The UN has failed

David Morris writes that Bush was right to claim that the UN has not lived up to its responsibilities on Iraq. Indeed, Morris argues, "The United Nations failed the global community. But for the opposite reason expressed by Bush."

On Sunday, the Security Council was told that the United States would attack Iraq within a matter of days. Yet the United Nations didn't act. Realizing it didn't have the votes to pass a resolution in favor of war, the United States decided to withdraw the resolution. But a few days before Chile had come up with a compromise resolution that would have given Iraq up to 45 days to comply with all the UN's demands. France had come up with its own similar compromise proposal that contained a check list of five steps that Iraq would have to take over the next 4-6 weeks to avoid a war.

It appears likely that the Security Council had the 9 votes necessary to enact these resolutions. But when push came to shove, France and Germany and Russia and China and the others on the Security Council who had insisted they were opposed to war decided not to put it to a vote. That allows the United States at least the fig leaf of relying on earlier United Nations resolutions (678 and 687) to invade Iraq.

A vote against war by the Security Council would have formally declared the United States a rogue nation if it attacked Iraq. Kofi Annan could have followed up the vote by refusing to withdraw the inspectors from Iraq because the Security Council had set a rigorous timetable for compliance and the inspectors needed to stay on the job.

Instead, the UN did nothing, and now the United States has initiated an immoral act of aggression which flies in the face of international law.