The United States seems to speak with only one diplomatic voice these days, and it is brutish and loud.
The UN Security Council sought via a vote proposed by Syria, to condemn Israel for shooting dead three UN employees and blowing up a Gaza warehouse containing 500 tons of UN food aid. All the other four permanent members of the council — Russia, China, France and the UK—- voted for the Syrian proposal which had been debated and amended over three days. But not the United States. They used their veto to kill the resolution. Why?
What would Washington’s reaction have been if the three unarmed UN staff had been gunned down in Iraq? Would it have argued, as it did over the Syrian resolution condemning Israel, that it was “too particular” and did not take account of the violence being perpetrated on the other side of the Palestinian conflict? One thinks not. Indeed, it is certain that President George W. Bush would by now be risking his first pretzel, as he settled into his big chair in the White House Iraq war room. The US justification for the veto is the more specious because no UN personnel has been killed by Palestinian gunfire, nor have Palestinians destroyed UN aid intended for them.
This resolution was specifically about UN personnel and UN aid. In rejecting it, the Americans are betraying their basic contempt for the organization and its structures and initiatives. It will grab the UN whenever it needs to justify its own foreign policy, but just as quickly discard it like a Kleenex when that purpose has been served.
Washington was prepared to overlook entirely the extremely serious implications for UN officials on duty around the world. Instead, it stood up yet again for Israel, with a slavishness that makes one wonder about the sanity of US foreign policy-makers.
There is even a body of Israeli public opinion which is itself wondering what their military are doing with UN officials. Senior officers have admitted they made mistakes. It would surely not have been too humiliating for Israel to have been censured in a unanimous Security Council resolution? After all, Israel has made an art out of ignoring past UN votes.
And, at least, the UN would have drawn a line in the sand on behalf of the people who serve it, not just in Palestine but throughout the world. But this cut no ice with the US. Unfortunately, US foreign policy seems to be reaching a level of blinkered unsubtlety where even sound arguments for sound causes are drowned out by a brutish roar. Washington is not even bothering to appear to listen to the concerns of its friends.
This is a tall-walking, big stick-carrying presidency which seems increasingly happier to kick down doors rather than stoop and turn the handles.
It is, however, about time that the White House started thinking a few more moves ahead. If an Iraqi invasion goes ahead, the US forces could quickly find themselves in a major jam. Their best and perhaps only way out will be the United Nations, the same United Nations whose staff, the Bush White House currently thinks can be killed without condemnation.
