LIFTING SANCTIONS
Charles Krauthammer is outraged by French and Russian resistance to lifting sanctions on Iraq. He proposes a simple solution:
. . . if the State Department sentimentalists who worship at the shrine of the United Nations insist on a pilgrimage to Turtle Bay, we should go to the Security Council and submit a one-line resolution: “Whereas the sanctions were imposed on the regime of Saddam Hussein; whereas that regime is no more; whereas sanctions are now needlessly preventing Iraq’s economic recovery; the sanctions are hereby abolished.”
No “modalities.” No negotiations. No deals. Dare France and Russia to veto.
If they do, if they dare so naked a display of cynicism, we then simply declare that the Security Council has demonstrated its utter bankruptcy and forfeited all moral authority — transcending mere uselessness and becoming now an agent of harm, deliberately standing in the way of the reconstruction of a suffering and now innocent country.
We then ostentatiously stand up, walk out and declare the sanctions dead. We then open the oil spigots and rebuild Iraq.
Sounds good to me. Indeed, the gall of the Russia, who tried to get the sanctions lifted during Saddam’s reign, is rather remarkable, to put it mildly.
Why not turn up the heat? Request that the kofi anan Oil for Food programs books be opened and audited! In the failure of the first response to do so, the culpable will be forced to dig a deeper hole…then ratchet up the temperature by demanding that the UN provide proof of this programs administration, again forcing their defensive cackles to register off scale. Truth is, the French were the auditors of choice, they cannot have this program opened for review, so we’ve effectively nailed them into a coffin from which there is no escape. By auditing the auditors using the facts of captured documents the french will be so marginalized as to be left standing naked and alone…they’ll derive some typicly french pleasure from the attention they’ll get but the worlds scrutiny of their body politic will quickly focus on the flaws and cause them to hurriedly cover themselves in repentance.
When the calls for a New UN grow loud enough, it shall happen.
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