And today people are still dying. But as the result of this war it just might stop. Not just in Iraq but in a host of places, Tel Aviv and Palestine among them. The shame is that this war is the only idea anyone has come up with. Shame on you. Shame on me. Shame, most of all, on Saddam Hussein.

Seriously, though, I don’t know. I could suggest various half-baked ideas for some proposed UN replacement, but I don’t know enough to actually come up with a viable alternative; I’m not learned enough in the world of international affairs to devise some alternative. All I know is that I’m going to keep protesting about the current situation, and argue about it with people like your good self. (Which, I have to say, has been far more interesting than debating the war with the standard lunk-headed nutters…)

That’s a side-issue to what we were originally debating, although I think that it is a related one. When it comes to the US/UK/Australia being a “force for good” I don’t think you can sideline the Republican element, given that in the past three years US foreign policy has been crafted by the Christian fundamentalists at the heart of the Bush administration. Any subsequent US administration is going to find it very hard indeed to repeal the staggering tax cuts implemented since January 2001, and will face huge opposition if they attempt to scale back the proposed 3.8% increase in the defence budget proposed for 2004, not only from Congress (who knows which party will hold the balance of power in the Senate and the House of Representatives in 2 or 3 years time?), but from the media. Again (as with the UN) that doesn’t mean that the US, in the future, can never be a force for good, but given the current climate and administration, and the long-term impact both of those factors, it’ll be a long time coming, if it ever comes at all.

I’d have to strongly disagree with your assertion that in a democracy your voice only counts if everyone else agrees with you; surely when everyone disagrees with you, most of them without question, is when your voice counts more than ever? Because to be silent in such a situation is to be as complicit as an inactive UN.

We have to trust our leaders, in this case. unless we can demonstrate that they cannot be trusted. It can be demonstrated of the UN - it cannot (at least in the broader sense) be demonstrated of Tony Blair or GW Bush or Joh Howard. If you don’t trust them who can you trust?

Look at the quote again.
Exceeding the U.N.’s mandate would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression we hoped to establish. That principle was first established by the US-led alliance in 1991; the UN took the principle in hand and… let it slip away - it took no action in Somalia, or Rwanda, or Zimbabwe, or even Bosnia except to send in peacekeeping troops who made it easier for genocide to happen. It does not even have a policy about what to do about Iraq.

You say that, if you were an American citizen, you’d be hard pressed to hold your government to account. Well, that’s democracy, and it’s more than the Iraqis get. In a democracy your voice is uniquely important, but it only has meaning if everyone else agrees with you. If they don’t it means, unfortunately, that you’re wrong. ‘Til next time round. Or until you actively join the establised political process.

I get the feeling that those making the loudest noise about Iraq are among the, what, 41% of people (myself among them, mea culpa) who didn’t bother to vote in 2001. We only get to tell our leaders what to do once every five years - after that they tell us what to do. So we gotta make sure we pick a good one… Just thank your Gods it wasn’t little Charlie Kennedy.

As I’m sure you know, Israel have ignored a far greater number of UN resolutions than Iraq. I don’t want to get into a points-scoring “Israel is bad because x, y, z” kind of a debate, and I’m not about to start chanting “Intifada! Intifada!” What I will say, though, is it’s hypocrisy of the most obvious and base kind to invade one country on the pretext of liberating its people whilst not only allowing but funding the oppression of part of another country’s population, simply because that country is your political ally.

Anyway, I digress.
The reasons that I’m opposed to this particular bit of neo-conservative colonialism you already know, and I’m not going to act like a British tourist abroad by shouting louder when you already know what I’m saying. What I was trying to say when I started this reply was that there needs to be serious and urgent reform of the entire structure of the UN, because the world isn’t able to function in any just way at all without some form of international body. That the one we are stuck with now is awful at its job isn’t a reason for ditching the good intentions with which it was originally set up, and that the UN as it currently stands is almost impossible to hold to account is no reason for there not being a body which can be held to account.
Even if I was an American citizen, I’d be hard pushed to hold the US to account; sure, I could vote and hope that the electronic voting systems being brought into the use in the US (developed and manufactured by Republican party donors) are fair, even though the company which built them refuses to let anyone inspect their inner workings (business confidentiality overrides clear and transparent democracy, y’see?). I could protest in the street (as I have done here), hope that enough people feel the same way, and hope that I don’t get demonised by the media for being some sort of cheese-eating surrender monkey. However, that’s pretty limited, and the Bush administration has proved time and again that the only people it is accountable to are its major donors.

The US has made it clear that it sees itself as some sort of moral force for good, the good being their best interests, and an increasingly unaccountable US administration, which aims to establish military dominance across the world (and in space) is, to me, a far more frightening thing than a UN which at least, somewhere along the line, has the potential to be a good thing.

Let me see if I got this right: the UN is inefficient as presently constituted in dealing with international crises; yet the UN is the only authority which should be allowed to deal with international crises. Hmmm. It’s not just inefficient, it is incapable. Its inaction has directly led to the death of millions of human beings, all in the name of some bogus “international concensus”. I originally interfered in this discussion to point out that it was through the UN that the Iraqi regime has been allowed to continue its muderous ways. After the Alliance victory in 1991 the UN told the Alliance, “Thus far and no further… Let us, the international community, take it from here.” And so the Alliance went no further. And the UN did… nothing. Sanctions were imposed which hurt only the Iraqi people; they imposed an oil for food programme which actually helps Hussein, since Iraq’s oil is now sold through intermediaries who kick back 20% of the proceeds directly to the government. And Hans “Give me just a little more time” Blix. Well, in Christine Keeler’s famous words, he would say that, wouldn’t he?

