President George W. Bush has been warning for months that if the United Nations Security Council does not force Iraq to disarm immediately, it will become an irrelevant player in the international community.
This certainly is not the first time that a nation dragged its feet when told to adhere to resolutions demanding something of it.
Today nations like North Korea blatantly disobey orders, sanctions and resolutions ordered by the United Nations Security Council.
Why then isn’t our President leading a coalition to put North Korea in line? Why isn’t North Korea making the Security Council on the verge of irrelevance? The reason is simple: Bush is not nearly as hawkish regarding North Korea.
President Bush and Tony Blair will be sending a new resolution on the Iraqi crisis to the Security Council early next week which could mark the beginning of the end of any hope for peace.
Bush told the White House Press Corps that the Council will be presented with a “clear and simple” resolution that asks the fifteen members one question: “Is Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein complying with a November resolution demanding that Iraq disarm itself of weapons of mass destruction?”
When a reporter asked if whether the new resolution would be the last chance for the Security Council to prove its relevance, Bush responded with simple “Yes.”
There are many things wrong with the President’s remarks. First of all, who is one man to decide when an international body will become irrelevant? Secondly, why is 2003 the year that Iraq finally casts the UN Security Council into such a state?
Iraqi President, Saddam Hussein, has been hiding his weapons of mass destruction for more than a decade and the UN is still very effective, some argue more now than in 1991 so how Iraq the cause of its irrelevance?
It seems to me that the Council will only become irrelevant if the world’s only superpower casts the international body into oblivion. The Council is expected to vote on the resolution after the next report from Hans Blix, the chief U.N. weapons inspector, on March 7.
