I was going to write this originally as a reply to various people in the timeline post, but it’s a bit large for that now, so…

I don’t usually need to pull out Wordpad for a commentary reply. Sheesh.

Well, seeing as how Western Civilization developed without the United Nations or anything even close to it, I’m pretty sure things aren’t going to suck too bad without such an absurdly worthless institution.

Yes and no.

On the one hand, the UN is fundamentally flawed. I think we all pretty much recognize this. In efforts to be more inclusive or whatever, it has come to lack the collective will to enforce the things it says it wants. Iraq is one example. Human rights violations by any number of member states is another. There’s a pretty long list, which I think we all know about, about which I’m not going to elaborate.

On the other hand, the UN symbolizes a number of things, including a commitment to peaceful relations, global cooperation, and such. These are, I think, useful goals. Because let’s face it. The system of international politics that brought us the First World War didn’t exactly work out. Excessive nationalism, military saber-rattling, and imperialism all contributed to that particular collective mental deficiency.

We got the right idea after the war with the League of Nations, but it had the UN’s main foreign policy problem – a lack of collective will (among other things). Commitment to peaceful relations or no, we saw how far that got Neville Chamberlain. Repeat the cycle with World War II and then the UN.

The founders of both the United Nations and the League of Nations recognized that another war on the scale that they witnessed, in some cases twice, would destroy humanity. We’ve come at times in the last half century very close to that. So the goal of cooperation and diplomacy is one that sits well with me.

And yet the organization designed to foster it has more or less failed in that goal. Without some sort of effective form of coercion answerable only to the UN leadership, it will always and forever fail. Any newer, more effective UN must address that problem, or be yet another reject to the scrapheap of history.

Too, such a body must enforce reasonable goals. As Marechal again notes, the UN’s human rights record is rediculously abysmal, yet he also complains about ceding national soveriegnty to anything. I should note, as an aside, we give some soveriegnty over our troops and the like to NATO, but you don’t hear him complaining about NATO. Any future UN must take into account both of these issues. There’s a line somewhere that must be drawn. I haven’t the faintest clue about how to draw it, however – the questions over human rights for one are very, very difficult to answer.

Breaking down into individual quotes:

Quoth Marechal: Just because a nation exists doesn’t mean it should have sovereignty or just because Saddam is in power does not mean he has legitimate sovereignty, Citizen Toast. Come on now. Don’t go pull a Bernadotte or I’ll be sad.

But, we ponder, who is it that decides if a nation should have soveriegnty or not? The United States? The United Nations? The UN route is of course more equitable to more people, but brings up all those will problems I mentioned earlier. The US route of course begs the questions of what sort of moral authority we think we have to go around deciding who lives and who dies. And there’s some justification behind that question, as a whole host of people in Latin America would have you know.

And will someone PLEASE tell me what is so wrong with imperialism???? Everyone is kicking around the “I” word like it was fascism or communism or some other repulsive, stupid ideological program of destruction. What the hell. I’m talking about the old school imperialism of Great Britain and France pre-1870s here. That’s genuine, glorious, honorable imperialism in its purest and unadultered form. Imperialism post-1870s is more like neo-imperialism, tainted and not quite as wholesome as the old school.

Christ, Marechal. You’re a history student. Hell, you even study the period. You should know this better than I do, yet apparently not.

Let us, before I get really started and for the sake of Iraq, distinguish between things like the US occupation of Iraq, which is best described as “nation building” with the clear intent to get the hell out after we accomplish the setting up of a viable government, and what Marechal is talking about, which is good old-fashioned dictatorial screw-the-people resource exploitation imperialism.

Let’s talk about that for a bit, shall we? We here in America have this peculiar little document called the Declaration of Independence. In it, we list a whole bunch of things about this imperialism. And I quote:

“HE has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing Importance, unless suspended in their Operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.”

“HE has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly Firmness his Invasions on the Rights of the People.”

“HE has refused for a long Time, after such Dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of the Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the Dangers of Invasion from without, and the Convulsions within.”

“HE has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.”

“HE has kept among us, in Times of Peace, Standing Armies, without the consent of our Legislatures.”

“FOR quartering large Bodies of Armed Troops among us;”

“FOR protecting them, by a mock Trial, from Punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:”

“FOR cutting off our Trade with all Parts of the World:”

“FOR imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:”

“FOR depriving us, in many Cases, of the Benefits of Trial by Jury:”

“FOR taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:”

“HE has plundered our Seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our Towns, and destroyed the Lives of our People.”

