right thing in 1991, and got the UN's blessing for an action in Kuwait. What is so wrong with doing it again?
|
Aside from four specific instances I can think of - Korea in 1950, South African sanctions, Gulf War of 1991 and Afghanistan in 2001 - the UN is largely an ineffective forum jumbled by conflicted interests.
The only reason the UN authorized action in Korea in 1950 was because the Soviet Union wanted to antagonize China.
The confused state of the world in 1991 from the fall of communism led to a rare alignment of interests for Gulf War I.
South Africa was another rare alignment of interests.
Sympathy over 9/11 led to world to concede the USA was owed a free one in Afghanistan.
Most of the time, as we saw in the Iraq dispute, decisive action at the UN is frequently left by the wayside as problems are debated interminably with solutions frozen as nations guard their self-interests.
The UN is largely useless.
You can debate whether that should have led the USA to do what it did in Iraq, but admit the obvious as to whether the UN is a place to get something done.
Lastly, the lesson of history is the League of Nations collapsed when it failed to recognize and deal with the interests of the great powers of the day.
Cowperson