By PHK
I just joined the UN/USA organization for the first time. Sent in my $40 annual dues for 2005 on Friday. A symbolic gesture primarily. But I guess this is my small way of defying the Republicans in Congress who think the best way to treat international organizations is to starve them to death because, oh my gosh, there’s graft and corruption and the UN needs reform. So Henry Hyde, Chair of the House International Relations Committee, and his Republican Congressional pals voted 221-184 to cut the U.S. annual contribution to the United Nations to one-half of the $440 million this year as a stick to goad the organization to change its errant ways.
Give me a break. What large organization doesn’t need reform? Doesn’t have its share of corruption that requires application of the hoe and spade? Come to think of it, the U.S. House of Representatives might review some of its own “best practices” some time. Its members might reflect upon their own financial rectitude - who financed their campaigns and to whom they are, therefore, beholden. The oil and gas industry, for example? Big Steel? Brokerage houses? The airlines? Halliburton? SAIC? Agricultural conglomerates? Defense industries? There's a saying: power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. There's another: If the shoe fits, wear it. And another about the pot calling the kettle black. Take your choice.
Or better yet, how about holding the Pentagon accountable for the billions of dollars it wastes every day – and can’t account for – on contractors, subcontractors, sub-sub-contractors, sub-sub-sub-contractors in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere when it can’t even protect its soldiers’ vehicles caught in what is looking more and more like the vortex of a civil war. If I remember correctly, the Iraq war effort costs the U.S. taxpayer over $1 billion per week. $440,000 annually is, therefore, a mere drop in the bucket in comparison to what the Defense Department can't account for. Or heresies or all heresies - why not vote to cut the Pentagon budget by a half to induce it to mend its profligate ways? It seems to me the same justification could be used.
Personally, however, I don’t think the Republican vote in the House has anything to do with UN accountability, I think it is just one more manifestation of the head-in-the-sand, go-it-alone unilateralism of the ascendant wing of the GOP that reigns unchecked in today’s Washington because Republicans control the Executive and both Houses of Congress. I don’t mean to say that all Republicans fit this mold – there are still some who value international ties including Senator Lugar – and I like to think New Mexico’s own Pete Domenici. And I know that the White House opposed yesterday’s House vote – but I wonder how forcefully. Regardless, far too many in Washington’s drivers’ seats today have never countenanced the need for the U.S. to work cooperatively abroad.
If they could destroy the organizations and the international networks that have been developed to keep the peace in the world since the end of World War II, they would. That’s what this story is all about – and the administration’s nomination of anti-UN John Bolton to be the next U.S. Ambassador to the beleaguered organization is just another piece of the grand demolition derby.