Reply #92: I quite agree

[Donald Ian Rankin]

that no country should invade another in order to steal their resources, but it would have been perfectly possible to invade Iraq without doing so. Unilaterally invading another to remove an oppressive regime *and replace it with a better one* is what I would like to see more of, but while the removing part is easy, the replacing part is much more difficult, and in Iraq it hasn't even been seriously attempted.

And no, I think the UN is depressingly toothless, in that it is completely incapable of preventing America launching invasions of whovever it chooses, by virtue of not having an army, and it is sometimes too unwilling to condemn countries like Israel and China, or to back up its condemnations with sanctions, but that it's definately the best thing on the table, by a long way, and I think the way to improve it is to give it more power, not less.

An international body capable of intervening consistently to prevent human rights abuses is one of my dearest political dreams, but one that does so inconsistently is still a lot better than nothing.