By:Jonah Goldberg

First Things First
Bush vs. the United Nations.

Let's get one thing straight from the outset: The U.N. sucks. And before you start talking about the starving babies it saves and the thorns it pulls from cuddly creatures' paws, please remember that all sorts of awful institutions do good things. Hamas funds hospitals, Hitler built highways, Stalin improved literacy, Baywatch helped people with tired blood by providing uplifting, and uplifted, torsos to look at. One can be in favor of many of the things the U.N. does without being in favor of the U.N., just as being in favor of regular garbage collection doesn't mean I have to be in favor of the government collecting garbage. If the government stopped picking up my trash, that wouldn't mean my home would be swallowed up in bags of filth. And, if the U.N. stopped feeding starving people that would hardly mean starving people would never be fed.

The problems with the United Nations are legion. It is a parliament of thugs masquerading as the authentic voice of the world's people. It is a megaphone for simultaneously childish and serious America-bashing. It is a place where utopian schemes and Malthusian nightmares will always find a sympathetic ear. It is a gold rush for criminals and cranks looking to drain the treasuries of nations too racked with guilt to put up a "No Panhandling" sign once and for all.

There are plenty of people, delegates to the U.N. at the forefront, who think the U.N. is a "democratic" voice for the peoples of the world and that it is therefore somehow immoral, arrogant, or unsophisticated to defy its edicts and brush off its condemnation.

This conviction, alas, stands on a foundation of shoddy thinking and fictional assumptions. I can't tell you how many people I've met who've tried to use the fact that the U.N. voted on something as proof that the U.N. is right. College kids will shriek the word as if it drips with self-evident authority: "It voted against the United States!" "Don't you understand? It voted!"

Well, voting, in and of itself, has as much to do with democracy as disrobing has to do with sex. Both are often necessary, neither are ever sufficient.

I always think of "the Commission" when I want to illustrate this point. That's what the Mafia called its confabs of the major mob families. Think of that scene in The Godfather where Don Corleone arranges for the return of Michael from Sicily (and subsequently realizes that all along it was Barzini, not that pimp Tattaglia, who outfoxed Santino). The Commission was democratic. It took votes on where and when to install drug dealers, bribe judges, and exterminate cops. Now, just because it took a vote, does that make its decisions any more noble or just? Well, the U.N. is a forum for tyrants and dictators who check the returns on their Swiss bank accounts — and not the needs or voices of their own people — for guidance on how to vote. The fact that Robert Mugabe, Bashar Assad, Kim Jong-Il, Hassan al-Bashir, Fidel Castro, et al., condemn the United States from time to time is a badge of honor. And the fact that we, and other decent peoples, feel the need to curry their favor and approval is a badge of shame.

Oh, sure, there are plenty of decent nations in the U.N., but that doesn't change the fact that decisions are made in a political environment where good guys must compromise with bad guys. If the Commission had had a few honorary slots for some policemen and priests, would that make its votes that much more honorable? When the Commission votes 10 to 2 in favor of selling heroin to Girl Scouts, should the cop and the priest feel bad? "Darn, lost another vote!" Should they try to, in the words of U.N. fetishists, "effect change from within the system" by seeking "constructive compromise with those whom they have sincere differences"? Or, should they say, "I'll be damned if I'm going to deal with, be lectured to, or be shaken down by a bunch of gangsters and tyrants, just because the New York Times says I should."

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Oh man, I could not have said it better myself. KoFi ANanananana, is an idiot. The U.N. exists because, well.. we allow it to. The United States runs the show, but thats not really being very fair so we lay low and allow the U.N. to run things until they get out of hand. "Oil for Food," anyone? We obviously do not care what the U.N. says, take Iraq for example, why should we when we founded the damn thing? Most, if not all of the players in the U.N. have at one time received some form of aid from the United States, yet when the time comes and we need some relief from the bench we are left high and dry. It would be pretty sweet if the US just decided one day to say, "F all this" and back up everything and came back home to chill. Take a step back and let the world kill eachother from the comfort of our duel-ocean barrier, mwahaha. I guess we might have to worry about Canada, well not really. Mexico could be taken care of with a lot of dynamite along the border so we really would have nothing to worry about. I don't know where I am going with this, which is obviously apparent by my ramblings, but back to the matter at hand, if the U.N. wants respect from the US, they need to give respect back, and by that I mean be our *****.

-Ghost

__________________
To know that we know what we know, and that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge. -Henry David Thoreau

Knowledge is power.

Oh man, totally not cool with the censorship. It ruins the entire piece.

For shame mike, for shame...

-Ghost

__________________
To know that we know what we know, and that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge. -Henry David Thoreau

Knowledge is power.