Friends, Allies, & The UN

They must be piping drinking water into the UN building straight out of the East River or maybe the Mexicans brought their own water, but something is making our friends and allies go weird on us at the UN; first it was the Axis of Weasels, then Russia and now the Mexicans.

The Mexicans take over the Presidency of the Security Council next week. Now you would think that it would be good for us to have an ally in the Presidency rather than a nation that relies on a witchdoctor for foreign policy. But our friends to the south have decided that they have three goals: "to return multilateralism to the UN," to "find a way to reinsert the UN into Iraq," and to "revise and limit the power of veto."

Now the first two goals are wonderful politically correct throwaway statements. They make the socialist, one-world-government wackos happy. There is nothing wrong about spouting off that kind of useless rhetoric.

But that third goal, to "revise and limit the power of veto," that is a very dangerous undertaking - most of all for the UN. We provide a disproportionate share of the UN's resource, financial and otherwise. If we pull our funding out of the UN, it fails. Nobody else really cares enough about it to fund it like we do.

But other nations, and the UN itself, need to realize that with our excessive contribution comes certain rights. We have a defacto veto over anything stupid that the UN may come up with - we can just pull our funding. It would kill the organization if we did that, but if the action is egregious enough and we have no other procedural power - well it is valuable real estate that the headquarters building sits on.

We hold the "golden share" because we provide the gold. If the UN takes away our absolute veto and essentially tries to subjugate over national interests to that of a Libya, a North Korea, or a Guinea then the diplomats won't be watching too many more Broadway plays.

If the UN is serious about reform, they need to provide humanitarian aid to Iraq and forget about multilateral diplomacy and providing security. They need to work on the touchy feely stuff and leave the protection to the big boys who have the means to enforce their edicts.

Instead of worrying about France getting "their fair share" in the new Iraq, the UN needs to worry about Iraqis getting "their fair share" of food and water.

Instead of trying to force the coalition to bail out of governing Iraq in the immediate aftermath, they should be glad that for once they can distribute aid to the people of a nation rather than the kleptomaniacs that usually rule third world nations.

Or maybe instead of being arrogant, whiny, condescending and ungrateful, they should just step back and say "Thank you."

They should thank us for supporting this organization even when it worked against interest. They should thank us for having given the organization credibility. They should thank us for being willing to get dirt under our nails to make the organization work.

Reforming rules and trying to stick themselves into Iraq for anything other than humanitarian aid is not needed. A simple "Thank you" would suffice, thank you very much.