The American Spectator : What Is Done Cannot Be UNdone

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What Is Done Cannot Be UNdone

By Jay D. Homnick on 5.6.10 @ 6:06AM

Hillary and Mahmoud's tussle yesterday was the latest reminder of why the UN should have been put out of its misery decades ago.

With the passage of time I think this story can finally be revealed. It was told to me off the record in December 2002, approximately three months before the war in Iraq began. President George W. Bush held his annual Hannukah party at the White House, inviting various Jewish dignitaries. Afterwards he summoned a few very trusted rabbis into a private office for a confidential briefing on the situation brewing in the Mideast. He told them he was preparing to invade Iraq with the aim of deposing Saddam Hussein and incapacitating his weapons of mass destruction. The decision had already been taken to proceed.

"Why then go through the rigmarole of trying to get a U.N. resolution to authorize the war?" one rabbi asked.

"If I proceed without a resolution, the U.N. may be seen as irrelevant. If necessary I will do it anyway, but I prefer to do it in a way which leaves the U.N. intact."

At the time I was impressed by Bush's worldview in a number of respects. One, it never occurred to him that going it alone would cost the United States. Two, he believed that if he treated the U.N. as irrelevant the world would see it as irrelevant. Three, he was delaying a war not for his political expediency, not for military advantage of the United States, but for the prestige of the United Nations and its continued effectiveness. The premises themselves are each open to challenge, but they provide a window into the character of a confident and responsible leader.

Now it occurs to me, watching Ahmadinejad and Clinton tussle in the General Assembly over Iran trying to marry into the nuclear family, that the United Nations is a dangerous anachronism. It should have been put out of its misery long ago, perhaps euthanized by U Thant.

It is hard to imagine a great good emerging from the U.N. today on any front. Any truly liberating gesture, like putting North Korea out of business or sending Hugo Chavez into retirement on the Caymans, is sure to be vetoed by some player putting national interest before international. Once a body has lost its historical panache, its Messianic momentum, it turns into a hulking repository of contradictory impulses primed for an explosion. Great bad could come out of such a toxic stew, say an international boycott of Israel.

Placing this forum at the disposal of Ahmadinejad and his ilk enables them to advance claims which seem justified on their face. Why should Iran be less trusted than Pakistan or Israel? There is no real answer to that in a group whose founding premise is the idea of equal legitimacy to all sovereign entities. It is like the child molester asking in group therapy why he should be treated differently than everyone else. That question can only be answered among ourselves if we first exclude him from the group. "Everybody knows that…" does not work when everybody is in the room.

Without falling into the facile equation of Ahmadinejad=Hitler, it is fair to use Hitler as an example of why the U.N. is rigged wrong for resisting monstrosity. If Hitler were alive there would be no basis on which to deny him a vote. The most anyone could do is boycott his speech as the United States did to Ahmadinejad. But the fox is perforce heard as a voice in the debate of how to protect the chickens.

No one will agree to disband the United Nations, except perhaps a President Ron Paul. We are stuck with the darned thing, with all its attendant annoyances: the magniloquent monologues as the tin-eared tinpots tintinnabulate, the alphabet soup pseudo-charities sending sexual harassers to the Third World, the soldiers who serve only to observe... and the unpaid parking tickets in Manhattan. But it would be nice if we took matters of substance and moved them into closer quarters. The United Nations should be reserved officially for matters of no moment, for ceremonies and processions and awards and to sell little trinkets in the gift shop. Take Ahmadinejad out of the General Assembly and place him in the care of an assembly of Generals.

About the Author

Jay D. Homnick, commentator and humorist, is a frequent contributor to The American Spectator. He also writes for Human Events. Here he performs his original composition, "Buy You (Bayou) a Drink".

Letter to the Editor View all comments (28) | Leave a comment

Brian Mc| 5.6.10 @ 7:02AM

I've been saying for years...put a lock on the door and declare a sabbatical for the U.N. A note afixed to the door would suffice as to the cause and aim of the lock.

"Go home and create open and republic elections involving all. Then, when that is accomplished, come on back and we'll sit down and talk."

How can you allow a nation a vote in the general assembly when it does not allow it's citizenry the same right?

The U.N. is a scam and an affront to liberty-loving people everywhere.

