From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Sat May 03 2003 - 10:59:13 MDT
Terry quotes from Mark Steyn's piece in the National Post:
> Now another Middle Eastern war has come and gone, and the
> bien-pensants are anxious that once again an obsolescent institution
> be glued back together and propped in position. This time it's the
> UN. The editors of Britain's Spectator concede it has more than its
> share of "irritating do-gooders," but surely even that's a euphemism:
> The do-gooders are, in fact, do-badders. The "oil-for-palaces"
> program (as Tommy Franks calls it) is a grotesque boondoggle even by
> UN standards: It was good for bureaucrats, good for Saddam's European
> bankers, good for his British stooge George Galloway, but bad for the
> Iraqi people. A humanitarian operation meant to help a dictator's
> beleagured subjects has instead enriched the UN by over $1-billion
> (officially) in "administrative" costs. There's no oversight, no
> auditing, nothing most businesses would recognize as a legitimate
> invoice, and, although non-essential items can only be approved by
> the Secretary-General himself, Kofi Annan (Mister Legitimacy) has
> personally signed off on practically anything Saddam requested,
> including "boats," from France.
Yes, the U.N. has become quite corrupt. Is it time for it to go?
> You don't have to agree (though I do) with George Jonas that the UN
> is a fully fledged member of the axis of evil to recognize that
> there's little point in going to war to install yet another branch
> office of UNSCAM. If the problem is America's image in the Arab
> world, in what way does it help to confine the Stars and Stripes
> brand to unpleasant things like bombs while insisting all the nice
> post-war reconstructive stuff be clearly labelled with the UN flag?
> If the answer is that that's the price you pay for healing the rift
> with Old Europe, that presupposes Old Europe is interested in healing
> it. Tony Blair may be keen, but the Continentals have different
> agendas. Will the Belgian government approve the complaint against
> Tommy Franks for "genocide"? The petition accuses the General of
> "inaction in the face of hospital pillaging," which apparently meets
> the Belgian definition of genocide. Unlike the deaths of over three
> million people, which is the lowball figure for those who've died in
> the current civil war in the Congo -- or, as I still like to think of
> it, the Belgian Congo.
>
> The Congo's civil war is everything the NIONists (Not In Our Name)
> claimed Bush's war would be: There were more civilian deaths in a few
> hours in Ituri province last week than in the entire Iraq campaign;
> while the blowhards at Oxfam and co -- the Big Consciences lobby --
> insist on pretending that Iraq is a humanitarian disaster, there's an
> actual humanitarian disaster going on in the Congo, complete with
> millions of children dead from disease and malnutrition. While the
> lefties warned that Ariel Sharon would use the cover of the Iraq war
> to slaughter the Palestinians, the Congolese are being slaughtered,
> and you don't need any cover. Because nobody cares. Because no
> arrogant Americans or sinister Zionists are involved.
That's it exactly, of course.
However, I think that the trouble with the U.S. leaving the U.N.
would be that it would play right into the hands of America's
enemies. "See! They're so out of control that they won't even
talk anymore!"
One's first reaction is, so what? Now I agree that the United States
should learn to start caring less about what other countries think
and more about what they will do.
Yet there comes a time when, whether it's trade negotiations or
human rights issues, Americans should indeed worry about what the
rest of the world will do. Allowing the French and Russians to
set the standard for human rights, or allowing a lot of America-
haters to weaken international trade is not in anyone's real
interest.
So the U.S. should continue to support the same goofy charade at
the U.N., and hope that over time irrational hatreds subside and
cooperativeness and genuine humanitarianism increase.
Lee
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