u·ni·lat·er·al (yn-ltr-l) adj. -- Performed or undertaken by only one side: unilateral disarmament. Obligating only one of two or more parties, nations, or persons, as a contract or an agreement. Emphasizing or recognizing only one side of a subject. Having only one side.

I've been reading a lot of articles lately about different foreign policy plans by the United States both in the past and in the present. Some of the information I'm talking about pertains to my American Foreign policy class essay. I wrote my essay on American foreign policy moves within Italy and Greece in the post World War II era. America's actions were unilateral in that case, more or less. Today, we have Iraq, Afghanistan and the Missile Defense system. Tomorrow we will have Syria, Iran, and God knows who else.

In each of these cases, America's moves were unilateral. Hands down. But, they are not considered to be. Why? .. well bcuz Poland, Spain and Japan are also involved in Iraq. What does unilateral mean anyway? Its just semantics. When we try to restrict actions in those terms, we get bogged down bcuz you have to fit it in somewhere. US actions in Iraq might not be unilateral by definition but in truth, since the actions only positively affect one side, it is unilateral (positive from the capitalistic point of view)

Did you know that contracts for the rebuilding of Iraq were being tendered by American companies even before the United States attacked Iraq? Of these contracts, the most profitable and long term one was granted to Dick Cheney's former company, Haliburton Inc.. How is that multilateral? Why were no Arab comapnies involved? Why were other countries not given the chance?

The US nearly got into a fight with Britain about the number of contracts being awarded to American companies compared to British companies. (I tried but did not find a good link for that fact.) Congress expressly passed a bill concerning reconstruction which had a clause that limited reconstruction contracts to only coalition or ally countries. It expressly said that no contracts would be given to German and French companies.

Multilateral? Coalition? Allies? Reconstruction? ... pls spare me the bullshit.

This is Unilateral. Imperial. Illegal. Mercenary.

Richard Perle (affectionately called the 'Dark Lord'), one of the most influential people in Washington today, or any other day, built the plans for the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan. He has admitted that the invasion of Iraq was illegal under International law. However, he hastens to add that, "I think in this case, international law stood in the way of doing the right thing."

Is this your multilateralism? Is this what you call making the world a safer place to live?

Basically, a person can call it what they want. Unilateral or Multilateral. The fact remains that trying to fit this type of a complex decision into a group based on such a small criteria is not only foolish, it detracts from the subject completely.

I digress. Did I even manage to make point there?.. Maybe the stuff in italics. :)

on other fronts..

I'm thinking abt putting up a message board to foster some discussion between ppl who visit the site. However, this comes with a slight downside to it. For example, if ppl don't post anything for a few days, I'll lose interest in writing cuz I'll think no one is reading. It is true that no one might be reading this either but I don't know that. So.. I'm thinking abt it, we'll see. I'll also have to find something that works and does not go beserk every two days. I don't want anything too high maintenance.

Man.. this post took an hour to write. All those old links were hard to find cuz there's so much stuff on Iraq out there now. I'm off to start my last essay. Peace.