Charles Krauthammer is outraged by French and Russian resistance to lifting sanctions on Iraq. He proposes a simple solution:
. . . if the State Department sentimentalists who worship at the shrine of the United Nations insist on a pilgrimage to Turtle Bay, we should go to the Security Council and submit a one-line resolution: “Whereas the sanctions were imposed on the regime of Saddam Hussein; whereas that regime is no more; whereas sanctions are now needlessly preventing Iraq’s economic recovery; the sanctions are hereby abolished.”
No “modalities.” No negotiations. No deals. Dare France and Russia to veto.
If they do, if they dare so naked a display of cynicism, we then simply declare that the Security Council has demonstrated its utter bankruptcy and forfeited all moral authority — transcending mere uselessness and becoming now an agent of harm, deliberately standing in the way of the reconstruction of a suffering and now innocent country.
We then ostentatiously stand up, walk out and declare the sanctions dead. We then open the oil spigots and rebuild Iraq.
