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Current Events » in reply to And Who Do You Suppose The Cops Are?

I hope my reply wasn't bogus!
alcaray — (archived)

...name someone besides the US who could play cop to Saddam's abusive father.

I've mentioned this once before to Tom. And since I have bad feelings about myself when I repeat (too preachy!), I'll try to emphasize different points.

You are right that there is currently no world authority to set and enforce laws governing the relations between states. In fact, every time there is an effort to set something like this up, expect the Republicans to throw a hissy and the US, ultimately, to refuse to participate. If we need such an authority (and I believe that we do), then the logical approach is to go about setting one up. One that will give legitimacy to invasions like this, when they become necessary.

Of course, we have to deal in the here and now, without any such authority in place. We *do* have some authorities that -- though they do not satisfy all requirements -- could provide more legitimacy than we currently enjoy.

The closest we can come to is the UN. It may not have been impossible to get the UN to go along, had we gone about it the right way, and if our "evidence" is as brilliant as the administration claims.

Or we could convene some kind of ad hoc authority, like they did to deal with the war criminals after WWII.

Or we could build a big consensus for it, external to the UN. I know, in some respects this is like raising a bigger mob to support the vigilante justice you propose, but there are a few differences. One is that consensus on the world stage includes everybody on the planet. That would provide quite an effective mandate.

But the bottom line here is that there was no effective authority in place, and any of the secondary authorities available to us were not likely to let us have our war. Does the US want to be a citizen? Or does the US want to be king? I vote for citizen.

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