> Mark writes:
>
> > Right after we capture Clinton, Gore and Albreit [Allbright] for the Kosovo
> invasion?
>
> The actions in Kosovo and Bosnia were sanctioned not only by the UN but also
> by NATO and the European Union and were enforced by multilateral forces,
> primarily KFOR and IFOR, and were later codified into the Dayton Accords.

Let's keep Kosovo and Bosnia separate.  The Dayton Accords were four years _before_
NATO action in Kosovo.

> The world's action in the Balkans was as legitimate an action as it has ever
> mounted, and was clearly for the benefit of all humanity.

Hmmm, well, I'll admit that the actions in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovenia were a
_model_ of what we can expect from the U.N. and European multilateralism.  First the
U.N. declared an arms embargo, giving the more heavily-armed Serbs a big edge.  So
we have an answer to what happens when they give a war and just one side shows up:
the men are killed, the women raped, the possessions stolen, and the houses burned
down.

The U.S. deferred to European multilateralism for several years and somewhere
between 25,000 and 250,000 people died--no one really knows how many.  Eventually
NATO--that is, the United States--got tired of this sophisticated approach and
decided to "work for peace"--that is, start bombing.  This is what forced the Dayton
accords.  Some highlights of U.N. "peacekeeping" during 1995:  in May, reacting to
NATO airstrikes, Bosnian Serbs take 350 U.N. "peacekeepers" hostage.  See how the
Serbs feared the wrath of the world government and its fearsome blue-helmeted
stormtroopers!  Then in July, U.N. "peacekeepers" who were protecting refugees in
the "safehaven" of Srebrenica decided that discretion was the better part of valor.
What happened when they gave a war in Srebrenica and only one side showed up?
Again, the men were killed, the women raped, the possessions stolen, and the houses
burned down.  The U.N. did ...... nothing.

Kosovo is a different matter.  NATO (i.e. the United States) did not wait for any
U.N. resolutions.  Clinton also tried, but failed to get Congressional approval.
The action was clearly a violation of the NATO charter, the U.N. charter, the U.S.
Constitution, and international "law".  Whether it was right or wrong is a different
matter.

Eventually some people from Yugoslavia were brought to trial in the Hague.  Was it
the U.N. that managed this?  No, of course not; it was the U.S.  The U.N. is an
impotent body, as it was designed to be.

The U.N. is a venue for discussion.  If nations can settle their differences by
talking, fine.  But the very form of the U.N. guarantees that it can never actually
_do_ anything.  The General Assembly is like the Senate on LSD, where Vanuatu and
China each have one equal, but meaningless vote.  In the Security Council the five
permanent members have veto power, so what are the odds that you could ever get them
to agree on anything meaningful?

In an earlier message, Wirt Atmar wrote:
> But of course the situation is much worse than that. If the US engages in
> unilateral cross-border excursions into another sovereign country without the
> legitimacy explicit to the consent of the United Nations, then I would
> suggest that such action is a criminal act under international law. If it
> comes to that, I believe that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Powell should be
> arrested and put on trial before the Hague. Quite obviously, the United
> States cannot claim that it is unilaterally enforcing UN resolutions without
> the consent of the UN itself.
>
> We enact laws, establish courts and enter into treaties to prevent exactly
> such action by the most powerful members of society, and they must be held
> accountable to those laws or the laws mean nothing at all.

How interesting.  This is so revealing.  If Wirt actually believed there were such a
thing as "international law" he would have written "I believe Saddam Hussein, Tariq
Aziz, and General Sultan Hashim Ahmed should be arrested and put on trial."  But
there is no international law, only lawlessness.  If there were international law,
the United States would not need to be planning to invade right now.

When Wirt writes "we enact laws" I presume he means that the United States enact
laws.  There are no laws enacted by the United Nations.  It was explicitly designed
to not be a world government.   Fortunately, President Bush (unlike Clinton in
Kosovo) got advance approval from Congress for his action in Iraq. (October 11,
2002.  Votes 77-23 in the Senate, 296-133 in the House.)  In the United States court
system, a treaty has equal weight as any act of Congress and if there is a conflict,
the one enacted later prevails.  So, any action in Iraq is consistent with U.S. law.

The United Nations was explicitly _not_ established to "prevent exactly such action
by the most powerful members."  The most powerful members were given veto power in
order to ensure that the U.N. would not be a threat to them.

The decision not to try to form a world government in 1945 was a wise one and the
reasons hold today.  True, communism has collapsed, but China, the world's largest
nation and a permanent member of the Security Council is still despotic.  Maybe in a
few decades, if China progresses and Russia holds steady to its democratic progress,
we could consider forming an organization we respect and could conceivably trust to
wield actual power.  Such conditions do not obtain today.

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