Everybody is going "We report. You decide." these days.
The unfixable UN | By Jed Babbin | March 15, 2005
IN ''BLAZING SADDLES" -- probably the funniest movie ever made -- one of the characters Mel Brooks plays is the sexually preoccupied and utterly corrupt Governor LePetomaine. In one scene, the governor, worried about a failing scam, shouts to his assembled cronies that they've got to find a way to save their phony-baloney jobs. Which brings us to Secretary General Kofi Annan and the UN.
Scandal piles on top of scandal, minor officials resign, investigations drag on, and Annan is under personal attack for failing to prevent the enormous corruption that's occurred on his watch. But Annan has nothing to fear. The widespread calls for UN ''reform" all aim at changing small problems. [ ... ]
Americans don't spend a lot of time thinking about the UN. It's something we expect our elected leaders to do. When we do think about it, as the latest Rasmussen poll shows, only about 37 percent of us have a positive opinion of the UN; 63 percent believe Kofi Annan should resign; and among those who follow the news closely, 72 percent believe Saddam Hussein used the UN Oil for Food program to bribe other nations to get their support in the UN.
If more people knew what the UN is doing to influence our lives and freedoms, the percentage of anti-UN feeling among Americans would have been much higher. [ ... ]
There is no way to fix the UN, because to do so would require that the votes of the despots and dictators be taken away and the democracies who are routinely outvoted and shouted down be the only voting members. There's only one solution to the problems of the UN: America must leave and form a new organization of democracies to try to deal with the problems we face together.
Jed Babbin, former undersecretary of defense for President George H.W. Bush, is author of ''Inside the Asylum: Why the U.N. and Old Europe are Worse Than You Think."
© Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
I believe that the Boston Globe is generally supportive of the United Nations, but evidence is not easy to come by since only the last two days of their archives are free.
Here are two "global hope" items to contrast with the "global hopelessness" oped.
Annan to propose revamp of rights panel | By Reuters | March 14, 2005
UNITED NATIONS -- UN Secretary General Kofi Annan will soon propose changes in the way countries are elected to the top UN human rights watchdog group, to ensure they are rights champions and not despots, an aide said yesterday.
Annan will issue a plan in the coming weeks for ''a complete revamping of the human rights machinery" at the United Nations, said his chief of staff, Mark Malloch Brown.
The goal of the plan would be ''to try and restore the credibility of this and have people on that commission who really are people of stature and reputation and record and come from countries of the same thing, with real human rights standing in the world," Malloch Brown told Fox News yesterday.
Over 180,000 Darfur Deaths in 18 Months -- UN Envoy | By Evelyn Leopold | March 15, 2005
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The U.N. emergency relief coordinator, Jan Egeland, estimates that more than 180,000 people have died in Sudan's Darfur from hunger and disease over the past 18 months, his spokesman said on Monday.
The deaths do not include people killed during ongoing violence in Sudan's arid western region, said spokesman Brian Grogan.
But hope springs eternal:
The U.N. Security Council this week expects to adopt a resolution that would authorize a 10,000-member peacekeeping force in southern Sudan to monitor a landmark accord that ended 21 years of civil war.
Can Kofi save the phoney baloney? Stay tuned.
