Victor Davis Hanson: The U.N.? Who Cares?

The Wall Street Journal Opinion Journal ^ | September 23, 2004 | Victor Davis Hanson

[quidnunc]

Kofi Annan & Co. might as well move to Brussels or Geneva.

These are surreal times. Americans in Iraq are beheaded on videotape. Russian children are machine-gunned in their schools. The elderly in Israel continue to be blown apart on buses. No one — whether in Madrid, Istanbul, Riyadh, Bali, Tel Aviv or New York — is safe from the Islamic fascist, whose real enemy is modernism and Western-inspired freedom of the individual.

Despite the seemingly disparate geography of these continued attacks, we are always familiar with the similar spooky signature: civilians dismembered by the suicide belt, car bomb, improvised explosive device and executioner's blade. Then follows the characteristically pathetic communiqué or loopy fatwa aired on al-Jazeera, evoking everything from the injustice of the Reconquista to some mythical grievance about Crusaders in the holy shrines. Gender equity in the radical Islamic world is now defined by the expendable female suicide bomber's slaughter of Westerners.

In response to such international lawlessness, our global watchdog, the United Nations, had been largely silent. It abdicates its responsibility of ostracizing those states that harbor such mass murderers, much less organizes a multilateral posse to bring them to justice. And yet under this apparent state of siege, President Bush in his recent address to the U.N. offered not blood and iron — other than an obligatory "the proper response is not to retreat but to prevail" — but Wilsonian idealism, concrete help for the dispossessed, and candor about past sins. The president wished to convey a new multilateralist creed that would have made a John Kerry or Madeleine Albright proud, without the Churchillian "victory at any cost" rhetoric. Good luck.

-snip-

[quidnunc]

FYI

[sinkspur]

Hanson's usually good, but he sucks here.

[HisKingdomWillAbolishSinDeath]

President Bush, the UN is an obsolete and worthless organization. A "paper tiger" is an understatement. How about creating a new international organization that is made up of only countries, a coalition of willing warriors, whose only stated goal is the destruction of terrorism. Now that's leadership!

[TwoWolves]

I never heard the whole speech, but what I did hear sounded like President Bush was trying to shame them into doing what their charter says they should be doing.

[McGavin999]

Indifferent, yes, and that loud clicking sound you hear is our checkbook snapping shut.

[ottothedog]

The article is actually better than those exerpts:

The Taliban and Saddam Hussein were once the United Nations' twin embarrassments, rogue regimes that thumbed their noses at weak U.N. protestations, slaughtered their own, invaded their neighbors, and turned their outlands into terrorist sanctuaries. Now they are gone, despite either U.N. indifference or veritable opposition to their removal. The United States sought not dictators in their place, but consensual government where it had never existed.

What was the response to Mr. Bush's new multifaceted vision? He was met with stony silence, followed by about seven seconds of embarrassed applause, capped off by smug sneers in the global media. Why so? ...

Deeds, not rhetoric, are all that matter, as the once unthinkable is now the possible. There is no intrinsic reason why the U.N. should be based in New York rather than in its more logical utopian home in Brussels or Geneva. There is no law chiseled in stone that says any fascist or dictatorial state deserves authorized membership by virtue of its hijacking of a government. There is no logic to why a France is on the Security Council, but a Japan or India is not. And there is no reason why a group of democratic nations, unapologetic about their values and resolute to protect freedom, cannot act collectively for the common good, entirely indifferent to Syria's censure or a Chinese veto.

I like the "US out of UN" bumper stickers because it also means "UN out of US".

[sinkspur]

I'm not impressed with Hanson's put-down of Bush because he didn't echo Churchillian themes.

Perhaps Victor could endure the rigors of a campaign?

[P H Lewis]

Save for later (too bleary-eyed to tackle anything else tonight)

[Texasforever]

Something Bush said in the last part of his speech has been bouncing around in my head because it sounded out of place. But I wonder if the structure of an "Iraqi democracy" was telegraphed? This is the line I am referring to

The U.N. and its member nations must respond to Prime Minister Allawi's requests and do more to help build an Iraq that is secure, democratic, federal and free.

Is Iraq about to become a federation of Sunni, Shia, and Kurdish states?

[sinkspur]

Perhaps. I didn't catch that.

Kerry's "momentum" will be broken tomorrow because the fool can't talk. Probably got hoarse from yelling at his underlings.

[ottothedog]

I don't like the part comparing Bush to Not-so-bright! But overall he comes down on the right side, saying that the UN is a bunch of worthless dictators who should just shut up, otherwise we'll send 'em back to their no good countries. Ok, so he didn't quite put it that way, but that is what I took out of it. :)

[goldstategop]

The UN is the Star Wars bar. Its hard to take its denizens seriously. Most of them do not like President Bush's message since freedom is exactly what threatens their hold on power back home. That's subversive stuff.

[VeritatisSplendor]

One reason we might want to have the UN in NYC is to make it much easier for us to spy on them.

[claudiustg]

Arab oil money has subverted the UN. The oil rich Arab despots bribe the poor countries of the world to support their agenda. The Europeans follow their greedy self interest in the same direction. No better example can be given than the continual anti-Israel resolutions flowing from the General Assembly.

Moving the UN somewhere else or dropping our membership while emotionally satisfying, would ultimately be self-defeating. It would be quite a coup if we could dissolve the UN over the oil for food scandal. That will probably not happen, but it is possible to neutralize it through de-funding and reorganization. The UN is a danger to our Republic.

[ClancyJ]

And, we now have the global tax floated by Chirac and apparently many nations agree. Could it be for two reasons?

1. Under the table dealings with Iraq are shutdown and Oil-For-Food profits are now shut down.

2. The socialistic countries are having economic problems and seek to sap the funds of the capitalistic nations to pad their pocketbooks.

[My2Cents]

The UN...The International House of Tyrants.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

I think the EU should be allowed only ONE VOTE, just as the U.S. has only ONE VOTE.

[Tolik]

Victor Davis Hanson:

Our own problems with the U.N. should now be viewed in a context of ongoing radical change here in the United States, as all the previous liberal assumptions of the past decades undergo scrutiny in our post 9/11 world. There are no longer any sacred cows in the eyes of the American public. Ask Germany and South Korea as American troops depart, Saudi Arabia where bases are closed, and the once beaming Yasser Arafat, erstwhile denizen of the Lincoln Bedroom, as he now broods in his solitary rubble bunker.

Deeds, not rhetoric, are all that matter, as the once unthinkable is now the possible. There is no intrinsic reason why the U.N. should be based in New York rather than in its more logical utopian home in Brussels or Geneva. There is no law chiseled in stone that says any fascist or dictatorial state deserves authorized membership by virtue of its hijacking of a government. There is no logic to why a France is on the Security Council, but a Japan or India is not. And there is no reason why a group of democratic nations, unapologetic about their values and resolute to protect freedom, cannot act collectively for the common good, entirely indifferent to Syria's censure or a Chinese veto.

So Americans' once gushy support for the U.N. during its adolescence is gone. By the 1970s we accepted at best that it had devolved into a neutral organization in its approach to the West, and by the 1980s sighed that it was now unabashedly hostile to freedom. But in our odyssey from encouragement, to skepticism, and then to hostility, we have now reached the final stage--of indifference. Americans do not get riled easily, so the U.N. will go out with a whimper rather than a bang. Indeed, millions have already shrugged, tuned out, and turned the channel on it.

    Victor Davis Hanson Ping !