Shows Over - Let The Games Continue And The Eventual Fireworks Begin

Hot Air has edited video of Ahmadinejad at the UN. The New York Times writes it up here. Observers of this sort of an international affair know what's coming next, even if it will be interminably long in the coming.

Barring some sudden, unexpected turn, we'll hear talk, much of it bluster from Iran. ElBaradei at the IAEA will strain to have his weak voice heard, making it all the more difficult for the civilized world to eventually get around to dealing with the thugs in Iran seeking nuclear weapons.

That France is already using such strong rhetoric is a good thing, but only in as much as it keeps America from having to do that very thing. The two most frequently used expressions over the next couple of months will be all options are on the table and we want to solve this diplomatically. And they'll be about as meaningful as re-reading a boring book for the fourteenth time while not quite recalling the ending, though knowing that only the ending is actually worth the read.

Everyone has and continues to go through the motions - Columbia, the UN and its various members. And so we'll go on until one day most likely in late Spring when Matt Drudge gets to haul out his flashing light and announce that someone, America, Israel, a coalition? has begun bombing Iran.

So, let the games continue and wait for the fireworks at the end. Not much else to do, really.

Comments

[ajacksonian]

The ever popular 'diplomacy backed by nothing' concept, to be deployed again by all and sundry. That works ever so well against tyrants and dictators who are still in control of their Nation, doesn't it? Look at how 'honorable' North Vietnam was... they gave us peace! And then did what they wanted anyways once we were gone...

That sweet, vegetarian, non-smoking, tea-totaler who just wanted Austria, the Sudetenland, then just about everything else in sight once he got the first two and the rest of Czechoslovakia as a free bonus gift. Why if you backed down to him one more time, he would have gotten most of Northern Poland, stepped into 'defend' Poland when the Soviets took their piece and then he would have used the stolen gold reserves from the Czechs and anything he could extract from Poland to further upgrade his tanks and aircraft... another year or so of doing nothing and a full sub fleet to take out the Royal Navy along with a Blitzkrieg on France and that would wrap it up for Europe. But diplomacy would have *worked*!

Then that lovely diplomacy over Ethiopia prior to that conflict... didn't stop the Italians from invading, although they never counted on the Lost Ark to be brought out against them...

Kaiser Wilhelm, the Austro-Hungarians, France, Britain, Ottomans, Russians all had great diplomacy and it worked *perfectly*! Got one of the most horrific wars seen until the next one, all due to lovely diplomacy actually *working* so that a minor spark in a Serb enclave could touch off a global conflict. Good going, diplomats!

Then you have the problem folks, like the Magic Kingdom of Mr. Kim, who has no intention of holding to a treaty and, once he signs one, immediately begins demanding *more*. He got 'half a loaf' and now wants half of the rest... Zeno's paradox inaction!

Really, trying to let 'third parties' figure it out doesn't work too well either. Teddy Roosevelt looked at it in his autobiography in dealing with the Panama Canal treaty and arbitration for figuring out tolls:

"I emphatically disbelieve in making universal arbitration treaties which neither the makers nor any one else would for a moment dream of keeping. I no less emphatically insist that it is our duty to keep the limited and sensible arbitration treaties which we have already made. The importance of a promise lies not in making it, but in keeping it; and the poorest of all positions for a nation to occupy in such a matter is readiness to make impossible promises at the same time that there is failure to keep promises which have been made, which can be kept, and which it is discreditable to break."

Which does point a finger at the modern ICC and the war crimes trials there for the Balkans, Rwanda and other places. That also goes for the IAEA and various other organizations that have Nations that have signed onto such things, and then have no intention of keeping to any form of 'limited arbitration'. And if you try to actually enforce such things, then you are decried as imperialistic, warmongering, etc. when all you are doing is trying to keep a Nation to the word of its National leaders. The lack-luster response of the signatories of the IAEA and other, similar, treaty based organizations points to a lack of commitment to want to *keep* those treaties... with those doing the asking for 'diplomacy' to work its tender mercies not understanding that the treaty IS THE RESULT OF THAT. If you don't want to hold any Nation, other than the US, to its agreements and then want to hamper the US with unsigned agreements or those that contradict the Constitution, just *say so* and be identified for your unwillingness to have a Nation.

If you purport to support treaties, you will also support the mechanisms necessary to uphold them and keep Nations to their agreements. Intransigent Nations who sign Treaties to stifle the ability of others to act and delay any process of accountability are signing such in bad faith and need to be recognized as such. You do actually have to name them, tell them what they did wrong, why it is wrong and that your Nation will use means to hold the one breaking the treaty accountable to it. If you do not support enforcement mechanisms, which includes warfare against the worst offenders, then do not advocate any treaty at ALL as they are meaningless without Nation to Nation accountability.

We are paying for decades of being unwilling to uphold treaties, unwilling to call activities as they are and actually make others accountable to treaties and to demonstrate the treaties that we sign have any meaning to us at all. The death toll from unaccountable activities and warfare rises as we dare not call it as it is, for that means that Nations *mean something to us* as does the accountability factor. Diplomats can report on if negotiations are in 'good faith' or not. In accountability to same, they will let you know if those that are acting against a treaty actually have done so by mistake or with intention to do so. Diplomats are pretty good at that, but always hedge on the side of caution.

Diplomats can do a great job on things on which all parties have some basic agreement, or in which some understood things can be negotiated over. Otherwise you just end up giving a 'half-loaf' to someone looking to get more and the entire thing if possible, and that is failure in using and understanding diplomacy and sacrificing good sense on the altar of 'peace'.

[dumbblonde]

"even if it will be interminably long in the coming"

Yes. The process has already been interminable. Yet moving ever forward. Iran truly wants a confrontation and a confrontation they will have, despite the efforts of the West to drag our collective feet and find a way out of it.

Ironically, when that moment finally comes, we'll once again be subjected to accusations of a "rush to war."

If only. If we had been in more of a "rush", we might not be in such a difficult position at this ever-later date.