U.N.: Friend or Foe?
Few organizations cause quite as much passion (and anger) from Conservatives as the United Nations. When driving through East Texas recently I saw a huge sign in someone’s yard that said, “U.S. Get OUT of the U.N.!”
There’s also a popular e-mail that’s been circulating in Conservative circles since approximately 2000, showing the Arab/Islamic voting records against the United States.
So why do Conservatives seem to despise this organization that the Left calls the “peace keepers” and “humanitarians” of the world? I thought I’d do a little research to find out for myself.
The United Nations (formerly the League of Nations) was originally an American idea. The UN’s founders established the organization “to promote American values and principles on a global scale”.
In Dore Gold’s book Tower of Babble (highlighting the rise and fall of the U.N.), he explained how President Roosevelt (who came up with the name, by the way) envisioned the U.N. as sort of a ‘world police’, made up of the United States, Great Britain, Russia, and China.
“If an aggressor ‘started to run amok and seeks to grab territory or invade its neighbors,’ FDR explained to reporters at the time of Dumbarton Oaks (conference), the UN would ‘stop them before they got started,’” Gold wrote.
The U.N. didn’t get underway until after Roosevelt’s death, when their charter was written and signed in San Francisco in 1945. It was open to all “peace-loving states” that believed in human rights and agreed to the U.N. Charter. (Even some non-government organizations helped draft the Charter, including Lions Clubs International.)
Unfortunately, one of the many problems with the United Nations today is their member roster. From the start they simply weren’t very selective about the company they kept.
Many U.N. member states are dictatorships, and many more are very poor quasi-democracies with all sorts of tribal and ethnic problems. Ironically, the United States doesn’t sit on the U.N.’s human rights panel—but Syria does.
Yes, Syria.
There are close to 60 Muslim nations represented in the United Nations and they each get to vote in the United Nations. This, of course, is not a good thing for Israel, a country that the U.N. continuously condemns.
The Jewish Virtual Library states that since the early ‘70’s the U.N. has become “permeated with anti-Semitic and Anti-Zionist sentiment”. The following examples illustrate how ugly the atmosphere has become:
“Is it not the Jews who are exploiting the American people and trying to debase them?”— Libyan UN Representative Ali Treiki.
“The Talmud says that if a Jew does not drink every year the blood of a non-Jewish man, he will be damned for eternity.” —Saudi Arabian delegate Marouf al-Dawalibi before the 1984 UN Human Rights Commission conference on religious tolerance.
“Jews killed Christian children to use their blood to make matzos.” (Statement by the Syrian Ambassador at a 1991 meeting.)
On March 11, 1997, the Palestinian representative to the UN Human Rights Commission claimed the Israeli government “had injected 300 Palestinian children with the HIV virus”.
Regarding the viral e-mail about the U.N. Arab/Islamic voting records against the United States, I did a little research to try to verify the numbers.
What I learned is that the only thing inaccurate about the voting record is that it’s gotten worse rather than better over the years. You would think this would be the final nail in the U.S.’s dealings with the U.N…
Kuwait votes against the United States 67% of the time
Qatar votes against the United States 67% of the time
Morocco votes against the United States 70% of the time
United Arab Emirates votes against the U. S. 70% of the time.
Jordan votes against the United States 71% of the time.
Tunisia votes against the United States 71% of the time.
Saudi Arabia votes against the United States 73% of the time.
Yemen votes against the United States 74% of the time.
Algeria votes against the United States 74% of the time.
Oman votes against the United States 74% of the time.
Sudan votes against the United States 75% of the time.
Pakistan votes against the United States 75% of the time.
Libya votes against the United States 76% of the time.
Egypt votes against the United States 79% of the time.
Lebanon votes against the United States 80% of the time.
India votes against the United States 81% of the time.
Syria votes against the United States 84% of the time.
Mauritania votes against the United States 87% of the time.
And to top it off, here is a list of countries which the U.S. annually gives foreign aid to:
Egypt votes against the United States 79% and receives $2 billion annually in US Foreign Aid.
Jordan votes 71% against the United States and receives $192,814,000 annually in US Foreign Aid.
Pakistan votes 75% against the United States and receives $6,721,000 annually in US Foreign Aid.
India votes 81% against the United States and receives $143,699,000 annually.
