April 15, 2004

More Nonsense From MoveOn.org

I got an e-mail forward last night from my grandmother, of all people, alerting me about the latest big campaign by the lefty website MoveOn.org: a petition calling for the U.S. to “immediately transfer management authority over Iraq to the United Nations, to enable a transition to peaceful Iraqi self-rule.”
Just a few holes in this little theory of theirs:

1) Who ever said the UN wanted to take over authority of Iraq? Hint: not the UN. They evacuated all of their Baghdad personnel after last fall’s bombing, going according to their recent pattern of being much more eager to run away from war zones than towards them.

2) MoveOn is apparently unaware that there’s no such thing as “UN troops”- when the UN commits troops to an operation, such troops are provided by participating countries. And since so many UN members opposed the war, or supported it but declined to provide soldiers, a UN force in Iraq would likely consist of- American and British troops, with a few others sprinkled in as well. A UN-operated force would be “all the same soldiers, just with different-colored helmets,” as David Frum has said.

3) Wouldn’t a US abdication of control/withdrawal of troops (its implied corollary) do nothing but send the message that terrorism works, and give the likes of Moqtada al-Sadr exactly what they want?

4) Why would a transfer to the UN cause the violence to magically stop? Is there any reason Iraqi militants would be any more amenable to being occupied by the UN than by the U.S.? And why do we need the UN to supervise the “transition to peaceful Iraqi self-rule,” when we’re already planning to do the exact same thing, in just two and a half months?

5) Not content to be both morally and logically wrong, MoveOn then stoops to rank dishonesty, as it picks-and-chooses supportive quotes by Thomas Friedman, John McCain, and Chuck Hagel- all of whom, as anyone familiar with any of them surely knows, vehemently oppose MoveOn’s position. In fact, the only American politician I know of who has endorsed a US/UN switch in Iraq is that noted Democratic moderate, Dennis Kucinich.

It’s unbelievable that a group with as much influence –and money- as MoveOn could be so clueless. I'd like to see them go the way of MOVE.

Posted by Stephen Silver at April 15, 2004 06:10 PM
Comments

as critical as i am of the motives and way in wich we went into iraq...i completely agree with you

Posted by: wagz at April 16, 2004 11:08 AM
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