Need for Control

My Plymouth Sundance has a 3-speed automatic transmission, in whichyou put it in Drive, and it does most of the shifting for you.Pretty cool stuff, it manages it all by itself, so you don't haveto pay attention to your engine speed and maximizing power or fueleconomy.

It's great to have such a system, especially for city driving.But it comes at a disadvantage‹automatic means you have lesscontrol over the engine and the speed you travel on the road. Notto mention the automatic transmission can't anticipate a hillcoming, that your going to accelerate hard in the near future forpassing, or that the long down grade you are going down willrequire some downshifting to prevent excess wear on the brakes.

For those times, every automatic transmission has a way to allowthe driver to force the transmission to stay locked in a lowergear‹be it 2 or 1, or whatever choices you have.

As a Transmission?

I know, I'm sure the United Nations doesn't want to be considered theUS's bitch, or it's automatic transmission. Yet, it seems likethat's what its role has been, and where it might fit in well. TheUnited States participates in the UN, and tries to use it as a wayto generate stable foreign policy, backed by the world.

It's too much work for the United States to be everywhere, allthe time. It's not exactly democratic either, but that's a thoughtfor another time. We need the world to help us in our ventures, andto protect our common interests (be it security, environmental, ortrade). Yet we don't want to devote all our time to doing justthat. Our President you focus mainly on our problems, and let theUN automatically govern foreign policies.

But at the same time, the US needs more then veto power to stopa threat, that's too great for the UN's automatic democraticmethods to handle. The world is not perfect, what some people viewnot to be a threat, may be too great of a threat for the US toignore.

Overriding the UN?

The United Nations does a lot of good things for the US of A, aspreviously noted. Yet, it fails to address all threats to us. Iraqis a perfect situation. Iraq suppostly had weapons of massdestruction or something like that. At least that's what thePresident claimed, and many people believed in America. People inthe rest of the world were much more cynical about such anapproach, but that's their choice.

We chose to ignore their choice, and defend our interests, bypulling that little lever, and sending troops over, to take overthe Saddam government, and try to bring peace to that region. Wegot one big tyrant out of power, and somewhat improved our securitysituation. Good for us.

A Time for War, A Time for Peace—I Swear It's Not tooLate

I think now that we have won the peace (at least tentatively) inIraq, we should think about trying to allow the people to governthemselves as soon as possible, and in the meantime put Iraq in UNcontrol. It's a safe bet that the automatic mechanism of the UNwill continue to serve US interests in a positive way, theycertainly don't want Saddam back.

Why must we continue to dominate the country, at a cost of acouple of American boys a day, not to mention a couple of billionto go along with that. Let's try to dump the great costs ahead onthe UN. I'm not saying we should totally leave the country, insteadwe should hand over control to the UN and still help out asneeded.