Kitty| 5.6.10 @ 7:26AM

"The U.N. is a scam and an affront to liberty-loving people everywhere."

DITTOS !! And forget about the sabbatical.

Conrad Spiracy| 5.11.10 @ 8:57PM

AGREED!

I am a long-time opponent of the United Nothingness but I offer this very tongue- in-cheek - Timothy McVeigh chose the wrong target. I abhor U.S. taxpayer money prolonging this international travesty. KICK THEIR BUTTS OUT!!!!!

Con Spiracy.

EXCELSIOR!

Alan Brooks| 5.6.10 @ 4:12PM

Haven't you heard? Ahmadinejad is a victim of the Zionist conspiracy to utilize the blood of Iranian babies to make matzoh with.
How could you be so blind?

Tom in Michigan| 5.6.10 @ 7:39AM

I remember years ago seeing homemade signs out on the highway where somebody, who I presumed was a "right wing nut job" at the time had writtten "Get US out of the UN." How prescient those "nuts" were because, even decades ago it was becoming increasingly apparent the UN was feckless at best and perverted at worst.

Now it's a venue where the world's most twisted and vile like Arafat, Chavez and Ahmadinejad come to spew their filth and level the most puerile and putrid insults against this great nation that is its host.

The League of Nations was a failure but, it did not devolve into a force of evil. The United Nations is not only a failure and a disgrace to the principles upon which it was first established, it has indeed become a force of evil; placing Iran on a committee to oversee the rights of women and Libya on a commission for human rights while allowing itself to degenerate into anti-Semitic megaphone as well.

Let the UN survive, if you will but move it to a more suitable venue such as Khartoum or Gaza or Mogadishu where the offal it excretes would stand out less from the surrounding stench.

Alan Brooks| 5.6.10 @ 4:44PM

"I presumed was a "right wing nut job" at the time had writtten "Get US out of the UN."

You forget that many of them want us out of the UN because Israel is a member. The enemy of an Iranian is not always a friend. Take Saddam for example...

Alan Brooks| 5.6.10 @ 4:45PM

... please

Curly Smith| 5.6.10 @ 8:27AM

The UN is exactly as it should be as the collective body of the world. The world consists largely of tyranny with a few pockets of freedom so the UN correctly represents tyranny. I'm sure that the misguided creators thought that by exposing tyrannical thugs with decent people they'd get more decent people but that's never worked before and it never will. But we shouldn't disband the UN because after a few more years of the Obama regime we'll be qualified for full membership.

Jobe| 5.6.10 @ 8:30AM

The U.N., shot through with corruption and irrelevance, should have been scrapped many years ago, if not never even conceived in the first place. What has it done for the world besides legitimizing brutal slavery, promoting communism, and contributing to the general misery of many of the world's people.

John Navratil| 5.6.10 @ 8:49AM

When the Russian were denied landing right in New York and New Jersey following the shootdown of the Korean passenger plane, they raised the question of whether the U.S. should remain the host country for the U.N.

Mr. Charles Lichenstein, a U.S. representative to the U.N. issued this immortal quote: "The members of the U.S. mission to the United Nations will be down at the dockside waving you a fond farewell as you sail off into the sunset."

It's an old idea whose time has really come again. Relocate this body to Tehran, Havana or Caracas. Perhaps Haiti would be a good place, as well. Northwest territories of Pakistan??? The mind reels with the possibilities.

KyMouse| 5.6.10 @ 9:27AM

I was in New York when Taiwan was declared nonexistent by the UN (1971, I think it was). I walked over to the UN and went to its gift shop, where they sold little flags of member nations.

I asked the sales gal for a flag of Taiwan, and she said that they didn't have any. I explained to her that Taiwan is the Republic of China.

She looked me coldly in the eye and said, "There is only one China -- the People's Republic of China," and turned away to help someone else.

I haven't been back to the UN since, and never will go back.

Desertfox| 5.7.10 @ 12:14AM

Thank you KyMouse for bringing this up.
Taiwan was ousted in favor of a communist China, which brutally eliminated 50 million(or more) of its citizens.
Get US out of UN, and stop paying for the membership. Some rich countries like Iran, China, and Chavez' regime can pay for it, Ha Ha!