Does anyone now doubt the justice of the 1991 war? They did at the time, but I honestly can’t remember on what grounds. I honestly can’t imagine on what grounds. War really does conform to Clausewitz’s dictum of “diplomacy by other means”. And this one more than most. Remember back in November last year - we all knew what Resolution 1441 meant. The inspections process was restarted only through the threat of imminent war 1441 proposed; the war became inevitable exactly at the moment that the perfidious cheese-eating surrender monkeys (couldn’t help it - thank God for Bart Simpson) made it clear that the US and GB would never get their second resolution.

And they’re being lectured to by Jacques Chirac? The man who actually resumed his country’s nuclear weapons testing progamme, testing 12 atomic devices in the South Seas in clear breach of agreed international conventions, and thus giving tacit permission to, inter alia, countries like India, Pakistand and Isreal to do the same? The friend of Robert Mugabe? The man whose principal drive to power at the last election was to avoid impeachment for political and financial offences (allegedly) commited while in the second-highest office in the land. Bring back Dick Nixon, I say…

You grant that at the start of the Second War noone much minded about Hitler except a handful of visionary politicians (oh, some Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, Hungarians, Austrians, a few Jews, gypsys, homosexuals etc etc), then refuse to grant that - just perhaps - someone might know a little more than you or I. You draw parallels with Israel - forgive me, but I just don’t see where you can go with that. Sure, Israel is this that and the next thing - but to say that it is worse than Iraq, or even comparable, is hardly a serious argument. I bow to no man in my distaste for Ariel Sharon, in my disgust for his role in, among other things, the massacres and Sabra and Shatila or his deliberate rekindling of the Intifada. But what of it? The major factor keeping a monster like Sharon in (democratically elected) power is precisely the ordinary Israeli citizen’s fear of a greater monster like Saddam Hussein.

By all means don’t trust the US administration. By all means hold it to account. But you can hold it to account - which you cannot the UN, nor Saddam Hussein.

And yes, the UN is inefficient, terrible at dealing with both international and internecine disputes, and ought to be reformed in order to rectify this. However, as regard’s who’s qualified to take action, it’s simply not justifiable for any country—the US or anyone else—to step outwith the boundaries of international consensus that exist, and that each country is party to. To do so sets a dangerous precedent; what if, say, either India or Pakistan was to make some sort of “pre-emptive” strike on their neighbour on the grounds that they were perceived as a threat? It’s too implausible a situation, but could you imagine the UN acceding to that? Just sitting back and saying “well, they’ve made their choice, and there’s not much we can do about it”?

Like I said, I agree that the UN isn’t best placed to deal with this, and their list of disastrous lack of interventions stretches back to the time of the UN’s formation, but—and this is a big but—that doesn’t give the US, or any other country, the right to unilaterally (or maybe bilaterally, with British support; after all, how many “coalition” countries are actually providing more than verbal agreement) intervene, particularly if the worldwide body to whicch they are supposed to adhere has not backed the enterprise.

Maybe I was a little flippant with that remark about threats to US interests, but I think it does have some credence, particularly when you look at the way the US (and, for that matter, the UN) consistenly ignored/sold arms to the Iraqi regime which enabled it to gas its own people and invade neighbouring countries.

I’d love to see Iraq rid of Saddam Hussein as well, but I’m not convinced that when the “coalition” “win” it’ll just stop. Should the “coalition” win, then I suspect that the US (and the UK, though they’re a minority character in this particular game) will feel it’s been given carte blanche to then invade Syria and Iran, as well as any other country in the region they feel like invading.

As regards running rings round the UN, ignoring security council resolutions, refusing weapons inspectors access, lying about chemical weapons programs and so on, Iraq, as devious as they’ve been, still have nothing on Israel (and then there’s America, who have recently decided to ignore both nuclear anti-proliferation treaties, as well as those signed to prevent further investment in chemical and biological weapons, and refuse to let independent UN inspectors inside military installations).

Yes, there’s obviously been a good case for getting rid of Saddam Hussein for years, but it’s not the case that’s been made in an attempt to justify this war. And quite simply, I don’t trust the US administration to be the ones to do the best job. I can’t think of a single country that they’ve intervened in since 1945 which resulted in a democracy being installed, but I can think of plenty where a democracy, however flawed it might have been, was replaced by a brutally autocratic head of state willing to do business with the US (Chile being a prime example).

Yes, there are many sides to this situation, and I’m sure you could find quotes from as many Iraqis who want to get rid of their leader as I could find quotes from Iraqis who want the “coalition” forces to withdraw. Thing is, there are better means of resolving this than the current war; diplomacy, to use a hackneyed phrase, had not been exhausted; indeed Hans Blix has said recently that given more time, the inspection and dismanlting of Iraq’s weapons would probably been possible, because he believed that the inspections process was working. That’s not to say it would have been a cakewalk, as it were, but surely a peaceful means of disarming the Iraqi regime, would be preferable.

A final point: our leaders might be the people who, for better or worse, the people we made our leaders, but that doesn’t mean we have to (i) accept that they’re always right or (ii) not make ourselves heard when we fell they’re not doing the right thing, or that they’re doing something for the wrong reasons.