Going with a Winner

IN the left corner, the United Nations; in the right corner, the United States. It looks like something of a championship match. Except that it isn’t really, so long as the Bush administration keeps its resolve. It is a question of doing the right and obvious thing: It is unthinkable that a proven killer like Saddam Hussein should be able to deploy weapons of mass destruction. The sole means to that end is regime change. If the U.N. has its way, Saddam will give up some disposable part of his deadly weaponry, keep the rest, use it as opportunity arises, and outlast this President Bush and probably subsequent American presidents too. The prospect of such a man forcibly uniting the Arab world concentrates the mind.

The pitiful record of the U.N. in the Middle East speaks for itself. Far from preventing war, it precipitated it in 1967; stood by impotently in 1973; could do nothing about the Syrian invasion of Lebanon and would have accepted the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait unless the United States had acted; prolonged the Palestinian refugee problem; washed its hands of Israeli security; in short, has been pointless at best, harmful at worst.

About the Author

David Pryce-Jones

David Pryce-Jones (1936–2025) was a British author and commentator and served as a senior editor of National Review.

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IN the left corner, the United Nations; in the right corner, the United States. It looks like something of a championship match. Except that it isn’t really, so long as the Bush administration keeps its resolve. It is a question of doing the right and obvious thing: It is unthinkable that a proven killer like Saddam Hussein should be able to deploy weapons of mass destruction. The sole means to that end is regime change. If the U.N. has its way, Saddam will give up some disposable part of his deadly weaponry, keep the rest, use it as opportunity arises, and outlast this President Bush and probably subsequent American presidents too. The prospect of such a man forcibly uniting the Arab world concentrates the mind.

The pitiful record of the U.N. in the Middle East speaks for itself. Far from preventing war, it precipitated it in 1967; stood by impotently in 1973; could do nothing about the Syrian invasion of Lebanon and would have accepted the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait unless the United States had acted; prolonged the Palestinian refugee problem; washed its hands of Israeli security; in short, has been pointless at best, harmful at worst.