Empowering the UN.

In a most contemptible fashion, ambitious globalists are working overtime to use the vicious terrorist attack on America to further their internationalist agenda.

And now the war. With bombs and missiles falling in Afghanistan, a defiant Osama bin Laden is promising that "neither America nor the people who live in it will dream of security before [Muslims] live it in Palestine, and not before all the infidel armies leave the land of Muhammad." Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld predicted in a recent New York Times editorial that this will be

a war like none other our nation has faced.... It will involve floating coalitions of countries, which may change and evolve.... This is not a war against an individual, a group, a religion or a country. Rather, our opponent is a global network of terrorist organizations and their state sponsors.... Forget about "exit strategies"; we're looking at a sustained engagement that carries no deadlines.

So far, however, America's first war of the new century very much resembles many of the conflicts of the last century: hi-tech missiles, warplanes, and naval task forces raining destruction from beyond the range of obsolete air-defense systems; raging mobs reacting to inflammatory rhetoric; and the ominous prospect -- as Secretary Rumsfeld implied -- of military engagement without any end in sight. In common with America's post-World War II 20th-century wars -- from Korea and Vietnam to the Persian Gulf, the Balkans, Somalia, and a galaxy of lesser conflicts -- this one was embarked upon without a congressional declaration of war. But unlike any of the others, it is in response to an attack against U.S. citizens on American soil. Terrorism, we have learned, is a legitimate threat to the security of the United States.

But the war on terrorism -- like the aforementioned 20th century conflicts -- has other aims besides the publicly stated eradication of international terrorism. The winds of war carry the smell of opportunity for the world's power elites. British Prime Minister Tony Blair, in a speech to the Labor Party, indicated that:

Round the world, September 11th is bringing governments and people to reflect, consider and change. There is a coming together.... The issue is not how to stop globalisation. The issue is how we use the power of community to combine it with justice.... This is a moment to seize. The kaleidoscope has been shaken. The pieces are in flux. Soon they will settle again. But before they do, let us re-order this world around us.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, speaking to the UN General Assembly on October 2nd, said of the war on terrorism:

In this struggle, there is simply no alternative to international cooperation. Terrorism will be defeated if the international community summons the will to unite in a broad coalition, or it will not be defeated at all. The United Nations is uniquely positioned to serve as the forum for this coalition.... The urgent business of the United Nations must now be to develop a long-term strategy, in order to ensure global legitimacy for the struggle ahead. The legitimacy that the United Nations conveys can ensure that the greatest number of states are able and willing to take the necessary and difficult steps -- diplomatic, legal, and political -- that are needed to defeat terrorism.

According to a September 26th article in the Washington Times, David Donalcattin, a UN legal expert working to set up the International Criminal Court, exulted that "the bombing, and subsequent calls for a global alliance against terrorism, has shaken Washington off its anti-multilateral course.... The great news for us [is] that American isolationism is finished.... This attack has shown, and the White House seems to hear, that no nation can do it alone."

Capitalizing on a Crisis

In other words, once again we are faced with the sordid spectacle of globalist insiders, at home and abroad, exploiting war and tragedy to further empower the United Nations. Make no mistake about it: Globalists intend to turn this conflict into yet another referendum on American sovereignty, and to gull Americans, caught in the emotion of the moment, into surrendering more of their freedom to unconstitutional and unaccountable international enforcement organs. The UN, meanwhile, emboldened by its newfound, Establishment-promoted aura of respectability and legitimacy, is poised to exact dangerous new concessions on national sovereignty from member nations.

The United Nations wasted little time positioning itself at the head of the fray. The day after the attacks, the Security Council rushed out Resolution 1368, which called on states to "work together urgently to bring to justice the perpetrators, organizers, and sponsors of these attacks" and expressed "readiness to take all necessary steps to respond to the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, and to combat all forms of terrorism, in accordance with its responsibilities under the Charter of the United Nations." Still, Secretary of State Colin Powell, as reported by Nicholas Kralev of the Washington Times, said on September 26th that the United States didn't require UN approval before responding militarily to the attacks: "At the moment, notwithstanding all the coalition building we have been doing, President Bush retains the authority to take whatever actions he believes are appropriate in accordance with the needs for self-defense of the United States and of the American people." So far so good; but Secr etary Powell then added, according to Kralev, that "that authority ... is based on Article 51 of the U.N. Charter, which gives member states the right to self-defense." In fact, the right of the federal government to defend our nation comes not from the United Nations but from U.S. citizens who have delegated that authority to the federal government via the U.S. Constitution. "We the people of the United States" established this Constitution expressly to, among other things, "provide for the common defense." In particular, the Constitution grants Congress the power "To declare war"; "To raise and support armies"; "To provide and maintain a navy"; and "To ... repel invasions...." It also, of course, makes the President "commander in chief of the Army and Navy of the United States Surely this most basic knowledge of the U.S. system of government is not unknown to our Secretary of State?

Despite the Bush administration's unmistakable toadying to United Nations authority from the earliest stages of the crisis, the UN-based internationalist Establishment does not intend to be perceived as a mere rubber-stamp for American and British policymakers. University of Pennsylvania scholar Robert Wright, writing in the New York Times on September 24th, touted international agreements like the Chemical Weapons Convention and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty as "tame" precedents for more restrictive international arms treaties to come. Wright also decried "the extreme devotion of the conservatives to national sovereignty." Changes to come, he warned, could include "the creation of international policing mechanisms that could impinge on national sovereignty as never before.... Clinging to American sovereignty at all costs isn't just wrong. It's impossible.... So the question isn't whether to surrender national sovereignty. The question is how -- carefully and systematically, or chaotically and catastroph ically?" Get the message? The time to empower the UN and associated international organs is now, before the furor over terrorism subsides and the UN-as-world-savior message loses its appeal.

