Turtle Bay Perfidy

I gave up some years ago trying to view the United Nations as a serious body whose intent was to accomplish serious things. The idea behind the founding of the UN was a noble one, but noble ideas from yesteryear have not been able to save the UN from the fatal flaws of its charter.

These flaws have been used time and again to not only render the organization useless in accomplishing it various stated goals, but also to turn it into a stick with which second rate thugs and dictators can smack the West in general and the US in specific, a task in which they are gleefully joined by nations such as France looking to exercise a position of world power that they haven't had in hundreds of years.

The latest in a long line of various corruptions, scandals and inconceivable actions involve Zimbabwe and Belarus, two countries ruled by ruthless thugs.

Zimbabwe was recently chosen to lead the U.N. Commission on Sustainable Development. That's right the same Zimbabwe that, under the foul hand of Robert Mugabe has gone from a shining example for all of Africa, to among the worst of a long line of corrupt hellholes on that continent. As Peter Brookes points out:

The former British colony was once an outstanding example of African development. But then dictator Robert Mugabe began to fear losing his grip on political power - setting out to destroy domestic threats to his rule through land seizures and redistribution. The result? The once-prosperous country's economy has shrunk 40 percent since 2000 - with no end in sight. Years of consecutive negative growth and inflation (at over 2,000 percent annually) are the world's highest; 80 percent of the populace is unemployed and/or lives below the poverty line.

And a nation that used to be Africa's prime food exporter now faces widespread hunger. As many as 4 million have left the country, mostly for South Africa, putting Zimbabwe on par with Sudan's Darfur in refugee terms.

Life expectancy has plummeted - where once the average newborn would live into his or her 60s, that infant now survives only to his or her 30s. A population that should be 18 to 20 million is just 11 million - with a reported 1.3 million orphans.

This is a country that should be leading a commission devoted to smart economic development? What a joke! Well, it would be a joke if it wasn't so tragic.

Belarus, which is ruled by the Soviet wannabe thug Alexander Lukashenko, is about to be chosen to head the UN Human Rights Council. Belarus is so bad in fact that even many of the usually feckless human rights organizations are opposing this move, but this is the same council that was headed by Libya, so don't expect such opposition to be headed.

While none of this surprises me, I am continuously surprised that so many people still think the UN can be taken seriously as the sole purveyor of international legitimacy. The time for the US to do the right thing and completely abandon the UN and its failed system has long since passed, but there are just too many people in this country that are willing to overlook things such as the above situations, the mass corruption, and everything else wrong with the UN simply because they enjoy seeing the US beat about the head and shoulders by thugs. It doesn't matter to them how much the world suffers so long as the US is "kept in its place".