UN Doings - The American Spectator | USA News and Politics
UN Doings
by

UN-AMERICAN
Re: R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.’s Bring Back the League of Nations:

Thanks RET, well said.

I do have a question and possibly RET or others would care to address it. Why are we still members of the UN? I don’t ask this lightly or in a facetious manner.

Is it that we as Americans think we can actually change or influence these buffoons? That we can curtail the corruption? That we can monitor the billions of dollars we give the UN? Are we afraid that if we leave some “resolutions” are going to be imposed on the United States of America? If so, who is going to enforce them, the UN?

The whole edifice at Turtle Bay houses nothing, with rare exception, but an international collection of bloviators and con artists, if not down right thieves and murderers.

At the very least we should throw this garbage out of our country and let NYC make better use of the property. I’m sure the EU would love to accommodate them.

If the UN did not exist a novelist would have to create it as satire. So please, answer my question; I’m perplexed.
Jim Woodward
Fruitland, Maryland

Not much that the sometimes kooky Tyrrell says ever passes my “laugh test.”… (That is, can you say it out loud to someone without them laughing), but he’s 100 percent right about the United Nations. While it is a noble thought, and truly inspiring that the greater nations like the U.S., the UK, Canada, Japan, Germany etc. will allow 2-bit dictatorships and failed nations to have a voice in the world, the failures of the UN have now become a blight on this good earth. Kofi Annan is a corrupted and ineffectual leader, ironically, from a corrupt and ineffectual continent. Syria, Iran, North Korea, Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, Egypt are just some examples of the pariah states that are allowed to have a voice in a world that they contribute nothing too. I’d love to see a Western Alliance created that included the strong democracies of the world. Having seen a bit of John Bolton in action, one hopes he can kick some butt, but with friends like China and Russia….Who needs enemies.
Nathan Maskiell
Melbourne, Australia

I believe it’s time to declare the UN a failure and pull the plug. Every petty dictator in the world uses the UN to give themselves legitimacy and disproportionate influence in world affairs. Continuing to fund this corrupt anti-American organization is simply throwing good money at a lost cause. With the U.S. out, the UN would hopefully collapse in short order.
Chris B.
New Jersey

We should give serious thought to leaving the UN and at the least, moving it out of this country. It is anti-American and Mr. Tyrrell could write a book about its corruption. As a start we could consider enactment of legislation to limit the time that the UN can meet. A wise man once told me while I considered purchasing a race horse, “Don’t buy anything that eats while you sleep.” While in session, the UN eats away at our interests and wallet. Let’s try to limit their sessions to two weeks every six months. The UN pols might like the proposal as they maneuver to keep the same pay.
Howard Lohmuller
Seabrook, Texas

It should have come as no surprise to Senator Voinovich that John Bolton has cut so able a figure as our UN envoy over the months since his interim appointment by the President. Ambassador Bolton, after all, came to the job with that best of qualifications: he was clearly detested by the opposition party and the liberal news media, a sure sign of brilliance and promise in any conservative public figure.

One wonders how the Senator will weather the equally predictable lack of interest that the New York Times, CBS News and other liberal news outlets will display toward him and his change of heart regarding Bolton — now that the Senator is no longer a useful anti-Administration prop.
Ron Goodden
Atlanta, Georgia

Can anything be said for the United Nations?
Observers of their absurd gyrations
Must think themselves at some kind of zoo
Although most animals it is true
Adhere to a certain native ability
To offer their species some sort of stability.

Rapes, corruption, oil for food to hide,
No respectable lions pride would abide
This cowardice of weakling elites,
Nor would peacocks strut with these soulless effetes.

Baboons must despair of the human race,
Scratching their heads as they watch the embrace
With which otherwise sane people uplift this band
Of thieves and tyrants and can’t wait to hand

Them millions of dollars and unfettered power.
Why even an elephant might cower
At the ease with which we hopefully forget
How useless they’ve always been, and yet

We can’t seem to stop it. Who will the land be
Which finally thumbs its nose at each useless grandee
And kicks them all out of New York’s upper east side.
And anywhere else where these vultures reside.

