When President Bush gave his

When President Bush gave his speech to the United Nations, he could not have been much blunter about our intentions to defend ourselves with or without the blessing of the United Nations. I wish our political leaders would follow the train of the argument that subordinates the supposed imperatives of the United Nations, or of “world opinion,” to the national interest of the United States.
I am not a fan of Dick Morris, but his New York Post column today makes the commonsense case against rhetorical subservience to the United Nations that I long to see our political leaders make. In noting the obstruction of France to the UN resolution that we desire, Morris says: “Who appointed France the arbiter of our foreign policy? Paris only has a veto in the Security Council through U.S. generosity and our desire to soothe the wounded ego of the defeated and largely collaborationist nation after World War II. Why does the United States seem so helpless in the face of French opposition to our intention to invade Iraq?”
Admittedly these are not the brilliant thoughts of a master diplomat, but they begin to address in a serious manner the reigning confusion that is fostered by the public discourse on this important subject. Morris’s column is “A deadline for Iraq.”
Katherine Kersten is both our friend and our Center of the American Experiment colleague. She is in addition an intellectual dynamo. In her Star Tribune column tomorrow, Kathy joins Dick Morris in addressing the rightful place of the United Nations in our present deliberations. Her column is “UN is hardly voice of morality on matter of Iraq.”