Barack Obama's none-too-subtle globalist tendencies, and the U.N.'s enraptured enchantment with Islam will fit each other like a silken glove.
How does America refuse to race down this dangerous super-highway? How do we expose the U.N.'s capitulation to Arab nations wanting Israel destroyed? How has the free world allowed this to happen? How does the corruption in the U.N. become a pressing issue to Americans? How do we get the American taxpayer to listen to, and recognize, the truth?
The countless anti-Israel resolutions and related debates consume an astonishing proportion of the UN community's precious resources. This year, during the 61th Session of the General Assembly (2006-2007), the time spent by ambassadors on enacting the 22nd anti-Israel resolution of the year was time not spent on passing a single resolution on Sudan's genocide in Darfur.Anne Bayefsky, writing for National Review Online, looks at the future of U.S.-U.N. relations with Obama in the Oval Office, and looks back at the mistakes of George W. Bush.
U.N. American Agenda
National Review Online
by Anne Bayefsky
Nobody is happier about the election of Barack Obama to the Presidency of the United States than the folks at the United Nations. It is as if they finally discovered kryptonite, and Superman will soon be disabled.
The U.N. is an uncomplicated place. Every sick, unsatiated tyrant, European has-been, or miserable wretch brainwashed about the Great Satan wants to take America down – unless they are able to immigrate of course. Their modus operandi? The United Nations.
The beauty of it, from the perspective of the majority, is that Americans are paying for their own demise. Americans are even convinced that the flagellation must be deserved.
President Obama will take over from where what might be called “Bush III” left off. The foreign policy of Bush II was so different than that of the man currently in office, it’s hard to ascribe them to the same human being.
Even die-hard U.N. enthusiasts admit they were pleased with many aspects of the American-UN relationship over the last few years, particularly after Bush III fed Bush II’s U.N. ambassador John Bolton to the wolves. Ongoing genocide in Darfur was shuffled off to the ponderous International Criminal Court. The Israel-Lebanon war was “solved” with a Security Council resolution. The U.N. reform package, and any serious effort at economic oversight after Kofi Annan’s Oil-for-food scandal, was tossed out the window. The green light was given to a multi-billion dollar renovation of U.N. headquarters in midtown Manhattan, notwithstanding advice that it could have done for a fraction of the cost. Efforts to tie reform or accountability to American U.N. contributions were abandoned, and five billion a year flows smoothly from American taxpayers to U.N. bank accounts.
On November 13, 2008, Bush III will chum around with Saudi mobster King Abdullah at U.N. premises in New York. The occasion is a Saudi-initiated event on “a culture of peace” which a U.N. spokesperson describes as “religious dialogue, plus.” The spectacle completes the Bush III metamorphosis. Think back to the image of Christian American soldiers stationed in Saudi Arabia in order to protect the country from Saddam Hussein, but forced to hide the crosses around their necks because their public display is a criminal act in the Kingdom?
Bush III notwithstanding, President Obama will have what his friends will call an unprecedented opportunity to tie American foreign policy to the U.N. ship of state, lance it down, and sail off into the sunset, never to be separated again. The predicament of the Saudi wife would be an apt comparison.
The U.N. apparatus has mapped out the priorities for President Obama’s early days in office (taking it for granted he’ll be hightailing it out of Iraq), and the only question is how fast President Obama will say “I do.” Here’s the plan now sitting on the President-elect’s desk:
Run for election to the U.N. Human Rights Council as a vote of confidence in the U.N. “human rights” apparatus and the ability to change it from the inside. (Forget that the U.S. would have one vote, that the Western regional group of states is overwhelmingly outnumbered, and that reform of an agency serving the human rights abusers is the last thing of interest to the abusers firmly in control.) Decide to participate in the Durban II “anti-racism” conference in April 2009, and send along a high-level emissary such as the Secretary of State. It would be hard to run for re-election to the Human Rights Council without attending the Council’s number-one priority, which is scheduled to take place shortly before the election. (Ignore that Durban II is a unredeemable and dangerous fraud. It adopts an anti-racism mantra to foment racism, the demonization of Israel and the defeat of free speech.) Revitalize the Middle East Quartet, which drives the Arab-Israeli conflict through a multilateral prism with the U.N. as a full and equal partner. (Dismiss the fact that the U.N. partner always weighs in on just one side of the conflict, adopting the predetermined position that Israel is the “root” of the problem and any Arab “peace” proposal is the solution.) Put Israel on the chopping block. “Israel first” has long been the calling card of the UN. The U.N. governing principle is this: “if only Israel did x, y, and z,” (the list to be expanded in response to successive Arab no’s), animus against the West would cease, terrorism would stop, the messiah would appear, and there would be no more war. (This might be called the “ass-backwards approach to Middle East politics,” since Israel is actually on the front line of the war against democracy and America’s way of life, not bringing up the rear. Serving up an Israeli hors d’oeuvre is just that – first course.) Drive the effort to stop terrorism through the 2006 United Nations Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy. (The strategy contains no definition of terrorism since U.N. members can’t agree on what counts as terrorism. It inverts priorities by focusing first and foremost on alleged “conditions conducive to the spread of terrorism,” such as “poverty” and “youth unemployment” “religious discrimination” and “socio-economic marginalization.” Plain old Jew-hatred or enmity of freedom and equality are mysteriously absent from the list of causes.) Agree to some form of global taxation, giving rise to an even more powerful, wealthy, and undemocratic U.N. fiefdom (and a poorer America).All that remains is for President Obama to put a date beside each one of the items on the U.N.’s first “to do” list. And down we’ll go.
— Anne Bayefsky is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and at Touro College. She is also editor of www.EyeontheUN.org