Yahoo asked Americans to respond to Barack Obama's address to the United Nations on Tuesday and pinpoint one specific international issue they'd like the country to focus on. Here are one reader's thoughts.
COMMENTARY | President Obama cannot help himself but to deal in the currency of hope and change, and today's address to the United Nations is evidence of that. Obama commended the Assad regime for choosing to accept a non-violent solution to its current predicament involving chemical warfare and international law.
"The Syrian government took a first step by giving an accounting of its stockpiles. Now there must be a strong Security Council resolution to verify that the Assad regime is keeping its commitments," Obama said, adding that ". . . there must be consequences if they fail to do so." The president said: "If we cannot agree even on this, then it will show that the United Nations is incapable of enforcing the most basic of international laws."
The president is right: A failure to enforce international law will ultimately result in a world-wide perceived illegitimacy of international law. The only problem is that the world is already at that point.
Consider the Saddam Hussein debacle in the '90s. Whether or not the chemical weapons were actually in Iraq at the time, Saddam Hussein violated international law and thus incurred the consequences. Yet when the United States took it upon itself to impose those consequences, many nations condemned the American-led coalition.
Ten years later in Syria, the UN's own investigation suggests that the Assad regime used chemical weapons on its own people, and yet, because of Vladimir Putin's never-ending quest to thwart America's international influence, the Assad regime has seen no consequences.
So long as the body of nations does not agree upon a standard of international justice, then the United Nations--and the notion of international law itself--will remain a conglomeration of impotent talking points used to justify unilateral action and inaction.
Anyone who believes in universal human rights must support the notion of international law as a method to enforce justice across the globe. But the world must see that the UN Security Council is little more than an international stage for political posturing. Russia and other nations continue to use their unrestricted veto power to thwart the enforcement of international law.
Until the president addresses the elephant in the room, his talk of hope and change will stay in the bullpen while reality continues to play itself out.
Jack Camwell served in the U.S. Navy from 2002 to 2006. He currently resides in Columbus, Ohio.
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