It is also responsible for regulating international postal service, which is pretty useful, for instance. The UN is involved in a lot of things that don’t make headlines.
US and the UK actually. It was from Roosevelt and Churchill’s discussions that the plan of reviving a sort of League of Nations evolved. The creation of permanent members of the Security Council with a veto over any UN actions kept the organization firmly under the control of the major powers.
It’s a talking-shop, although sometimes a very expensive one. No real harm in it as it’s quite toothless unless the 5 permanent members agree on something and how often does that happen? Keeping the HQ in New York is also sensible in that it’s another way of maintaining US control.
US Out of UN
Was the battle cry of the John Birch Society in my youth.
I wish to thank the OP for reminding me why I got the Hell out of the Midwest.
And: believe it or not, there are actually a few intelligent people in the world who have a very negative view of Israel.
In the 60’s the TV networks all considered “Palestinian” and “Terrorist” to be equivalent terms.
It should surprise absolutely nobody that the Jews most eager to take what little land the Palestinians were allowed and American Jews who moved to Israel for the sole purpose of destroying any chance for peace.
Jeez, you’re right. Stupid hippie librulz invented the UN to push, with the aid of the over-paid teachers, (damn their Union) Kwanza and imported matryoshka dolls on unsuspecting, innocent American™ youth.
If we want to forget the lessons of WW I and WW II then yes, let’s get out of the UN. Maybe we should go back to a policy of appeasement, too; with Russia perhaps?
I suppose this question is being asked at this moment largely because the OP disagrees with the UN on the latest pronouncements against Israeli settlements. I, on the other hand, very much agreed with the statements and wish (in this case) that the UN (with the US) could do more.
I suspect the reason we haven’t had WWIII is more because of nuclear bombs than the UN.
The UN doesn’t have real power unless the Western nations decide they should.
Their peacekeepers mostly look the other way when civilians are threatened while the diplomats bribe each other.
The fact that the world needs an organization like the UN means that the UN isn’t going to work very well. Thus it lurches between worthwhile humanitarian organization, and the world’s most expensive comedy club.
Regards,
Shodan
There’s plenty of reasonable criticism, but do you think the world (and/or the US) would be better off without the UN? I think it’s only a tiny portion of the US budget, so I’d be awfully hesitant to risk losing an organization that may have prevented a lot of major conflicts and suffering when the benefit seems so small.
You might be amazed to learn that there is more to foreign policy than being Israel’s cheerleader. As others have noted, the world has seen less warfare since the UN was formed than before. Had the US not followed the isolationist path after WW I and had joined the League of Nations, who knows, perhaps WW II and its aftermath could have been avoided.
Not true. The world was more peaceful 1844-1914 than 1945-2016. As Shodan noted, it was nukes that averted WWIII, not the UN. And they had to give the Soviets three votes to join. How was that just?
The OP’s position on the UN’s unfairness towards Israel is perfectly justified. Even if you accept that Israel’s settlement programi n the West Bank is unethical and wrong - and I agree it is - it is literally not one of the one thousand worst human rights problems in the world today. If the UN passed a resolution condemning a human rights violation by a member state every single working day of the year, and did so in order of the very worst one and worked their way down, they would NEVER get to Israeli settlements.
The reason they keep passing the resolutions is simple; Israel is mostly populated by Jews, and the Muslim countries, and lots of people in other countries, hate Jews. I challenge anyone to come up with an explanation based on morals and ethics as to why Israel is constantly ripped over settlements but Saudi Arabia is never condemned for being a criminally evil state. You can’t.
Does this mean the US should abandon the UN? I don’t see how that would help; it’s morally equivalent to the whiners who say they’ll move to Canada every time their Presidential candidate loses. It’s not going to get better if your voice is no longer there.
Dude, are you fucking kidding me Saudi Arabia gets condemned all the time by the UN. For example,here.
And countries voted against Israel because they are muslim/and or hate Jews?
