Why I nearly resigned

New Hampshire

The UN should be appointed overseer of the peace not because that organisation possesses planning skills which America does not, but because to shut it out will cause resentment in the Arab world. However irritating are many of the do-gooders among its ranks, the UN has the advantage of being seen as an antidote to alleged Western imperialism.

After reading those words in The Spectator’s leading article of 12 April, I hurled the magazine across the room and typed up my letter of resignation. A nervous dependant pointed out it might be wiser to line up alternative employment first. It quickly emerged that no other British publication would have me, and the only alternative employment was casual construction work. So let me try to explain instead why the heart sinks at finding a paragraph like that in what purports to be a conservative magazine.

The short answer is the official Russian response to the suggestion that UN sanctions should now be lifted, so that Iraqis can sell their oil and start rebuilding their country. ‘This decision cannot be automatic,’ says the Russian foreign minister with a straight face. ‘For the Security Council to take this decision, we need to be certain whether Iraq has weapons of mass destruction or not.’

Got that? Last month, the Russians were opposed to war on the grounds that there was no proof Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. This month, the Russians are opposed to lifting sanctions on the grounds that there’s no proof Iraq doesn’t have weapons of mass destruction.

There are a few striped-pants masochists in the State Department who enjoy this sort of thing and have spent the last four weeks pining for M. Chirac to walk all over them in steel-tipped stilettos one more time. But most Americans, given a choice between being locked in Security Council negotiations with the Russians, French and Germans or being fed feet-first into one of Saddam’s industrial shredders, would find it a tough call.