What, you're still here?

That's what I wish the US would say to the Kofi Annan and the entire UN. Why we're still a member of this corrupt organization, and why we allow them to reside on US soil, are beyond me. Well, not really. Despite the disingenuous cries of "unilateralism," I'd say our continued membership in the UN serves to at least partially assuage the ravages of world opinion. If we up and quit, and told them to get the hell out, the backlash from the rest of the world may prove to be rather discomfitting.

Still, when I read stuff like this (tip o' the hat to Misha), I just wish the Congress would say to hell with it and present an eviction notice to that large building in New York.

"I hope we do not see another Iraq-type operation for a long time - without U.N. approval and much broader support from the international community," he said in an interview with the BBC World Service.

I refer you to the 30 plus countries that are helping us out in Iraq. True, not all are combatants, but they are there now. And I'll say it again: I'm sure Britain, Australia, Italy, Poland, etc. are surprised to learn that the US did it all by itself. In Kofi's world, "unilateral" means "without the assistance of France and Germany."

The U.N. Charter allows nations to take military action with Security Council approval as an explicit enforcement action, such as during the Korean War and the 1991 Gulf War.

Yes, I'm sure the US-led campaign in Iraq was the only time a member nation has taken military action against another nation without Security Council approval.

But in 2003, in the build-up to the Iraq war, the United States dropped an attempt to get a Security Council resolution approving the invasion when it became apparent it would not pass.

At the time, Annan had underlined the lack of legitimacy for a war without U.N. approval, saying: "If the United States and others were to go outside the Security Council and take unilateral action they would not be in conformity with the Charter."

There was absolutely no way that the Security Council was ever going to sign off on the campaign. It just wasn't going to happen, despite numerous UN resolutions that effectively required the UN to take military action against Iraq. I guess it just shows how good the word of the UN actually is.

After talking about doubts that security conditions in Iraq would allow the elections currently scheduled for January 31, 2005, to take place, the article concludes:

The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, John Danforth, all but ruled out any delay beyond the Jan. 31 deadline for elections in Iraq's interim constitution.

"Let there be no doubt: we are committed to this timetable," he told council members Tuesday.

I'm not going to guarantee that elections will be held on that date. In war, nothing goes entirely as planned, and Iraq is certainly no exception. But I will guarantee that elections will be held, even if they end up being delayed a while. The goal is to have a political system in Iraq that is at least somewhat close to a democracy (with variances that take into account the reality of the culture) and a government that has been elected by the people. We're deliberately trying to infect the area with perhaps the biggest meme of all, liberty. Yeah, it sounds grandiose, and perhaps it really is. But I think it's our best hope for a true and lasting peace.