Tom DeWeese -- The United Nations: It's Time to End the Farce

By Tom DeWeese
December 14, 2002
NewsWithViews.com

The world is in chaos and, quite frankly, it's the United Nations' fault. It gives validity to zealots and petty bigots. It helps to keep tyrannical dictators in power. It provides money and aid to international terrorists. And it sets itself up as the international economic and environmental standard which all nations are to mirror. The United Nations is the root cause of international trouble, not the answer.

Saddam Hussein is in power, able to threaten world peace today, because the United States allowed the United Nations to dictate the terms for the finish to the Gulf War after an American-organized coalition all but annihilated Iraq as a war machine. In the intervening decade, Iraq has time and again broken the terms of that treaty. The UN's response has been to pass 17 toothless resolutions to demand that Iraq behave itself.

Delay. Negotiate. Recommend. Study. Reconsider. Do nothing. This is the game the UN has played in nearly every international crisis.

It is the reason North Korea remains a threat and its violent dictator's son remains in power. It's the reason why Zimbabwe's murderous dictator, Robert Mugabe, is able to steal his election and then steal the land of white property owners and still have a voice at the UN's Sustainable Development Conference. It's the reason why the Communist Chinese are able to ignore any UN rules not to their liking while growing as an international military and economic threat. It's the reason why a terrorist nation like Syria can be given a seat on the UN's Human Rights Council.

The United States must share some of the blame for this situation because we allow this circus on the East River to exist. The only credibility the UN possesses comes from recognition by the United States. The only financial security the UN enjoys comes from funds provided by U.S. taxpayers. The only military punch the UN has comes from American military power. The United Nations is a house of cards, but it's a very dangerous house of cards.

The UN is dangerous because its most vocal membership stands in opposition of the American values of representative government, justice, free enterprise, privacy of individuals and private property rights. Most of the UN's members are nations controlled either by communist regimes, kingdoms or mad dictators where American values are either unknown or viewed as a threat.

Those same UN members are busy working to implement plans for UN global governance. Already, the UN's International Criminal Court is in place. The UN has held an international meeting to discuss the possibilities and methods of implementing global taxes. More plans are under consideration to establish a UN global army or police force.

Most member states participating in these planning sessions are from brutal dictatorships like China and Cuba and brutal fundamental Islamic states like Syria and Iran. Can any clear thinking American honestly believe that the ideas coming out of this group would have a possibility of favoring ideals readily accepted as rights in the United States? Or expressed in the UN's Charter?

Many Americans simply do not believe that the United States would voluntarily give up its sovereignty to the United Nations. They say our people would never stand for it. It is happening incrementally with innocent-sounding policies, treaties and protocols.

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was sold as simply a way for American producers to broaden their markets to the international level. Instead, many have found that details of the treaty dictate rules and regulations, particularly of the environmental kind, that tilt the playing field to other nations. As a result, American markets are flooded with foreign goods as American businesses and jobs head out of the country. As a result of NAFTA, the American sheep industry has all but disappeared. Other industries may soon follow as the United States continues to cling to this discredited policy.

The European Union was originally sold as another NAFTA through which nations could join together to compete with the United States in the international market. Now, once-proud nations have given up their national sovereignty, ancient currencies like the Italian Lira and the French Franc have disappeared in place of the Euro. Would the citizens of France, Italy or Greece ever have agreed to such a move had the whole plan been put on a ballot? Now there is discussion of an African Union, a South American Union and a North American Union in which the United States would meld its borders with Canada and Mexico. The move will be easy since NAFTA has already set the precedent.

How long will it be after the establishment of all of these geographical unions before the world moves towards one international union? Imagine a world run by the justice of China, with the economics of Cuba and the military might of the United States. Such is the world of the future under the United Nations. The United States holds all of the cards, but it has only one vote in this cesspool of Socialism.

The United States can end it all now if it wishes. The carefully calculated idea that the UN is a benevolent institution must be changed. President Bush has proven that we don't need the United Nations to grant us permission to protect our national interests. The United States can and will fight its own war on terrorism. It can and will organize its own coalition of allies, use its own money, its own weapons, and its own troops to defeat an enemy who threatens us.

When the 108th Congress opens in January, Congressman Ron Paul will once again introduce H.R. 1146, the American Sovereignty Restoration Act. His bill calls for the United States to withdraw from the United Nations. It also calls for the United Nations to remove its headquarters from our shores. H.R. 1146 would relieve the United States from participating in UNESCO and UN environmental policies that endanger our economy and property rights. It would end U.S. participation in UN peacekeeping missions, meaning we would no longer be helping to prop up criminal governments and enemies who seek our demise.

As the UN's irrelevance becomes clearer to Americans; as it drags its feet, delays and passes yet anther meaningless resolution, the time has never been better to change the national mindset to say, "Get us out of the UN." That time is now.

Tom DeWeese is the publisher/editor of The DeWeese Report and president of the American Policy Center, a grassroots activist think tank headquartered in Warrenton, VA. The Center maintains an Internet site at www.americanpolicy.org.

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