The United Nations--A Portrait of Failure (update 5/18/06)

Born out of the crucible of World War II, the United Nations was in idealistic and sober response to the 55 million deaths that war wrought. The world witnessed Hitler's death camps, Japan's mass murders and rapes in China, and finally the American Atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Recoiling with horror, the world vowed to end war for all time.

Following the first World War, a similar well-intentioned organization had been established, The League of Nations. Established as an article of the Treaty of Versaille, ending the war, the League of Nations was supposed to end war and suffering. With no army or means of enforcement, their only weapon was sanctions against member nations. Sanctions, then as now, proved to be totally ineffectual. With the lessons learned from its first attempt, the world hoped the UN would prove to be a more effective body. The world was wrong!

In the preamble to the United Nations Charter the noble intentions of the fledgling organization are evident.

WE THE PEOPLES OF THE UNITED NATIONS DETERMINED
to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, and to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, and to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,
AND FOR THESE ENDS
to practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbours, and to unite our strength to maintain international peace and security, and to ensure, by the acceptance of principles and the institution of methods, that armed force shall not be used, save in the common interest, and to employ international machinery for the promotion of the economic and social advancement of all peoples,
HAVE RESOLVED TO COMBINE OUR EFFORTS TO ACCOMPLISH THESE AIMS
Accordingly, our respective Governments, through representatives assembled in the city of San Francisco, who have exhibited their full powers found to be in good and due form, have agreed to the present Charter of the United Nations and do hereby establish an international organization to be known as the United Nations.

And for all its noble intent, the United Nations has been a dismal failure nearly from its inception. An excellent and nearly complete listing of the UN failures can be found here.

The fatal flaw of the United Nations then, as now, was in its moral relativism.

One of the strengths of Western Democracies is that they are not, in fact, democracies, but Representative Republics. The people elect representatives to govern, by the consent of the governed. Tyrants, potentates, despots and theocracies all rule by force, imposing their will upon the people. The United Nations sees no difference between a duly elected government and a tyrant. A dictatorship that tortures and terrorizes its own people has the same force of law within the UN as the United States of America, a beacon of freedom for the entire world.

The United Nations itself is nearly a true democracy, which is to say: Mob rule! Each country within the governing body has a vote on every measure, and since nearly two thirds of the nations of the world are tyrants, thugs, potentates and theocracies, the mob is greater than the legitimate governments of the world.

Fortunately, there is a block within the structure of the UN that works to thwart the will of the mob. That block, the five permanent members of the security council, which hold veto power over the council, is both a strength and a failing of the UN.

The five permanent members are France, Russia, the United Kingdom, United States, and Communist China. Originally, the Republic of China held that final permanent position on the council, but the UN in it's infinite wisdom, chose to replace the small democracy now situated on the island of Taiwan, with the thugs who overthrew them. This revolution, the overthrow of a charter UN member member, took place before the very eyes of the UN, with no action taken to stop it.

As demonstrated in the link above, the failures of the UN are legion, but here I wish to focus on just one of their early failures, and their most recent ones. The first failure to explore is the UN failure to the Jewish people of Israel.

The Establishment of the State of Israel

Beginning in the 1700s, Jewish settlers began returning to the Holy Land to make their homes. In the late 1870s, spurred by the periodic pogroms and persecutions of Europe this trickle of people soon became a tide known as Zionism. The Zionists bought their land from the Ottomans and established farms vinyards and orchards in the desert. It is important to note, that at that time, there were no Palestinian people, as we now know them.

Palestine at that time was populated by Arabs, Christians and Jews who had immigrated there from hundreds of different countries, speaking dozens of different languages. The land was owned by absentee landowners living in Damascus, Beirut or Constantinople. The landowners imported peasants from throughout the Arab world to work their orchards, vinyards and farms, at subsistence wages.