Though the wisest of owls might eschew deliberations,
Can anything be said for the United Nations?
Mimi Evans Winship

What if they had a ceasefire and nobody came? Godspeed, Israel. Godspeed.
Randy Gammon
Drexel, Montana

COLOR SCHEMES
Re: Doug Bandow’s A Right of Conscience:

How about having Doctors, Drug Stores and Clinics just put their signs in BLUE for anything goes, or RED for we have a conscience?
Elaine Kyle

Though Bandow insists “George W. Bush has merely barred federal funding. Private (as well as state and foreign) research can proceed unmolested.” “Unmolested”? Crippling is more like it.

The fact is that no lab equipment paid for by federal funds can be used in any way to advance the research disapprobated by the President’s veto — a lab would have to have two full sets of gear to work even handedly on scientifically interesting and metaphysically incorrect T cell lines. Two electron microscopes and two NMR labs per group equals megabucks of sterile redundancy. Still, a Jehovah’s Witness would be an improvement on the second-hand Surgeon General who’s been modeling Nixon’s surplus White House Guard uniforms on TV lately.
Russell Seitz

Mr. Bandow is incorrect when he states, “Yet for life to arise, implantation is necessary.” Life begins at the moment the nuclei admix. Implantation is necessary for the survival of the new life.
Paul Bruce

LET ‘EM COME
Re: Christopher Orlet’s The Return of SDS:

Let the SDS come to Chicago! It won’t bother us. Hold the Gay Games in Chicago. Who cares?

But when President Bush came to Chicago a few weeks ago to celebrate his 60th birthday with Mayor Daley, just about every honest citizen in the state was disturbed. As columnist John Kass wrote in the Chicago Tribune today (July 27):

Recently, Mayor Richard Daley and President Bush were publicly cozy, officially celebrating the presidential birthday but informally advertising mayoral clout…City Hall’s political message was clear: Rich Daley has nothing to worry about. Federal subpoenas? C’mon, just look at him there with the president, laughing, eating cake.”

When it comes to judging character, President Bush is a chump. He thinks Putin has a soul, he invites the Kennedy’s over to watch movies, and the only person in America to celebrate his birthday with is Richie Daley.
Jack Hughes
Chicago, Illinois

THE NUTCRACKER
Re: William G. Shipman’s He’s Not Nuts:

Mr. Shipman is quite right — after some huffing and puffing, the world community will again try to buy off North Korea. The proper phrase for this, however, is “paying tribute.” We and our European friends are paying tribute to North Korea, and also Iran. How the thugocracies of the planet must be enjoying this!

Rudyard Kipling called this “paying the danegeld.” This referred to the Middle Ages when weak or incompetent kings could not or would not fight off the Viking invaders, and so offered them money to go away, or attack someone else. Of course, the Vikings either attacked anyway, or else soon came back with more demands.

I can imagine dear old Kim, or the leaders of Iran, thinking: “look at these Western nations, especially Europe. They once ruled the world, and now here are their most pathetic descendants quivering and clasping their hands, believing in nothing except perhaps sex and hedonism, begging us to take their money! We can insult them, attack them, spit on them, announce to all and sundry that we will destroy them, and still they offer us tribute! Even they know we will go ahead building nuclear missiles, and still they do it!.”

And no, before some liberal starts screaming at me, I am not advocating a return to old-style imperialism, slavery, and the rest of it.

You will also notice the world couldn’t care less about justice for the powerless. Consider the North Korean refugees fleeing into China, where they are hunted like animals and sent back to torture and death in North Korea. They are infinitely worse off than the Palestinians, who are the subject of endless negotiations, and subsidies from Europe and the U.S. — though very little from their Arab brethren, I have noticed.

Ah, but the North Korean refugees don’t have nail bombs, and oil-rich patrons, and don’t blow up buildings, do they?

I wonder if the West, or at least its corrupt, sneering elites in politics and the media, will collapse one day. Perhaps the elites won’t care, so long as they don’t have to pay any price, as usual.

I wonder what our ancestors might be thinking of us…
John Lockwood
Washington, D.C..

RIFLE RATIONALE
Re: Jay D. Homnick’s Bullish on Bearing Arms:

This goes back to the saying, “When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.”

If the right to carry had been the law in 1991 maybe the gunman that walked into Luby’s in Killeen, Texas and killed 23 people and wounded more than 20, would have been stopped after his first few shots.
Elaine Kyle

There are no two ways about it: the Second Amendment enables all the other ones to exist; armed citizens underwrite this country’s freedoms. Other countries can exist without armed citizens because the US in turn underwrites their security. Therefore, I contend that the NRA is the most important charity in this country, and, indeed, the world. The American Spectator is perhaps the second.

