UNsuccessful, UNethical, UNneeded By Justin Darr (9/05/04)

Books of Interest

The United Nations has failed again.  Somehow, the UN has found time away from obstructing the investigation into their collusion with Saddam Hussein to rob billions of dollars from the "Iraqi Oil for Bribes", I mean "Food" program, to doom thousands of Africans to certain genocide in the Darfur region of  Sudan.  In its infinite wisdom, the UN has decided to offer the radical Islamist government of Sudan a package of trade deals and financial incentives rather than any threat of international sanctions to curtail their wonton slaughter of their non-Moslem citizens.  If the Sudanese comply, they will be able to build a nice, shiny, new airport and Western style shopping mall, and if they refuse. Well, nothing happens, and things can go on as they are.  Situation normal for the United Nations.

Incidents such as these add the latest fuel to the fire of critics of the UN who say the time is long past for the United States to leave the morally bankrupt, ineffective, anti-American international body.  It is easy to agree with the sentiment.  Why should we pay billions of dollars a year to an organization that is actively working against us and feels unaccountable for its own actions?  The reality of the matter, however, is the United States leaving the UN would solve nothing.  The United Nations would continue on as it has, probably getting worse without America taking a stand for freedom and democracy, and the United States would effectively ostracize itself from a potentially useful outlet for international diplomacy.  No, the problem is not the United States' membership in the UN, but the United Nations itself.  In its 60 year history, the UN has accomplished nothing.  Its only successes have been the result of the UN loaning out its name in the form of an "endorsement" of an action that would have been done regardless if the UN existed.  On its own, the United Nations has failed to realize even its most fundamental charges.  For example, even in the areas of preventing genocide and fighting world hunger and disease, the UN has vividly demonstrated its ineptness. 

According to www.genocide.org, since the end of World War II and the founding of the United Nations, over 81 million people have been killed in racial, religious, and political genocides across the world.  This number is 1350% greater than all those killed in the Nazi death camps.  But now, instead of innocents dying under the swastika, they are perishing under the blue flag of the UN and its farcical peacekeeping missions.  Just within the past few years hundreds of civilians where slaughtered in Srebrenica, Bosnia, within eyeshot of 600 Dutch UN peacekeepers who felt they were not authorized to interfere.  And in Rwanda, millions were killed in ethnic cleansing campaigns conducted under the nose of another UN peacekeeping mission led by now UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan.  Just what does the UN think "preventing genocide" means?  It is obvious that the United Nations has not only failed in its mission to prevent genocide, but has actually acted as its enabler, leading to the bloodiest 60 years in history.

The United Nation's incompetence extends far beyond its peacekeeping missions.  In the fight against starvation and disease, time and time again the UN has mismanaged and wasted hundreds of millions of dollars of aid on spurious projects that seem aimed more toward their personal aggrandizement and creature comforts than helping the suffering around the world.  For example, in the 1980's, at the height of the Ethiopian famine, the UN spent over $75 million building and upgrading apartment complexes for UN administrators and aid workers in Ethiopia while food supplies rotted on the docks, unable to reach famine stricken areas due to a lack of transportation vehicles.  And, more recently, in East Timor, the UN spent over $50 million to build hotels and supermarkets for foreign visitors while neglecting the development of much needed local infrastructure and hospitals.  The UN acts like any other European Socialist bureaucracy.  The bureaucrats arrogantly assume they know what is best for others at all times and any decision they make is correct for the simple reason that they made it.  Above all else, the bureaucrats protect their own, accepting no responsibility for errors, and ensuring that all blame is placed outside of the organization.  The end result is the UN being content to give starving people what the United Nations say they need, not what the people require.  If people want food and medicine, they get a soccer stadium.  If people want a democracy, they are given a UN generated bureaucracy.  The people want freedom, they get the status quo.

The problem with the United Nations is it wants all the power of a World Parliament but will assume none of the responsibility associated with such power.  In effect, the goal of the UN is to dictate world peace on its terms, not facilitate it in a spirit of freedom and democracy.  An international body dedicated to the debate of ideas and opening avenues of diplomacy is a wonderful idea, but it will never work so long as the international body feels no accountability to the sovereign nations which compose it or the people of the world it claims to protect.  After billions of dollars and countless lives lost on an idea that does not work,  the United States should lead the charge to replace this fatally flawed institution with an international body that might offer the world a real hope for freedom, democracy, and prosperity. 


Justin Darr
justindarr@juno.com