Tuesday, September 05, 2006

It’s Time to Deep-Six the UN

Just Say NO!Right after the election in 2004, before Gates of Vienna had really gotten going, I joined the comments at the Belmont Club and suggested that other commenters take up a most pressing topic: getting the United States out of the United Nations. An interesting discussion ensued, and various alternatives to the UN were suggested.

Not long after that Dymphna and I started blogging here, and now whenever the mood strikes me I can rant and rave about the UN.

This latest tirade is the result of a comment made by David S. on Dymphna’s post the other day:

Just finished reading “Meanwhile, in Darfur…”. In reading it I reached the same conclusion that I reached long ago: we need to leave the UN. Period. Form a tighter international organization under NATO if you wish or some other option, but the UN is such a sham and mockery that we as a nation should simply denounce it for what it is and move on. Any time something may actually get done there, the reasonable solutions are blocked by China and Russia, and oftentimes France.

The fear is, in leaving the UN, we lose ‘legitimacy’ for our actions in the international community. What a joke; since when did anyone but our closest allies actually think anything we did was justifiable?

Another fear, I believe, is that seceding from the UN would divide the world into two camps, two sets of alliances in the same fashion as pre-world war politics. The UN in reality does nothing but create a thinly-veiled ‘unity’ which has no relation to policy. Our opposition holds to a different set of values (wrong ones) and has a different ‘constituency,’ if you will. We are already two camps — those who support Western Civilization, and those who do not (or are indifferent and see dollar signs in opposition). It would be as if the United States formed one political party which included the neocons and Christian right in the same group as the Greens, Socialists and other moonbats. It’s absurd.

While the boundary between the two is blurry in many nations including our own, there are numerous countries that have outright declared their undying hatred for us. Why should we have any respect for their opinion when their goals are to destroy us? Why should China, who is fast becoming our main opposition in everything from economics to international policy, be allowed to veto a moral objective such as ending the violence in Darfur simply because it would be unprofitable?

The only reason why we continue to be a part of this joke of an organization is because the MSM keeps painting it as the last hope for humanity. And some people actually doubt there is a liberal bias in the media; what greater proof could there be than their support for the UN?

I hope everyone out there reading this holds the same view. Do any of you see any way we could ever make this possible? In my opinion it is undoubtedly the first step we have to take as a nation to get back on the right course. Thoughts?

My thoughts are: Buddy, if you wanted to hear someone denigrate the UN, then you come to the right place.

Some of our readers are old enough to remember those billboards that used to say, “Get US out of the UN!” They were a feature of highway driving in certain parts of the country, particularly in the South. They went along with “Impeach Earl Warren”, and came from the fringe. They were evidence of a nutjob right-wing wacko, the same kind of backwoods unibrow fellow who said, “Ain’t nobody gonna fluoridate my water!”

[Note to readers: Please don’t tell me about the recently-discovered hazards of fluoridated water. I’m familiar with them; that’s part of what adds irony to this whole story.]

Forty-odd years later, the idea of getting our country out of the UN, and the UN out of our country, doesn’t seem so weird. It’s all but mainstream now, even if the “mainstream” media don’t want you to think so.

I’m not going to take this anymore!The UN has outlived its usefulness, if indeed it ever had any. It has gone past the point of being an ineffectual joke, and entered a new stage where it actively and deliberately aids those people and regimes that most Americans consider evil.

Kofi Annan just went to visit Mad Jad, and basically delivered the message that UN resolutions aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on; that no deadline for the correction of Iran’s behavior really exists; that even if it did, there are no meaningful consequence for failure to meet it.

The UN is good for nothing. The only things it can do are to skim money off its funding to line the nests of its apparatchiks, procure underage sex-slaves for its peacekeepers, and pass resolutions condemning Israel.

Oh yes; one other thing: It thoughtfully provides those handy missile-storage ambulances for Hamas and Hizbullah.

And, yes, I know what a good job the World Health Organization does. Every time anybody criticizes the UN, WHO comes up. It’s the transnational equivalent of Head Start — whenever funding is threatened, trot out the poster-boy success program! Especially one that involves smiling little children with big brown eyes.

