UNecessary

This month, the United Nations turns 70 years old. As with most liberal ideas, the UN began with the best of intentions—an international body designed to help ameliorate disputes between nations, assist those countries and peoples in desperate need, and generally serve as a forum from which good ideas for world peace and harmony could be espoused. After 70 years of corruption, ineffectiveness, and continually growing anti-American sentiment, the UN clearly has not achieved its high-minded goals.

Rick Moran comments:

... the biggest problem with the UN is its moral corruption. The fact that it’s an anti-American body shouldn’t be surprising given that most of the world is anti-American. Using the CIA as a scapegoat for the thug kleptocracies of the world is what we’ve come to expect.

But putting the worst violators of human rights on a human rights commission, or representatives of nations who enslave women on a women’s rights commission, and other transgressions against decency marks the UN as an immoral body that doesn’t deserve the support of the United States. Anti-liberty, anti-Semitic, anti-free speech, anti-free market — the UN stands in opposition to every value we hold dear.

To be clear, some of the work done by the UN needs an international home. The refugee crisis cannot be addressed by one country or even regionally. But perhaps setting up a private, non profit entity would do better — and be more efficient — at dealing with the crush of refugees.

As for the rest, the World Health Organization performed miserably in dealing with the ebola crisis. But what else is to be done with an international health crisis? Some international body has got to take charge or there would be even more chaos than there was.

Other UN bodies we could do without; United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), who allowed Palestinian terrorists to use schools to store rockets, could be deep sixed; the International Telecommunications Union who is currently trying engineer the takeover of the internet; International Fund for Agricultural Development, an organization set up to alleviate rural poverty that has actually made the problem worse.

The need for international bodies to deal with international crisis is not at issue. The question is, should a corrupt, ineffective international organization be given 22% of its budget (27% of the peacekeeping budget) by the American taxpayer?

I agree with Moran's assessment. There is a need for some of the functions that the UN provides, but these functions can be provided without the concomitant corruption, wasteful bureaucracy, and brazen anti-American sentiment from an organization to which we contribute over $1 billion a year.

It's time for a UN makeover. The organization should move out of the United States to a location better suited to its anti-Western membership. The United States should reduce it's support to the average yearly contribution of the top ten contributing nations. If that leads to budgetary problems for the UN, the organization should reduce the size of its massive, unnecessary bureaucracy. It should eliminate the various "commissions" that do little to improve the plight of the oppressed and everything to harass and denigrate targeted countries.

The UN is an anachronism that provides the appearance of an effective world body. Appearances, however, can be deceiving. It might be possible to restructure the UN into a smaller, more effective organization, but that's highly unlikely. In its present form, it does relatively little that could be not be accomplished more effectively with smaller targeted organizations.