During the first world war, the British who controlled Palestine made promises to the Jewish settlers, promising a Jewish Homeland in exchange for fighting with the British against the Ottoman Empire. The Jewish forces within the British Army fought heroically. In 1917 the British issued the Balfour Declaration.

The original text of the declaration had read "Palestine should be reconstituted as the National Home of the Jewish people." After Montagu's attack, the text was changed to read "the establishment in Palestine of a Home for the Jewish people." A clause was also added protecting the rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine and more curiously, a clause was added protecting the rights of Jewish communities outside Palestine.

Making similar promises during World War II, the Jewish settlers once again answered the call to arms. At the end of hostilities, the Jews put pressure on Britain to honor the promises made. Enter, the United Nations.

The United Nations effectively created the state of Israel by its vote for partition on Nov 29, 1947.

Jamal Husseini, the Arab Higher Committee's spokesman, had told the UN prior to the partition vote the Arabs would drench "the soil of our beloved country with the last drop of our blood . . . ."

Almost immediately after the UN vote, Egypt, Syria, Transjordan, Lebanon and Iraq invaded Israel. When Israel declared its Independence on May 14, 1948 the Arab countries declared war.

The UN blamed the Arabs for the violence. The UN Palestine Commission was never permitted by the Arabs or British to go to Palestine to implement the resolution. On February 16, 1948, the Commission reported to the Security Council:Powerful Arab interests, both inside and outside Palestine, are defying the resolution of the General Assembly and are engaged in a deliberate effort to alter by force the settlement envisaged therein.

In 1948 the United Nations passed 16 resolutions calling for truces, cease-fires, condemnations and sanctions. Does this sound familiar to anyone? Sixteen resolutions without accomplishing a thing. Had the UN been effective in 1948, we would not have the turmoil we still have today throughout the Mideast.

The UN: A Real Culture of Corruption!

Now, fast forward through decades if failure to the 1990s. Saddam Hussein defies the UN, ignoring sanctions, playing cat-and-mouse with weapons inspectors, firing at US airplanes guarding the no-fly zone, and rearming his forces.

The UN has taken a strong stand on Human Rights around the world. The UN Commission on Human Rights is one of that bodies most important committees. What nations are on that commission? Well, as of 2003, not the United States!

53 member UN Commission on Human Rights. Yet, who are its members?Incredibly, the membership includes some of the worst mass murderers and violators of human rights, including Cameroon, China, Congo (DRC), Cuba, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Uganda, Vietnam, and Zimbabwe. The Chairman of the Commission for 2003 is the terrorist state, Libya. And the United States, one of the best exemplars of civil rights and political liberties and foremost proponents of human rights, was kicked off the Commission for the 2002 session.

Why was the United States, one of the true bastions of freedom in the world, excluded, while thugs and murderers were included? The answer might be here:

According to Joanna Weschler, the UN representative of Human Rights Watch, America lost the vote because "there has been a growing resentment toward the United States (because of) votes on key human rights standards, including opposition to a treaty to abolish land mines and to the International Criminal Court, and making AIDS drugs available to everyone."

As a Reuters report puts it, "the 53-member commission (is) turning into an 'abuser solidarity' group with more and more countries with questionable human rights records gaining election and then voting as a bloc against singling out individual nations for human rights abuses."

The more things change with the UN, the more they stay the same. Finally admitting that the UN Human Rights Commission was a sham, a new body, the UN Human Rights Council has been formed. This new body, strongly resembles the old corrupt commission. From UN Watch:

Geneva, April 11, 2006 - An international coalition of 15 human rights groups including former political prisoners and torture victims in Libya and Cuba expressed outrage today over Switzerland's nomination of Jean Ziegler, founder of the "Muammar Khadhafi Human Rights Prize," as an expert for the UN's new Human Rights Council....Mr. Ziegler's current term as UN hunger expert "embodied everything that was discredited about the old Commission on Human Rights: gross politicization, selectivity, lack of professionalism and lack of credibility." Ziegler has been accused of paying little or no attention to regions with actual hunger crises, and instead devoting his attention to polemics against the West, capitalism, the U.S., and Israel.

