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 Hussein’s 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. It’s not nuclear proliferation that is the problem, it’s 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 UN’s 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.” It’s 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 world’s 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, I’m 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 it’s time to withdraw from the United Nations and find other means to address the world’s problems, unilaterally, bilaterally, and effectively.
true
Sounds a lot like a country preacher I know!
Not just from the pulpit, either, but in casual conversation too. In a recent conversation I had with him, I pointed out that he used a term that isn't necessarily a slur but isn't considered socially acceptable anymore. He responded without even blinking, "The double-A in NAACP don't stand for African-American, son."
What about Israel? Who would be there to vote against all the anti-Israel amendments the Muslim nations try to pass.
If the U.S. leaves the UN, and takes a few of its bribed and coerced allies with it, the UN's votes simply don't mean a thing. I want the UN to be marginalized and meaningless. Let them take anti-Israeli votes, anti-US or anti-western votes - if the US and her allies leave the UN what does a vote mean?
I agree, we don't want to unilaterally withdraw from the UN. If we did, all the remaining UN clowns would pass one resolution after another condemning the US and trying to figure out ways to confiscate our money.
I want the UN to be destroyed -- financially and politically. The US should significantly reduce their $ for the UN.
If Chirac is tied to his buddies who worked with Saddam, France should then be removed as a permanent member and replaced by a country like Poland or Italy. However, with Clinton's buddy Marc Rich as someone who also worked with Saddam, it might be difficult to achieve.
Bump
Well, that's what the original idea was; the UN was supposed to be in Geneva. Wiser (or more devious) minds prevailed and (after much lobbying) the UN was headquartered in the US.
It's interesting to figure out why the US government thought it was a good idea to have the UN headquartered on US soil.
It's amazing how palaeoconservative Bush-haters (who agree with liberals that the US should not be acting alone) still claim to be anti-UN even though their behavior is anything but.
Oh well. They still think the UN is "Zionist" even though the enthusiastically call for implementation of the UN's anti-Israel resolutions.
We're on the same page GW! This is the constitutional option already in place. I don't like the present discussions that would change our constitution.
Aside from the presidential question I'd hope people realize our constitution offers lasting resolution to the problems illegal immigration from Mexico presents. Roughly a third of our lower 48 states is comprised of what was once half of Mexico. If another quarter of Mexico, or all of Mexico moves to accept our rule of order presented by our constitution, it would bring such economic opportunity that migration northward would cease and reverse quickly. It is the constitutional way of acceptance into our nation.
They couldn't afford to secede. The red states are huge net recipients of federal tax money.
Get the US out of the UN.
Because it's easier to spy on UN missions if they're located on American soil?
I think you might be on to something...
No.
Stupid question.
I remember Ambassador Stevenson railing against the corrupt, ineffective gang of criminals in the 60s.
I remember Ambassador Moynahan railing against the same group of crooks in the 80s (70s?) He wrote a fantastic book: A Dangerous Place about his experiences. A liberal!
Things have only deteriorated further since.
Why need the question be repeated endessly, instead of acting on the obvious answer?
Another great piece on the corrupt and dangerous UN organization!
BUMP!
"Because it's easier to spy on UN missions if they're located on American soil?"
I find it 'intriguing' that the koffee kup is the chief administrator of a worldwide organization that supposedly promotes openness, hospitality, cooperation, and good will for all Nations but yet he has his own pet projects kept 'secret', unavailable for inspection by those same Nations' representatives...
Two words...Eminent Domain
On our soil, are they going to fight us for it? blahhhahahhah....with spitballs perhaps?
Drop out and then send them packing. Then form our own United Nations. We decide who gets in and if they vote against us on anything we kick them out. No socialists, dictators, or theocracies need apply. If you speak French don't even ask. It won't be democratic at all and you do it our way or it's the highway, but if anyone bothers you we will kick their ass for you.
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