Out to lunch last month with a wise and articulate left-of-center friend, he says "I never understood the visceral contempt by the right for the UN."
Well, I mailed him a copy of the Weekly Standard with Stephen Hayes's documentation of UN failures in Kosovo. That's not online, but a great one the week after is.
I will also email him a link to this WSJ OpinionJournal - Featured Article by Lawrence Lindsay about the values of the UN vs. the USA:
"There has never been a single resolution on China, Syria or Saudi Arabia. The current session ended by defeating a resolution to criticize anything about the situation in Zimbabwe, and by eliminating the 10-year-old position of rapporteur on human rights in Sudan. This was despite a report of the U.N. rapporteur on torture informing commission members of the Sudanese practice of 'cross-amputation'--amputation of right hand and left foot for armed robbery, and various cases of women being stoned to death for alleged adultery.
Commission meetings themselves are a platform for incitement to hate and violence. At this year's session, the Iranian deputy foreign minister threatened what he called a 'vicious circle' of violence and future 'extremism' resulting from the Iraq war. The Cuban representative demanded action against 'the most critical case of . . . massive and flagrant violations of human rights [and] of the systemic institutionalization of racism--that of the United States.' The Algerian delegate said: 'The Israeli war machine has been trying for five decades to arrive at a final solution.' The Palestinian representative called for the 'elimination' of 'Zionist Nazism.'"
I did not sign the petition to pull out of the UN, but this baby needs serious, structural reform. I suggest a new body comprised of representatives of free nations. Then you can keep the General Assembly and the Security Council. But a middle body of diplomats who truly offered political representation of their nations could do most of the work.
I disagree, JK. The U.N., or any extra-national body for the purposes of diplomacy, is superfluous and counter-productive. Direct diplomacy between individual nations is the best and therefore the only way nations should conduct foreign policy.
Besides, we already have a body comprised of representatives of free nations. It is called, NATO.
Posted by: JohnGalt at April 28, 2003 11:44 AMHow could the United Nations be anything but an evil, corrupt organization.
For any action to be moral, it must flow from the rational self-interest of the person taking the action. The same criteria must apply to the action that any group might take. It must flow from the rational self-interest of the individuals that make up that group.
If you apply this principle to the U.N., it quickly becomes apparent that it would be impossible for that organization to take any moral action simply because the vast majority of its members are not morally legitimate in the first place. (Their governments were not put in place from the rational self-interested actions of their constituents.)
The only way the United Nations could ever be a legitimate organization would be if all of its member nations governed themselves by a written constitution that properly protected individual rights and allowed all of their citizens representation in and access to their governments.
Even then it could only be a debating society unless each of the member nations ceded their power and authority to a United Nations that itself possessed a written constitution that guaranteed individual rights and had a proper separation of the powers of government.
I believe that a more likely scenario for such a thing happening would be for the United States to begin adding states to its union. Given the current state of the world, the United States and philosophy in general, such an idea is ludicrous. (but I can always hope :-)
Posted by: Russ Shurts at April 28, 2003 01:24 PMFair points, both. Maybe there is better chance to develop NATO than the U.N.
I would not give the UN piles of money or preter-costitutional authority, but isn't good to keep all the kids in one room where we can keep an eye on them?
Posted by: jk at April 28, 2003 08:03 PM