The U.N.: Irrelevant and Malignant
By Alan Caruba June 15, 2002 - Source: NewsWithViews.com
The United States with a population in excess of 287 million people has one vote in the United Nations General Assembly. There are 188 other members. Of these, 130 member nations have populations less than 13 million people. That is less than the State of Florida. Their vote is equal to that of the USA.
It gets worse; there are 31 nations with a full vote that have less than a half million people (500,000). Even our least populated State, Wyoming, has more people. These UN member nations have the same vote as the US, China, India, Russia, Great Britain Japan or any other major power in the world. Indeed, fourteen nations with less than 100,000 people have a vote equal to ours. They include Tuvalu (10,836), San Marino (26,937) and Liechtenstein (31,130).
The real power is in the UN Security Council, composed of 15 members. Great Britain, France, China, Russia, and the United States are permanent members. There are ten other members elected for two-year terms. The one question no one has been able to answer for me is "How much security has the UN provided the world since its inception in 1947?"
The UN Charter says it exists to "save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, to practice tolerance and live together in peace as good neighbors, to unite our strength to maintain international peace and security." This malignancy that passes for an international organization devoted to fostering peace and a bunch of other noble ideals has proven to be utterly useless and totally irrelevant, except as a threat to democracy and freedom everywhere.
These days, the UN is totally devoted to transforming itself into a global government, essentially ending the sovereignty of all member and non-member nations through a matrix of treaties, conferences, and protocols. The UN has its hand in all aspects of life on Earth from trade to the environment. It wants the right to tax everyone, to have its own judicial system, and its own military capability. If it has its way, you will be saluting the UN flag, not the Stars and Stripes.
Founded after World War II, its architects were either Soviets or secret agents of the Soviets, working at the highest levels within the US State Department. Its first, interim Secretary General was none other than Alger Hiss who went to jail for lying about the fact that he was a Soviet agent. The United Nations has never had a Secretary General who wasn't a dedicated Socialist.
The first major conflict that broke out after WWII was the invasion by communist North Korea of South Korea. US troops are still stationed there more than a half-century later after the "United Nations Police Action" that threw the North Koreans and the Red Chinese army back behind the 38th parallel. Frankly, there isn't room to recount all the other so-called United Nations' efforts to maintain the peace that weren't totally dependent on the strength of the United States to achieve any resolution.
The five wars waged against Israel alone are a testimony to the UN's ability to look the other way when a member nation is fighting for its life. There is no single organization in the world that is more anti-Semitic than the United Nations. Its conference "against" racism, held in Durban, South Africa, last year was such a horror of racism, mostly aimed at Israel, the US withdrew its representatives. Between 1967 and 1988, there were 88 Security Council resolutions passed against Israel and not one criticizing a single Arab nation or the PLO. In that same time span, the General Assembly passed 429 anti-Israel resolutions.
In the years since the UN was founded, there have been appalling genocides in Asia and Africa.
When the United States was attacked by al Qaeda, the US did not go to the General Assembly to ask permission to respond; it sent its military to Afghanistan to decimate this threat. The US had learned the lesson of the Gulf War during which, operating under a UN resolution, it was not permitted to go into Baghdad and kill Saddam Hussein and his gang of thugs. Told by Iraq to leave, following its failed invasion of Kuwait, the UN withdrew its inspection teams searching for weapons of mass destruction.
No one seems too upset by this, except of course, those of us who keep calling for the complete withdrawal by the US from the UN. This perfectly sane response to what is clearly an evil organization invariably earns us the knee-jerk nomenclature of "extreme right wingers."
What is "extreme" about opposing an institution that has not only utterly failed to bring about peace, has made no impact on the abuse of human rights around the world, and which poses a threat to our republic? The United Nations is an international malignancy, undermining free societies everywhere, a platform for racism, a mechanism seeking transfer the wealth of industrialized nations to those that do not foster any economic growth of their own.
Remember that the next time a US ambassador to the United Nations casts our one vote in the General Assembly at the same time as Djibouti.
? Alan Caruba - All Rights Reserved - Reproduced with permission.