Are not the scenes of joy and jubilation from Iraq an embarrassing indictment of the United Nations' failure to support the war? Well, no, not really. On the contrary, the course and outcome of the war is a strong vindication of the U.N. stance. To argue that military victory bestows legitimacy is to say that might is right. It also begs the question: Will others politely accept the new U.S. imperial order, or will they begin to arm and align themselves so as not to become tomorrow's Iraq?

The big story of this war so far surely has been proof that the U.N. was right, that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein did not possess usable weapons of mass destruction, and therefore he did not pose a threat to regional, U.S. or world security of an urgency and gravity that required instant war to topple him. The U.N. inspectors could indeed have been given more time to complete their job. After all, they destroyed more Iraqi armaments between 1991 and 1998 than did the multinational coalition during the 1991 Persian Gulf War itself.

Moreover, the speed of the victory by the American, British and Australian forces (the three countries that made up the coalition of the willing on this occasion) vindicates those opponents of the war who argued that Hussein had been so weakened since 1991 that he did not pose a credible threat to anyone outside Iraq. To credit the lightning victory to brilliant coalition generalship rather than basic Iraqi weakness is a triumph of spin over substance.