And then there is this from FrontPage Magazine.com:

Iran has put itself forward as a candidate for a seat on the new United Nations Human Rights Council in its inaugural election of forty-seven members scheduled for May 9th. Insiders believe that Iran will be voted in by the General Assembly, because it is grouped with the Asian bloc of nations that are allotted thirteen seats on the forty-seven seat Council. Although members will be voted on individually, each region has a fixed number of guaranteed seats in order to ensure "equitable geographic distribution." So far, only nine countries in the Asian bloc, including Iran, China, and Pakistan, have decided to declare their interest for any of the reserved thirteen “Asian” seats.

That is correct. The new Council on Human Rights will likely include Iran, China and Pakistan. Do we really need to know anything else about that body? The UN, once merely ineffective, has by this time become corrupt as well! In the last several years the UN has distinguished itself for scandal and corruption.

AND, as though that wasn't enough evidence to make my point, now Cuba has been added to the new Council. That's right, Cuba will now sit in judgement of the US and other world powers on the issues of human rights! The inmates are indeed running the asylum!

Rwanda

In 1994 the Hutu regime in Rwanda began an active genocide against the Tutsi tribe. The United Nations responded, but not in a decisive manner that might have prevented the genocide from occurring. Critics, even those within the UN itself charged that the UN was slow to react, and failed to anticipate the genocide. What began as "mass killings" degenerated into genocide.

There were also "organizational problems" in the Secretariat in New York, he said. He also drew attention to certain States, "including my own country" [Sweden], who turned their backs on Rwanda altogether.

It would "always be difficult to explain" why the United Nations decided to reduce its peacekeeping troop presence in Rwanda once the genocide had started, and increase it again only once it was over, Mr. Carlsson told journalists.

The responsibility spread out to include the Secretary-General, the Security Council, UNAMIR and Member States, he said, adding that an "action plan" intended to prevent genocide in the future would have to include a clear statement that "without adequate resources there will be no peacekeeping".

Failure to act is one thing. Being criminally part of the problem is quite another. It has been charged that before he was Secretary Genreal Boutros Boutros-Ghali actually instigated the genocide by providing arms to the Hutu regime.

Former United Nations Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali's tenure was marked by scandalous charges that he played a leading role in supplying weapons to the Hutu regime that carried out a campaign of genocide against the Tutsi tribe in 1994.

As minister of foreign affairs in Egypt, Boutros-Ghali facilitated an arms deal in 1990, which was to result in $26 million of mortar bombs, rocket launchers, grenades and ammunition being flown from Cairo to Rwanda. The arms were used by Hutus in attacks which led to up to a million deaths. The role of Boutros-Ghali, who was in charge at the U.N. when it turned its back on the killings in 1994, was revealed in a book by Linda Melvern. In "A People Betrayed: The Role of the West in Rwanda's Genocide," Boutros-Ghali admits his role in approving an initial $5.8 million arms deal in 1990, which led to Egypt supplying arms to Rwanda until 1992. He says he approved it because it was his job as foreign minister to sell weapons for Egypt.

So, while Boutros-Ghali helped supply arms to the Hutus, the UN made sure that the Tutsis were unarmed.

"Lt.-Gen. Romeo Dallaire, the former commander of Canada’s UN ‘peace-keeping’ mission to Rwanda in 1994, revealed that he had sent a fax to Annan’s office warning that Rwandan security officials had been ordered to ‘register’ the (predominantly Christian) Tutsis as an obvious prelude to mass liquidation. Annan’s office ordered Dallaire to ‘assist in the recovery of all weapons distributed to or illegally acquired by civilians,’ which, in effect, meant disarming the intended victims!" The result of the disarmament is another dismal chapter in history. The Rwandan government waged a massive genocidal campaign against the Tutsis while the UN looked on and washed its hands of responsibility in the matter.

