Stroud and Hall

The United Nations Honors Yet Another Dictator
2006 09 28

Islam Karimov, Uzbekistan’s ruthless dictator, has been awarded a medal by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) for “strengthening friendship and cooperation between nations, development of cultural and religious dialogue, and supporting cultural diversity.” This award went to the same man that brutally slaughtered several hundred unarmed Uzbeks in Andijon last year. Meanwhile, Uzbekistan has been ranked in 2006 by Freedom House as one of the most repressive countries in the world with one of the world’s worst human rights records.

Founded after the Second World War, UNESCO directive is to contribute to peace and security by promoting collaboration among nations through education, science and culture in order to further universal respect for justice, for the rule of law and for the human rights and fundamental freedoms which are affirmed for the peoples of the world.

One can only wonder what UNESCO, with such a mandate, was thinking when it awarded the prestigious gold Borobudur medal to Karimov for his contribution to preserving World Heritage sites. Perhaps they should have taken into consideration that his preservation of these sites comes at the expense of maintaining a totalitarian government through massive human rights violations and the use of slave labor, including children as young as six or seven, on state-owned cotton farms.

Could it be that UNESCO found that Karimov “developed cultural and religious dialogue” by arbitrarily jailing, controlling and interfering with the media, opposition parties and the work of Uzbek NGOs? Or perhaps, what UNESCO meant by “strengthening friendship and cooperation between nations” was the fallout between the United States and Uzbekistan when Uzbekistan ordered the U.S. to close all its military operations inside Uzbekistan within 180 days on July 30, 2005—only to subsequently accuse and kick out all U.S. related NGOs, including IREX, Freedom House and the International Republican Institute, on the basis that they were fueling political opposition? Or maybe by “cooperation by nations,” they meant the landmark decision in October 2005 by the European Union to partially suspend its Partnership and Cooperation Agreement with Uzbekistan—the first time it has ever done so with any country.

The litany of human rights abuses in Uzbekistan goes on and on, especially on issues such as religious freedom and torture. Certainly UNESCO must have been aware of undeniable totalitarian nature of Karimov’s regime best known for torture and suppression of any political or civil dissent. But perhaps, given the recipients of prizes in the past, UNESCO simply doesn’t care.

On February 3, 2006, UNESCO awarded its 2005 José Martí International Prize to Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez. Cuban president Fidel Castro personally handed the Martí prize which is intended to recognize those who have contributed to the “struggle for liberty” in Latin America to Hugo Chávez, another repressive leader who has a winning track record of electoral fraud, human rights violations, property theft and political repression.

Just as the United Nations newly “reformed” Human Rights Council still allows egregious human rights violators to sit in judgment of other nations, UNESCO is following other United Nations’ branches that are failing to live up to the ideals and mission upon which it is founded. All branches of the United Nations must reform and stand for the very principles embodied in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights––the founding document of the United Nations. Otherwise, the United Nations’ moral authority regarding human rights is completely undermined by its deference to dictators and egregious violators of human rights.

In addition to allowing dictators the run of the UN, the UN is also infected by corrosive and destroying corruption. One of the worst examples of this corruption once could be found at UNESCO. Recognizing that UNESCO was bursting with corruption, as well as mismanagement and politicization, the United States withdrew from it in 1984. In 2003, after UNESCO instituted a number of reforms, including eliminating half of its top staff members, the United States rejoined the body.

Perhaps, it is time that the United States reconsiders withdrawing from UNESCO yet again.

Anne Yasmine Rassam is vice president of foreign policy and international women’s issues for the Independent Women’s Forum.

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We want a divorce
2006 09 28

It’s one of the biggest scandals to hit the United States, and it’s happening in the heart of New York. For years, the United States has had the capability to alleviate the situation, but our government’s inactivity has instead exacerbated the problem. Through passive negotiation, we have allowed this regime to endanger the security of American citizens while at the same time wasting away their tax dollars. No, this regime is not the radical Islamic fascists. The enemy Tom Kilgannon exposes in his new book, Diplomatic Divorce, is the inept global government known as the United Nations.

