From: "Anthony Crifasi" <crifasi-AT-hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: its a new world order stupid
Date: Fri, 18 Apr 2003 03:46:43 +0000


Malcolm Riddoch wrote:

>>On Sunday, March 23, 2003 Malcolm Riddoch wrote:
>>"while your belief that men of righteous honour and good christian ideals 
>>have control of the destiny of the US and therefore of this world is 
>>rather quaint..."
>
>This is not an anti-christian statement. I just find it quaint that you are 
>credulous enough to actually believe that Bush's born again religious zeal 
>is anything other than a pragmatic political appeal to the conservative 
>christian lobby groups that helped bring him to power.

Malcolm, you can definitely tell that he means it. Kenneth can tell, so can 
I, and so can most Americans - whether they agree with him or not, most 
Americans trust that he definitely means what he says. Why? Because we've 
got such a stark contrast. Against a certain former "well respected" 
president who couldn't be trusted to mean what he said when he said the word 
"is"! And against a United Nations that basically admitted that they didn't 
mean what they said in resolution 1441. And against a Hussein who blatantly 
didn't mean what he said when he agreed to UN resolution 687 at the end of 
the first Gulf War. Against these, Bush definitely stands in stark contrast 
as the real deal, whether or not one agrees with his deal. So now that your 
'quaintness' argument about Bush's sincerity is out the window, perhaps the 
'quaintness' consists simply in his Christianity per se?

>>In other words, Clinton did not force a vote in the UN Security Council 
>>before he bombed Bhagdad. That does not change the unilateral and 
>>unathorized nature of what he did with his superpower status.
>
>Neither did his bombing of Baghdad result in the collapse of US public and 
>political support for the UN and an international crisis that has mobilised 
>'old europe' along with more traditional opposition against a 'go it alone' 
>US global enforcer. Clinton did not polarize the world politic, he worked 
>more or less within an internationalist framework and did not fatally 
>undermine the legitimacy of the UN by entirely rejecting its authority.

But if you agree that Hussein materially breached 2 UN resolutions, then how 
can you possibly blame Bush for bypassing UN authority due to how the 
Security Council responded to those breaches? How can you blame Bush instead 
of the UN itself for undermining its own legitimacy?

>Please note that this is not a vote of support for your Democrat party, 
>just a statement of fact. Who knows how Clinton or Gore would have reacted 
>to 9/11? It's a pointless exercise wondering about it cos it didn't happen.

Well Gore has already explicitly said that he would not have invaded Iraq. 
As for Clinton, if another Monica Lewinsky fiasco came up, you bet he would 
bomb Bhagdad again, just like last time.

>So which bit of - "the US administration is under no compulsion whatsoever 
>to defer to the UN at all in any field, quite the opposite, it is now 
>explicitly its own arbiter in global politics and an era of international 
>cooperation, with all its limitations, is at an end" - don't you 
>understand?

The last part. Why? Because there has already been a superpower for DECADES 
that felt "no compulsion whatsoever to defer to the UN at all" when it 
invaded a country, thereby treating itself as "its own arbiter in global 
politics". Nor did that superpower invade in reaction to an event like 9/11. 
Nor did that superpower invade only after 2 UN resolutions to be breached. 
Nor did that superpower even bother to call for a vote in the UN Security 
Council.

That is why I don't understand the last part of your statement.

Anthony Crifasi

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