other state. T he reason for the unprecedented response to Saddam
Hussein wasn’t his brutal aggression—it was because he stepped on
the wrong toes.
Saddam Hussein is a murderous gangster—exactly as he was
before the Gulf War, when he was our friend and favored trading
partner. His invasion of Kuwait was certainly an atrocity, but well
within the range of many similar crimes conducted by the US and its
allies, and nowhere near as terrible as some. For example,
Indonesia’s invasion and annexation of East T imor reached near-
genocidal proportions, thanks to the decisive support of the US and
its allies. Perhaps one-fourth of its population of 700,000 was killed,
a slaughter exceeding that of Pol Pot, relative to the population, in
the same years.
Our ambassador to the UN at the time (and now Senator from
New York), Daniel Moynihan, explained his achievement at the UN
concerning East T imor: “T he United States wished things to turn
out as they did, and worked to bring this about. T he Department of
State desired that the United Nations prove utterly ineffective in
whatever measures it undertook. T his task was given to me, and I
carried it forward with no inconsiderable success.”
T he Australian Foreign Minister justified his country’s
acquiescence to the invasion and annexation of East T imor (and
Australia’s participation with Indonesia in robbing T imor’s rich oil
reserves) by saying simply that “the world is a pretty unfair place,
littered with examples of acquisition by force.” W hen Iraq invaded
Kuwait, however, his government issued a ringing declaration that
“big countries cannot invade small neighbors and get away with it.”
No heights of cynicism trouble the equanimity of Western
moralists.
As for the UN finally functioning as it was designed to, the facts
are clear—but absolutely barred by the guardians of political
correctness who control the means of expression with an iron hand.
For many years, the UN has been blocked by the great powers,
primarily the United States—not the Soviet Union or the T hird
World. Since 1970, the United States has vetoed far more Security
Council resolutions than any other country (Britain is second,
France a distant third and the Soviet Union fourth). Our record in
the General Assembly is similar. And the “shrill, anti-Western
rhetoric” of the T hird World commonly turns out to be a call to
observe international law, a pitifully weak barrier against the
ann
(Ann)
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