While the U.S. government has repeatedly put faith in the United Nations (UN) and other international government organizations (IGOs) to create global stability, they often become institutes of corruption and manipulation, not to mention threats to American security, says Kilgannon.

The UN in particular is out of touch, if not outright ignorant, says the author. Kilgannon cites several inconsistencies between how the U.S. and the UN perceive other nations. For example, the U.S. State Department listed seven countries as state sponsors of terrorism prior to the U.S. liberation of Iraq: Iran, Iraq, Syria, North Korea Cuba, Sudan and Libya. Ironically, all of these nations are considered by the UN to be “peace-loving states.” Kofi Annan, whose tenure at the head of the UN has led to some of the most corrupt and deceitful scandals in history, even refers to the leaders of these countries as “Excellencies.”

Kilgannon portrays the affiliation of the United States and the United Nations as a give-and-take relationship: The U.S. gives American tax dollars to the UN, and the UN in turn takes away security and political voice from American citizens. In other words, the United States is paying for the most expensive ticket in order to sit in the nosebleed section.

This ripoff scenario holds true not only for the UN, but also for other IGOs such as the ineffectiveWorld Trade Organization. Kilgannon notes that that the $26.5 million that the U.S. pays annually to the WTO is twice more than any other nation pays, and is in fact more than the total combined payment of 122 of the 148 represented nations. And while one would hope that the track record of the United States as a successful political and economic power would bode well for its relationships with developing and developed nations, the facts show that the opposite is true. In the United Nations, 131 countries vote against the U.S. at least 75 percent of the time, and only four countries (Palau, Israel, Micronesia, and the Marshall Islands) vote with the United States over 60 percent of the time. Kilgannon affirms that the United States is being treated “like an international doormat in the General Assembly,” and it’s entirely not obvious why. Whatever the reason , be it envy or not, it must be understood “the UN is anti-American to the core.”

Furthermore, the creation of the International Criminal Court and International Court of Justice is laughable, says Kilgannon, and both institutions have negligible, if not harmful, effects on American security and foreign policy. American citizens cannot depend on a weakly established foreign body for protection.

Until the United States begins a process of separation, the UN and other IGOs will continually strip our nation of its power, using the money we give them to do so. If the U.S. does not “diplomatically divorce” from the UN soon, the American citizens could incur costs of taxes on international trade, international postal servicing, and international emails, as well as service fees for use of “global commons” such as the oceans.

In Kilgannon’s perspective, the United Nations does have a legitimate purpose in improving the world’s human rights violations—however, the UN is failing miserably in that purpose. One alarming example of this failure can be found in Sudan, a Commission of Human Rights member, where “a government-sponsored genocide has displaced more than 2,000,000 people and killed upwards of 300,000 by the way of starvation and murder.”

One of the common themes expressed throughout this book is the United Nations’ ability to undermine U.S. authority in all aspects of government and leadership. Kilgannon summarizes:

One of the mistakes the U.S. government makes with respect to the United Nations is to treat it as an ally. It is not. In today’s world, and given the offensive the UN has mounted to increase its authority, the organization must be treated as an adversary — one that is persistent, not passive.

Diplomatic Divorce is a wake-up call for the American government and citizens, alerting us to a network of international organizations that are steering the United States in the wrong direction. After reading Kilgannon’s condemning account of manipulative strategies and corrupt catastrophes, including Annan’s treacherous Oil-for-Food scandal, patriotic Americans will have no choice but to question the United States’ involvement with such an incompetent line-up of characters and organizations.

Nick Loris is currently an editorial intern at Townhall.com while pursuing his masters in economics at George Mason University.

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Shasi Tharoor: The Indian who wants to be chief
2006 09 25

The race to succeed Kofi Annan as the UN’s next Secretary-General is getting more attention. South Korea’s Ban Ki-Moon has placed first in two straw polls of the UN Security Council, and at this writing would seem to be the favorite. Ban is a product of Harvard and a career diplomat and he has received good grades for his part in the North Korea nuclear negotiations. But late-entry candidates are getting in the race, indicating that the permanent members of the Security Council haven’t yet settled on a choice to send to the General Assembly.

