How The U.N. Ignores Its Own Charter

How The U.N. Ignores Its Own Charter
By: Herb Denenberg ,

The Bulletin

Has anyone noticed that the U.N., which costs American taxpayers
about a billion dollars a year, does almost exactly the opposite of what it
is supposed to do? This is one of the great outrages of recent history, and
what do we do about it? We have a U.S. Senate that fails to confirm perhaps
the most effective and enlightened voice in trying to reform the U.N. - John
Bolton, who served as our representative to the U.N. in 2005 and 2006.

The U.N. is such a disgrace that in his new and valuable book,
Glenn Beck treats the U.N. as sort of a joke and a farce, which it is. In An
Inconvenient Book: Solutions to the World's Biggest Problems, Mr. Beck shows
how "the U.N.'s initial to-do list" calls for exactly the opposite of what
the U.N. is doing.

Safeguard Human Rights: This is one of the U.N.'s most important
jobs. Mr. Beck asks, "So you are saying that U.N. peacekeepers in the Congo
should not rape the women there? Someone should have told them." I'd add an
even more important Orwellian inversion on how the U.N. does the opposite of
what its charter calls for. Its Human Rights Commission (and now called a
Council) is dominated by the worst violators of human rights, and instead of
investigating and condemning the worst human rights violators, it spends its
time investigating and condemning Israel and the U.S.

You might also add the U.N.'s inaction and apparent indifference
to genocide and related forms of mass murder. Dore Gold, in his book Tower
of Babble: How the United Nations has Fueled Global Chaos, points out that
the U.N. had no forceful response when the Khmer Rouge were murdering
million of Cambodians in the 1970s. It did nothing to stop Iraqi human
rights abuses and the genocide involving the Kurds. It maintained its
silence and indifference to the genocide in Bosnia and Rwanda. There seems
to be no genocide the U.N. is really against or that the U.N. really will
stop.

To show you that when it comes to uncivilized and barbaric
response to genocide, consider this from Mr. Gold's book: "The most absurd
aspect of the U.N.'s handling of the massacres [in Rwanda] was that
throughout the crisis, the representative of the Rwanda's Hutu-dominated
government sat on the U.N Security Council. Rwanda had become one of the
Security Council's 10 nonpermanent members on January 1994, and it remained
on the council even after the council had deployed peacekeepers to the
central African country. This ambassador received his instructions from a
regime that had collaborated with the militia in planning and executing the
genocide that was in progress. Thus, as U.N. members sought accurate
information about the extent of the killings in Rwanda, the ambassador
repeatedly denied that any genocide was underway."

In other words, the U.N. doesn't stop genocide; it facilitates
it.

Promote Social And Economic Progress: Mr. Beck writes of the
U.N.: "They actually have this one down pat. Kofi Annan was living (rent
free) in a New York City mansion worth $50 million and his son was stone
cold pimpin' in a brand new Benz purchased with a sweet U.N. 'discount.' If
that isn't promotion of economic progress, then gosh darn it, I don't know
what is."

Improve Living Standards: Mr. Beck says, "done" - just see above
section on promoting social and economic progress. I would have used a
better example: the infamous $100 billion oil-for-food program in Iraq,
which kept money flowing to Saddam Hussein for "humanitarian purposes" but
was used instead for arms, for more of his palaces, for torture and for the
support of terrorism. Mr. Gold observes: "Simply put, the oil-for-food was
not just a source for illicit income for Saddam Hussein. It became a source
for funding terrorism as well." Oil-for-food money and Iraqi transfers to
support Palestinian terrorism have been well documented. In addition, Mr.
Gold reports that the Iraqi Intelligence Service had a branch known as M14,
which trained not only Palestinians but also Iraqis, Syrians, Yemenis,
Lebanese, Egyptians and Sudanese in explosives and foreign operations.

Mr. Gold gives this example of how the money was used: "In
October 2002, the notorious terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi transferred two
Iraqi payments of $10,000 and $30,000, to operatives in Jordan through the
al-Fafidiain Bank to finance terrorists attacks, including the assassination
of the U.S. diplomat Lawrence Foley." He also shows how the 9/11 Commission
and others have documented how al-Qaida operatives were working with Iraqi
intelligence and how Iraqi payments were financing that terrorist
organization responsible for 9/11. Mr. Gold said the U.N. should have known
of these details and should have done something to stop the support of
international terrorism.

Perhaps the key question is what to do about the U.N. We need
leadership that could have been provided by John Bolton. We need to fix our
own U.S. State Department, which as Mr. Bolton points out, doesn't see its
job as advocating for the U.S. but merely thinks it is supposed to do its
diplomatic dances without regard to the results reached by its feeble and
directionless diplomacy. (See my column of Nov. 14, "A Report on the Agency
that Usurps the President's Power.") A good start would be to replace
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice with Mr. Bolton or someone like him.

But Mr. Bolton also has a reform for the U.N., which he explains
in his book Surrender Is Not an Option: Defending America at the United
Nations and Abroad. He writes, "I conclude only one U.N. reform is worth the
effort, and without it nothing else will succeed: Voluntary contributions
must replace assessed contributions. If America insisted it would pay only
for what works, and that we get what we pay for, we would revolutionize life
throughout the U.N. system. There is simply no doubt that eliminating the
'entitlement' mentality caused by relying on assessed contributions would
profoundly affect U.N. officials around the world. ... U.N. agencies that
are now voluntarily funded ... tend to be effective and transparent, thus
providing clear lessons for the remainder of the U.N. To argue otherwise
would ignore the experience of market-driven imperatives throughout human
history, which is really what switching to voluntary contributions would
mean. If member governments providing resources were not satisfied with the
outcomes produced by their U.N. contributions they would shift their funds
elsewhere, thus providing a 'market test' for effectiveness. If non-U.N.
programs or agencies proved more effective, the U.N. would quickly feel the
consequences."

Mr. Bolton makes another important point. The move to voluntary
contributions would not be fast or easy, but merely debating it would have a
positive effect. He therefore proposes that Congress immediately signal it
wants to go in this direction and communicate that message to other nations
and foreign parliamentarians.

Mr. Bolton says let the global debate on voluntary contributions
begin and let Congress drive the debate. He adds, "State's bureaucracy may
even follow!" I'd also suggest that Congress won't drive the debate, so if
the public wants U.N. reform, it should demand it by contacting the usual
suspects including your senators and representatives, other elected
officials and media outlets. Let the long overdue public uprising begin to
stop a U.N. that now works against almost every value we hold dear - and
does so with our tax dollars. We have been financing our own suicide and
destruction long enough.

Herb Denenberg, a former Pennsylvania insurance commissioner and
professor at the Wharton School, is a longtime Philadelphia journalist and
consumer advocate. He is also a member of the National?Academy of Arts and
Sciences. His column appears daily in The Bulletin.

©The Evening Bulletin 2007