I MADE IT THROUGH THE WILDERNESS:

We've, all of us, a tendency to think of the Right as the hard-bitten cyncical folk and the Left as the starry-eyed idealists. But in its insistence on the moral supremacy of multilateralism and U.N. authority the Left makes the Right look positively dewy and virginal. Check out this bit on the new UN resolution, France, Russia Bend on Iraq: Key Security Council members seem ready to accept a compromise with the U.S. on a resolution to back up inspections with force. (Maggie Farley, Robin Wright and Tyler Marshall, October 18 2002, LA Times):

The resolution proposed by the U.S. is a deliberately ambiguous compromise that allows its main opponent on the council, France, to take credit for keeping the U.S. from acting without the U.N. Although the United States would prefer U.N. backing, the language of the draft also ensures that it would not have to win a second Security Council resolution to authorize a strike.

"The United States does not need any additional authority, even now, to take action to defend ourselves," Powell said. Any resolution that emerges, he added, would preserve the right of the U.S. to act in concert with other nations "even though the U.N. would not wish to act."

The French have been insisting on a two-step process designed to keep the U.S. from launching a strike as soon as weapons inspectors run into trouble in Iraq. The first resolution, under the French proposal, would strengthen the inspectors' mandate and grant them immediate access to any site in Iraq. If the inspectors were impeded, the French would require a second resolution to approve war. In the last week, however, French diplomats have amended their criteria to a "second meeting, not necessarily a resolution," paving the way for compromise.

What additional moral authority can an attack on Iraq gain by allowing the French and Russians to perpetrate the illusion that they've had some influence on the course of events?

Posted by Orrin Judd at October 18, 2002 12:41 PM