Kofi's Next UN Scam
Friends of Saddam -
The next scam is in the works.
Just how absurd the United Nations has become is highlighted by Libya's recently serving as head of its Human Rights Commission -- and the U.S. seat on the commission was handed over to that garden spot of liberty, Syria.
While nationalism certainly has a dark side, what reason is there to think a world government of some sort would be better? As the "Oil-for-Food Swindle" makes abundantly clear, the politics of the UN is pretty much like politics everywhere: a mix of high hopes (feed the Iraqi people), low motives (award the lucrative contracts for oil to Saddam's French and Russian friends) and a self-interested bureaucracy (cover up the crime).
The fact that the world is divided up into nation states has distinct benefits, not least that they allow for social, political and economic experimentation. As Cornell University political scientist Jeremy Rabkin has pointed out, national sovereignty offers the oppressed at least the possibility of refuge. When things get too bad in one country, people can at least try to flee to some other country.
If the United Nations, by contrast, were sovereign, there would be nowhere else to go.
Well, you say, nobody thinks the United Nations is going to become a world government anytime soon. But don't be too sure. The proposed international criminal court would give judges appointed by the United Nations the right to judge individual citizens of nation-states (unlike the so-called World Court in the Hague, which arbitrates differences among states). The UN-backed global warming treaty, meanwhile, in effect would put the world's energy supply in the hands of a bunch of bureaucrats.
Annan lost his bet on Kerry, and the time is long past for a serious clipping of the UN's wings -- starting at the top.
Posted by ron
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