Plum Crazy

Kevin Patrick of Blogs for Bush e-mailed me a link to a piece he wrote entitled: Madonna's Choice for President Wants to Give Up US Sovereignty

Andrew Sullivan unearths this absolutely ridiculous quote regarding United States self-determination from Wesley Clark:

And I would say to the Europeans, I pledge to you as the American president that we'll consult with you first. You get the right of first refusal on the security concerns that we have. We'll bring you in.

I have no problem bringing in a coalition of forces when we act internationally (just like the 60 countries we worked with when invading Iraq), but putting the interests of the UN ahead of the interests of the United States is untenable.

In his comments section, I replied as follows:

A right of first refusal does not mean a right of all refusal. For example, if I give someone a right of first refusal to buy my apartment, all that means is that when I go to sell my apartment, I have to offer it to them first. If they turn down the offer, I then am absolutely free to sell it to someone else. It does not mean that if they turn me down, I then cannot sell my apartment at all.

It seems to me that what Clark was saying was that prior to acting unilaterally or even approaching the U.N., we would first approach NATO on our security concerns. If NATO refused assistance, then we would be free to assess our options. This doesn't strike me as being philosophically different than Bush having first approached the U.N. prior to declaring war on Iraq. As things stand, I actually think approaching NATO prior to approaching the useless U.N. is a good idea, and I think that attempting to bring in an international coalition prior to making a decision to act unilaterally is also good (something that Bush himself did). In short, I have no problem with that Clark quote.

Also, he emphatically said nothing about putting the interests of the UN first, unless the UN has suddenly become NATO. What you probably meant to say is that putting the interests of NATO ahead of the interests of the US is untenable. Philosophically the same, granted. I still don't believe that what he said is putting the interests of NATO first. It serves US interests to attempt to work with our allies first.

Where you could have gotten Clark, but did not, is that Bush did give the UN right of first refusal. They refused. He then assessed our options and decided to act without them. France and Germany would only have been happy had we decided not to act at all. Clark's proposal suffers from precisely the same danger. It's very nice to give NATO right of first refusal, but if they refuse and we still choose to act, we might find ourselves in precisely the same position anyway. And that is the problem with Clark's critique. Not that he is giving away our right of self-determination.

Judge for yourselves.