You may remember that back in April, the United Nations elected Iran to its Commission on the Status of Women. No, this was not an April Fool joke, not an article in the Onion, not a blog post from Iowahawk, but real news in the real world.
PowerLine was reminded of this story by today’s headline: Iran human rights chief defends stoning sentence.
In other U.N. related news, the Security Council on Friday denounced the sinking of a South Korean ship–but managed to do this without denouncing anyone in particular for having sunk it.
Why do “progressives,” and even many old-line liberals, continue to have such a worshipful attitude toward the U.N.? If you corner one of the latter and press him on this point, he will probably say something along the lines of, “It would be so wonderful if it worked, and people could just talk their problems out instead of fighting.”
This attitude reminds me of the story of the engineer and the mathematician who were trapped at the bottom of a deep, dark well, with absolutely vertical and slippery sides. The engineer was in despair, but the mathematician was cheerful and optimistic.
“How on earth do you think we’re ever going to get out of here?” asked the engineer.
“It’s easy,” responded the mathematician. “Assume a ladder.”
Today’s continuing U.N.-worship seems to me to contain a large element of ladder-assuming.
The WSJ article on the Korean resolution also notes that “More amazing still, the resolution that didn’t bark is being hailed as a deft way to lure North Korea back to the six party talks over its nuclear program. Follow the logic: Since the North wasn’t condemned for doing what everyone knows it did, the North’s leaders might now be appeased enough to return to the nuclear talks they walked out of last year. Sink a ship, and gain new diplomatic respect.”
All that matters to the progressive/tranzi mind are intentions. Peace is good, dialogue is good, negotiation is good, and so on.
If those good things are your intention, then the policy to achieve them becomes the achievement.
What actually happens down here on planet Earth doesn’t really matter. If things don’t go according to the intention, then the evil opposition is to blame for sabotaging the effort.
When you live in cloud cuckoo land, wishes are reality.
An Iranian woman was recently raped and murdered by Basij forces, for the crime of violating the dress code.
For many people hope counts more than reality.
The poor Shah. Dumped by Jimmy Carter for the “saint” Khomeini. He tried to bring his people into the 20th century and this is what they are left with. The Iranians are too worldly and knowledgeable to be enslaved for long by this cult of ignorant thugs. It required a vicious war for the Arabs to conquer Persia and convert them to Islam. When they throw off this tyranny, I predict that Islam will also be renounced.
My fear is that they will all be destroyed in a nuclear exchange with Israel. Tony Cordesman’s study of such a war concluded that 28 million Persians would die compared to 600,000 Israelis and that Israel, though terribly wounded, would survive but Persia would not.
Jospeh Stalin was one of the key founders of the United Nations. He allowed nothing in its structure that would threaten him at all. Western leaders, naive and hopeful let him get away with it. Mao sat on the security council for nearly 30 years. Would we accept an organization in which Hitler had played the role of Stalin and Mao? Why should we tolerate one so contaminated?
Stalin saw the UN as a weapon against the free world. The first and last time when the UN lived up to its original mandate was when Stalin boycotted it. Thereafter, he and successors were careful to control it. The UN is institutional hostile to democracy, free speech and voluntary economics.