So any time a congressman questions the federal funding of yet another statue of the Virgin Mary soaked in bat phlegm, the lefties and their lobbyists roll out Head Start. Or the school lunch program. Or Big Bird. Anything to tug the heartstrings of the TV audience and remind them that those nasty, evil Republicans want children to eat ketchup as a vegetable! The horror!

It’s the same with the UN. They vaccinate the children. They bring portapotties to the little ones in the refugee camps. They feed the starving orphans of [insert the name of your favorite Third World country wrecked by socialism here].

What would we do without the UN?

I say: Let’s find out.

Here’s a list of the things we know about the UN:

  • The organization is massively corrupt, from top to bottom.
  • UN officials used the Oil-For-Food program to enrich themselves and actively subvert the foreign policy of the United States, as well as prop up the tyrant Saddam.
  • The UN would like to tax everyone in the world to fund its corrupt activities, so that it will no longer have to come cap in hand to the Congress and the taxpayers of America.
  • The UN, along with a large chunk of the Left in this country, believes that the laws of the United States (and any other country) are and should be subordinate to “international law” which is whatever the unaccountable nabobs at Turtle Bay say it is.
  • The UN believes that everyone has a right to birth control, but not to self-defense.
  • The structure of the United Nations guarantees that its agenda and procedures will be controlled by the worst undemocratic regimes in the world.

So what have we got to lose if we kiss it goodbye?

The UN — like its star-crossed predecessor, the League of Nations — is supposed to keep the peace. That’s its rationale: rather than resort to war, the well-meaning and peace-minded nations of the world will submit their disagreements to UN mediation, and thus avoid armed conflict.

Uh-huh. Right.

The UN did a good job of stopping war in Rwanda, and Darfur, and East Timor, and Sri Lanka, and Chechnya, and Kosovo, and Somalia, and…

The only war that the UN is willing to stop is any war of self-defense attempted by the State of Israel.

The real truth of the matter, the ugly truth that makes America hated and reviled the world over, is that the only force capable of keeping the peace in the world today is the armed might of the United States of America. No country can remain at war if America has the desire and will to stop it. And, without the help of the United States, the UN is a shrill but ineffectual bystander.

The UN is like an old woman whose cat is stuck up a tree, standing on the sidewalk and shrieking at the firemen, “Save my poor Bootsie!” while the big strong firemen run the ladder up the tree and do their job.

Only this particular old woman is stealing the tires and the chrome trim off the fire truck and putting sand in the gas tank, and all the while the firemen are too busy to notice.

The UN has gone past the point of being an annoying irrelevance. Because of its actions, millions of people will eventually die, and some of them will be our men and women in uniform.

The President has taken an oath to preserve and protect the citizens of this country. He will violate it if he does not, with deliberate speed, begin the work of extricating us from the United Nations.

Our treaty obligations cannot require us to commit national suicide.

26 comments:

newc said...

"It is Finished".
Call darth Bolton back in and get him something better to do.

The US ARE the UN. People from all over the world do anything to get here. It is the Ark.

Enough.

Nilk said...

I am so there.

Once we've extricated the US, can we get Australia out next, please?

Prodicus said...

Agree with your principal arguments but (and I hate to point it out) this is a bit overstated, isn't it? :
"No country can remain at war if America has the desire and will to stop it."

Fellow Peacekeeper said...

"The only war that the UN is willing to stop is any war of self-defense attempted by the State of Israel."

Well, the US could have vetoed that UNSCR resolution 1701 but chose not to. And, Israel could have happily ignored the UN and kept shooting (as it has in the past, where UNIFIL was never considered a barrier to targeting - anyone else remember the Fijian battalion compound massacre incident?). So, in all fairness it took at least two accomplices to the UN to make for that latest clusterf**k.

Course, we (ah, that is the UN, I mean the French, Bangladeshis, other running dogs and riff-raff that is the new UNIFIL) could also enforce UNSCR 1559, which IIRC would mean the Syrians getting out of Lebanon. And the I-ranians.

The new UNIFIL will be at least 50% more effective than the old one. Shoot - make that 150% ! (i.e. still zero, but its the progress that counts).

In Russet Shadows said...

I could not agree more. My only burning question is how, How, How? How do we do it? I tire of mere words, and editorials which soothe our hearts for a while but leave us unfilled. I speak not of violence, but reasoned and rational action. How, How, HOW? While the U.N's laws are not our laws, we still have a window to act. Let us turn our energy from words into action. Any ideas?

