Small government was Re: [extropy-chat] EMP Attack?

[Brett Paatsch]

>> Brett Paatsch
>> Subject: Re: Small government was Re: [extropy-chat] EMP Attack?
> ...
>> I think the US 'defected' in game theory terms at the UN and it was
>> seen to 'defect'...
> 
> Brett I read and reread your post but I don't think I 
> understand it.

My fault.  That was unclear. I have posted to this list before my thoughts
on UN Resolution 1441.  I'll go there again if you are interested Spike
but I doubt that you are. The facts are a matter of public record though.

In a nutshell the whole permanent security council agreed to resolution
441 including the US and the UK as permanent security council 
members. That meant that the UN and not the US had been given the
power to determine whether an invasion of Iraq would occur by the US
itself. In simple terms the US had ceded its sovereign power to invade
Iraq unilaterally without UN security council approval. 

It had ceded part of its power when it signed the UN Charter and it
ceded the rest of the power when it signed of on 1441 on the matter
of Iraq. 

The US 'defected' when they refused to be bound by an obligation they
had taken on. When they decided under the Bush administration to
invade Iraq without an enabling security council resolution authorising
them to do so, the US broke faith with the UN.  

The legal minutae was probably lost on most people but the fact that
the US (and allies) invaded to find weapons of mass destruction that
ultimately didn't exist was not lost even on the proles.  Nor was the
view of Kofi Annan, and others, that the invasion was illegal. 

The US invasion of Iraq was a dishonourable and an illegal act. 

>>  Then I think the US voters validated the defection
>> by re-electing the Bush government. The Australian voters did the same
>> here with the Howard government...
>> 
>> But that they were done in front of the whole world in the media is
>> significant to me. ...
> 
> In front of the whole world in the media?

The US approach to the UN, the debate over resolutions, the spin and
counter spin put by various countries, then the invasion itself, then the
failure to find weapons of mass destruction, all of that took place in
front of the world media. 
 
>> ...They voted for mortages or other issues...
> 
> Voted for mortages?  What is that?  Did you mean
> mortgages?  How did they vote for mortgages?

Sorry I did mean mortgages. And the reference probably only applies
to the Australian electorate. The Howard government campaigned 
vigorously and negatively on the basis that they were better economic
managers than the opposition. They talked of interest rates always
going up under the opposition, even though anyone with any economic
understanding (not many unfortunately) knows that interest rates are
not determined by governments they are determined by the reserve 
bank who have a view to the global economy which is largely outside
the control of either political party. 

I said they voted for mortgages but what I should have said was that
voters voted for the version of dumbed down political half truth that
appealed to them best. 
 
>> Brett Paatsch
> 
> Do explain in the light of the successful election 
> recently in Iraq.  Were the Iraqis defecting too?  Are 
> not the Iraqis on the eve of construction?

No. The Iraqis are not defecting, not in the terms I was talking about. 

The surviving Iraqis as a whole (if it makes sense to talk of Iraqis as a
whole) may indeed be beneficiaries of the US 'defection' within the
security council at the UN. I hope that they are. I hope that Iraq 
succeeds in becoming a democracy in the middle east. 

Perhaps future generations will come to regard President Bush as a 
great visionary and strong leader who acted with the blunt instruments
available at the time.

I think that he defines the limits of the age though and the relatively low
rate of progress we are going to see for some time. 

I think that there was an opportunity in the UN after resolution 1441
was signed when the US and the world could have been better than
this. I think Bush and the US under his watch fumbled the ball.

The honourable thing for Bush to have done with the UN was to have 
dropped out of it if he thought it was faulty.  But instead he decided to
stay in it, break its rules when they didn't suit, pretend that he wasn't
breaking them and then try to turn it into something that he could use. 

That is what I think the world is seeing now. The Bush government
going after the UN to make it into an instrument of US foreign policy.  

The rule of law is a phrase that we will hear a lot of lip service paid
too, but the rule of law is exactly what we don't have. 

Brett Paatsch