Shashi Tharoor – the Indian who wants to be chief of the United Nations – is hot on Ban Ki-Moon’s tail. Tharoor now serves as Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information at the UN and was Kofi’s chief spin master during the Oil-for-Food scandal. He has finished second to Ban in both Council straw polls.

Senior U.N. official and author Shashi Tharoor smiles during his meeting with India’s main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader L. K. Advani in New Delhi June 20, 2006. India nominated Tharoor to succeed Kofi Annan when his 10-year term as U.N. secretary-general ends at the end of 2006. REUTERS/B Mathur (INDIA) After receiving the nomination of the Indian government this summer, Tharoor has been hopping the globe, lamenting the fact that “this used to be a job for which people didn’t have to campaign.” The ultimate UN insider, Tharoor longs for the days when “the Security Council discussed names behind closed doors.”

Tharoor bleeds powder blue, having spent his whole career on the international public dole. If elected Secretary-General – and a recent Security Council straw poll shows him with the requisite support – Tharoor will continue Kofi Annan’s legacy of building the UN into a global bureaucracy. The UN, Tharoor demands, must be built into “an effective house of global governance for the twenty-first century.” Tharoor’s determination to have the UN govern the globe makes him a candidate worthy of a U.S. veto.

Tharoor is a master at spin. As part of the disgraced team that allowed some of the worst scandals in UN history, Tharoor recently told a reporter that “the UN is not in need of reform because it has failed, but because it has succeeded in a whole host of endeavors, enough to be investing in.”

Despite the fact that the UN is a closed and secretive institution, Tharoor told BBC reporter Jeremy Paxman that “we [at the United Nations] tend to work in a very open and transparent way.” Then, during the same interview, Tharoor answered the reporter’s questions with statements like, “I’m not at liberty to tell you that”; “I’m not going to go into that level of detail”; “no, I really can’t tell you”; and “that is not something that I can really go into in any detail right now.” Open and transparent indeed.

John Kerry and Shashi Tharoor have a lot in common when it comes to how the United States should defend itself. Tharoor endorses Kerry’s “global test” and argues that “acting in the name of international law is always preferable to acting in the name of national security.” Spoken like a true utopian who never bore the responsibility of protecting citizens of his nation.

The UN is not capable of protecting innocents from those who mean them harm because the elites who take up space and oxygen at the UN spend their days debating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. The most infamous example is the UN’s inability to define “terrorism.” That is unlikely to change with Tharoor at the helm. During an interview at the University of California at Berkley, Tharoor said that “truth is a particularly difficult issue.”

He went on to explain: “A lot of the work of the world’s diplomats in international affairs consists of reconciling different forms of truth, different perceptions of truth, of being able to see every international conflict from the point of view of both or all the protagonists, not necessarily to sympathize with them, but to understand that there is more than one answer to every question and more than one way of looking at every particular problem.”

That explains a lot. When Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says that Israel should be “wiped off the map,” I now understand why UN officials respond with, “Hmmm, interesting, tell me more.”

There is one truth that Shashi Tharoor holds, and that is that America-bashing is good for business. From his ivory tower, Tharoor tried to undermine the 2003 U.S. liberation of Iraq saying, “the difference between a UN operation, in which everyone wears a blue helmet, and a ‘coalition of the willing,’ led by one big power,” he wrote, “is similar to that between a police squad and a posse.” And in a 2004 speech to the Asia Society in Hong Kong, he began with several criticisms of the UN’s most generous contributor nation and then said, “I am not here just to pick on the United States.”

But if elected Secretary-General, Tharoor will make a career out of undermining the United States. Stay tuned – a decision from the Security Council is near.

Thomas P. Kilgannon is the president of Freedom Alliance and the author of Diplomatic Divorce: Why America Should End Its Love Affair with the United Nations.

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Diplomatic Divorce
2006 09 20

Why America Should End Its Love Affair with the United Nations

Tom Kilgannon, who has reported from UN events around the world, provides an eye-opening look at how a corrupt haven of second-rate bureaucrats from third-world countries is dictating the future of the world’s only superpower—and leading us down the road to ruin.

