Saving the UN or Not

“So, your father was Jew, yes?" United Nations Undersecretary-General Viacheslav Ustinov asked me abruptly.

"My father was a Basque. I don't believe he was a Jew."

"Yes, yes," Ustinov insisted. "Your father was Jew. I know. I have very good sources in this building. You have a big file here at UN now. Also, I have article about you in newspaper Washington Times . It say your father was composer. I know!"

Several thoughts occurred to me during this seemingly demented confrontation. Are all composers Jews?

This Ionesco-like scene did not take place in seventeenth-century Warsaw, nor in the Kiev ghetto during the reign of Nicholas I of Russia. This was taking place in New York City in 1983, inside an international enclave apparently totally removed from the reality surrounding it.

These excerpts from the book The UN Gang by Pedro A. Sanjuan recounts one of the many bizarre exchanges between our US undersecretary to the United Nations and his UN colleagues from other nations. Sanjuan was in fact a US spy, the only one at the UN, who had been appointed by VP George Bush to monitor the activities of the 274 Soviet spies then in residence at the UN building in New York.

Sanjuan’s book describes the incompetence, corruption, anti-Semitism and criminality rife throughout the UN Secretariat. Former US Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger observed that the author had spent more than a decade observing the UN from the inside and the picture is not pretty. Corruption, mismanagement, nepotism, open espionage against the United States are but a few of the warts on the body of this august international institution.

At my Omnilore course on Great Decisions 2006, we debated whether the United Nations was savable and worth saving. Our discussion leader asked whether the UN could make the changes necessary to prevent another oil-for-food scandal, reform its human rights mechanisms, and achieve its development goals. Being new to the group I waited for others to reply, and waited, and… then finally offered that UN investigator Paul Volker had reported a total lack of transparency that made reform utterly impossible.

That kicked off a discussion of what the UN does well, such as the activities of the World Health Organization. I wondered where the WHO stood on the use of DDT to fight malaria in Africa where an estimated one million children die every year of the preventable disease. Unfortunately, a major obstacle to the use of DDT in Africa has been the USAID organization, under political pressure from environmental groups.

But what about the ostensible reasons for the UN’s existence? The United Nations was created after World War II to promote peace and international understanding. By any measure the U.N. has failed to achieve its mission. It has failed to address the most dangerous threats facing the civilized world, refused to condemn terrorist acts, and supported some of the world's most oppressive governments, all while wasting billions of dollars.

These failures are documented in a new book The U.N. Exposed : How the United Nations Sabotages America's Security and Fails the World by newsman Eric Shawn, who writes: Less than five miles from Ground Zero in Manhattan sits an international hotbed of anti-Americanism. And for the honor of hosting our adversaries in our own country, Americans pay 22 percent of the U.N.'s bloated $2 Billion budget.

The U.N. Exposed reveals many disturbing aspects of UN operation that have been ignored by the mainstream media, for instance, that:

1. U.N.-supervised funds were diverted into weapons used against American troops in Iraq.

2. Terrorists and rogue states seeking nuclear weapons flout toothless U.N. resolutions.

3. U.N. workers have repeatedly turned children into their sexual prey.

4. U.N. ambassadors and staff enjoy luxurious and tax-free Manhattan lifestyles and other perks. The sainted UN Secretary General Kofi Anon lives in a Manhattan mansion estimated to be worth more than $40 million. That alone would immunize millions of at risk children in the third world.

At the end of class we were asked whether, with all its warts, we favored keeping the UN. The response was 12 Yes and 1 No (me). This should be an interesting class.