Beach Girl said...

All we have to do really is have Bolton take the lovely hand of Australia in his, turn around three times saying, "We evict you; we evict you; we evict you!" Move the empty sea cargo containers to the loading dock and ship the arses of the UN home.

It really should not be a messy, acrimonious endeavor with gnashing of teeth. Just stop paying our dues, turn off the electricity and water to the building, and let the "diplomats" go home.

The crime rate would go down in NYC and all of us would be better off with the UN out of the US. The UN has degenerated into an "us" vs. "them" mentality with "them" being the United States and Israel and of course Australia, Britain, a few NATO nations, and such. The American people would be well-served to get the "yoke of oppression that the UN longs to be" out of our sandbox.

The "free world" would be much better served as well. We get it done by pointing out to the President of US that UN needs to go. The Baron has started the list of reasons. The President knows the list too. It all boils down to politics and politicians can get things done if they know doing the right thing is the winning ticket.

Zerosumgame said...

Baron, (OT for thread, not for GoV)

I assume by now you have heard that nine Islamonazis were arrested in Denmark for a terrorist plot (which of course will be blamed on the Motoons, but really has more to do with the Rasmussen government itself).

Clearly, they see Denmark as vulnerable.

We will now see how strongly the Danes are committed to fighting Islamonaziism.

Are they Europe's Australia, or are they a perfect fit for the EU, a nordic Spain?

Baron Bodissey said...

Prodicus --

...this is a bit overstated, isn't it?

Yes, it is.

But the reason it is overstated is that everyone knows that the US is unlikely to intervene anymore except under the most exigent of circumstances. Hence my inclusion of "has the will to stop it."

America has very little will left. 9-11 was not an exigent enough circumstance to waken it. George Bush has learned the unfortunate lesson of how deeply hobbled the national will of this country is.

It will take something truly awful to change this circumstance.

Jeremayakovka said...

It will take something truly awful to change this circumstance. -BB

You mean "History": e.g., Victor Hanson has been saying says major terror escalation is inevitable.

Si vis pacem, pare bellum, etc.

BCM said...

The problem with leaving the UN is the resevoir of credibility it still has- and the usefullness it would have for those opposing the US.

Think back to the Korean war for what happened when the USSR walked out of the room for a little while. The US' enemies would have the same opportunity to do similar things to the US. Once the US leaves, how much damage could the UN do with its remaining legitimacy?

1) legitimize the call for the destruction of Israel

2) Divide the US from its allies (Many of the western nations, if forced to choose between the US and following the UN would follow the UN- the people of Canada for almost certain and the UK quite likely as well)

The US leaving the UN would be like leaving the gun cabinet open, along with the car keys and a full crate of whiskey. The damage that the UN would do in the world while it tore itself apart would be nightmarish.

The US in the UN is a terrible and ultimately necessary evil due to what would happen after the US left.

X said...

The UN needs its Japan moment. When Japan walked out of the Leage of Nations conference after refusing to give up its claims on Korea everyone realised that the League had no power. If the US walks out of the UN and then continues doing what it's done, or if Israel decides to leave, it would probably have the same effect. A better way might be for some other nation to just walk out. China, for instance, or Austrlia. Or even Iran.

Then again, Iran has been blatantly ignoring the UN for the past year and people haven't figured it out ye. Perhaps the sight of a nuke exploding after all the talks to stop it will have the right effect...

There's no easy way to dismiss the UN. It'll collapse, and it'll make a mess when it does, and whether the US is in or out will make not a jot of difference.

kepiblanc said...

zerosumgame --

In all fairness the Danish MSM - including national TV - did not even try to conceal the ethnicity / faith of those arrested. They openly call them MUSLIMS. Not "fanatics", "radicals", "youths" or some such. MUSLIMS.

Zerosumgame said...

Kepiblanc:

The question is "Now that Danes know they are targets of terrorism, will they surrender like Spain?"

If they surrender, then:

a) they will vote in the left at the next election.

b) They will remove the laws about foreign marriages.

c) They will stop prosecuting honor killings.

d) They will give these Islamonazi savages the right to beat up and kill Jews and bomb synagogues without fear of arrest -- as is the case in the rest of Europe.

e) And they will stop protecting the editors and cartoonists of J-P, so that they are forced to flee to the United States or find themselves butchered just like Theo van Gogh.