In Diplomatic Divorce, Kilgannon contends that the United Nations—with the help of international, anti- American lobbyists—is assaulting American values on a number of fronts, from national security to trade to tax policy to the Internet. Our First Amendment is under attack from UN bureaucrats who are trying to wrest control of the Internet from the United States. Global gun-grabbers have our Second Amendment in their crosshairs as they work toward an international Arms Trade Treaty that will ban the private ownership of firearms. Kilgannon shows how despite President Bush’s work, members of America’s military are still in jeopardy of being tried before Kofi Annan’s International Criminal Court and how Congress has outsourced its constitutional responsibility to the World Trade Organization.

Leading Democrats like Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, John Kerry and others, Kilgannon explains, “have abandoned their faith in America for the empty promises of a global cult…which is hopelessly corrupt, inherently flawed and anti-American to the core.” These apostles of universal law have hung our Constitution on the discount rack. For these reasons and more, he argues, “it is time for America to end her love affair with the United Nations.”

THOMAS P. KILGANNON is a leading authority on the United Nations, international institutions, and American sovereignty. He has closely monitored UN activities and reported from international conferences held in Monterrey, Mexico; Johannesburg, South Africa; and New York City. He currently serves as the president of Freedom Alliance, an educational and charitable organization dedicated to preserving the American heritage of freedom and providing support to our men and women in uniform.

Before joining Freedom Alliance, Kilgannon served as a top aide to Congressman Mark Neumann of Wisconsin, one of the most visible and effective members of the historic freshman class of 1995. Prior to that, he coordinated policy and communications for the Christian Action Network, a pro-family lobbying organization, and served as deputy press secretary for Patrick J. Buchanan’s 1992 presidential campaign.

He is a graduate of New York University where he studied economics. He has appeared on CNBC, MSNBC, FOX News, CNN International, and Court TV, as well as numerous nationally syndicated radio programs. Kilgannon is also the host of the Freedom First radio program on the Rightalk Network.

Endorsements

Tom Kilgannon is right on target in Diplomatic Divorce. The United Nations with its army of Lilliputians has not only tied down the great Gulliver, but also stolen his platinum credit card, spit in his face, and killed his children. It has distorted our laws, perverted our foreign policy, and poisoned our culture. The UN has long been ripe for reform, but ripe has now turned to rotten, and it needs to be sent to the trash pile. As Americans, we must no longer sit by and watch as American freedoms are usurped by this international gang of crooks and bureaucratic riff-raff. We need to heed Kilgannon’s wisdom now and end this unholy love affair.

ZELL MILLER

Tom knows the aristocratic, liberal elites who are the pandering enablers and apologists for this corrupt, sovereignty-snatching, global bureaucracy. Tom Kilgannon exposes the scandals, corruption and conspiracies that the planetary potentates in the Big Blue Building on Turtle Bay try to keep hidden from the American public. Before accepting the premise that we should place the safety and security of the American people in the hands of the UN, our leaders should pay attention to this book, Diplomatic Divorce, and heed its advice.

OLIVER NORTH

Tom Kilgannon’s new book Diplomatic Divorce raises a very important question: Can we continue to reconcile participation in the United Nations with our Constitution and national sovereignty? Mr. Kilgannon concludes that we cannot, and I share his opinion. Forget about reform—the UN is inherently illegitimate, because supra-national government is an inherently illegitimate concept. Legitimate governments operate only by the consent of those they govern. Yet it is ludicrous to suggest that billions of people across the globe have in any way consented to UN governance. Diplomatic Divorce is a welcome and needed voice in the fight for American sovereignty.

Congressman RON PAUL (R-TX)

NRA knows the dangerous agenda of the United Nations to ban private ownership of firearms, as Kilgannon effectively points out. I have debated these global gun banners for years and know their objectives far too well. I recommend Diplomatic Divorce to every person who values the freedoms that are guaranteed by the United States Constitution.

WAYNE LAPIERRE

Executive Vice President & CEO, NRA In his excellent new book, Diplomatic Divorce, Tom Kilgannon has jump-started a long- overdue conversation about America’s future relationship with the United Nations. He correctly argues that if America is to remain the greatest nation in the world, our relationship with the United Nations must end. I recommend it to every member of Congress who cares truly about America’s future.

