OT: Maybe it's time to make it the "Travelling" Third World

Whistle
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For 57 years now, the US has hosted the UN. Its difficult for me, anyway, to see what good that’s done us.

For most of that time, the General Assembly has been the forum for a bunch of dirt poor tribal societies who can’t (or won’t) quit fighting one another long enough to grow food and thus rely on the largesse of the few nations which can.

For most of that time, the host nation, the USA, has had to put up with a seemingly endless barrage of insults, complaints, threats, spying and generally un-guest-like behavior from a major part, if not a majority, of the delegations who seem to come with only three points on their agenda -criticize the US, live like royalty and beg for handouts.

UN ‘diplomats’ routinely scoff at US laws and regulations, hiding the most egregious and sometimes reprehensible behavior behind he all-encompassing shield of ‘diplomatic immunity’.

Now I’m no raving right-wing conservative, but I find it both repugnant and laughable when the likes of Syria and North Korea use the good ol’ UN to criticize the US or Great Britain on human rights and to berate us while living on the fat of a land whose people worked a darn sight harder to achieve prosperity than their peoples were ever willing to work.

I suppose we need them, though in the current crisis with Iraq its hard to see what purpose they serve other than to endlessly re-debate the same issues and endlessly re-vote similar toothless resolutions. Still, I think it’s time they inflicted their rather slovenly guesthood on someone else.

Perhaps France should take a turn. They’re rich now, too. Or maybe China. I hear their cops aren’t as hung up on civil rights as ours are. Or maybe somewhere in Africa. There’s probably a lot less traffic regulations for them to violate there.

Or, dare I say, maybe someplace like Syria or Libya? That way their diplomats wouldn’t have to go so far to engage in endless, pointless debate and USA-bashing. It’s only fair, after all. Since most of the UN seems to make a virtue of hating the US, I’m sure they’d enjoy it just as much somewhere else. And I’m sure we could make much more productive use of the real estate.

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[ This Message was edited by: Paul on 2003-02-17 17:30 ]

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When a kid, I had a nasty habit : I wouldn’t play cow-boys–and–indians if I wasn’t to be the sheriff.

But I grew up.

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I don’t imagine this thread will do anything more than make foreigners and liberals angry.

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Well put, Waldenski. Whipping up hatred of foreigners and ranting about the United Nations doesn’t do anybody any good.

The League of Nations wasn’t perfect, nor was it helped by US failure to join after it was set up largely at the instigation of a US president. Neither is the UN, also set up at the instigation of a US president, but just as poorly served by the attitude that the kid who owns the football makes the rules (nice one Zoob, I came independently to much the same conclusion about the Security Council years ago). The point about both is that they were steps towards the creation of the rule of law among nations rather than the “might is right” principle which brought “old Europe” and the rest of the world so much grief. The fact that neither succeeded shouldn’t discourage us from keeping on trying.

The US approach to international relations under the Bush party has not only squandered much of the goodwill towards the US which was present after 11 September, it has also brought the world back to about where Europe was in 1914, complete with strategic economic and military/industrial interests, shifting ultimatums and mobilisation timetables bringing their own contribution to the inevitability of war.

I’m managed so far to stay out of the “Saddam Hussein is a Nasty-Pie Rolling Protest” thread because that kind of thing tends to degenerate- heck, even perfectly innocent non-political threads have degenerated lately. I’d rather keep C&F as a place where we can get on, emphasising the bonds that link us. I don’t know if anyone changes their opinions much in the light of what they read in such threads in other fora, they generally seem to do more harm than good. But if we must discuss the evidently impending war, I suggest that the Rolling Protest thread is sufficient forum for it and ask people not to contaminate the Chiffboard with a bunch of other threads on related issues.

\

An Pluiméir Ceolmhar

[ This Message was edited by: Roger O’Keeffe on 2003-02-17 12:28 ]

[ This Message was edited by: Roger O’Keeffe on 2003-02-17 12:29 ]

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On 2003-02-17 02:23, Zubivka wrote:
When a kid, I had a nasty habit : I wouldn’t play cow-boys–and–indians if I wasn’t to be the sheriff.