International Criminal Court

Nor do the internationalists intend to limit their campaign to appeals for more international controls on weapons of mass destruction. The newly minted UN subsidiary, the International Criminal Court (ICC), which the United States has so far rejected, is a major item on the globalist agenda that is now being promoted with a vengeance. Dutch Foreign minister Jozias van Aartsen said in the wake of the attacks, "We emerge more convinced than ever of the need to strengthen the international legal order and the fight against universal crimes.... Universal crimes deserve a universal answer." Mike Aaronson, director general of Save the Children, wrote in the London Times that:

it is precisely to deal with gross crimes against humanity, such as those perpetrated last week, that the International Criminal Court ... is being set up.... Ironically, the United States has been the country that has been most reluctant to agree to the ICC, which needs ratification by 60 countries before it can come into being. We hope that last week's tragic events will give fresh impetus to strengthening the international legal framework for the pursuit of acts of inhumanity, wherever and by whom they are committed.

And U.S. Senator Christopher Dodd, despite publicly opposing the language of the ICC treaty, nevertheless endorsed the product. "I cannot believe," Dodd fumed, "that ... at the very moment we are asking the world to join in apprehending the thugs and criminals who claimed 6,000 lives ... we would say we will have nothing to do with the establishment of an International Criminal Court."

While we have warned of the dangers of the ICC before in the pages of this magazine, it bears repeating that, however attractive the notion of Nuremburg-style international proceedings, the ICC is a trap. Images of bin Laden and his henchmen tried publicly and then marching off to the gallows, like the Nazis of the last century, may seem viscerally appealing.

But how will Americans react to the deportation and trial of American servicemen accused in some future war of committing "crimes against humanity," and tried and sentenced by tribunals far from America's shores with no accountability to American law?

Disarmament Under the UN

The fight against terrorism, defined in the broadest possible terms, is an opportunity to prosecute more aggressively the United Nations campaign to disarm civilians worldwide. As Kofi Annan said ominously in his October 1st address to the General Assembly, "we need to strengthen controls over other types of weapons that pose grave dangers through terrorist use. This means doing more to ensure a ban on the sale of small arms to non-state groups." That's right: small arms in the hands of "non-state groups," which could, of course, include gun clubs or individual families, are a potential "terrorist" threat. As to just who the terrorists are, or how "terrorism" might be defined for legal purposes, Annan was ambiguous: "Some of the most difficult issues relate to the definition of terrorism. I understand and accept the need for legal precision. But let me say frankly that there is also a need for moral clarity." There, as always with leftist utopians, is the rub: Legality is to be held hostage to the supposed mo ral rightness of the cause.

The events of September 11th have swept away political resistance to the payment of "back dues" the U.S. supposedly owes the UN. In a remarkable turn of the political tide, George W. Bush on October 5th signed a bill, sponsored by longtime UN critic Senator Jesse Helms, to pay $582 million in back dues to the world body. "This release of funds," Bush said, "will enhance the close bond between the United States and the United Nations, and will help to facilitate the work the United States carries out in concert with other UN members."

Even public opinion, once skeptical of the world body, has become dangerously accommodating, if the polls are to be believed. In an Associated Press poll taken soon after the September 11th attacks, 64 percent of respondents said that the UN is doing a good job, nearly half favored U.S. payment of UN dues, and a whopping nine out of ten Americans surveyed want the UN involved in pulling together an international anti-terrorism coalition.

On September 28th, the Security Council issued Resolution 1373, essentially a more robust, fleshed-out version of 1368. In stark, high-handed language, the resolution

[d]ecides that all States shall: Prevent and suppress the financing of terrorist acts.... Refrain from providing any form of support, active or passive, to entities or persons involved in terrorist acts, including by suppressing recruitment of members of terrorist groups and eliminating the supply of weapons to terrorists.... Ensure that any person who participates in the financing, planning, preparation or perpetration of terrorist acts or in supporting terrorist acts is brought to justice and ensure that, in addition to any other measures against them, such terrorist acts are established as serious criminal offenses in domestic laws and regulations.

Once again, conspicuously absent from the document is any attempt to define terrorism. Resolution 1373 presumes to dictate to states even the requirement for anti-terrorism laws. And, considering the United Nations' hostility to civilian firearms ownership, it is no stretch to imagine skeptics of omnipotent government smeared with the "terrorist" label.

And so we arrive, as we always do, to the language of battleships, missiles, and warplanes; behind the rhetoric of peace by political means lurks always the premise of force, no less so with the UN than with any sovereign nation. On October 7th, as the bombs began falling, the U.S. State Department, in a public announcement circulated worldwide to embassy personnel, announced the initiation of military action "pursuant to its inherent right of self-defense recognized in Article 51 of the Charter." President Bush, bowing to globalist precedent, notified the UN Security Council that the war on terrorism may be extended beyond Afghanistan to other countries and reaffirmed that the operation against the Taliban was an act of self-defense--under the UN Charter. The world we thought we knew is fraying at the edges. Fareed Zakaria, longtime shill for the Council on Foreign Relations and the internationalist Establishment, is enjoying the ride, according to his recent Washington Post opinion piece: "Now a crisis is upon us and [the Bush] team is paying America's UN dues, taking matters to the United Nations, telling Russia that we understand its situation in Chechnya, forgiving Pakistan for its nuclear explosions and even finding a kind word for the Iranian mullahs.... Welcome to the real new world order."