Former Congressman BOB BARR

Countries must maintain individual sovereignty and be responsible in the end for securing and protecting their people. America’s national security should never (never) be left to the whims and the corruptive forces of the United Nations or other international bodies that do not have the best interests of the United States at heart. In Diplomatic Divorce, Tom Kilgannon explains very eloquently why this is so critical in today’s world, especially in the global war against radical Islam. We cannot depend on the United Nations to be effective and successful in protecting our interests at home and abroad. Mr. Kilgannon also reveals the dangers American military personnel continue to face from the UN’s International Criminal Court. Diplomatic Divorce is a must read.

Major General PAUL VALLELY, USA (Ret.)

FOX News Military Analyst

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Bush should skip UN General Assembly
2006 09 19

By Thomas P. Kilgannon
Monday, September 18, 2006

Nobel Prize winner Elie Wiesel says Iran should be booted from the United Nations because its leader called for the destruction of another member state of the UN. The suggestion is sound – or would be – if one actually believed that any of the 57 countries that constitute the Islamic Conference at the United Nations would approve of the idea. Its doubtful too, that any of the 103 countries that are designated “not free” or “partly free” by Freedom House would rally to such a cause. And Kofi Annan, who recently had the diplomatic equivalent of a conjugal visit with Iran’s leader, would quash any sign of momentum for the move.

Wiesel’s proposal also suggests that Iran’s membership is a blemish on an otherwise noble institution. But the UN’s tolerance of terrorist states, their elevation of human rights abusers to positions of honor, and their reputation for corruption indicates that Iran is right at home in the United Nations with the other malcontents who infest the international enclave on Manhattan’s East Side.

It is America that is miscast in Turtle Bay, and our membership in the UN has become a stain our national pride.

“I’m frustrated with the United Nations,” President Bush said in the Rose Garden last week. So are the American people. At a time of war, 50 percent of Americans believe the United Nations undermines U.S. national security interests, according to a poll released by the Hudson Institute. The same survey shows that 75 percent of the public view the UN as “no longer effective.”

The public’s tolerance of the United Nations has run its course. Since September 11, 2001, Americans have come to see the UN for what it is – a corrupt cauldron of anti-Americanism. Not only is the United Nations undermining our foreign policy, but it is pilfering our sovereignty on a systematic basis. As I travel the country promoting my book, Diplomatic Divorce: Why America Should End Its Love Affair with the United Nations, I find the public screaming for a leader who will end the “business as usual” relationship we have had with the UN for the last 60 years.

It explains the grassroots popularity of Ambassador John Bolton who, unlike other U.S. Representatives to the UN, has refused to be a doormat for Kofi Annan and his deputies. But Bolton can only carry out the policies set by his president.

President George W. Bush speaks to the UN on the same day as Iranian strongman Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. When asked if he would meet with Ahmadinejad while at the United Nations, Mr. Bush replied firmly, “No, I will not meet with him.” Correct answer. But neither should Mr. Bush grace the same podium that hosts the leader of a state sponsor of terrorism, and which is providing support to Shia militias in Iraq to attack U.S. military personnel.

One would think that the UN would deny a microphone to a leader who vows to destroy another member state of the United Nations. But since logic and political courage are in short supply in Turtle Bay, Mr. Bush should protest the use of our dues to underwrite such hostility.

Led by John Bolton, the United States convinced the UN Security Council to adopt Resolution 1696 which demands that Iran “suspend all [uranium] enrichment-related and reprocessing activities, including research and development.” This is the single provision the United States requires before entering negotiations with Iran over their nuclear ambitions. But when Ahmadinejad ignored the Security Council, he was rewarded with a visit from Kofi Annan, which only split a united world community.

After the 9/11 attacks, Kofi Annan wrote in the New York Times, that “the international community is defined not only by what it is for, but by what and whom it is against. The United Nations must have the courage to recognize that just as there are common aims, there are common enemies.”