In short, we will now see how serious Denmark is about fighting Islamofascism.

I must admit that from this side of the Atlantic, I am not optimistic.

X said...

There's a lot of assumptions in that post, Zero. A lot of ifs, and they all rest on the first assumption, "if they surrender"... given their current behaviour this seems unlikely.

I know something of the danes. In Sweden they're seen as slightly stuck-up and stubborn, which is just a negative way of saying that they're confident and unweilding. In other words they aren't spanish. No offence to any spaniards who happen to be here but, really, you're a flighty bunch. ;)

Zerosumgame said...

Archonix,

In my very first post at GoV, I pointed out that Denmark is a nation of 5 million surrounded by an EU of 400+ million.

It is part of a federation (the EU) that is dominated by left-wing dhimmis, whose Europe-wide laws are written by left-wing dhimmis (laws to which Denmark are bound), whose cultural and media outlets are dominated by left-wing dhimmis, and perhaps most ominous for Denmark, the Danish economy is dependent on trade with these left-wing dhimmis.

Even if the anti-Islamist, pro-Western faction in Denmark were a solid majority (and I doubt it is more than a slight majority, as the left has had its share of ruling governments in Denmark, so it must be almost as strong), the pressure that the EU would bring to bear on a stubborn, anti-dhimmi Denmark, if combined with Islamofascist terrorism, would be too much for Danes to bear. Ultimately, they would have to surrender to the EU, and beyond that, to Islamofascism. Those Danes that did not like it would leave, as the Dutch and Swedes are doing now.

I don't mean to rain on Denmark's parade. But I don't think Denmark is big enough to withstand all the forces acting on it (and some of those forces are internal) to get it to surrender to the EU, surrender to the Islamofascists, and then brainwash the people with the anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism of both.

X said...

Zero, you seem to misunderstand the nature of the EU. At the moment it seems very large, but as an entity it is somewhat less than the sum of its parts. It has no actual legislative power. Countries within it aren't actually obliged to implent EU directives. The entire thing is a mutual pretence on the part of all involved, but it's currently reaching a point where the pretence won't work for much longer. Denmark doesn't have any obligation to actually do as the EU says, nor pay any fines that the EU might levy for not complying with its directives. Look at France. ALl it would take is for Denmark to abrogate a single piece of legislation that made it a member of the EC and everything thereafter would be rendered null and void. Then it would be a free agent again.

Denmark might be a small country but that doesn't mean it will "surrender", as you put it. They already voted against the Euro, and the EU is viewer very unfavourably. If the EU now starts to trya dn intefere directly in Danish politics on this issue it might well spark a popular demand to leave the EU, and there's nothing the EU can do about that. In fact the EU is quite reliant on Denmark as a major trading port, and if the danes were to exit and re-establish their customs checkpoints on the border with the rest of the EU it would cause quite a lot of problems for other EU countries, beyond any they might try and inflict on this "little" country.

Simply put, the EU isn't a federation and isn't a government, as much as it likes to pretend otherwise. Don't try and view it through the lense of your federal government, because that's about as unlike the EU as you can get. Its power rests on treaties, enacted in to law at the national level, and it only has that power as long as the nations within it continue to invest it so. If they decide to stop, and repeal the acts and legislation that bind them to those treaties, the game's over.

El Jefe Maximo said...

One of the few good marks to the credit of Joseph Stalin was his insistence on the veto for the great powers in the Security Council.

I don't like the UN either; it is as pernicious an institution as its predecessor, the League of Nations. It is quite enough that we pay for the UN let alone that we have to listen to it. It is a ginormous conspiracy to allow basket case states and middle power gadflies to punch out of their weight.