The latest UNSC resolution was passed 14-0-1 (US abstained). The current membership is as such. You think China hates Jews? France? Italy, Bolivia, Japan, Sweden, Uruguay, The Ukraine all are muslim/ or they hate Jews?
Because Stalin and Hitler would rethink their invasion of Poland, if the country with the 17th largest military were a member of the League of Nations?
Go ahead, name the thousand that are worse.
No, that’s not it.
As AK84 pointed out, your premise is false.
Furthermore, the Israeli occupation is an international issue, as the occupied territories are not part of Israel. The UN is an international organization, devoted primarily to international problems, as opposed to purely intranational ones.
In addition to that, the UN has been elbow-deep in the Israeli mess from the very beginning, with the 1947 Partition Plan. It’s their baby, they have to raise it.
It isn’t based on morals or ethics, but much of the reason Israel gets ripped over the settlements is that Israel is a civilized country. Hizbollah and Hamas aren’t. The Islamic terrorist groups don’t care what the UN says, so the UN doesn’t really try to influence them.
Much of the rest of the reason is that Israel is a convenient bug bear for other countries to use to distract their people.
Regards,
Shodan
Really? You think people say “oh my, the price of food has skyrocketed and we have 8 hour a day power cuts, but never mind that fuck Israel”?:rolleyes:
That’s a lot of typing. How much are you going to pay me?
But, seriously, it’s trivially easy to think of examples and never repeat yourself. Here, just look at the front page of Human Rights Watch right now:
North Korea; Where to start? If we’re doing this by government policies North Korea probably qualifies fifty times.
Gambia: Democracy collapsing as outgoing president refuses to, well, outgo
Burma: Where to begin?
Iraq: Again, where does one begin? Child soldiers now.
[QUOTE=AK84]
Really? You think people say “oh my, the price of food has skyrocketed and we have 8 hour a day power cuts, but never mind that fuck Israel”?
[/QUOTE]
Uh… of course.
Redirecting people’s anger towards outward enemies was an old scheme when Machiavelli was a young lad. I cannot believe anyone would be skeptical of this… why the hell do you think Donald Trump is always railing about China and Mexico and Muslims?
Why do you think Argentina invaded the Falklands in 1982? It was to try to keep the junta in power.
If you can get the people angry at ethnic/religious/foreign enemies, you can distract them from the fact you’re screwing them. It’s the oldest trick in the book.
What advantage to the US is there in leaving the UN that outweighs the benefit the US derives from being one of the 5 permanent members of the UNSC? That’s the real question. As far as I can tell there isn’t one…which is why we won’t leave the UN. As for hosting the UN in New York, well…again, we derive quite a lot of prestige and benefit from having it here, so not sure why we would want to send them packing, though I guess this could be a point of real debate. Leaving the UN is crazy, but not hosting the UN here in the US is just…not smart (IMHO…and I don’t particularly like the UN and think that overall it’s a waste, especially if you aren’t a permanent member of the UNSC with veto). But it’s not crazy.
And even if one disagreed…that’s the way democracy works. Some results are going to bother some people. That’s completely inevitable. Democrats don’t want to disband Congress just because Republicans have a majority right now.
I might say it’s one of the worst state-supported programs of a westernized country. There are other problems that are comparable (e.g. the incarceration rate of young black males in the US) but they aren’t an explicit policy of the government.
That is self evidently what rulers in the Arab (and some other parts of the Muslim) world have tried to do, with some success. It’s obviously not a permanent and foolproof way to distract popular attention from their failings, but it’s a well established post 1948 part of the mix along with secret police, etc.
It’s hard to believe anyone is seriously arguing that international criticism of Israel isn’t disproportionate to its wrongdoing, which it is obviously is.
That doesn’t or shouldn’t grant carte blanche to Israel, nor moreover and back on topic is it alone a good enough argument for the US to quit the UN IMO.