Save the UN: Withhold Our Dues

FrontPageMagazine.com ^ | 12/02/04 | Dick Morris

[kattracks]

Whether the United Nations were located in New York or in Geneva, Congress cannot and should not continue to spend our money paying dues to an organization that will not open its records to our elected officials who are seeking to investigate numerous reports of corruption reaching high up in the UN organization.

When the son of the secretary-general is accused of receiving payments from a contractor in the oil-for-food program and the very administrator of that effort is, himself, implicated in its corruption, it is time to investigate. While Paul Volcker’s investigative mission to get to the bottom of the scandal must proceed, the U.S. Congress has a separate duty to the American people to see to it that our tax funds are not dissipated in a scandal.

If the United Nations refuses to open its financial records to our congressional investigators, the United States should suspend payment of part of its annual dues as a punishment for the United Nations’ intransigence.

The oil-for-food scandal is, of course, the first major scandal of the global community. Normally each nation sets its own standards for its leaders’ integrity and the other nations of the world are obliged to deal with whoever holds power, however doubtful his or her honesty. But the oil-for-food scandal raises two key questions.

The first, of course, is how to deal with officials appointed by multinational organizations, whether the United Nations or, in the future, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, NATO, the World Trade Organization or the European Union. These officials must be held accountable. If their own organizations have no ability or willingness to investigate their wrongdoing, it is the duty of the major nations involved, the ones whose taxpayers foot the bill, to demand accountability.

The second issue, however, is even more important: How are we going to deal with the use of international funds as payoffs to national leaders of the countries whose votes set up the program?

It is usually France’s business, not ours’, if their president, Jacques Chirac, or their interior minister, Charles Pasqua, profited from the oil for food program. It is usually Russia’s business if Putin or his United Russia Party was enriched from the same table. But when Chirac and Putin were influenced by these payoffs to cast their nations’ votes in the United Nations for or against the Saddam Hussein regime, the matter becomes our business. We must not let the UN Security Council become an auction in which the corrupt sell their votes to the guilty or the aggrieved based on who can pay them off more handsomely.

Self-regulating organizations generally police their own honesty ineffectively. When the entities are international, the disdain of their officials is palpable. They consider themselves above the law of any nation and dismiss the claims of the U.S. Congress as political demagoguery, taking refuge in their diplomatic status and the international nature of their organizations to escape scrutiny.

In Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s case, he apparently let the oil-for-food largesse flow to his son for years after he had claimed that it had been terminated. In response to questions from journalists, Annan admits only to having a “perception” problem.

But if the United Nations is dishonestly administered and its credibility is undermined by scandal, the very effort for globalism, essential and laudable as it is, will be besmirched. The humanitarian work of organizations in the United Nations will be impaired, and the world body will no longer be an honest broker.

The stakes for the world body could not be higher. Annan should understand that restoring the body’s reputation for disinterested integrity, created in the first instance by its illustrious former Secretary-General Dag Hammerskold, is vital.

There is no more important mission. If Congress has to cut the UN funding to force its leaders to live up to the ideals to which they should be committed, it is vital that it do so.

The United States may have to cut the United Nations in order to save it.

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Dick Morris is a former adviser to President Clinton.

[Arthur Wildfire! March]

The UN has Qaddafi as head of the Human Rights Commission, last I heard. Ok then. Just as Robert KKK Byrd is the 'conscience of the senate', a man who was stockpiling WMDs is the 'conscience of the UN'. To be a part of the UN is to have Qaddafi as our chief moral adviser. It's insane to give one dime to the UN.

[backhoe]

My 2¢'s about the UN?

Neal Boortz has the right idea- kick them off US soil, plop them down in Haiti, and tell them, "when you get this straightened out, give us a call..."

Moreover:

--Sex abuse charges rock UN in Congo-
-- Interesting this is being posted today. Talk show host Dennis Prager had the Israeli Ambassador to the UN, Doree Gold, on his show today. Mr. Gold has just written a book about the UN called the Tower of Babble(i think this was the title). Some of the things he was saying about the UN were unbelievable.

--TV campaign urging: Kick U.N. out of U.S.-
"I say we just give the entire country of Haiti to the UN."--or move them to Zimbabwe or another country in Africa. Let them see what the really do for the world.

--UN knew of Saddam's oil-for-food thefts: BBC-
The sooner we resign from this corrupt organization and kick them off our soil, the better.

Click this picture & goto "last" for the latest UN scandals:

American Policy Center on-line Declaration of Independence from the U.N.

[MadAnthony1776]

United Nations? About as united as the North and South during the Civil War. It's more US vs. the World. I say, "not one red cent and let us send the UN to the fate it justly deserves. The same as it's predecessor, the League of Nations." I'm sure the UN building would make some nice office space for some good American companies. When an organization that purports to have the welfare of the world as its main concern but is willing to overlook the genocide in Sudan, actively participate in the fraud of oil for money program and also use it's forum to continually bash the US at every turn, then it's time to put them all in cement golashes and send them out to sea.

[Reactionary]

"But if the United Nations is dishonestly administered and its credibility is undermined by scandal, the very effort for globalism, essential and laudable as it is, will be besmirched."

Globalism is not laudable nor essential. Globalism concentrates political power in the hands of unaccountable political leaders. And that is the definition of arbitrary and unlawful power.

[NoControllingLegalAuthority]

I see no reason whatsoever to "save the UN." Give all the UN employees 48 hours to pack and leave. After that, arrest any still here.

[DustyMoment]

Dick, let's NOT save the UN. It has disappeared down a rat hole seeking its predecessor, the League of Nations and is simply not worth the effort to try to salvage.

Let it go. Help kick it down the rat hole and bring shovels to cover it over.

In the last 20 years or more, the UN has done NOTHING towards honoring its charter to create peace through diplomacy, but it has managed to sit on its collective hands while millions have been massacred in tribal wars in Africa; ignore the terrorism that has gripped the rest of the world as Muslim terrorists commit atrocities and acts of war; continue to push for the extinction of Israel in favor of the Palestinians; and increasingly criticize and punish the US for trying to protect itself, its citizens and its interests.

We don't need them anymore because they just aren't doing the job.

Let'em go.

[Reactionary]

Liberals seem to think that, given the proper "motives," an organization unaccountable to the individual will, without fail, behave in such a manner as to put the individual first. In other words, they believe that unchecked power is inherently altruistic and "just."

How they've managed to convince themselves of this naive stupidity is anyone's guess. The totality of human experience speaks otherwise. Even recent history is a living refutation of this idiotic belief.

It evidently takes a lot of faith to be a liberal.

[RKBA Democrat]

Dick Morris has it wrong. Instead of trying to extract some grudging level of accountability out of the UN, we should be working on developing a political consensus within the US to head for the exit door.

Dick Morris could and should be working on developing that consensus within our party. But instead, he's taking the approach that with a little repair, and a little paint on the facade it'll all be better.

Getting the US out of the UN. Another of my 101 reasons why conservatives should think about joining the Democratic party.

[backhoe]

It evidently takes a lot of faith to be a liberal.

It has long seemed to me that those on the Left substitute their political positions for religion.