IAEA Chief: Next Time, Ask Our Permission

What a moronic response.

The IAEA, as well as the NPT are AMERICAN ideas and creations. Because we, or at least those Americans back in the days when our government wasn't batshit crazy, understood that the way to control proliferation was through international law, and combined global actions. We understood that one country taking out what they percieve as threats is exactly where we do not want to go.

Aside from that, there now remains no evidence that most of the world will ever be compelled to accept, that the Syrian site really was nuclear. We only have the word of the Israelis, and suppositions by American intelligence. Some may find that convincing. Most will not. Would it not have been better if IAEA inspectors could have examined the site? Or, if they had been refused access, that refusal would have answered the question itself.

IF you know anything about nuclear matter, you know that this building, even if it was a reactor under construction, was years away from producing anything that could have been a threat to anyone. So what is the rush to bomb it while doing nothing whatsoever to make the case that it really is a threat?

There seems to be an absolutely relentless stupidity at work here, in the Israeli approach as well as the RW loonies in the Bush administration.

WE will maintain our position of dominance in the world only by building international institutions that bind other nations to our system, and constrain their behavior into rational channals.

If you think that American power is going to be maintained through this kind of unilaterlaism, and flouting the international structure that WE BUILT after WWII, then you people are dangerous lunatics of the highest order.

But we certainly have had plenty of evidence of that already.
457 days to go....

Hey, JoeCitizen: way to preface your arguments with a glance into your keen intellect. "A moronic response?" That's a hell of a way to talk to a commissioned officer in the US military, particularly since you kicked off your whole diatribe with a falsehood: the US did not propose the NPT. Ireland did, and Finland was the first country to sign it. Ouch.

What a moronic statement.

Here's International Politics 101 for you, Joe: IOs (that's International Organizations to the layperson) derive their legitimacy FROM nation-states, not the other way around. They are only as strong as their member nations choose to see them. The minute that a state perceives that the UN or a similar IO is not acting in its perceived interests, it usually will opt to circumvent that IO, particularly since IOs have virtually no means of enforcing the resolutions they pass, and any enforcement they offer will almost certainly be too little, too late, and incompetent to the highest degree.

Let's go with an example here: the UN. The UN has proven itself about as useful as a shit-flavored lollipop in the past 50 years. Failures of interventions in Somalia and Rwanda, spineless intervention in Bosnia and Cote d'Ivoire, lack of intervention in Sudan and Kosovo and Sierra Leone and Angola, a pitiful effort to block US intervention in Iraq... the only arguable success I can think of is East Timor. And the Korean War, but that was ages ago. UN sanctions caused unspeakable humanitarian disaster in Iraq, and had a minimal effect in ending apartheid in South Africa. Not to mention that a lot of Third World countries perceive the UN Security Council as nothing more than a Good Ol' Boy club of Western powers. They don't want to trust the UN because, frankly, the UN is not trustworthy. The UN, the most recognizable of all international organizations, has an absolutely lousy track record. If the UN was a basketball team, it wouldn't even make it to the playoffs.

Wake up, Joe. International organizations are not the panacea you blindly perceive them to be. They are mostly anemic and incompetent. But instead of saying, "Well, we should just settle for unilateral action all the time," which I think is a horrible idea, I suggest we spend the next few decades trying like hell to reform the UNSC, NATO, and all the other IOs out there that people put too much faith in. They're not worth a warm bucket of spit now, so let's change that. Until they are reformed, they won't inspire any fear or respect in member nations, and rogue states will go on manufacturing illicit nuclear materials, and states like Israel will go on bombing them sporadically to maintain the status quo.

The above "Anonymous" comment was from me. Sorry about that. Just trying to pick up the slack while Slab is over in the Sandbox.

thanks, Slab's brother.

Even if the non-prof treaty was an American creation (which it wasn't), what does that have to do with Israel?

Israel didn't tell the IAEA before it blew Syria nuke site to smithereens. The head of the IAEA is whining about being out of the loop. One big reason he wasn't in the loop was to make sure no one in the IAEA could warn Syria.

Those who have the delusion that the UN actually has any more authority than nations choose to give it are all upset. Meanwhile, genocide continues in Darfur.