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March 7, 2003
These words by the ex-diplomat Richard Woolcott---whom I've seen as stuffed-shirt Wasp and pro-Indonesian---make good sense. Woolcott says:
"Our interests and American interests are not always going to coincide. In recent times we have been too responsive to American pressures. A friend can say no, and I think a good friend should when it feels its ally's taking a mistaken course, even if it doesn't have the capacity to change that course."
Woolcott says the US has taken a mistaken course. Washington's preoccupation with terrorism is assuming the mantle of a moral crusade that will have a distorting effect as an all-powerful America becomes more self-righteous and unilateralist. He says that in mid-2002, Australia should have dissociated itself from the start of the American push to overthrow the Iraqi regime.
What is going on now, Woolcott says, is a charade since "America intends to invade Iraq with or without UN backing." Woolcott argues that the new American doctrine of pre-emptive strikes risks returning us to "the 'might is right' approach... if not to the law of the jungle." What Australia should be doing is arguing "that the world needs a rules-based international order."
Sounds pretty good to me.
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The world needs a rule-based international order? We have a rule-based international organization. The United Nations. An institution full of corrupt, power hungry hypocrites who cannot find its tail. UN is a joke. They should be doing what Americans are doing but they're not. Why is that? They call Americans to restore order in Sudan, I wonder why? In Rwanda? So, do we need another United Nations?