June 2nd, 2005

The U.N.: The Modern Tower of Babel

 by Burt Prelutsky  
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Those who argue on behalf of the U.N. are liberals; those who abhor it, and who resent our tax dollars being used to keep this ship of fools afloat are conservatives.

There are two kinds of Americans, and I’m not referring to those who could or could not pick Paris Hilton out of a lineup of bimbos. No, I’m thinking of those two groups of people who have totally differing views of the United Nations.

On the one hand, there are those who think it is a vile aggregation of members who are up to their collective eyeballs in corruption. Just in recent years, we have seen them twiddle their thumbs while Saddam Hussein slaughtered thousands, and genocide was freely practiced in the Sudan and Rwanda. For good measure, there was the Oil for Food program, and the disgusting sex scandals involving U.N. representatives and African children.

On the credit side of the ledger, there’s this to be said for the members of the organization: They never start something they don’t finish. That would include not only their expense account breakfasts, lunches and dinners, but cocktails and between-meal snacks!

Basically, those who argue on behalf of the U.N. are liberals; those who abhor it, and who resent our tax dollars being used to keep this ship of fools afloat are conservatives. Assuming that everyone in the first group isn’t a complete idiot, how to explain this division? Always one to give people the benefit of the doubt, I think it’s because those on the left are both naïve and idealistic. It’s a dangerous combination. In the last century, it led any number of our fellow Americans to promote the big lie that the Soviet Union was heaven on earth. Because Joe Stalin and his savvy propagandists said all the right things about peace and universal brotherhood, these useful fools fell for it, hook, line and sickle!

Even when Stalin gobbled up Eastern Europe as if it were one enormous smorgasbord, American crackpots of the left wing persuasion parroted his line about Mother Russia needing a geographical buffer. They didn’t have anything much to say about what the half billion souls crushed under the Soviet boot needed. In retrospect, I guess Hitler’s big mistake in conquering Poland, Czechoslovakia, Norway, Holland, France and Belgium, was in not suggesting he was creating a buffer for Germany.

So it is when the folks at the U.N. start prattling about world peace, these mush heads eat it up with a large spoon. The fact that the U.N. has leveled scores of resolutions against Israel while having rolled out the red carpet for a pistol-packing Yasir Arafat means nothing to them. They gag on ugly facts, preferring their beautiful fantasy of world justice adjudicated by the likes of Syria, China and North Korea. Sometimes, I swear, you get the idea that they live in a Disney universe where trees sing and dance, and squirrels talk, where wars need never be waged, and where the vilest tyrants only need to be given a time-out like a bratty three-year-old in order to shape up.

These are the same folks who insist that President Bush is the greatest menace in the world because he insists on pursuing a policy of bringing democracy to as many places as he can. They ignore the fact that, at least so far as I’m aware, no two democracies have ever gone to war with each other.

If that isn’t an ideal state of affairs, something all peace-loving people would support, I don’t know what is.

On the other hand, if pressed, I’d be willing to make an exception to that rule where France is concerned!

Foreign Affairs: United Nations, National Sovereignty



Burt Prelutsky has written for Dragnet, McMillan & Wife, MASH, Mary Tyler Moore, Rhoda, Bob Newhart, Family Ties, Dr. Quinn, and Diagnosis Murder. He wrote a humor column for the Los Angeles Times and was the movie critic for Los Angeles magazine. His most recent book is Conservatives Are From Mars, Liberals Are From San Francisco (A Hollywood Rightwinger Comes Out of the Closet).
BurtPrelutsky@aol.com
http://www.burtprelutsky.com/

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