A US Perspective on the UN

(EDITOR'S NOTE: George Melloan of The Wall Street Journal makes as good an analysis of the United Nations as I have read in ages. It really has come time for the US to evaluate exactly what purpose this archaic, corrupt institution actually serves. Beyond our kowtowing to mischievous and deceitful little autocrats for international sanctions approval, the United Nations actually costs our country billions of dollars each year in scandal-ridden and neglectful programs. I could go on ad nauseum, but instead defer to excerpts from Mr. Melloan's editorial below. -EBO)


Bush Will Give Turtle Bay Yet Another Try
by GEORGE MELLOAN
The Wall Street Journal
Tuesday, September 21, 2004

...In the forefront of U.N. failures is Darfur, where tens of thousands of innocents are perishing while the U.N. dithers over whether it wants to support a U.S. charge that Sudan's government is conducting a genocide. That Khartoum has armed and supported Arab terrorists who have murdered, raped and starved the hapless black Africans of that desolate region would seem to be reason enough for U.N. action.

...North Korea and Iran are hell-bent to build nuclear weapons to use for blackmailing their neighbors and the world at large. The U.N. can't seem to decide what to do about that either. Last Friday, the IAEA board voted, after much haggling, to criticize Iran for the secrecy of its nuclear program. But the U.S. couldn't persuade the board to go beyond that.

...North Korea is even more impudent, threatening to test a nuclear weapon. As with Saddam Hussein, the end result of allowing these two governments to repeatedly thumb their noses at the U.N. is likely to be that the U.S. ultimately will have no choice but to use military force to remove the dangers to the civilized world their nuclear ambitions represent.

...U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan last week took it upon himself to say that the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq last year was contrary to "international law." The invasion, of course, followed more than a decade of Saddam's defiance of U.N. resolutions demanding that he reveal whether he had weapons of mass destruction.

...Former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker is investigating how it happened that Mr. Annan didn't notice that Saddam was skimming billions of dollars from the U.N. oil-for-food program to build palaces, buy weapons and bribe sundry politicians around the globe.

...In the 191-nation General Assembly Mr. Bush will address today, most of the delegates represent small, poor nations that mostly have one thing in mind, trying to wheedle as much as they can out of the large, rich nations.

It is sometimes unclear what real purpose the United Nations serves, considering how it has swollen into a secretive bureaucracy and the difficulty in marshalling any unity on how to achieve its lofty goals of world peace and prosperity.