But I grew up.

You’ve totally missed my point. It isn’t about kid games. It’s about the unwashed brother-in-law with the disgusting personal habits who eats your food, criticizes your housekeeping and invites his drunken buddies over to watch the game on your TV and spill beer on your carpet.

The rest of the “world family” has for six decades enjoyed the dubious advantages of the UN’s existence without having to endure the flatulence, cigar butts and dirty laundry of its immediate presence. I’m not suggesting euthanizing the lout - just that the rest of the family ought to take their turn at taking him in for a change.

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On 2003-02-17 07:03, Walden wrote:
I don’t imagine this thread will do anything more than make foreigners and liberals angry.

I’m a liberal and I’m not angry.

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Well, I am a liberal foreigner and I’m not angry.
But I’m sad, sad about outrageous things said in this thread and in the “rolling protest” thread as well.
Most of all I’m sad about the loss of something, that I can’t put into words right now. But it’s some terrible loss, one can sense all around these days, and alas here on this friendly board too.
Sorry if this sounds very cryptic, but my mind’s still trying in vain to process, what my heart feels for quite a while now.

Claus

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I won’t pretend I’m a liberal
I won’t defend I’m a foreigner here (of ITM, not being Irish of course, even sometimes I doubt this is an A-ITM board…)
I won’t pretend I’m not angry. But just as well don’t pretend you ain’t a “raving right-wing conservative” for you happen to advocate as such in this thread, sir.

However, please DO give UN back to Swiss. I’ll agree. I’ve always been shocked by UN hosted by the mightiest. Swiss ? THEY deserve it. And the benefits with it–hotel bills, plane fares (late for poor Swissair), and families dwelling there, etc. Why, you thought the discomfort of hosting “third world diplomats” as you say, came without economic advantages ?

BTW, let them diplomats and their familes vote, see if they prefer NYC, Manhattan. One of the very few American cities which I’d definitely prefer leaving than loving. Give me Boise instead! Milwaukee! Denver! Salem! even Chicago!

As far as I know, no-one from Geneve ever complained about hosting SDN (to rookies–the ancestor of UN) or Unesco, and a few UN offsprings. And they’d be worth of the honor. And they’d take it as such.

So would Bruxelles. La Haye/Den Haag. Luxembourg. Maastricht. No prob.

Don’t like it ? Leave it ! (to others, who’ll be content).

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I don’t get the knee-jerk offense taken by Europeans when someone states they don’t like the U.N. It dosn’t mean they don’t believe in peace and diplomacy.

If you’ve bothered to read Chuck’s other posts it’s clear he’s not a right-winger or a left-winger.

Daily lunch’s with my friends who are from India, S.Africa, Germany I found you cannot make a direct correlation between the right-left, conservative-liberal in our different cultures. It’s better to take one issue at a time and it’s futile to try to make firm idealogical connections between countries.

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Craig

Thanks for your comments, but as you’ll also recall, I don’t take personal offense easily either.

FWIW, most folks who know me can’t figure out whether I’m a liberal, a libertarian or a dangerous anarchist. Just depends on the specific issue I happen to be frothing at the mouth about at that particular moment.

As another aside, I find in my conversations with others that distrust of the UN tends to be a lot more common across the entire political spectrum of this county than many would expect. Whether its the black helicopter crew who think the UN is the agent of the New World Order (I guess it’s those terrifying baby-blue helmets), or the pro-life crowd who insist that WHO is the vanguard of Satan’s Terrestrial Forces, or just the folks like me who think it’s a toothless scofflaw debating society with an insatiable need to spend money, a lot of Americans would just say “Don’t go away mad, just go away!”

