Posted by
JDComments on Thursday, December 14, 2006 10:45:55 AM
"No state can make its own actions legitimate in the eyes of others. When power, especially military force, is used, the world will consider it legitimate only when convinced that it is being used for the right purpose—for broadly shared aims—in accordance with broadly accepted norms."
These are some of Kofi Annan'a parting words regarding US foreign policy, and for me they summarize the Liberal mindset perfectly: only if you get the approval of others can your decisions be correct. Yes, he says legitimate in others' eyes, but the underlying message is that theirs is the only legitimacy that counts since if we all decide that for ourselves there would be anarchy. The mob therefore is the arbiter of truth, pretty much the operating philosophy of the French Revolution, that iconic moment that has spawned more death and destruction than any other single event in history through its authoritarian descendants. Sounds like a role model for me!
If you think about it, all old Kofi is saying is that the jury gives the final verdict, and guilt and innocence, truth or falsity, is just something they decide based on their normative [or maybe not so normative] values. It's just Liberal relativism in different words.
And as we have found in such classic cases as O.J.Simpson, sometimes a jury's definition of truth doesn't seem to hit the mark, but then again, what is truth? For Liberals, truth is what the majority says it is.
Therefore for a Liberal, and the UN is just the institutionalization of their beliefs writ large, unless you can convince all those other hundreds of countries, each weighing their own interests, that your policy is "correct" , your efforts are "wrong" and illegitimate and have to be undermined.
Now there are reasons to seek international support for your foreign policy, among which is sharing the logistical and military burdens, but to believe that you need the validity bestowed by majority acclaim is as stupid as believing the Sun circled the Earth until Copernicus convinced the masses that it was the other way around. The truth was always there; Copernicus' fight was with the ignorance of the masses, as in our case it is with the stupidity and /or self interest of other nations.
So as Bush continues to wage a war the rest of the world eschews, we should remember that its righteousness doesn't depend on China or Russia or France, but what we believe to be in our's and the world's best interest. The majority rule for establishing legitimacy is a tool which is used in many contexts, but the greatest leaps forward for civililzation have been made when a single person has refused to accept what most believed to be true, and found the actual truth which others eventually came to accept . Truth is real, and only history will tell us if our choice was correct, not the votes of a bunch of envious countries.