Still, unless and until we can organise withdrawal from that body by all the big powers (US, Russia, Japan, China, India, Germany, UK and France, etc.), I'd rather see us in it; if only to make sure we kept other powers from being up to too much mischief (that is, more than they are already). Meanwhile, we are better off sniping at it and allowing the thing to make itself as absurd and ridiculous as possible.

kepiblanc said...

zerosumgame --

Point a) might happen, but unlikely. The rest (b -e) never will. And, BTW : What does 'left' mean in Denmark ? - Do you know that the largest 'left' party (Social Democrats) actually support the laws on immigration, including the ban on forced marriages and family reunions ?. The leader of the other 'left' party (Villy Soevndal of The Socialist People's Party) today was unusually clear on the matter of terrorism : "No Tolerance whatsoever".

IMHO we have only one, really dangerous political party, called "The Radical Left" (which isn't 'left' by any standard). This party represents 10% of the population (many Muslims) and the entire Danish collection of fruitcakes, jarheads, acid-pots, nuts, doo-gooders, tree-huggers, know-better-than-you's, whackademicians and so on and so forth. According to 'The Bell Curve' most populations have about the same percentage of 'negative-variants', but here we confine them to one party. Very practical.

Zerosumgame said...

Zero:

This party represents ... the entire ... collection of fruitcakes, jarheads, acid-pots, nuts, doo-gooders, tree-huggers, know-better-than-you's, whackademicians and so on and so forth. According to 'The Bell Curve' most populations have about the same percentage of 'negative-variants', but here we confine them to one party. Very practical.


In this country, we call such people "Democrats".... :-)

Reliapundit said...

they could sell the building to trump; it'd make a fine coop/condo/hotel-casino-marina.

X said...

Ehh, the building is outdated now. Best thing would be to burn it to the ground and start again with something more suitable. Though theming it on the old building might be a nice idea. A sort of international folly...

NotClauswitz said...

The building would make a good Wal-Mart/Costco, the organization is a train-wreck.

Epaminondas said...

There can be no 'organization', there MIGHT be, if the circustances are dire enough a situation by situation coalescence for action.

As far as getting out of the UN...just have NYC demand the parking fines in the name of social justice for economic transfer for the poor, and illegal aliens in NY. We can have Jesse organize the whole thing. Cindy Sheehan can live in a lampost on 1st ave.

Then we can put Shea Stadium in Manhattan. We'll put a plaque up at the nearest D'Agostino's near hte rest room in commemoration of Adlai Stevenson's best work...there's nothing else worth remembering ..they didn't end a single war...only as Dean Acheson warned, confirmed the status quo via truces... Korea, Iraq, Israel.

Pastorius said...

Great rant, Baron. You forgot to mention, in your bullet-points section, that the UN wants to take over control of the internet, and will probably eventually put that idea to a vote.

That's one of the most frightening ideas I have ever heard come out of the UN.

Papa Ray said...

"Only this particular old woman is stealing the tires and the chrome trim off the fire truck and putting sand in the gas tank, and all the while the firemen are too busy to notice."

The above is so true. Baron you out did yourself.

Papa Ray

X said...

Pastorius, close, but what the UN is aiming for at the moment is control of the root DNS. In reality it won't let it do much about controlling internet content (changing the root zones will tend to break things, you see, something verisign got in a lot of trouble for when it tried). The real issue is that the UN is siding with the International Telecoms Union (which is just another tranzie). You see, back inb the 60s they had this crazy idea about running a world-wide computer network, but they were stuck in the old analogue switch way of doing things rahter than packet-switching, which is what TCP/IP uses. They figured it out eventually, but in the time it took them to write up their detailed and overly complex first draft of the specifications for their protocols, a bunch of nerds in the US had written, tested and implemented TCP and got the first twinklings of the net working. After that the ITU system was simply ignored. THey've had a grudge ever since, and now they're using the UN as a way of wresting back their "rightful" domain.

I know they'll fail. The only reason they've had for trying is that ICANN (who run the root dns these days) has seen a lot of inteference from the US government over the years, but now they're backing off completely. After that the only reasons are ideological: ICANN is a not-for-profit private corporation, you see, and not an NGO, so it isn't proper in the eyes of the activists. The UN can vote all it likes; I doubt the US will hand over the root DNS, as it means a) seizing it from private ownership and b) handing it away again a might happen, but b?. Well... if Hillary gets in in 08, then you can wave bye-bye, but otherwise I doubt it. :)

Of course the UN could set up its own root DNS and break the internet in the process, but considering their attempts at running, well, anything that actually needs to be responsive, somehow I doubt it'll work for long.