The United Nations: A Creature of Fiction

"Personal Notice: Danger is my stock-in-trade. If the job is too tough for you to handle, you've got a job for me, George Valentine. Write full details."

The above advertisement was how the hero in 1940s radio thriller "Let George Do it" obtained his clients.

It made for great radio; it makes for lousy foreign policy. Besides, George was a fiction.

Increasingly, political leaders, from the Democrat Party to Greens in Germany, demand that a worldwide "George"--the United Nations--do the work whenever there's a problem.

Environmental problems? Nuclear Iran? The Internet?

"Let George (the U.N.) do it!"

An industry has sprung up castigating George Bush, the United States, Israel, Great Britain: in short any country who doesn't govern by committee, for the grave sin of "unilateralism".

The United Nations has a great track record for padding the pockets of its officials, naming Israel and the United States as a "problem" or "racist" and other amusing sideshow antics.

Its list of accomplishments of actually doing anything about serious problems is much shorter.

Now, there are some calls to let the United Nations police the Internet.

As commercials for risky investments proclaim, "Past performance is no guarantee of future success".

Calls for UN action are shorthand. Substitute the words, "Let George do it" and the results would be the same: nothing.

That anyone should "police" or "take charge" of the Internet is troubling--except to the nanny types who are troubled by nothing except smoking in bars, fatty foods and non-Politically Correct speech. That the United Nations do it is--well, we'll let the reader supply their own reaction.

With that in mind, the following five quotes may be enlightening. Remember them the next time someone gets in front of the cameras with a call for the U.N. to take action on anything, from Iraq to Iran's nuclear ambitions to policing the Internet.

"If I'm president, I will not only personally go to the UN, I will go to other capitals. . . . I will immediately reach out to other nations in a very different way from this administration. Within weeks of being inaugurated, I will return to the UN and I will literally, formally rejoin the community of nations and turn over a proud new chapter in America's relationship with the world."
--John Kerry, NBC's Meet the Press

"Should governance of the Internet be turned over to the United Nations? It seems far-fetched, but that’s exactly what some foreign governments – including China and the European Union – are advocating."

Three women peace activists interrupted today’s Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on John Bolton’s nomination as US Ambassador to the UN. They held up banners reading “NO Bolton, YES UN,” “Bolton = Nuclear Proliferation,” and “Diplomat, Not Bully, Please!” and urged Senators to reject Bolton as the worst possible choice for the job and for world peace.

"When everybody is responsible, nobody is"
--Arthur Rubenstein, among many

"Virtuous motives, trammelled by inertia and timidity, are no match for armed and resolute wickedness. A sincere love of peace is no excuse for muddling hundreds of millions of humble folk into total war. The cheers of weak, well-meaning assemblies soon cease to echo, and their votes soon cease to count. Doom marches on."
--Winston Churchill, writing in The Gathering Storm, of events in 1935. European powers, instead of acting against treaty violations and--in spite of bald declarations by Hitler and Mussolini on what they intended to do--kept insisting no one country but the League of Nations take action.

"Let George do it."

"Let the U.N. take action."

Both entities are fictitious.

In other words: let nobody do it.

by Mondoreb
[image:un]
Source: The Gathering Storm, Winston S. Churhill, p. 190
Let the U.N. Govern the Internet?
Kerry's UN Fetish



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