By Alan Caruba
Following the end of World War II in
1945, the idea of a United Nations, an international body devoted to avoiding
future wars must have had a lot of appeal despite the fact that, not that many
years earlier, the League of Nations that emerged after World War I had proven
to be a toothless failure.
In the years since, the United
Nations has prevented major world conflicts, but it has done little to curb
others. It seems to exist to give its blessing to them and the U.S. has long
acted as if it could not engage in a war without its permission. From the Korean
War in the 1950s to Vietnam in the 1970s, to the wars in the Middle East, the
U.S. has ceded its sovereign right to pursue wars in what it regarded as its
national interest. Korea and Vietnam were proxy wars during the period of the
Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.
The wars in the Middle East have been
a response to 9/11, first in Afghanistan and later the need to remove the Iraqi
dictator, Saddam Hussein, who had waged war against Iran and Kuwait. The U.S.
actually lent support to the war against Iran because we have technically been
at war with Iran since 1979 when our diplomats had been seized and held hostage.
Kuwait is an oil-rich nation and, if Saddam had been allowed to take over, he
would have turned his attention to Saudi Arabia and other Gulf nations. In the
Middle East, it is always about oil. And now we must add to that equation, the
rise of fanatical Islam.
In all the cases cited, the United
States has had to do the heavy lifting, the bulk of the fighting. World War II
left us the only superpower in the world and the only one with atomic bombs. We
put Western Europe back on its feet as a counterweight to the Soviet control
over Eastern Europe. When it collapsed
in 1991, the balance of power changed, but by then China was already on the rise
economically, having embraced capitalism, but retaining Communism as its
governmental system. The dictators who ran the Middle East, many of whom the
U.S. either tolerated or lent support, ran into a buzz saw of discontent from
their oppressed populations.
One of the largest cliques in the
United Nations is made up of Middle Eastern, African and other largely Muslim
nations. They and others like the Chinese and Russians have no love for
democracy or freedom. The result has been the rollout of treaties intended to
(1) generate enough income to make the UN financially independent and (2) exert
a centralized global control over commerce and the individual lives of people
worldwide.
The UN is the center for the entire
global warming/climate change hoax and its Kyoto Protocols to reduce so-called
greenhouse gas emissions. It is the home of the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change which just finished its 18th conference to continue its intention
to transfer money from the developed nations to those that are not. The U.S.
Senate unanimously rejected this treaty in 1997 when it was initially
proposed.
There is, however, a Law of the Sea
Treaty (LOST) that is seeking ratification by the U.S. and is supported by the
Obama administration. It would give the UN control over offshore drilling,
requiring the U.S. to pay half of its royalties to unelected UN bureaucrats who
could spend it any way they want. Moreover, it would require the U.S. to make
our offshore drilling technology available to any nation that wanted it and to
do so for free despite the millions spent to develop it. One fears that a lame
duck Senate might ratifies it. The most recent effort to ratify it was rejected
in July.
What
most Americans do not know is that international treaties trump the U.S.
Constitution. They have the same status as constitutional law and must be
enforced by U.S. Courts. Thus, our most sacred right as a nation, our
sovereignty, is eroded by such treaties. It was the reason that the Congress
rejected membership in the League of Nations. We should have done the same with
the United Nations, but for decades since we have provided a quarter of its
budget while having just one vote in the General
Assembly.
There is no doubt in my mind that the
worst of the UN treaties is the current effort to exert control over the Internet.
This month, representatives of the 193 member countries of the International
Telecommunications Union will meet in Dubai to discuss ways to control the
international exchange of Internet traffic across countries and how to extract
money from it.
Gorden Crovitz, writing in The
Wall Street Journal on November 25th summed up the danger this represents.
“Having the Internet rewired by bureaucrats would be like handing aa
Stradivarius to a gorilla.”
He noted that “The Internet is made
up of 40,000 networks that interconnect among 425,000 global routes, cheaply and
efficiently delivering messages and other digital content among more than two
billion people around the world, with some 500,000 new users a day.” More
importantly, “The self-regulating Internet means no one has to ask permission to
launch a website, and no government can tell network operators how to do their
jobs.”
It is an irony that the Internet had
been the platform by which Egyptians came together to overthrow its longtime
dictator, Hosni Mubarak, but which has led to the takeover by the Muslim
Brotherhood and a new constitution that is based on sharia law; a huge step back
to the seventh century that makes women chattel and endorses slavery. One step
forward, ten steps back.
Control over the Internet is control
over the free flow of ideas and information. It is control over a large portion
of the world’s population. Authoritarian nations hate it and seek to control it.
Its implementation would turn the world into one large prison
camp.
There are other UN treaties that need
rejection and the U.S. Senate this week did reject the Convention on the Rights
of Persons with Disabilities which former Sen. Rick Santorum, joined by Sen.
Mike Lee (R-Utah) denounced as a “direct assault on us and our families.” It,
too, was an attack on our national sovereignty and the rights of parents to
determine how their children are educated and cared for. It was signed by
President Obama in 2009, but the Senate’s action avoided its ratification. A
treaty on small-arms control would render the Second Amendment null and void.
For years conservatives have called
for the withdrawal of the United States from the United Nations. That act alone
would likely collapse this evil international institution. It won’t happen so
long as the current administration is in power.
© Alan Caruba, 2012
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