President Bush should have used this opportunity to challenge Kofi Annan’s sincerity on that statement and help the United Nations set a new course that no longer tolerates terrorist states, their acquisition of weapons of mass destruction, and their overt threats to other member states. For reform of the policies and procedures at the UN is meaningless until the people who run the place reform their mindset.

A visit from the President of the United States – for any individual or any institution – is a coveted prize. Mr. Bush’s leverage in exacting meaningful change from the UN would have been to withhold his presence from their annual meeting.

By doing so, he would have defended the honor of his nation. But by attending the UN’s General Assembly, he gives the UN no reason to reform, no reason to set higher standards for membership and responsible behavior on the world stage. Another lost opportunity.

Thomas P. Kilgannon serves as the president of Freedom Alliance, a Townhall.com Gold partner.

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Book Review: Diplomatic Divorce
2006 09 18

By Carol Devine-Molin
September 18, 2006

In his new book, Diplomatic Divorce: Why America Should End Its Love Affair with the United Nations, author Thomas P. Kilgannon asserts that American sovereignty is being systematically whittled away by power-grabbing UN globalists who can readily rely upon members of the worldwide political Left as their most ardent advocates and enablers. Of course, leaders of despotic regimes are tremendous supporters of the United Nations as well, since the Turtle Bay crowd coddles them, and provides them with a legitimacy and cachet that they can’t garner anywhere else. Kilgannon states, “The UN General Assembly is littered with terrorist governments, human rights abusers, corrupt regimes, dictatorships and political deviants of all stripes.”

Amazingly, those enamored with the United Nations are willing to ignore the reality that its bureaucrats are profoundly corrupt, incompetent, blatantly anti-American, and given to bolstering tyrannical regimes and terror states while failing to promote freedom and democracy throughout the world. The UN bureaucrats are less-than-worthless, and one needs only to focus upon their leader, Kofi Annan, Secretary-General of the United Nations, to grasp their current state of degradation.

This Grand Pooh-Bah of the UN presided over the worst scandal in the history of the global body – the UN Oil-for-Food scam – that’s well chronicled in Kilgannon’s book. Moreover, the Secretary-General spread the wealth around, as Kilgannon notes, “Kofi Annan’s son Kojo Annan, and a long-time friend of the Annan family, Michael Wilson, were trading on their access to the Secretary-General to win a lucrative Oil-for-Food contract for their employer (Cotecna).” Sadly, the starving Iraqi people, who were supposed to benefit from the humanitarian program, received very little assistance.

With the UN turning a blind-eye, Saddam Hussein was able to utilize the Oil-for-Food program to feather his own nest, bolster Iraqi oil production, purchase weaponry, and co-opt individuals for the purpose of buying influence on the UN Security Council. Kilgannon indicates, “As Charles Duelfer of the Iraq Survey Group pointed out, Saddam was trying to win influence in the UN Security Council, which is reflected in the fact that the two countries where most of Iraq’s oil was sold were Russia and France, two permanent members of the Security Council.” Saddam successfully conducted bribery by selling cheap oil. The investigative panel, the Volcker Commission, didn’t have subpoena power or a grand jury, and couldn’t compel testimony. Furthermore, for a nine month period in 2004, three years of UN files, including those on the Oil-for-Food program (1997-1999), were destroyed by order of Annan’s Chief of Staff. Unfortunately, these arrogant UN bureaucrats appear poised to get away with their crimes.

Throughout Diplomatic Divorce, Kilgannon underscores that the UN represents “global governance that is hostile to the United States.” He cites some significant examples of the deleterious impact of UN activities upon our nation:

The UN Security Council delayed in the US liberation of Iraq;
World Trade Organization decisions force Congress to rewrite US laws;
The creation of the International Criminal Court required the State Department to expend political capital and strike bilateral agreements with every nation on earth to protect US military personnel;
The International Court of Justice has forced a delay in the case of a Mexican national convicted of rape and murder of an American citizen;
Kofi Annan’s Millennium Development Goals spawned the creation of President Bush’s Millennium Challenge Account and a spike in US foreign aid;
UN treaties have influenced decisions of the US Supreme Court.
That being said, the United Nation’s International Criminal Court (ICC), is the focus of considerable attention at this juncture, undoubtedly due to the presence of US military personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan where fighting continues.

