Posted on 10/18/2004 12:39:18 PM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
There was a time when, if you wrote or spoke out against the United Nations, you would be dismissed as some "right-wing nutcase" who saw conspiracies or was some kind of "isolationist" who didn't understand the need for an international forum where the problems of the world could be resolved without resort to warfare.
Turns out that the United Nations, founded in 1948, is not simply incapable of stopping wars and genocides, it is so utterly corrupt that it needs to be eliminated entirely in the hope that the many other existing international organizations, treaties, unilateral and bilateral relations can be allowed to do what it will not and cannot.
This is not a new thought to me, but it resurfaced as I read an October 9 news article about a tough new anti-terrorism resolution aimed at stemming attacks on civilians by denying terrorists safe havens, weapons, financial resources, and freedom of movement. Introduced by the Russian Federation, it was unanimously passed by the UN Security Council. It was described as strengthening the essential coordinating role of the United Nations in the international campaign against the terrorist threat.
This is the same United Nations that did nothing when Red China invaded and occupied Tibet.
This is the same United Nations that stood by while Rwanda went about the business of slaughtering hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians.
This is the same United Nations that has been unable to stop the Sudan from conducting genocide against more than a million of its Christian citizens. And Sudan is a member of the UN Human Rights Commission!
This is the same United Nations that has been unable to persuade Syria to withdraw its occupation troops from Lebanon.
This is the same United Nations that has stood by for years as the Palestinians waged a terrorist campaign against the Israelis and then chided the Israelis for building a fence as a means to defend themselves.
This is the same United Nations that needed a coalition led by the United States to force Iraq to withdraw from its invasion of Kuwait and then spent twelve years passing one useless resolution after another to get Saddam Husseins Iraq to disarm. After its Oil-for-Food administrators and key members of its Security Council wallowed in corruption, it faintly blessed the US effort to remove an important base for terrorist planning, training, and funding.
This is the same United Nations that needed the United States to intervene when the North Koreans invaded the south in the 1950s and whose atomic energy agency has been unable to stop North Korea from developing nuclear weapons. Now Iran is thumbing its nose at the UN. Its not nuclear proliferation that is the problem, its which country is led by people who are deemed most likely to use these weapons. The mere prospect of a nuclear exchange drove Pakistan and India to the table to resolve longtime conflicts.
And, yes, this was the United Nations that stood by while the United States pursued an ill-fated war against the North Vietnamese when they invaded the south.
The United Nations has been unable to respond to outbreaks of violence in Haiti, Somalia, Cambodia, and Kosovo, to name just a few places where it has demonstrated its ineptitude.
As the scholar Jeremy A. Rabkin points out, The Security Council has never authorized outside military intervention solely to protect people from slaughter at the hands of their own government.
Now, three years since 9-11, an event that changed not just the United States, but alerted the entire world to the threat posed by an organization that is not a nation, but a group dedicated to imposing Islam, the Security Council has passed another useless resolution, vowing to do something about it.
Meanwhile, the United Nations has been largely sustained by the twenty-five percent of its annual budget paid by the United States, plus the $1.4 billion the US gives to United Nations programs and agencies. US taxpayers fund more of the UNs activities than all of the other 177 member nations. At the same time, the vast majority of the recipients of US foreign aid routinely vote against the wishes of the United States. Most of those opposing US initiatives come from Africa and the Middle East.
Since the founding of the United Nations in 1948, there have been 291 wars resulting in 22 million deaths. The US Department of State lists 36 terrorist organizations operating with impunity in at least 60 UN member nations. Some 47 member nations are dictatorships and the UN roster includes six terrorist states.
Please, let us not even discuss its human rights record. At one point, it ejected the United States from membership in its Human Rights Commission and installed Libya to chair its meetings. Libya!
A Gallup poll in September 2003 found that sixty percent of Americans said the UN was doing a poor job. Its not just doing a poor job; it is actively seeking to undermine the concept of sovereignty for every nation in the world. It is actively seeking to become a world government. It wants to impose its own taxes. It wants its own military force. It wants to ban ownership of guns. It wants control of the worlds oceans and seas. Its Kyoto Protocol will seek to impose limits on the use of various forms of energy vital to industrialized nations, while exempting some like China and India.
There are elements of the United Nations that are doing some good work--but all of these good elements could be done by other organizations, both more cheaply and more effectively (case in point, the scandal ridden Oil for Food program). It has helped refugees. Its World Health Organization tries to improve conditions. There are, Im sure other examples, but overall the UN is a cesspool of corruption and the nexus of evil that blithely ignores its original mandates.
Welcome to the existing and growing majority of Americans who think its time to withdraw from the United Nations and find other means to address the worlds problems, unilaterally, bilaterally, and effectively.
Amen. Kick them off our soil too!
Good article. I could never understand why some Americans are so enamored of the UN. They never seemed to hide their communistic/socialistic leanings. Ah well.
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Rather than withdraw, I would prefer that the UN be abolished. I'd hate to withdraw and allow the UN to vote without the US's veto vote.
Yep...kick them out of that building and make condos! Prime property!
I wrote my senator (the one who stays on the job)
, Norm Coleman about this 6 months ago. He said it would
be "unwise" to get out of the UN . I guess we need yet even
more proof they are corrupt and worthless.
I'll send him this anyway. It's fun to bang my head against
the wall...
Heard a southern preacher sum it all up in one sentence: "Get the US out of the UN and the UN out of the US!"
Let's see... It's a quarter to three here in Texas... I think if they had it done by the top of the hour I could live with it.:-) We should hit our elected representatives with this as soon as they're sworn in in January...
You should have asked him what was so 'wise' about staying...
The United Nations has done nothing but divide the Nations. I agree, we should get out of the UN and form a new organization that actually does what it is supposed to do.
U.N oil-for-food program is directly responsible for the deaths of American soldiers.
And I personally believe that some of this money helped finance the terrorists to do 9-11.
The Korean war, Vietnam, the United Nations are responsible for the deaths of some Americans.
Why we give money and trade with communist and socialist countries is beyond me.
Read Olly North's new book which says Russia, China, France, Germany were selling weapons to Iraq even after President Bush gave orders to go into Iraq a little over a year ago.
I think they have put United Nation personel in command structure of our military, judges, and departments of U.S. governments that make sure we go by international laws.
How about we leave the UN, throw all the diplomats with unpaid parking tickets in jail and turn the UN building into a "War on Terror" center headed by the new NID?
Let them relocate the UN to Paris, Berlin, or Moscow....
How about Freedom
For SURE we should NOT be giving foreign aid to ANYONE who votes against us there nor should we give ONE CENT to any UN administered program. EVER!
Off soapbox.:-)
Without the U.S. a UN vote is meaningless. Who's going to enforce UN votes - France?
I do not have the intellect or writing ability to put into words my complete and utter contempt for the Useless Nations. The sooner the US leaves this POS organization, the better.
Only if I personally got to throw Annan's skinny rear out and onto the streets.
GWB should make a UN withdrawal a campaign issue. It would probably win him the election.
I dream of the day!
It would be far WORSE if sKerry is elected (but that ain't gonna happen!)
Damn straight!!!! Boot their arses out, asap.
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