The U.N. Shakes Its Mighty Fist
After North Korea's nuclear test on May 25, the United Nations Security Council, as it always does, sprang into action. Well, maybe not quite sprang. And maybe not really "action" as most people understand the term. Rather, representatives of the 15 states on the Security Council talked a lot about what kind of really scary words they could put into public statements or condemnations or even resolutions to demonstrate that, this time, the North Koreans had finally gone and done it and that this time, unlike in its responses to all of North Korea's provocations since that three-year misunderstanding over the 38th Parallel in 1950-53, the Security Council meant business.
According to Reuters, a late draft of the proposed resolution, prepared by the Obama administration with an assist from Japan, thundered that the Security Council "condemns in the strongest terms the nuclear test conducted by (North Korea) on 25 May 2009 in flagrant violation and disregard of its relevant resolutions."
Sheesh. That's tough stuff. If THE SCRAPBOOK were Kim Jong Il it would certainly think twice about another nuclear test. (Actually, if THE SCRAPBOOK were really Kim Jong Il, first we'd do something about the hair.)
The Security Council "condemns in the strongest terms"? That's got to be causing Asia's most prominent Elvis impersonator to lose some sleep.
Think back to October 2006, when North Korea conducted its first nuclear test. The Security Council adopted Resolution 1718 expressing "the gravest concern" about North Korea's violation of international treaties and sharing its "firm conviction" that "the international regime on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons should be maintained."
That resolution included some "deploring" and some "deploring further" and even some "expressing profound concern." At one point the Security Council went so far as to proclaim that it "decides that [North Korea] shall abandon all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programmes in a complete, verifiable and irreversible manner."
How could Kim Jong Il possibly have ignored that?
The difference, it seems, is in the force of condemnation. The 2006 resolution merely "condemns the nuclear test proclaimed by [North Korea] on 9 October 2006 in flagrant disregard of its relevant resolutions." This draft resolution, if it passes, will condemn this latest test "in the strongest terms."
The diplomats who authored that earlier resolution must be kicking themselves. If only they'd been more strongly condemnatory, we might all have been spared further nuclear provocation from North Korea.
But there is reason for optimism. Not only does this latest resolution upgrade the condemnation, the Security Council "calls upon all member states immediately to enforce the measures that were put in place by resolution 1718."
That is, the Security Council calls on its member states to do the things they didn't do after promising to do them in 2006 and hopes that the threat of actually doing these things will prevent North Korea from doing those things it did after ignoring the last resolution.
On second thought, this might not work. THE SCRAPBOOK expresses its profound concern.
Real Diversity
If there's one term that sums up the source of Judge Sonia Sotomayor's appeal to her admirers, it's her status as a symbol of "diversity."
As just about every sensate human being must know by now, Judge Sotomayor is a Latina--a female of Hispanic ethnic origin--whose life history as a Latina in America, it is believed, will furnish the "empathy" that Barack Obama seeks in Supreme Court nominees.
And yet, THE SCRAPBOOK hastens to point out, there is diversity and there is diversity. Nowadays, of course, "diversity" is usually measured in terms of blood--race, ethnicity, even religion--and in ways that must surprise those dwindling numbers of Americans who fought to liberate Europe from Nazi ideology. As if to emphasize blood's paramount importance in these matters, there has been widespread praise for Judge Sotomayor--from sources as diverse as the Nation and the American Diabetes Association--because she suffers from diabetes. High blood sugar, apparently, influences the way jurists think and rule.
Perhaps it does. But many factors influence the way people think and act, and "diversity" need not always be measured in eugenic terms. There is, for instance, the interesting (and seldom mentioned) fact that the pool of Supreme Court justices is now almost exclusively drawn from the ranks of federal appellate judges--an estimable group of men and women, highly intelligent, ambitious, and successful, but not exactly drawn from all walks of American life.
This practice began, more or less, under Richard Nixon, who preferred federal judges because they had a "track record" that might indicate future performance on the court. It is now a prerequisite for presidents of both parties. But this has not only proved to be an imperfect predictor--as retiring Justice David Souter has demonstrated time and again since his appointment by George H.W. Bush in 1990--it has also excluded many different types of people whose experience, wisdom, perspective, and talent are surely as significant as Judge Sotomayor's diabetes. When was the last time a state governor was appointed to the Supreme Court? Or a United States senator? Or a cabinet or sub-cabinet officer, a state attorney general, a solicitor general, a lawyer in private practice, or a professor of constitutional law?
It's been awhile--and yet, up until comparatively recently in our history, these were all sources of High Court justices.
THE SCRAPBOOK would not pretend to know whether it is a good or bad thing for the Supreme Court to be composed entirely of ex-federal judges, or if it is critical for the Court's distinction to contain somebody who once ran for public office, or defended a corporation or labor union in court. But it is worth mentioning that the all-white-male Supreme Court that unanimously decided Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 contained only one former federal appellate judge (Sherman Minton) and was headed by a chief who had once been a governor and run for vice president (Earl Warren). Not to mention a onetime member of the Alabama Ku Klux Klan (Hugo Black).
Sentences We Didn't Finish
"These questions I put to Daniel Bell (who has now turned -ninety, as if his venerability were in need of chronological confirmation) one afternoon many years ago, as we sat with wines and theories on his back porch in Cambridge. It was from him that I learned the multiplicity of the realms, and so it was to him that I expressed my heresy about the . . . " (Leon Wieseltier, New Republic, June 3).</π>
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