Imagine this very troubling scenario: In the not-too-distant future, American soldiers are hauled before the UN’s International Criminal Court on so-called “war crimes”, to be subjected to the justice meted out by American-hating, “one-world” Lilliputians who render universal judgment from their Ivory Towers. Sadly, this is not science fiction fantasy, but virtual certainty if America ever chooses to subordinate itself to the aforesaid global tribunal.

Hyperbolic rhetoric, you say? Hardly. On October 4, 2001, the British ratified its alignment with the International Criminal Court. By 2005, three members of Her Majesty’s armed forces were indicted by the ICC for war crimes pursuant to their actions during Operation Iraqi Freedom. The British government circumvented UN intervention – and the specter of having their soldiers paraded before a world body – by bringing the men before their own domestic courts, charged under Britain’s International Criminal Court Act. However, that hasn’t dulled the controversy. As noted by Kilgannon, “Nobody is arguing that British soldiers should be able to act with impunity, but citizens are concerned that the charges against the men are politicized and they are being tried in order to appease the ICC.” The notion of political show trials is absolutely abhorrent to free societies. The British experience should be a wake-up call to other nations – particularly democracies - that have been enthusiastically willing to genuflect before the altar of UN power. Currently, the US is opposed to the ratification of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. However, one never knows if this will change.

Clearly, the UN will criminalize US foreign policy if it ever gets the opportunity to do so through the ICC. The UN believes it has the right to determine when and how a nation utilizes military force. However, our government is accountable to the American people – not the UN – and the US should never even consider turning over its Constitutional responsibilities to foreign entities. Moreover, Kilgannon avers, “One of the things that makes the court [ICC] dangerous is the precedent it sets in allowing the United Nations to impose its will on the rest of the world.” The author is not pro-Republican in his overall stance, and indeed lambastes the Republican-controlled Congress and the President for “flooding the United Nations with unregulated soft money that is used to undermine every part of our Constitution.” That said, Kilgannon has an even bigger problem with the Democratic Party, which he says has “hitched its wagon to the asses of the internationalists.”

Kilgannon’s use of the phrase “Love Affair” in his book title is most apropos, since there’s almost a romanticizing of the UN throughout the world as a fair arbiter or “fair broker” that’s egalitarian in nature, and which ostensibly works to pave-the-way to a utopian society where “artificial” notions of national sovereignty and borders will be tossed aside. Yep, it will be heaven on earth to the political Left. The “kumbaya” liberal elites eat this stuff up. However, most Americans still appear to have a healthy skepticism of the UN. Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry was roundly criticized when he indicated that he would only take preemptive military action if it passed “the global test”, which of course is pure Leftist gobbledygook. The majority of Americans are cognizant that the Commander-in-Chief must make national security decisions that are in the best interests of the US, and the heck with a global consensus.

As noted by the author, the US pays about 22 percent of the regular UN budget amounting to approximately $363 million each year, and when contributions to peacekeeping and other UN agencies are added in, we pay roughly $3 billion annually to the UN. That’s beaucoup bucks! And it begs the following question: Why should Americans pay for the privilege of being disrespected and attacked by a global body that means us harm? As underscored by Kilgannon, “The General Assembly is a hotbed of anti-Americanism.” Simply put, the UN, which seeks to diminish our sovereignty and national security, represents a considerable threat to our national interests.

Can the UN change? Kilgannon believes that meaningful reform at the UN is virtually impossible due to its flawed nature. Therefore, he advocates a more radical step, stating, “We do not want to withdraw from the world, only from the United Nations.”

Thomas P. Kilgannon is a leading authority on international institutions, and has produced an extremely informative, yet eminently readable, book on the dangers posed by the United Nations and the globalists. It offers insights on so many issues – domestic politics, American sovereignty, American national security, international relations, the inception of the Iraq War – that I recommend it without hesitation to anyone who wants to understand the challenges that our nation must address in order to survive and thrive in this 21st Century.

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Growing apart
2006 09 18