Blair: UN, reform thyself

Douglas Davis, THE JERUSALEM POST 
Mar. 6, 2004

British Prime Minister Tony Blair rejected the policy of containment and defended the doctrine of pre-emption as he called for a reform of the United Nations and launched a robust defense of his support for the Iraq war. 
Speaking at his Sedgefield constituency on Friday, he warned that, we are in mortal danger of mistaking the nature of the new world in which we live, which was threatened by Islamic terrorists and rogue states which were determined to acquire weapons of mass destruction. 
This is not the time to err on the side of caution, he said, warning that, everything about our world is changing - its economy, its technology, its culture, its way of living, he said. 
If the 20th century scripted our conventional way of thinking, the 21st century is unconventional in almost every respect. This is true also of our security, he warned. 
The threat we face is not conventional. It is a challenge of a different nature from anything the world has faced before. It is to the world's security, what globalization is to the world's economy. 
Blair's uncompromising message came amid the continuing savage debate here over the legality of British involvement in the Iraq war to topple Saddam Hussein, and over allegations of government deception and apparent intelligence failures in the build-up to the war - all of which have heightened calls for Blair to resign. 
September 11 was a personal revelation, he said. What galvanized me was that it was a declaration of war by religious fanatics who were prepared to wage that war without limit. They killed 3,000. But if they could have killed 30,000 or 300,000 they would have rejoiced in it. 
The purpose was to cause such hatred between Moslems and the West that a religious jihad became reality - and the world engulfed by it. 
After September 11, he continued, I could see the threat plainly. Here were terrorists prepared to bring about Armageddon. 
Blair said the agenda must be robust for tackling the security threat that this Islamic extremism poses, he said, warning that it is monstrously premature to think the threat has passed. The risk remains in the balance here and abroad. 
Turning his back on containment and embracing pre-emption, he said: Containment will not work in the face of the global threat that confronts us, he said. The terrorists have no intention of being contained. The states that proliferate or acquire WMD illegally are doing so precisely to avoid containment. 
Emphatically I am not saying that every situation leads to military action. But we surely have a duty and a right to prevent the threat materializing - and we surely have a responsibility to act when a nation's people are subjected to a regime such as Saddam's. 
There is, he added, a need to reform the UN so that the Security Council represents 21st century reality. The UN should also be given the capability to act effectively as well as debate. 
It means getting the UN to understand that, faced with the threats we have, we should do all we can to spread the values of freedom, democracy, the rule of law, religious tolerance and justice for the oppressed, however painful for some nations that may be. 
At the same time, he added, we wage war relentlessly on those who would exploit racial and religious division to bring catastrophe to the world.