And so on and so forth. And that’s the mild form of it. I mean, the Thirteen Colonies missed out on the forced slavery (Africa, Spain in the Americas), random killings (Spain again), and other such things. The destructive forced economic servitude to fuel the homeland, thus preventing the colony from gaining any sort of wealth (that the 13 colonies gained a decent measure of wealth is something of a historical accident), is of course a given.

And we as Americans are, or ought to be, sort of opposed to that thing. Never mind that, in our hypocrisy, we took territory from Mexico and fought dozens of Indian tribes to extinction. Never mind that we kept among us millions of slaves. All of those things did, and still do, cause controversy, with just cause. It’s written at the beginning of the Declaration of Independence:

“WE hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness — That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

Which is not to mention the horrendous cost of the military force required for occupation, which is a deal-breaker all by itself.

As far as the whole Iraq thing goes, this timeline makes interesting reading.

“This is interesting. To say the least.” —Toast

“Sadly, I’m not surprised. I went to the UN once, and they have a graph up somewhere where it shows how much money they’d need to solve or at least nearly solve many of the world’s problems. The total cost is less than the total military expenditures of every country in the world.” —Regina

“Either way, I can’t see why there’s such a need for that much money being directed towards the military. The only plausible threat would be terrorists (which is plausible), but since when do you fight terrorists with, say, stealth bombers?” —Toast

You, too, can have your very own topic, simply by making a political statement. Congrats, y’all. ;)

Anyway. I’ve a few points to make, regarding both the United States military budget and the United Nations as an effective entity. We’ll start with the UN.

Whatever the UN may or may not need for it’s budget, it ought to be noted that in many, many areas, they’ve fallen flat on their faces, budgetary and otherwise. I note the Iraqi chairmanship of their little WMD council thing (this just before the war), and a slightly older Sudanese chair of the one on human rights. You will be reminded that Sudan is like the only place in the world where slavery is still legal. Contrast that with what the UN believes are essential human rights (and there many of them – freedom is most certainly one), and ask yourself: With that kind of record, do I REALLY want these people to have my money? Throw in the French, throw in a certain leery feeling towards international courts that contradict the American judicial system, and a couple other things, and you’ve got in a nutshell why a whole bunch of Americans dislike the UN.

Which isn’t to say it’s not a good idea, but the implementation has become highly flawed.

That having been said, I will note that even the United Nations has not been able to escape from the necessity of having an armed military force. So far as I know, no country on the planet has escaped from it, with the possible exception of, say, Monaco.

Further note that a modern military is a very expensive thing. Aircraft carriers do not come cheap. Neither do jet aircraft, smart bombs, or M1 tanks. Further note that much of the reason for that expense is to make the weapons safer weapons, as paradoxical as that might sound. Smart bombs and cruise missiles come at a certain inflated price. Stealth bombers, which are harder to detect, thus resulting in a lower pilot casualty rate (a thing I am much in favor of), also bear a certain price. There’s a tad more complexity than that, but that’s the basics of it.

But, you say, the US military is so LARGE! How can we possibly need that many troops?

Very easily, actually. Consider for a moment that the US has non-trivial numbers of troops all over the planet (much of Europe, Korea, Japan, Iraq, others). Also consider that a very big chunk of the planet relies on the US military to protect it from various things, up to and including the United Nations, who we were involved with in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Somalia, to name a few. Our presence in Korea stems from a UN mandate 50 years ago. Hell, our presence in Iraq is UN mandated from 1991 or so. America has responsibilities to a good number of international organizations, the UN and NATO among them, which require military presence.

That having been said, we’re still a bit thin. The Iraq occupation is an enormous logistical problem, to the point where it’s eating a whole lot of National Guard troops, the Army is desperate for manpower, and a Marine friend of mine who’s already been there once is afraid he’ll have to go back again.

I can’t say I’m overly pleased about the military budget either, but I see why it is the way it is, and I’m fine with that.

[edit] I seem to have forgotten a bit of Toast’s comments. What constitutes a threat. The terrorists are not the only one to be had. We just had, for instance, a very nice shooting war with Iraq in which our heavy equipment came in very handy. All those stealth bombers and such. It’s been a few years, but when we took down Milosivic, we needed all of it, too. In fact, we lost a stealth fighter in the doing.

