Paul Weyrich
Monday, March 10, 2003

Unless things change significantly in the next week, President George W. Bush does not appear to have the votes in the United Nations Security Council to pass even a compromise resolution giving implicit support for war.

I am surprised this is the case. President Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell have made it clear that if the United States leads a "coalition of the willing," without U.N. approval, it will mean that the United Nations has ceased to be relevant.

Let me make it clear. I have been against the United States going to the U.N. from the beginning. Whether or not Saddam Hussein is a threat to the vital interests of the United States is a debatable proposition.

If he is, as President Bush and many in Congress maintain, then why are we putting our vital interests in the hands of such places as Cameroon and Bulgaria? (Bulgaria, a former Soviet satellite, is proving to be a staunch ally of the United States, so perhaps Mexico would have been a better example.)

The President is a man of faith who says he prays for peace every day and, in any case, prays for the guidance of the Almighty in the decisions he has to make.

The U.N. is, of necessity, a Godless institution. Even if God could be acknowledged, whose God would it be? The God of the Jews? Jesus Christ? Buddha? No, God has no place at the U.N.

How do we ask for the Divine Blessing for the actions of the U.N. when at the U.N. there is no God? Moreover, the way the Security Council is constituted, this country is putting itself in the hands of many nations whose values are at odds with the Judeo-Christian tradition on which this nation was built.

So, if there is not some last-minute change, the United Nations will have gone the way of the League of Nations. Eighteen resolutions and more than a dozen years and they could not force Saddam Hussein, dictator of a fourth-rate power, into submission.

That is not all bad. I have a real problem with the U.N. treading on the sovereignty of a nation, because what can be done to Iraq may very well be done to this country one day.

I am truly surprised that the establishment, which believes in the U.N., would let this happen. Once the U.S. goes it alone, albeit with some significant help from other nations, the U.N. will never be taken seriously again.

Oh, sure, it might remain as some sort of debating forum where nations let off steam. And it might continue as a relief agency, perhaps able to get through in areas where other nations are not welcome.

The dream of the liberals to have some form of one-world government will be left in the ashbin of history.

Unfortunately, as Burton Yale Pines pointed out more than a dozen years ago (just as everyone was cheering George Herbert Walker Bush), the unfortunate legacy of the Gulf War was the fiction that it is necessary to consult the U.N. before acting. Ironically, President Bill Clinton did not seek the blessing of the U.N. in going into Kosovo and Bosnia.

And, initially, President Bush was inclined to go it alone. It was the Democrats in the Congress, along with Colin Powell, who insisted that the U.S. pursue U.N. backing. Only last fall, the Security Council managed to produce a unanimous resolution, with the likes of China, Russia, France and even Syria voting in favor of it.

But now, with the Council refusing to take its own resolution seriously, it really does resemble the League of Nations, which collapsed when it too could not take action at the critical time.

No tears will be shed on this end if that is the outcome. If, as we are told repeatedly, the United States is the last remaining superpower, then let us take matters into our own hands. We are a mature enough nation to determine what sort of foreign policy we want.

Is it the neo-Wilsonian vision offered up by the Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol, or is it that envisioned by George Washington and today being articulated by Pat Buchanan? Perhaps it is something in between.

The nation needs to have that debate. When the matter is reasonably settled, perhaps by who is elected to the presidency and the Congress, we are perfectly capable of carrying on ourselves or with such other nations as we wish, depending upon the circumstances.

While I am not an advocate of this war, I always support the president of the United States when he makes a decision to go to war, no matter which president or what political party he belongs to.

When Bill Clinton went into Bosnia he was not initiating nor responding to war. He had established the U.S. as peacekeepers. He promised that our troops would be back in a year. That was, as I recall, 1995. Never before had the United States intervened with peacekeepers where we had not first fought a war.

Just as with Bush. Never before have we initiated a war with another country. Not even a just war.

Perhaps what happens in Iraq will help to settle the debate. If we have a short war, the casualties are few and the U.S. is able to completely pull out in fairly short order, then the Bush vision will have prevailed.

On the other hand, if the war is prolonged, the casualties high, and it is clear we can't leave anytime soon, the prediction of the Democratic presidential candidates will have come true. That will help settle the debate as well.

No one wants this war, but if we must have it then I hope the outcome is that we did it without the U.N., and that the U.N. ceases to be a serious instrument of our foreign policy. Whatever else the outcome, that would be to our everlasting benefit.

Paul M. Weyrich is Chairman and CEO of the Free Congress Foundation.

Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
George W. Bush
Saddam Hussein/Iraq
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