Iran calls to expel Israel from UN after strike on Syria

[moniss]

This is the title to an article from VOA news dated 11/11/24 re-posted from AFP. It is about a strike in Syria. It would be nice for several countries to be expelled including Iran and Syria but it does highlight a point that people have tried to make before. That is the idea that one country or another claims the "right" to go into any other country and conduct military strikes wherever they suspect people who have been attacking them might be. Other countries around the world have long questioned why this is OK for some but not for others.

In other words if the US had militia groups living here in Miami who were doing command/funding for attacks in Cuba, Nicaragua, El Salvador etc. then by the reasoning allowed in the Middle East it would have been perfectly acceptable for those countries to attack buildings in Miami thought to house such operations. No squabbling from the US allowed. Sauce for the goose and the gander.

But we know that would never be allowed. Because it's us rather than someone else. The idea that a country has carte blanche to conduct airstrikes anywhere in the world in any country against people suspected of being in terror groups is not something that's OK when one country does it but not another. That is what has troubled so many of the member nations in the UN about allowing any and all attacks simply on one countries "claims". The notion that because it is claimed that makes it a fact is also on shaky ground because if that justification method holds then it can be turned around and the ones using it can be on the receiving end.

The whole thing becomes nothing less than an international open season on each other simply by making claims and then exercising the "right" that has become an allowed precedent. As with so much of many countries foreign policy since WW2 it has become completely a matter of "do as we say, not as we do", "anything is OK for me but not for you" etc. That is hardly some moral high ground to lecture to other countries or supposedly cajole them about "the actions of civilized modern nations" and insisting about resolving problems by international cooperation.

How many countries have seen the way of the powerful countries when a weaker country doesn't submit to their demands? Do we pretend we don't try to uproot and defeat their leaders so that we will get the trade/military agreements, for example, we want? Do we pretend we don't use our Intelligence apparatus to destabilize? Do we pretend we don't use and enable "off the books groups" to do some of these things?

It won't change because I or others bring it up but at least we should drop the BS about it and just call it for what it is. Own it. The powerful claim a right to do things and let their friends do things that they deny to others. There it is all in that statement. Hypocrisy rules the day in the supposedly "developed" nations.

https://www.voanews.com/a/iran-calls-to-expel-israel-from-un-after-strike-on-syria-/7860263.html

[pat_k]

1. Repeated failure to apply international law to Israel's actions undermines enforcement elsewhere.

[moniss]

2. Likewise for actions of other nations

as I've pointed out. It is a horrendous mess and one with many guilty parties stretching back a great number of decades. Suffice it to say that countries lead by the French, British and US have for well over a century practiced double-dealing and hypocrisy in their dealings in Africa, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean as well as elsewhere.

Writers far better than I have produced articles pointing out the conduct of the former Colonial powers in the post-Colonial period towards the nations they formerly controlled. It is much of this "illusion of having your freedom" that is talked about. The best way I have heard it posed is one writer from an African nation said "How am I free if you are still doing what you can to control me"?

[pat_k]

3. It's hard to hang onto, but I must believe ...

...we, and other nations and peoples of goodwill on this planet, can do better.

"I don't measure America by its achievement, but by its potential."
— Shirley Chisholm

[Mosby]

4. Who are the permanent SC members?

China, France, Russia, UK and the US.

What if we replaced the UK with Egypt, and the US with Venezuala and France with Libya.

Do you think that the new SC will evince western values? Would you be OK with their support for dictatorships, fascism, bigotry against Jews, LGBT+, minorities? How do you suppose this fantasy SC, with the support of Arab/Persian countries will make the world a better place?

The truth is that western values form the basis towards the most efficacious path to a better world, many developing countries only offer greed, death and destruction. The rest have no voice.

Its incumbent on western leaders to help those that don't share progressive values to show them the path to a better world.

[moniss]

5. The Security Council has never provided

what it is named for. The UN, controlled by it's ruling members, has a charter it doesn't live up to and they make lofty statements about conduct and purpose while at the same time they know their countries governments are working and planning against those very goals of conduct and purpose and doing so for their own benefit. The fact is the construct of the UN is so flawed that it becomes useless.

The vast majority of major military problems in the world for the last many decades have been the result of the conduct and policies of Russia, The United States, Israel, Iran, Egypt, Syria, Iraq and China. The other members of the UN would do themselves far better if they all withdrew from the UN and began their own international body of cooperation. Expulsion from the UN of the countries I listed is never going to happen even for just one of them like Iran. But members can withdraw and it has happened in the past. It should happen en masse. It would be a breath of fresh air to see the new Session of the UN try to open with only a half dozen or so representatives in attendance.

But the fact is it will never happen nor will any meaningful reform of the UN. So in perpetuity it is forever going to be a Security Council that is a Cold War standoff with the parties using their veto against each other while dragging the remaining members further along a road of lies and self dealing for the benefit of the ones with the veto.