Too, there’s a pretty non-zero chance we’ll become involved in a shooting war with, say, North Korea at some point. They, certainly, warrent the use of stealth bombers and tanks and such. Iran is a much less plausible sort of threat, but they’re there, too. India, Pakistan, Russia, China all have decent militaries we may end up fighting at some point. Etc, etc. [/edit]

So, in a fit of political something or another, I tuned in to watch Bush give his State of the Union speech tonight. On that note, let’s hear it for C-SPAN for having a live webcast of the thing. In fact, let’s hear it for live webcasts.

Anyway. This whole thing deserves some sort of gigantic hand wringing, which I’m not sure if I’m capable of in my current exhausted state, but we’ll see what we can come up with. So…

For the curious, you can find the transcript of the thing here.

I’m not going to argue with the war on terror blurb. Mostly because there’s not a whole hell of a lot to argue with, but also because I actually agree with him. To quote Regina’s favorite Thomas Friedman line, “Some things are true even if George Bush believes them.” Yeah. I do note, however that at this line: “Key provisions of the Patriot Act are set to expire next year.” rated ENORMOUS applause from the Democratic side of the isle. Certainly, I won’t argue with their good judgement there.

That having been said, from everything I can tell, we’re STILL screwing over the Afghans, and that STILL annoys me a great deal.

Too, I don’t argue too much with the Iraq section, though I’m somewhat amused that he’s still riding the still-breathing-but-not-long-for-this-earth WMD horse. I’d really love to see him take a spill off that one.

Too, the Democratic response to the SOTU speech had a point – internationalized the Iraq effort may be, more so than, say, the French would have you believe, but it’s still mostly our troops on the ground. I don’t really know what I want to say about that, but that’s how it is.

And catch, if you will, the barely disguised connection he’s trying to make between Afghanistan and Iraq in the, erm, War on Terror. We all know I’m for all of it, but Christ, Dubya, let’s at least make an attempt to call it like it is.

There was much, much deserved beating of the wretched economy bullshit. A lot of it from C-SPAN callers, to the tune of “So, if we’re gaining all these new jobs, where’s mine?” There was a congressman what got interviewed after the thing who had some good things to say, as well, to the tune of “do you have any idea how many jobs we’ve lost in this recession? It’s a lot. And we’re not THAT recovered. Oh, and you know the No Child Left Behind crap? Yeah. What money? Because it ain’t getting full funding.”

It is also left as an exercise for the reader to wonder WHERE exactly all the money for these giant new programs Bush keeps coming up with, if we’re cutting taxes. Apparently he’s also going to reduce the deficit and balance the budget or some such crap, as well. As much in awe of Bush’s mad money skillz as I may be…no.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, too, is a rant on Bush attempt to channel the spirit of JFK with that Mars thing, but it’s not coming out yet, and it’s best I don’t let it, lest I hurt myself from the laughter.

I’m also not entirely sure what I want to make of his ideas on illegal immigrants. Believe you me, though, the callers in on C-SPAN sure had ideas, mostly involving tar, feathers, shotguns, and maybe the odd burning cross. In support of Bush, mind you. Frightening business.

I’m not sure I want to touch health care with a stick, but I will note:

I know there’s not much chance of stopping the War on Drugs, but really, we need to do something SLIGHTLY less insane than we’re doing. Too, this whole “Hey kids, drugs are bad, mmmkay?” thing is old. It was old when I was in fucking grade school, actually.

And the steroids thing…whatever. I’m slightly incredulous that we need the POTUS to put this in the State of the Union of all things. Aeeyah.

Too, while everything he says about abstinence-based sex ed is true in a technical sense, it’s still an incredibly stupid idea. I could go on about that one, but I’m thinking not right now.

And about the time he started blathering about the “sanctity of marriage” and “faith-based initiatives” is about where I started getting very annoyed. VERY annoyed. EXTREMELY pissed off.

Although the bit C-SPAN did while he was blathering about it all where they cut to a shot of Ashcroft clapping was pretty amusing.

Still, if I didn’t know anything else about Bush, the fact that he’s a severe right-winger would be enough to make me frightened and ready to vote against him. Almost more than anything else he stands for, actually.

And I think the Democratic response is worth reading. I won’t comment on it, but I think it’s mostly pretty good.