And who decides whether or not it's a good idea? The interfering country will probably think it's an excellent idea in most cases. The interfered-with country will probably not. Julia
I absolutely agree, julia, which is why i said it should be a coalition formed under united nations' auspices, and used darfur as an example. Given that, the logical conclusion, as far as I see it, is that we have toaccept the fact that there will only be intervention when Russia and China think it is in their self interest. With respect to Darfur in particular, it has been made very clear that the UN will not do anything meaningful tostop the genocide until the government of the Sudan decides it is in their interest to stop it, or other outside forces ended it (as happened Rwanda and the Balkins). Indeed, Sudan served on the Human Rights Commission while the genocide was taking place. Now, we agree that GWB's foreign policy have been a nightmare. Even among my rather conservative Houston friends, I don't get much in the way of defense of his actions (especially when I explicitly seperate GWB's actions from their own beliefs). So, I'd like to review this policy in terms of Clinton's and Bush Senior's actions. Clinton's most notable action in this regard was his illegal ending of the Balkins genocide. The UN's peacekeeping activities were deliberately hamstrung by the Russians, who supported the Serbs. They ensured that the UN would do nothing effective. The Dutchbat report on the actions of UN Peackeepers during the that time gives good insight into this (I really don't fault the Dutch troops, they were set up to fail by the nature of the restrictions on UN action). The second is the no-fly zone set up by Bush Sr. and continued by Clinton (with the British and with the French until '98). This stopped the atrocities against the Kurds in the North and decreased the atrocities against the Shiites in the South. This was not explictly authorized by the UN, it was justified by an interpretation of a previous resolution. The third is the bombing of Iraqi military targets by Clinton after Hussein ruled large facilities off limits to the inspectors. The fourth is the threat by Clinton to bomb N. Korean nuclear facilities when they were building reactors that would provide enough plutonium for 50 A-bombs per year. As a result of these threats, a deal was made to freeze production in exchange for aid. This is, as far as I can tell, the same deal Bush accepted after rejecting it as appeasment in 2001. None of these actions were under the auspices of the UN. If memory serves me, the only two times that the UN authorized the use of more than minimal force were Korea and Gulf War I. So, if we limit ourselves to UN authorizations, we would agree that intervention would be extrodinarily rare. Now, I'm not arguing that you favor continuing the genocide in Danfur, or N. Korea having hundreds of A-bombs by now, or the Balkins still being in flames, etc. I think I know your position well enough now to know you think all of those things are horrid, and are happy they didn't happen. What I don't know is whether you think that the US acting alone, or with one ally, or even with NATO without UN authorization is inherenly so risky that it would actually be better to allow those things to happen than for the US to have acted outside the scope international law in those cases. Dan M. I don't like any nation to act unilaterally, but if it is done out of compassion and saves lives, rather than the opposite, of course it is justified. when the UN fails to intervene effectively, as is often the case, someone has to do it, but i think we all can agree that GWB's motives are not out of benevolence. jon __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
