In honor of the "World's last great hope for peace," or whatever, I'd like to bring some honor to the United Nations in the name of those whom the United Nations has been a great hope for peace. People like this:
25 million victims of Stalin's gulags
Up to 50 million victims of Mao's "Cultural Revolution."
Up to 5 million victims of Ho Chi Minh's collectivization.
Up to 2 million victims of Pol Pot's Maoist regime.
300,000 victims of Idi Amin.
Four million victims (and counting) of Sudan's civil war.
800,000 victims in the Rwandan genocide. Rwanda was, after all, abandoned by the U.N. just as things got "hot" there.
Up to 2 million victims of starvation in North Korea.
Hundreds of millions of victims of abortion, encouraged and endorsed by United Nations population control initiatives.
....and quite a bit more. Yes, happy birthday to the world's last great hope for.....
Genocide.
Clearing The Decks: 4/19 Edition
-
In one sense, this blog hasn’t changed much in the 22 years I’ve been
running it. I get up early, I write stuff. For the past 20 years, it’s
doubled as sho...
2 hours ago
5 comments:
I accuse the United Nations of complicity in the genocide of tens of millions of born humans, and hundreds of millions of preborn, and you think I haven't given them the one fingered salute?
Wow, tough crowd. :^) It used to be that making this kind of allegations was grounds for a duel, and now it's passe'. Yikes.
To be fair, the UN's original goal was to be a better League of Nations. The LoN was meant to avoid the repetition of WWI; the UN was meant to avoid all-out war between the US and Soviet Union in the aftermath of WWII. The UN wasn't meant to prevent humantitarian disasters (although no one would complain if it managed to), it was meant to prevent nuclear holocaust and/or the utter destruction of Europe. It accomplished this, even if it did so by allowing/encouraging proxy wars in the Third World among other things. I think we can indeed thank the UN that the Cold War stayed cold. The problem is, few then and fewer now recognize that this was the UN's purpose, and instead make it out to be some humanistic utopia-bringer. As you point out, it hasn't done a very good job of this, but I maintain that this was a peripheral task for it. In my view, the fall of Communism made the UN a lame duck. What is needed now is a new organization designed to help nations with non-nation groups such as terrorists and multi-national corporations and with health and environmental issues--a new organization targeted at the current threats to world society.
Happy my u know what. What a way to ruin my day, thanks a lot! :o)
Joe, that sounds really great, but it's unfortunately completely false. For starters, the U.N. Charter (I just read the preamble) aims to prevent all wars (not just between superpowers) and also to support human rights.
And no, the U.N. did not hold off total war between the United States and the U.S.S.R. A little device of plutonium and hydrogen did that by ensuring that all out conflict would mean mutual annihilation. NATO also helped prevent this war by arming the borders of the Warsaw Pact.
You might also do well to note that the Soviet Union did effectively use its place on the Security Council to wage proxy wars of "liberation" while preventing others from helping their victims by their Security Council veto. Arguably, the very structure of the U.N. has made the problem of war worse, since free nations are no longer allowed to recognize casus belli and defend other free men.
Which may be exactly what was intended; let's not forget that 14 of the 17 men who worked to found the U.N. were found to have been members of the Communist Party. I would argue that it was also intended to undermine human rights; the massive genocides of Mao, Pol Pot, Ho Chi Minh, and others are simply what Marx would have called the "dictatorship of the proletariat.
Thanks for filling me in on that, Bert.
Post a Comment