Defend the U. N.

[drhark]

Does anyone care to rebut this guy?

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/cliffordmay/cm20050203.shtml

 

[trevster2k]

Yeah , let's scrap this whole thing, and go back to fighting with pointy sticks and sharp rocks.

 

[drhark]

Anyone care to rebut this guy?

 

[deep]

nope

he should go through life with the butt
the good lord gave him

 

[A_Wanderer]

The UN doesn't need to be defended, if it truly were a force for good in this world then any criticism would be ridiculous. The problem is that the UN is not a force for good and it is rotten to the core in many areas.

 

[Jamila]

The U.N. is only as good as the countries which control it. (the Security Council)

It definitely needs improvement, but I don't think the answer is to scrap it.

There are some GREAT U.N. agencies like W.H.O., UNESCO, UNICEF, UNHRA, etc which work just fine and contribute greatly to helping the world's poorest and forgotten people.

Revise, revamp and possibly redesign aspects of the U.N. - but to eliminate it is just short-sighted and counter-productive to the idea of world peace and international understanding/co-operation.

 

[A_Wanderer]

Frankly I think that the UN is only as good as the jet setting buerocrats, dictators and dirty dealing symbiotic relationship between them that keep that US subsidised gravy train running. All those billions of dollars could really help a lot of US families who get screwed by welfare systems.

Simply look at what the UN has done for Tsunami relief and then compare it too Australia and America's contributions as well as our charities ~ while we had troops on the ground distributing food and clean water to the worst effected areas with an Aircraft Carrier, C-130's and Helicopters the UN was bickering with hotel staff over round the clock catering in their hotel base of operations. The other big donations from countries such as Canada, Japan, Germany, Netherlands would of course be going through the UN - Australia's 1 billion pledge to Indonesia is a bilateral affair that does not involve the UN one bit, and that is a good thing.

The UN is an utter waste of time, it has never been a viable means to avoid conflct and turned itself into a forum for every dictator and kleptocrat to shift blame away from themselves and onto the USA and Israel. The General Assembly is a joke, the security council doesn't give a fuck about what the UN tells them to do and its "good organisations" still manage to find themselves party to very bad deeds like sweets being given to young Palestinian Arab children to become shahids, virulently anti-semitic school textbooks to the UNRWA's Peter Hansen admitting to having no problem with Hamas members on the UN payroll because their religious practices and involvements are inconcequential to what they do for the UN (incidently it was also under Hansen that UN Ambulances were (ab)used by Palestinian terrorists to run guns and attack Israeli's). From it's singularly unique ability to treat Israel as if it is comitting genocide and Sudan as a respected member of the human rights comittee to the 21 billion dollar UNscan that was oil for food the UN manages to epitomise how things that may seem so right, such as internationalist respect for human rights can go so wrong when entrusted to dictators.

I would love to see "the UN" ~ the impossible ideal that it and the league of nations should be but it is not that and nor can it ever become that in its current iteration.

 

[Rono]

Yeah right,...without the UN there would not even be talks between countries in the past. The big countries made the UN meaningless because they only need the UN for own gain,...corruption big scale

 

[BVS]

...and how would you justify your precious little war without the UN resolutions?

 

[A_Wanderer]

I have consistently maintained that the United Nations failed Iraq and the fault lies with both the USA and UN. My justification was freedom and democracy and to all the terrorists and naysayers I think that the Iraqi people gave them the finger on the elections.

 

[Rono]

...and how would you justify your precious little war without the UN resolutions?

I guess this question is for the topic starter ?

 

[Rono]

It is a good thing that the Iraq elections went well but if you think that it is alright to lie to the UN with false facts and figures, don`t complain about that the UN is a awfull corrupt organisation,...


Btw, is the Unesco, Uniceff ect. not UN related ?

 

[A_Wanderer]

Do I think that it is alright to lie to the UN with false facts or figures? To this the answer is no. I think that the Bush Administration dropped the ball big time by even wasting that much time in the UN ~ it was a crawl to war filled with numerous diplomatic dead ends and face saving and ultimately that is part of the reason that elements of Iraq's dormant WMD program conveniently dissapeared before the war even started. It was obviously a forgone conclusion that the US would have gone in if Saddam didn't absolutely and completely verify his disarment.

Colin Powell presented to the UN the intelligence assesments available, some of these assesments have since been proven wrong once the war was over, others have been verified. Intelligence is never 100% and governments take action with what information and analysis they have at their disposal. I do not that it was willfull lying to go over why many nations viewed Saddams WMD program as a problem.

Furthurmore I do not think that the course of actions taken by the US government should have a negative effect on me as an individual Australian citizen in criticising the corruption and flawed aspects of the United Nations. You construct a strawman argument of me approving of lying (which I do not, it is truthful that before the war Saddam Hussein represented a long term risk to stability in the region for many reasons including WMD) and then somehow use that to disqualify criticism of the UN.