Let’s quit the UN

The Spectator ^ | Feb. 8, 2003 (Advance Copy) | Mark Steyn

[conservativecorner]

Great commentary concerning the UN and the USA!!

[happygrl]

Steyn BUMP!

[Howie66]

I've been saying for years that we sould (1) withdraw from the UN, and (2) demand that the UN find a more suitable location for their operations. The events of the past 12 years have done nothing but bolster my opinion on this.

After the fabulous presentation given by Colin Powell yesterday, I watched and listened to the comments given by the members of the Security Council. There was nothing surprising in any of the comments made by the French, the Germans, or the Syrians.

I have already contacted the offices of my Congressman (Tom DeLay) and bothe on my Senators (Kay Bailey Hutchinson and John Cornyn) to express my views. I strongly recommend that everyone do the same.

The UN has demonstrated time and again that they are nothing more than a playground for Anti-American socialists that have no interest other than aquiring power and money for their own benefit.

The sooner that the UN is disolved, the better.

[Bahbah]

"When I first saw it, circa 1990, [referring to the "Get the US out of the UN" sign} I believe I gave a wry chuckle positively Pattenesque in its amused sophistication: to be sure, the UN contains its share of rum coves but no serious person would entertain the notion of US withdrawal. Now I think he’s dead right"

This precisely describes the path I have taken. And we need to get the UN out of the US.

[headsonpikes]

bump

[Snake65]

This precisely describes the path I have taken.

Agreed, sir.

[Indy Pendance]

"So I say: go ahead, Jacques, make my day. Wield your veto, and let the Texan cowboy and his ever-expanding posse go it ‘alone’."

Bump!

[marron]

He has put his finger on it. UN approval for the war will be relatively simple to get. Its simply a matter of mortgaging are assets to French interest.

But how is a vote purchased with the Iraqi peoples' treasure more moral than a simple decision taken by elected US leadership, taking into account the interests of this country and the region?

We have been warning the UN that if they unable to respond to Iraq's defiance of their own resolutions, they will wake up to find themselves irrelevant. But let them sleep... they are already irrelevant. They already are unable to respond. The only UN decisions that are enforced are the ones we choose to enforce. The others simply hang in the air like an unanswered question.

The UN is a collection of mostly statist and socialist countries that could in no way be construed as sharing our values. We should never allow ourselves to be yoked to such a crowd as this. This does not mean we should never act in concert with other countries; we almost always do partner with others. But the partnerships are real ones, based on shared interests, and shared values. And they are always partnerships which arise naturally, owing nothing to our respective UN memberships.

Steyn has it about right. The UN is already finished. They have already been pants'ed, and there is nothing left to the imagination. But we have lost nothing, really, except an illusion. The real alliances we still have just as we have always had them. The countries that are willing to face a bullet for us, are willing for reasons having nothing to do with the UN. The others who offer help less publicly, at the level of law enforcement, likewise do so for reasons unrelated to the UN.

We will get by without it. The age of multilateralism will not disappear with the death of the UN, but the multilateral bodies that arise will be "organic", they will arise in response to a specific need, and will therefore be real. The UN is a fantasy. However fond some of us may have been, it was never real.

[Pokey78]

Thanks!

[marron]

"mortgaging are assets " = "mortgaging Iraqi assets"

dang.

[Terriergal]

Let’s quit the UN

I didn't even have to read the article. My answer is Yes.

[Redcloak]

Quit the Unimportant Nations? Surely you can't be serious.

[ScholarWarrior]

[Jim Noble]

I would like us to make sure the UN is dissolved, rather than see it continue on without us from its new HQ in Berlin or Beijing.

[The Iguana]

There were many woozy Western liberals who felt — and still feel — that the theoretical idealism of communism excused all its terrible failures in practice. The UN gets a similar pass but from a far larger number of people. How else to explain all those polls in Britain, Australia and even America that show popular support for war contingent on UN approval? ‘The UN’ means the Security Council; ‘the Security Council’ is a negative — it means anything which doesn’t prompt France, Russia or China to use their vetoes. I mentioned a few months back those Anglican churchmen who’ve redefined the Christian concept of a ‘just war’ to mean only one sanctioned by the UN, and said I couldn’t see why it should be left to two atheists and a lapsed Catholic to decide whether this is a war Christians could support. But amazingly the Anglican position has now been embraced by huge majorities of the British, Australian and American peoples: only the UN can confer moral respectability on the war.

Huge Steyn Bump.

I have pondered this very point over and over again in recent months. Why this fetish of moral authority at the hands of the UN? This body of mostly thugs and kleptocratic swags?

Whatever the UN is spending on PR it is getting all of its money's worth. Never before has there been such a disconnect between the image and the reality of an institution.

[Britton J Wingfield]

Lack of funding would dissolve it quickly enough, I think. Not to mention the amazing amount of infighting that would take place in the post-US vacuum.

[YoungKentuckyConservative]

The UN is nothing less than the skeleton structure of the New World Order. That's all it is. Katie, thus, is a useful tool for the socialist/communist/dictatorial LEFT!!!

[RonPaulLives]

glad to see you talking about the New World Order, my fellow Kentuckian.

Get the U.S. out of the U.N. and the U.N. out of the U.S.

[Stefan Stackhouse]

the Anglo-Aussie-American relationship

The "Triple A"! I just might be able to warm up to that!

[Wphile]

A Steyn ping!

I'm firmly in the US OUT OF THE UN camp.