Alec Saunders SquawkBox

Radical Ideas

Some radical ideas over at the Smug Canadian.  In principle, I agree that Canada could, and should, take on a role of trying to fix the UN.  We are widely seen as being an honest broker, and a peacemaker in international affairs.  This seems like a role we could play, and have historically played.

I also agree with the assertion that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is the starting point, and that there be some test of democracy in the requirements for entry into, and continued membership in, the UN club.  Having said that, the practicality of excluding China from the UN seems like a bit of a stumbling block.

Our smug friend goes on to assert that there be a requirement for a capitalist economic philosophy, and a means test comparing the constitutional government of said members to the US constitution.  Both of these tests are excessive.  If capitalism is truly the superior system, then it will win.  So far, that seems to be the case.  But countries that want to experiment with other systems should be free to do so, and pay the economic price for failure, just as Canada pays when it introduces overly socialist programs that make us uncompetitive on world markets — anybody in Ontario remember Bob Rae?  We chose him, and I’d certainly not want to have an outside body exclude us from membership on the basis of our own stupidity. Similarly, having lived in the US, and lived by their Constitution, there are many pitfalls one might reasonably want to avoid. 

In principle though, membership in the UN body should be governed by something like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and countries that do not conform should have their membership revoked.  Part of conformance should be that citizens are governed by governments of their own choosing, under a constitution of their own choosing, with regular review (ie. elections) by the people.

The UN itself must become more democratic.  The security council is a farce while 5 countries hold veto power over the remaining 15 countries. 

Explosive Mixtures

Shia “freedom of expression” is being observed closely throughout the world.  David Warren wrote a piece on Monday called “The Test” in which he stated that Shia religious leadership is fomenting a fundamentalist uprising in Iraq, with the intent of building an “Islamic Democracy” like that of the government of Iran, right next door to Iraq. 

One of the observations that Warren makes is that the separation of church and state does not exist in Islam.  He writes:

Religious manifestations in Islam are in their nature also political manifestations. Westerners struggle to grasp, or else entirely overlook, a worldview that is fundamentally different from our own. It is a vision of society in which such concepts as the nation, its state, an independent judiciary, “civil society”, and the aloofness from politics of religious leaders, are inconceivable — except as unIslamic imports from the formerly Christian West. These are the concepts now at issue in Iraq.

This fact is largely lost on many people in the west.  Karen Armstrong, in her book Islam, goes to great lengths to make this point.  The many factions of Islam — Shia, Sunni, et al — spring from political/religious movements that go back over a thousand years. 

In this piece titled “Who are the Infidels now?“, Mohamed Elmasry, an engineering professor at the University of Waterloo, warns against fanaticism of all kinds.  He particularly singles out American fundamentalist Billy Graham, and the Graham organization’s Samaritan’s Purse charity, which seeks to go to Iraq and “quietly minister” to the Iraqis.  He writes:

During the past 100 years of struggle for decolonization, many leaders across the Muslim world used religious issues to motivate their people to resistance. The French and British (and now the Americans) were presented as the new Crusaders, as intolerant fanatics bent on conquest and conversion.

We’re at a potentially explosive turning point in Iraq.  The Bush administration must restrain the crusaders from entering Iraq, even under the guise of providing aid to the Iraqis.  George Bush must put aside his own Christian convictions, recognizing that faith and politics are one and the same in Iraq, and find a way to build a secular accomodation of Sunni, Shia, and Kurds in Iraq.  To do less risks the creation of a second Iran.