Sunday, May 08, 2005


The UN


With all due respect for the United Nations efforts with earthquake and tsunami recovery in Asia, a recent petition I circulated about getting the UN out of the US, etc., etc. was met with a common reply for which I am strongly compelled to respond to in turn.

The essence of the responses were, "We can't eliminate such an organization. We need to have a forum to discuss issues among nations. You complain about the UN, but you give no viable alternative suggestions."

Whether it is in our business, our church, our government, or our world, the human proclivity is to never, ever eliminate organizations, committees, special funds, etc. Business is one category that is faced with the economic profit and loss reality that ultimately cleanses itself of useless, nonproductive, or parasitic entities.

With the current advanced state of telecommunications and the overlapping diplomatic networks that exist, we have to seriously ask ourselves, "What if we closed the doors of the UN tomorrow. What would happen?" My simple response would be that the slime factor would drop by several percentage points. Other than that, the NGO's would still continue NGOing. People would still surf the Internet. CNN would still be selling its view of the world.

Some people suggest that the UN be reorganized or evolved to fix its endemic corruption and ineffectiveness. In the real world, this doesn't work anymore. With invested or imbedded interests, including the building janitorial service union, it will take years, if not decades to effect change. The only solution is termination as no amount of radiation or chemotherapy will cure this cancer...only surgical removal.

During this recent Asia disaster, all the UN could quickly muster was a complaint that the US was not contributing enough, quickly enough. It will be interesting to look back in a couple of years at this shattered landscape. I predict that individuals and individual governments and private initiatives will have healed this wound most quickly, with the UN standing on the sidelines, as it did in various political massacres or ethnic cleansings in the last few years

As an old wag said, "There are people that make things happen, there are people that watch things happen, and there are people that wonder what happened." The UN is a ripe candidate for the last allegory.

Originally published New Year's Day 2005

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