I guess I even understand why it was set up here at first - after all, in 1946 the US was about the only developed country not trying to recover from six years of devastation and/or enemy occupation. But I really believe that it should have eventually gone to Geneva or possibly Oslo (the Swedes could have used the hot air at this time of year). That or moved every few years. Nothing prevents a bloated bureaucracy like having to pack up and move every five years or so.

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Agreed. :slight_smile:

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Well, Chuck, you make a lot of good points but kind of avoid the obvious next question, which is do we (the US) need to belong to the UN at all? Most of the issues you raise would also apply to that question. When a country like Syria is on the UN Human Rights Committee is that a sign the whole organization has become a joke? When minor world powers are making major world decisions does that reflect a problem? Do we want to belong to a club that oftentimes doesn’t seem to like us much? I suspect if we withdrew from the UN everybody who is trading with us now would still do so, and everybody who would like to kill Americans would still feel that way.

I suspect people were asking the same questions about the League of Nations years ago. There is nothing sacred about the UN or it’s charter, at what point do we think about getting out?

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On 2003-02-17 15:39, DaleWisely wrote:

I’m a liberal and I’m not angry.

Glad to hear it.

I really didn’t mean that it would anger every liberal or every foreigner, which would be a sweeping generalization. Just that the rhetoric was a bit inflammatory.

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I cannot deny that the UN is a flawed body. It is a work in progress and as such it still has some growing and learning to do. The US has no corner on truth and justice. We are not God’s, or the Gods’ gift to the world. We are perhaps one gift, when we work out of the best that we are. And there are other gifts from other peoples. It seems that we too seldom acknowledge the gifts of others as we so vehemently declare to the world how wonderful we are. Our politicians often do not act out of the best that we, as a nation, have to offer. In recent years we have not done all that we can to help the UN move toward its beautiful dream and potential. We have withheld much needed money that we had made a commitment to provide; we have not held our ”friends” to the same standards we hold those we oppose; we have in the wider world refused to work with other nations to create a safer world (i.e. land mines, the environment and nuclear weapons) The world has gone on without us. We have actually done much to bring other countries together as they have worked on these issues without us. They are discovering that the world doesn’t stop just because the US decides we don’t approve of a particular issue. How much more could we have done, can we still do, if we become a truly good, responsible citizen in the world, working for the common good rather that just concerned with “getting ours.” I can only hope that we learn before it’s to late that our interests, ultimately, are the interests that are shared with others in the world.

and to finish this post I leave you with one of my favorite quotes:

“…have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.”
Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926)

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A French general, a German general, and an English general stood on a hill watching the Americans battle a tyrant’s army on the plain below.

The English general turned to his aide and said, “Go get me my crimson cape!”

The French and German generals asked, “Why do you need a crimson cape?”

The Brit replied, “It’s so I can join the battle, and if I’m wounded, the blood won’t show and I can continue the fight alongside my American friends.”

The French and German generals turned then to their own aides and said, “Go get us our brown britches!”

Rob Mitchell

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So, Jim, if I hear you right, you feel it’s mostly the US’s fault the UN is screwed up and the US should have spent more money on it? I would guess a large part of the world would share that opinion. Don’t you feel the rest of the world bears any responsibility?

Anyway, I enjoy your quote. The longer I live, the more I realize how much I don’t know and that life is a series of questions that seem only to lead to more questions. That’s why these flip, easy answers like “Bush is an idiot”, “It’s all about oil”, “The French are wimps”, “war is always wrong” etc tend to bother me. The right answers are usually in the middle somewhere, though it’s sure tough to figure them out sometimes. Peace to you too.

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Rando7,

Nope, I don’t think the US by itself has screwed up the UN. I don"t buy that it’s screwed up, flawed…yes, a work in progress…yes, screwed up…no.

There is more than enough responsibility to go around for it not being as effective as it could be. I wish the US had done more to help it be more effective rather than too many times interfering with it’s effectiveness. The US deserves credit, credit that it mostly has not received for helping the UN get this far. But other countries also deserve credit they too haven’t received. It’s a mixed bag on the credit and debit side for both the US and other countries Rather than putting our energy into who deserves credit and/or blame (which I am also seduced into) why not starting from now work toward helping the UN be “all it can be.” :slight_smile:

I still see the UN as being our best hope for the world I wish my children and grandchildren, and the children and grandchildren of all people around the world, to inherit.

