Posted on 12/01/2004 7:51:01 PM PST by Jean S
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 U.N. 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 U.N. 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 U.N. 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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Morris is the author of Rewriting History, a rebuttal of Sen. Hillary Clinton’s (D-N.Y.) memoir, Living History. |
book mark
Well, when he is on Sean's radio show, call Sean and cite your issues with Morris.
Obviously the US is not afraid of the backlash, or Sadaam would still be in power.
I think that means that they will like us....
ie: hate us now...backlash = like us now....hummmm?
Anyway...lets try it!!
We may have been the home of the Freemen and the Unabomber, but we're not all crazy-looney-psycho.
Morris... 'Welcome to the party, pal.' We've complained about the UN's corruption for years. They act as if this latest outrage is just a parking ticket. When you let organizations get away with murder for years, they think they're above the law. In fact they are the law. Not yet. Not ever. Go the way of the League of Nations, UN, and don't let the door hit you on the way out.
"The oil-for-food scandal is, of course, the first major scandal of the global community."
NOT.
UNESCO and UNICEF have already had multi-million dollar corruption scandals. Libyan and Sudanese leadership on the Human Rights Committee is Kafkaesque scanda. The UN's effectiveness in non-proliferation is a joke. It was utterly useless during the Cold War. It was and remains counterproductive in resolving the conflict between Arabs and Israelis. Just to mention a few major scandals.
Morris' assertion is correct only if "major" means greater than $10 or 20 billion, in which case the oil-for-food is one of very few major scandals in human history.
"We must not let the U.N. 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."
But it already IS an auction in which the corrupt sells votes. It has always been thus.
I'm with you on that. If I were W, I'd issue an Executive Order to evacuate the already rusting crumbling building within 60 days, and then have it imploded. After that, I'd leave the rest of the remains to be removed by NYC, and the cite rebuil to be determined by same since it is on NYC real estate. Footnote however: I *believe* that the real estate footprint of the UN is owned by the Rockefeller Foundation; so there may be legal implications there. I'm not sure. Just seem to remember this relationship between the City of NY, the UN and the Federal gov't.
Not sure those figures are right... I read recently that the shares of the US, Japan, and Germany combined make up 2/3rds of the entire UN budget.
Fine. Let's see how "relevant" the U.N. is without the U.S. in it. It'll be nothing more than an international version of the Democrat Party. Nothing to them apart from their hatred of real freedom.
No problem. Just call it eminent domain. Liberals do it all the time. It'd be kinda poetic justice to see that tactic used to demolish their beloved terrorist-coddling U.N.
"We may have been the home of the Freemen and the Unabomber, but we're not all crazy-looney-psycho."
I know--my statement was a positive one!
On another note, Dick Morris once worked as a political advisor in a campaign for Senator Jesse Helms (R-NC).
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