Rick| 5.6.10 @ 9:32AM

Natan Sharansky, in his book "The Case for Democracy", stated that there are two types of societies - Fear based and Freedom based. The difference is whether one can stand in what amounts to the town square and speak out against the government with impunity. Sharansky went on to state that only Freedom based societies should be voting members of the U.N., because fear based ones, not caring about their own people, surely cannot be counted on to care about those of other countries. That this is not done is the main problem with the U.N. - every piss-ant dictator gets the same power as a country that actually cares about people.

Louis Jenkins| 5.6.10 @ 10:11AM

The UN should be bulldozed into the Atlantic, and a park errected in its place. Let the peaceful, bliss filled organization find another place to exist, but not on the shores of a nation that, at least, claims freedom as its foundation.

Margie| 5.6.10 @ 9:36PM

That is an excellent idea, best one I've heard. Done legally, of course. We could hold a celebration ceremony as we watch it slide into the water.

Yosemeti Sam| 5.6.10 @ 10:16AM

UN - PT Barnum and Baily without ringmasters!

To wit a free-for-all hallucinogenic political Meth lab!

chuck| 5.6.10 @ 10:22PM

I was thinking more along the lines of the bar scene in the original Star Wars!

Petronius| 5.6.10 @ 10:29AM

The best reason to implode the dUNp is that it is a base for foreign intelligence services to operate anywhere in the U.S. But the best reason to keep it is it makes some maneuvers of other governments visible and provides cover for unemployable intellectuals who would make trouble full time somewhere else were they not in Turtle Bay. So let's just kick the UN out of Our country and send this pack of hyenas someplace more to their liking as they despise us. How about Athens? Any other suggestions?

Desertfox| 5.7.10 @ 12:21AM

Havana will be my first choice.

Mimi| 5.6.10 @ 11:02AM

In reality for now anyway,....A John Bolton would help. The "O" has to go first. A new day in .....NOVEMBER!!! And then on to 2012.

Robert Pinkerton| 5.6.10 @ 2:37PM

I salute -- no irony express nor implied -- Mr. Homnick's mordant poesy. I like bitter-&-twisted senses of humor directed at the deserving. The United Nations certainly deserves derision from lovers of liberty, for that organization is best comparable to a little boys' masturbating club, sharing pornography stolen from their elders and wildly erroneous peer-group mythology. In this case the pornography is the oeuvre of Marx and his epigones, and the mythology is the aggregate of cultural appogiaturi of the Marxist hive-offs like the Frankfurt School.

The United Nations is an organization of governments, for crying out loud! This means those at the top of the State machinery and those outside the State but still at the top of Society (Local what passes for great rich). These are people deeply invested in supremacy of government -- of State over society like a brank -- because in the case of all too many of them, if their Peoples actually had rights, these sods would be out on their respective [bleep]s! Do not expect any proclamation about freedom they might issue, to be anything other than hollow window-dressing.

JanineC| 5.6.10 @ 4:38PM

The UN is simply a bunch of elitest leeches who use their position for their own edification, profit and comfort. They care nothing about the state of world affairs or safety. They only want ways of gathering more power and money so they can enjoy their aristocratic lifestyles.

Alan Brooks| 5.6.10 @ 8:54PM

"for that organization [UN] is best comparable to a little boys' masturbating club, sharing pornography stolen from their elders"

Sounds fun, but don't give them any ideas!

WAKE UP| 5.6.10 @ 11:09PM

The best test for the United Nations right now would be to (a) relocate it to somewhere far less congenial, and (b) stay away from it at the same time. Then we'll see how long it lasts before the whole thing implodes.

GavInTucson| 5.7.10 @ 1:17AM

Just about any atoll in the Pacific suits me just fine for U.N. relocation.

The islands is tiny, out of the way, and very suitable for nuking.

williamcoxx| 5.9.10 @ 12:55AM

He has what it takes to be a good president. He has done really a fantastic job.
http://www.articlesbase.com/de.....12463.html

Dernon Ruton| 5.9.10 @ 10:43AM

Mr. Homnick, your article prompted in me a thought I had never formulated in quite this way. The UN was established in June 1945, and the State of Israel in May of 1948. This was perhaps the one truly great thing the UN has ever done. Seen in this light, one could argue that the UN already had outlived its usefulness before ever having seen its third birthday, 62 years ago.