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The reason I chose to “avoid” the next question was that I don’t know where I stand on the answer. On the one hand, the UN is, perhaps terminally, flawed. It is ineffectual, fatally bureaucratic, and exists even in its own mind primarily for the purpose of redistributing the wealth of the West to those who’d rather have it given to them than work for it. Rather like the US '60s model welfare department. Unfortunately, such a model or scheme is impossible because impoverishing the rich to give everything to the poor merely removes the incentive for anyone else to work to become rich.

On the one hand, I don’t disagree that we have a responsibility to help the rest of the world. However, as with the murderously regressive British tax code of the '80s, I don’t think the responsibility to help means we should give them everything we own. So, to an extent, I think we (meaning all developed nations, not just the US) should remain in the UN, however it would be madness to simply acquiesce to the grabbing demands of every unwashed little beggar that manages to design a flag and convince the rest of the grimy little begars that they’re now a “nation” and deserving of a place at the trough.

At the same time, part of me says that the UN, under a false banner of democracy and egalitarianism, is simply nothing more than a bunch of poor relatives pounding their spoons on the table and demanding more and more without contributing to the production of that “more”. In the overall scheme of things, the UN is increasingly meaningless, anyway, a condition they’ve brought on themselves by their own indecisiveness, voting blocs and clicques. The real decisions are made in NATO, the EU, The Pacific Rim group of nations, the Group of Eight, and bluntly, in a handful of national capitals. The UN General assembly is meaningless in a real sense, and the Security Council has increasingly made itself so. We really don’t NEED to belong.

The hstory I was taught decades ago was that the primary reason for the failure of the League of Nations was that, although Wilson was instrumental in it’s founding, the US did not become a member. Maybe, though like much of the “history” of the '50s, it sounds fishy to me. The League failed in the most part because of the world domination dreams of Hitler and Stalin and the national paranoia of the Empire of Japan. US participation wouldn’t have mattered.

The term “World’s only superpower” is badly overused. The ability to destroy the world, which we have, clearly doesn’t give us the ability to control the world. Worse yet, it shades all of our international dealings. Everybody else may hate us, but still they predicate their actions on what they think our response might be. When they need a cop, as in Kuwait or Korea, we’re real useful, but the rest of the time they hate our guts and take absolute glee in confounding us in their little debating society. Iraq is a good example. There are more than a few UN member nations, admitted or otherwise, who’d benefit from our taking out Saddam. And most of the others would at least breathe a bit more easily. But since we’re probably going to do it whatever the debating society decides, even some of those who’d benefit wring their hands and weep in an openly crocodilian way about “US AGGRESSION”.

I often think that perhaps we should be separate from the UN. Then we could simply negotiate with them without all the political crap that comes of supposedly being an equal one of them. The world needn’t fear. The US will still be first in line to help when their own overpopulation and underdevelopment cause them to suffer inordinately from aberrances of nature. They may hate us, but American generosity exists indepedent of the UN and might even increase without the resentment caused by UN demands and backstabbing.

Like I said at the beginning of this book, I remain ambivalent on the question. The world probably needs the UN. I’m not at all positive that we do.

I hope that all made sense. I shouldn’t try to express a coherent opinion after midnight.

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On 2003-02-17 22:27, mitchlr wrote:
The French and German generals turned then to their own aides and said, “Go get us our brown britches!”

Rob Mitchell

Now this was an elevated contribution to the debate:

I didn’t know they sold the Sun in Memphis, or is it you subscribed for their theology column ? :roll:

Then wait for next issue. Maybe they’ll bring a punchline for what the American wore. Or maybe they’ll come back to their usual fund of racist jokes.

[ This Message was edited by: Zubivka on 2003-02-18 04:33 ]