Darfur

In 2003 the Janjaweed, an armed Islamic group in Sudan began the systematic "ethnic cleansing, " or genocide of the Christian population of the Darfur region in Sudan. The Sudanese government denies any support for the Janaweed, however evidence supports the claim that the government is arming and supporting the action.

The Arab nomads never came with cars and helicopters. This is not Arab nomads. This is the government. We had a self-defense unit, but when we saw the cars we said ‘This is the government’ and we ran. We didn’t fight. The government doesn’t like black people.

Estimates are now that over a million persons have been displaced from their homes, while an estimated 300,000 have died, over half from starvation. What his the United Nations done to stop the bloodshed? Un peacekeepers, unable to stop the slaughter have been forced to stand by and watch government forces massacre civilians using machetes and bayonets. This is the United Nations at it's finest!

After years of ineffectual response by the UN, with thousands of additional deaths and displacements, the United States has finally been called upon to end the tragedy. In fact, the left in this country has demanded that the US place troops in harm's way, in an action guaranteed to fail, and that is of absolutely no vital interest to our country. This, it would appear, is the only purpose the left can find for the US military.

With US diplomatic involvement, it would appear that a cease-fire and peace agreement has finally been reached in the region.

After a frenetic all-night negotiating session, the Sudanese government and the largest of the Darfur rebel groups signed a hard-fought peace agreement on Friday intended to end three years of misery and bloodshed in Dafur. But two much smaller rebel groups angrily demurred, leaving open the possibility that they would threaten the accord.

Congo


In 2004 there was a civil war and the mass murders in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. And again, UN peacekeepers are under armed, under manned, and over restricted by rules of engagement. Some three million Congolese have been killed so far, but all UN peacekeepers have done is stand by and watch them being murdered.

That would be bad enough. But there was more to taint the UN image.

U.N. "peacekeepers" from Morocco based in Kisangani – a secluded town on the Congo River – are notorious for impregnating local women and girls. In March, an international group probing the scandal found 82 women and girls had been made pregnant by Moroccan U.N. staffers and 59 others by Uruguayan staffers. One U.N. soldier accused of rape was apparently hidden in the barracks for a year.

Most of the sexual abuse and exploitation, says the report, involves trading sex for money, food or jobs. However, some victims say they were raped, but later given food or money to make the incident appear to have been consensual – "rape disguised as prostitution."

...Despite the fact that the U.N.'s sexual code of conduct is prominently displayed on U.N. facilities Congo – forbidding sex with prostitutes or women under 18 – the U.N. continues to hand out free condoms to "peacekeepers" to protect them from AIDS.

Somalia

Somalia, which was effectively been without a government since the 1980s, has been torn by violence and civil war, as competing warlords battle for power. When UN relief efforts and workers were threatened in 1992, the US put troops into the area, under the UN, to restore order and protect the workers. This effort was named Operation Restore Hope. The result of this mission of peace was the now infamous "Blackhawk Down" incident in which the bodies of 18 servicemen were dragged through the streets of Mogadishu.

The troops originally sent by President GHWB, were immediately pulled out by newly elected President Bill Clinton. Osama bin Laden, who was in Somalia at the time working with the warlord Aidid, saw the US flee when confronted with American deaths, and took from that the fact that America was a paper tiger. He decided that the US did not have the stomach to lose American casualties, and he was emboldened.

But, more than just a peacekeeping failure, Somalia has degenerated into a UN sanctioned scandal of epic proportions. The peacekeepers themselves have become the oppressors.

Back in 1997, there were reports Belgian U.N. troops roasted a Somali boy. A military court reportedly sentenced two paratroopers to a month in jail and a fine of 200 pounds for the offense.

