Free Republic

(CNSNews.com) – Amid continuing calls to reduce U.S. funding of the United Nations, two senior Obama administration officials this week gave speeches asserting the importance of full – and fully-paid up – engagement with the world body. U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice addressed the United Nations Association of the United States (UNA-USA) on Monday, urging the advocacy group to help the administration make the case to the American people that “the U.N. plays an indispensable role in advancing our interests and defending our values.” On Wednesday Esther Brimmer, the assistant secretary of state for international organization affairs, took...

What will it take to knock the United Nations off the pedestal that it occupies in the minds of American internationalists? Certainly not passivity in the face of genocide. The loathsome record of the UN fiddling while innocents burn in Bosnia, Rwanda and now Darfur has not dimmed the affections of the world body’s faithful devotees. Nor do serial rape and institutionalised paedophilia seem to serve as disqualifiers, either. The multi-lateralist faith of the UN cheerleading squad appears to be unshaken by a sordid trail of sexual exploitation left by blue-helmeted peacekeepers from Kosovo to the Congo. In 2001, a...

Democratic critics of John Bolton’s nomination as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations have concentrated on personal attacks, rather than on policy differences because they know that if the confirmation debate is about policy, the public will support Bolton as a strong advocate of U.S. interests at the UN. Liberals must hide their ideological embrace of the UN as a supranational font of moral authority and a constraint on American power. During the run up to the Iraq War, opponents of a Congressional resolution to use force did not question intelligence assessments or the dangerous nature of the Iraq regime....

UNITED NATIONS, Nov. 12 - Secretary General Kofi Annan's reluctance to commit staff members to Iraq in large numbers and a series of comments he has made about the war have strained relations with the Bush administration and left many Americans bewildered, according to both supporters and critics of the United Nations. Mr. Annan withdrew international staff members from Iraq in October 2003 in the wake of attacks on relief workers and the bombing of the United Nations' Baghdad headquarters, which killed 22 people, including the mission chief, Sergio Vieira de Mello. Although the United Nations has been assigned the...