“Only the UN’s has the moral authority
November 30th, 2006 | by Craig R. Harmon |for a job like this”, or so says Clare Short. I say she’s wrong. This appears to be the only job for which the United Nations has the “moral” authority.
If I ever hear anyone connected with the UN ever utter the words “moral authority” in connection with that cesspool of an organization again I think I’ll vomit.
21 Responses to ““Only the UN’s has the moral authority”
By Jersey McJones on Nov 30, 2006 | Reply
Craig, why is it you fall so easily into scapegoating and throwing the baby out with the bathwater? This is the same sort of diversive tactic employed against defense attorneys, the ACLU, etc. Necessary institutions make easy targets. The UN is simply the sum of it’s parts. If there were no UN, there’d be a “Union of Nations” or a “Group of Nations” or a “United International Group of Nations Union.” The UN does not prosecute representatives of member states. That is left to the member states themselves. And that is exactly the level of sovereignty that nationalists, as I assume you would call yourself, desire. The Moral Authority of the UN is a measure and reflection of the states that are members. It’s leverage is in the gerth of it’s membership pool just as an insurance policy is a measure of it’s coverage pool. Americans are just as prone to abusive behavior as any other citizens of other member states. It is up to those states to be accountable for their own actions, not the UN.
I wish people would be more mature in their understanding of this institution.
JMJ
By Craig R. Harmon on Nov 30, 2006 | Reply
You assume that the UN is an essential organization. How on earth did this planet survive until the invention of the League of Nations?
By Jersey McJones on Nov 30, 2006 | Reply
In today’s highly interconnected real-time world, yes, the UN is essential. It is a forum through which most all the nations of the world can communicate with one another regardless of bilateral, or trilateral, or whatever relations. It’s humanitarian institutions have been invaluable over the years. The IAEA has done wonderful work and could do much more were it not for the intractability of states with nuclaer arms and the states that want them. Prior to the existence of the UN the world was a much different place. Free Trade was a radical new concept, airline flight was for the wealthy and powerful alone, news of world events was limited to only places where news-people could reach, there were no satellites, no jets, no nuclear anything. Polio was still a global pandemic. Modern representative democracy out side of the US was just getting started.
Yes, the UN is essential - and a evolutionary and natural product of the modren world. The few scandals you point out do not negate that. Our government has suffered far more scandals over the years than the UN has. Should we be rid of it?
JMJ
By Craig R. Harmon on Nov 30, 2006 | Reply
Um, “few scandals”? You’re joking, right? I pointed to one scandal, or actually many scandals all involving the selling of food and protection to people at the price of human beings, preferably young human beings for the sex slave trade. The article to which I linked is hardly the first of its kind. It is a long running scandal. There have been many, many others not involving human sex trafficking. Oil For Food being the perhaps largest scale mismanagement scandal that the world has yet known. The previous human rights organization is another with the most recent human rights organization following close on its predecessor’s heels. Also, like, Rwanda anyone? The current UN head was then the head of the Rwanda mission, under whose nose genocide proceeded unabated.
But I haven’t called for the elimination of the UN. I have said that I’m tired of hearing about the UN’s supposed “moral authority”. They have no such authority that can be labeled moral, not with their track-record, not in my book.
By Jersey McJones on Nov 30, 2006 | Reply
Craig, Americans routinely engage in the sex trade. American compaines were involved in the Oil for Food scandal. America did nothing, while being the prominent member of the UN and, inparticluar, the Security Council, about Rwanda.
They are the closet thing we have to a international moral authority. Certainly WE are no moral authority ourselves.
America shouldn’t be throwing stones here, Craig.
JMJ
By Craig R. Harmon on Nov 30, 2006 | Reply
Jersey,
Neither have I called us, that is, the United States, either as a nation or as a prominent permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, a moral authority. I’m not attempting to lift America above the UN, nor am I lowering the UN below America. I am spotlighting the United Nations in exactly the same manner as the Republican party and the religious Right are identically spotlighted here at BIO!
I can, of course, throw stones here since I, myself, have never engaged in sex trafficking. This isn’t America throwing stones. It’s me. And not that I’m saying I’m some great moral authority, either. It is, in fact, not about establishing moral authority. It is about destroying the notion of moral authority in relation to the UN.
Certainly destroying the notion of a moral authority of an institution is hardly a foreign concept here at Bring it On! where any notion that Republicans, the Christian Right, the Roman Catholic hierarchy, and so forth are so frequently attacked around here that it is the rule rather than the exception. I’m simply taking the recurring theme and extending it to an institution that almost never gets such treatment here unless it is me giving it. It deserves it, in my eyes.
By Paul Watson The Cranky Brit on Nov 30, 2006 | Reply
Craig,
So who does have the moral authority to coordinate disaster relief in your opinion?
For that matter, what the bloody hell does ‘moral authority’ have with regard to disaster relief in the first place? Get the people who can best do the job and let them get on with it. It’s not rocket science! And that shows why I’d make a lousy politician.
By Jersey McJones on Nov 30, 2006 | Reply
Craig, the UN is the only UN we’ve got. As it represents the largest assemblage of nations on the Earth, it is the ultimate moral authority of international issues of import. It’s problems, be they as they may, do not negate these facts.
JMJ
By Craig R. Harmon on Nov 30, 2006 | Reply
Jersey,
Nor do your facts negate mine. We’re both right here.