Another Belgian soldier reportedly forced a young Somali to eat pork, drink salt water and then eat his own vomit. Another sergeant was accused of murdering a Somali whom he was photographed urinating upon. Another child, accused of stealing food from the paratroopers' base, died after being locked in a storage container for 48 hours. Fifteen other members of the same regiment were investigated in 1995 for "acts of sadism and torture" against Somali civilians.

The pattern of abuse was not confined to Belgian troops. Belgium was actually the third country in the peacekeeping group to charge troops with serious crimes against Somali citizens -- including rape, torture and murder. In 1995, a group of Canadian paratroopers were investigated for torturing a Somali to death and killing three others.

Gruesome photos were published in a Milan magazine of Italian soldiers torturing a Somali youth and abusing and raping a Somali girl. Paratroopers claim they were specifically trained in methods of torture to aid interrogation. According to one witness, Italian soldiers tied a young Somali girl to the front of an armored personnel carrier and raped her while officers looked on.

Iran

From today's headlines we can see that the UN is still unable to effectively to a world threat. Iran, thumbing it's nose at the wolrd, the US and the United Nations, has promised to continue it's nuclear program, despite UN opposition. And the UN is powerless to stop it!

U.S. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns said that most of the countries that took part in the talks -- the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and Germany on Tuesday, the Group of Eight industrialized countries on Wednesday -- favored imposing sanctions on Iran if it doesn't stop its nuclear program.

"Everybody talked about the need to consider actions. The majority said sanctions,'' Burns said.

But China and Russia, who as permanent members of the U.N. Security Council can veto any proposal, still remain opposed.

As if to underscore its position, Russia confirmed that it would sell 29 mobile air
defense missiles to Iran -- a step Burns criticized.

There are so many other failures that this article could become a book. All over the world, UN efforts have consistantly failed.And this is not to even mention the greatest UN scandal of all time, The Food For Oil Scandal, involving Saddam Hussein. This scandal was so all encompassing and widespread, that it will have to deserve an article all its own! There is just too mch detail, to many play actors, and too much deceit to chronicle here!


Is There An Answer

People who support the United Nations and condemn the actions of the United States sometimes ask, "Do you want the US to be the policeman of the world?"

My answer would be, NO! I don't want the US to have to be the policeman of the world, by itself. But sometimes it just has to be that way! If you look out your window, and see a group of thugs raping women, how many calls to 911 have to go unanswered, with the police never showing up, before you get together with your neighbors to take action on your own? The UN has not been answering the calls!

It has become all too apparent that the UN cannot function. The United States needs to lead a pullout of the United Nations by all the truly democratically elected nations of the world. The US needs to cut off all funding to the UN and expell the UN from New York. If the body wishes to continue operating, let them set up shop in Uraquay or Pango Pango. The US should withdraw US forces from any and all UN "peacekeeping" missions and/or relief efforts.

Of course, the US would be condemned for any such action. The UN might even call for sanctions! But, since the United States is the only nation that ever upholds UN sanctions, it would clearly be a toothless weapon.

It is a fact, that the United States military does most of the heavy lifting in any UN action, and always has. The fact that the US has not had UN backing in Iraq, and quite probably will not, in Iran, is of little consequence. The nations that the US can count on will be there with or without the UN!

The US then should set up another body, sort of a "coalition of the willing" which is limited to demonstrably democratically elected governments. A good beginning might include, The US, Canada, Great Britain, France (with reservations), Germany, Belgium, The Netherlands, Denmark, India and Japan.

Unlike the United Nations, not all nations would be eligible for this coalition, but only those deemed worthy by the member nations. Other nations could apply for membership. In a few years, through United States leadership, Afghanistan and Iraq might well qualify.

The first order of business for this new organization, would be the war on terror, eliminating terrorist cells and states where ever they arise. This coalition of the democratic nations of the world, could and would act as "policeman of the world," taking decisive action to stop mass murders and atrocities across the globe. Then ccan do not worse than the failed United Nations, and can, in my opinion, probably do much better!