And I haven’t seen The ‘Burbs but any reference therein to a citizen’s ownership of a submachine gun is typical Hollywood ignorance and paranoia. Private ownership of submachine guns, as well as all automatic weapons, has been illegal since the 1920’s. (True, licenses for such exist, but they are highly specialized and exceedingly difficult to obtain.) As always, we should fear the government that fears our guns.
R. Trotter
Arlington, Virginia

DITTO
Re: Sam G.’s letter (under “Wear Red”) in Reader Mail’s Lit Chicks:

Sam, this is edited from part of one of my emails, but I decided to share it with all —

Not a day goes by that I don’t think about how fortunate I am to live in this country, something many of my countrymen seem to have forgotten, or worse, don’t even understand anymore. Ben’s point is simple, but eloquent. We should be reminded, often, of our blessings, and those who are in harm’s way fighting to preserve those blessings
for us. But, the war is not supported by everyone. And, while there may be legitimate disagreement about it, I simply cannot countenance the prospect of another Vietnam-like reaction by the left to soldiers returning home from a controversial war. We cannot afford to lose another generation to bitterness, because the NYT was “conflicted” over the mission.

Just last weekend, I was on a business trip to Killeen, home of Ft. Hood. Many of the spouses of employees at the various businesses are soldiers. One waitress I talked to was so worried about her husband, who is assigned to a BFV, Bradley Fighting Vehicle, and had expressed his concerns many times to her about the war. I tried to reassure her and after a long conversation, her attitude began to change a little. My feeble attempts are nothing, though, compared to the MSM and their brainwashing, but I do what I can and that is all that is expected of any of us.

We must remember, that it was not so much because of any physical injuries that our friends and loved ones who returned from Vietnam were lost, but because their whole lives were politicized by the left. Nothing was more difficult for me emotionally, than to see so many of them give up on us, to see them lose their understanding and perspective of what it means to be American, and I will not stand by and again watch the “enemy within,” destroy the spirit of those who, in this case voluntarily, are risking their lives to defend us. Maybe, because of 9/11, these popinjays will be corralled, this time. If not, our bravest patriots, and the ship of state, are headed for rough waters, indeed.

God Bless you, Sam.
Mike Showalter
Austin, Texas

TRUE FEMINISM?
Re: Christopher Orlet’s The Real Suzanne Swift, Colleen Mussolino’s Letter (under “Swift Vettes”) in Reader Mail’s Exceptional Work, and B.J. Stewart’s letter (under “Walk A Mile in Our Boots”) in Reader Mail’s Bible Liberals:

It has taken a week, but finally the aptly named Ms. Mussolino’s gender fascists have come out to screech. Neither of these ladies responds to Mr. Orlet’s list of the problems with SP4 Swift’s accusations and the holes in her story. It is the old “seriousness of the charge” routine: “A woman says she’s been raped, so a man must be lynched.” Shades of South Carolina of a century ago — an on-going national travesty. But in this age when profiling is forbidden, should they not be demanding that an equal number of women be included amongst the suspects?

Another implication is more interesting. If SP4 Swift is telling the truth, what does that say about the capability of women to serve in the military? Suzanne Swift was a military policeman. During basic training every recruit receives an introductory training segment on unarmed, hand-to-hand combat. As part of their later, MOS training military police receive additional training, even special emphasis, in unarmed combat and how to subdue large, violent men, which is a part of their job. Why would SP4 Swift not have been able to resist her attacker, or seemingly, even to try? Remember all those quaint slogans that women do everything twice as well as a man?

If SP4 Swift is telling the truth, would it not argue that women are unfit not only for regular military service, but even for work as regular civilian police officers, since they would appear to be incapable of defending themselves, let alone assisting other citizens in distress. You would think the feminist fascists would be angrily disowning Suzanne Swift as a fraud and a disgrace to the sisterhood.
George M.

JUDGE NOT JUDGING
Re: Mark Tooley’s The Liberal Jesus:

Interesting article.

I will go out and by the Book. Your political view and bias is apparent by the substance and tone of your critique. Christianity is political because at its core is Jesus’ command to Love our neighbor as we Love ourselves. Its about truth, compassion, fairness, and other values increasingly absent from our society. Sadly, our conservative brethren have forgotten this.
L. Chuck Lira

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