Paul W.,
Until the UN showed up to take the credit for the good work that the US and Australia had been already doing, the US and Australia were doing a smash-up job with relief. They not only got in well ahead of the UN, once there, they had the equipment and transport for the job. As you indicate, moral authority has nothing to do with it but then ‘moral authority’ wasn’t my term, it was, in that specific situation, Claire Short’s term although it’s a term that get’s thrown around a lot when talking about the UN. She said that the UN was the only organization that had the moral authority for the job. I say bullshit. We were doing just fine without them, we’d have done just fine without them. Those nations with a heart would have given as they could, those without wouldn’t. All the UN brought to the party were shiny blue hats and a lot of big egos, as far as I could tell.
By Jersey McJones on Nov 30, 2006 | Reply
Craig, I agree. The UN isn’t exactly the Justice League. But then, imagine a Justice League in which Superman was a conceited, spoiled, self-absorbed, paranoid, greedy, stupid, arrogant, anti-intellectual, imperial theocrat. I mean, it doesn’t matter so much if Wonder Woman or Spiderman is like that, but imagine if Superman was like that - wouldn’t be good, huh?
We’re the problem because we have the power.
You, as a conservative, should understand EXACTLY what I’m saying, man.
JMJ
By SteveIL on Nov 30, 2006 | Reply
I’m reading this thread with great fascination as I commented on the BBC story Craig cited over on this thread. Jersey argues that the UN is the only UN we got. Well, we only had one League of Nations, and look how “effective” that was. And instead of blaming the institution and the individuals within it (Kofi Annan in particular) that support and protect the world’s worst criminals, Jersey again manages to blame the US:
So what are you saying Jersey? We would be less of a problem if the US had less power? Are you then saying that the US would be the best country in the world right now if it didn’t exist at all? Your logic escapes me.
By Craig R. Harmon on Dec 1, 2006 | Reply
Jersey,
Bush has many flaws and, being the sole remaining superpower, we have the capacity for either the greatest good or to cause the greatest harm in the world. However I decline to follow you into the world of “We are the problem” in the UN, as that implies that we are the sole problem, hardly a fair or accurate assessment. Our greatest power in the UN is through our veto power in the Security Council but that is a power that we share with four other nations. Other than that, we get our one vote just like every other nation. We aren’t the problem written of in the article to which I linked in the post, while there were some American companies in Oil for Food, we were not in charge of oversight of the program, the program’s oversight was tightly controlled so that, until we invaded Iraq, we had no clue as to the problem, let alone its extent. Finally, we fought long and hard to have the former travesty of a human rights agency overhauled. When it finally was, come to find out that the new agency is nearly as bad as the old. The US is not the problem at all these scandals that I have cited as far as I can tell. The problem is systemic and we, as I’ve said, have exactly one vote, just like every other member nation.
We are hardly the problem. I grant you that we have contributed in various ways to a number of problems but we are not the scandal in the UN, that is the organization itself. It is a bureaucratic nightmare and one that lacks the genuine desire or will to become the open, transparent organization that it would need to become if it is to become the decent agent of good that it was hoped that it would be.
By Jersey McJones on Dec 1, 2006 | Reply
Craig, it stands to reason that if we are the worlds greatest power and that therefore we are the greatest power in the UN then therefore we are the greatest part of the problem.
JMJ
By Craig R. Harmon on Dec 1, 2006 | Reply
Jersey,
Well that’s better put since you’ve gone from making us “the” problem at the UN to making us “the greatest part of the problem” but, still, it is incontestable that we have no more power in the UN than France has or three other nations so I contend that we are no more responsible for the UN’s problems than China, France, Russia, or the UK. All of these countries have an equal amount of power and influence over what the UN does or does not do or over how that organization does what it does.
By Jersey McJones on Dec 1, 2006 | Reply
Incontestable? Equal amount of power?
C’mon man. We’re the US. We’re the 800 pound gorilla in the UN room. Not France.
JMJ
By Craig R. Harmon on Dec 1, 2006 | Reply
Jersey,
If you wish to contest it, contest it but you’d better have better than 800 pound gorillas for arguments. For example, show how having an equal number of votes and the same veto power that every other permanent member of the Security Council translates to the US having more power in the UN than any other permanent member including France.
By Jersey McJones on Dec 1, 2006 | Reply
Oh please, Craig.
JMJ
By Craig R. Harmon on Dec 1, 2006 | Reply
That’s your rebuttal?
By Jersey McJones on Dec 4, 2006 | Reply
Craig, if you believe that the US has no more leverage in the UN than any other voting country, then I have no rebuttal for that. It’s just loony.
JMJ
By Craig R. Harmon on Dec 4, 2006 | Reply
And that leverage worked out so well in gaining UN support for the Iraq war. That’s me. Loony.
By Craig R. Harmon on Dec 5, 2006 | Reply
Jersey,
Where, pray tell, is all of this evidence of our leverage within the UN? What UN policies have we pushed through against the veto of France, China, Russia or the U. K.? Oh wait, if France or China or any one of the other permanent members voted against it, we couldn’t get it pushed through. So where is the evidence that we leveraged France, China, Russia or Britain off of positions against us?
Just wondering because, you know, if we’re so much more powerful than the other permanent members you should have a whole slew of examples of policy decisions by the UN where France, Russia, China and the United Kingdom have been forced into backing our play on policy positions that they really opposed as being against their own best interests.