Letter: War carries out U.N. mandate

Tuesday, March 11, 2003 | 8:56 a.m.

Last fall President Bush proclaimed: "The conduct of the Iraqi regime is a threat to the authority of the United Nations, and a threat to peace. Iraq has answered a decade of U.N. demands with a decade of defiance. All the world now faces a test, and the United Nations a difficult and defining moment. Are Security Council resolutions to be honored and enforced, or cast aside without consequence? Will the United Nations serve the purpose of its founding, or will it be irrelevant?" He reverted to that theme a few days later:

"The U.N. will either be able to function as a peacekeeping body as we head into the 21st century, or it will be irrelevant. And that's what we're about to find out. ... This is the chance for the United Nations to show some backbone and resolve as we confront the true challenges of the 21st century."

The president has made the matter transparently clear: The impending war on Iraq is intended to carry out the mandates of the U.N. Security Council, not to protect our nation or to punish those responsible for the Sept. 11 attack. The war would uphold the supposed authority of the U.N. and vindicate its role as a de facto world government.

FRANK PELTESON