Ed Wood "The Right Stuff" Published Feb. 19, 2003

His Excellency, Kofi Annan

Yes, that's how he's addressed as secretary-general of the United Nations. "His Excellency." And as such, he may think he is exalted above all men, but under his leadership the United Nations has become impotent and increasingly irrelevant.

This past Saturday, His Excellency spoke at the College of William and Mary. He took the occasion of his celebrity to warn the United States that it must not declare war on Iraq without U.N. Security Council agreement. Now wait a minute. Didn't the U.N. Security Council just give the United States a unanimous 15-vote passage of their Resolution 1441 authorizing the United States to take action in defense of the U.N.'s previous resolutions, all seventeen of them, that called upon Saddam Hussein to give up his weapons of mass destruction?

If I recall, it was the United States of America that got attacked by terrorists, aided and abetted by the country of Iraq, causing massive destruction and the lives of some 2,800 innocent victims. What I don't recall is the United Nations rushing to our defense and offering us aid in coping with this disaster. I don't recall the United Nations rising to the occasion to assist us in the establishment and funding of a Department of Homeland Security to guard against future terrorist attacks sponsored and largely financed by members of this same United Nations organization.

President Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell have each gone hat-in-hand before His Excellency and his cronies, and pleaded for support to not only defend ourselves, but to defend the integrity of the United Nations itself. After all, it is their seventeen resolutions to which Saddam Hussein has repeatedly thumbed his nose. It is they who should be enforcing their own resolutions. It is they who are proving daily their impotence and irrelevance.

Yet His Excellency is still trying to exert his non-existent authority by demanding that President Bush wait for yet another U.N. resolution authorizing our defense of our vital interests. I do believe that authority, and that responsibility, is already vested in our president by virtue of the Constitution of the United States of America!

The fact that His Excellency is wanting the United States to await still another U.N. resolution, in addition to the one already unanimously voted, just admits that they realize that none of their resolutions have any meaning at all. Whether it is their Resolution 1441 in support of the United States, or any of the previous 17 U.N. resolutions in defiance of Saddam Hussein, they are meaningless.

So now President Bush is approaching a moment of decision. Should we continue to support the U.N. and their cat and mouse game with Saddam, as France, Germany, and Russia are recommending, or has the time come for action? After all, right now no one is being hurt. There are no biological attacks. And in the words of that great humanitarian, Rodney King, "can't we all just get along" for a little while longer? Do we have to attack Iraq right now when we have so many other problems - a slow economy, the alleged presence of home-grown terrorist cells, the threat of North Korea.

Let me offer a famous quotation. As you read it, you try to guess its author. (No peeking, now!)

"Now let's imagine the future. What if he (Saddam) fails to comply (with the U.N. resolutions) and we fail to act, or we take some ambiguous third route which gives him yet more opportunities to develop his program of weapons of mass destruction?

Well, he will conclude that the international community has lost its will. He will then conclude that he can go right on and do more to rebuild an arsenal of devastating destruction. And someday, some way, I guarantee you, he will use the arsena."

That, gentle readers, was a statement made by President William Blythe Clinton, Feb. 17, 1998. Almost exactly five years ago. And if that doesn't convince you, two days later, on Feb. 19, 1998, his secretary of state, Madeline Albright, made the following statement:

"I can honestly tell you that I don't think that the world has seen, except maybe since Hitler, someone who is quite as evil as Saddam Hussein. If you don't stop a horrific dictator before he gets started too far - he can do untold damage. So, my lesson out of all of this is deal with the problem at the time that you can and don't step away from it thinking that it'll go away."

Of course that begs the question as to why these two leaders didn't act on their convictions. I am sure that is a question President Bush ponders daily. But Mr. Bush is now faced with the consequences of his predecessor's inaction. Speaking in Nashville on Feb. 10, he said,

"We face an outlaw regime in Iraq that hates our country. A regime that aids and harbors terrorists and is armed with weapons of mass murder. My attitude is that we owe it to future generations of Americans and citizens in freedom-loving countries to see to it that Mr. Saddam Hussein is disarmed."

So Your Excellency, Mr. Annan, the task before us is rather obvious, as stated by two American presidents, from each of our two major political parties. Either lead, Your Excellency, or have the courtesy to just get out of the way.

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Ed Wood is a resident of Sparta, TN. His column is published each Wednesday in the Crossville Chronicle.