"There is a small articulate minority in this country which advocates changing our national symbol which is the eagle to that of the ostrich and withdrawing from the United Nations."
Eleanor Roosevelt

No one it seems is happy with the United Nations, certainly not our congress and the media pundits are quick to smell blood and join in the UN-bashing. No doubt that has to do with the growing bureaucracy and our inability to control those pesky small members who think other than our way. How dare they? How indeed? In addition, there is a peacekeeping responsibility within the UN and yet, here we are once more, sending troops where we haven't agreed as a nation to send them. It seems the UN would be dandy if it only mirrored our values. Rex Harrison's deep voice, lamenting "why can't a woman be more like a man" springs to my mind.

Public opinion is said to be at an all-time low, but I am distrustful of what is so often claimed as public opinion. I think, given the choice of a world fighting, or a world fighting less and talking more, public opinion would choose the talking more.

The United Nations is far from perfect, as mankind is far from perfect and the needs and desires of member countries will always be controversial. They are not us, these fellow-members and that is their singular glory, but it's often a bitter pill to choke down. Problems within the UN reflect similar problems of the diversity within American civil life and we haven't yet decided to do away with the republic.

The UN is the best effort yet for nations to discuss and decide, to bring the power of world opinion to bear in a democratic process. Well, nearly democratic. There is the small matter of those more equal than their equals;
China, Russia, the United States, France and Britain. We each have and often exercise the power of the veto, which I guess makes us a little more equal. After fifty years, it might be time to take a look at that. If our individual goals lack worldwide support, perhaps we're pursuing the wrong goals or not defining them with enough clarity. It is an unsettling truth to realize that we all want peace, peace on our terms, and are willing to fight bitterly and bloodily in its name.

Currently and through the last several presidencies, our congress has so disagreed with United Nations programs and aims that it exercised the only control left to it, the refusal to fund. Like petulant children on the playground, they stamped their feet, sucked their collective thumbs and took their marbles home. One and a half billion dollars worth of marbles at last count. The congress that seems foolish on a daily basis before its constituency, has now succeeded in making us look foolish as a nation before the world. The UN is three billion in debt and half the debt is ours.

What an honor. What an unpaid forum from which to stand and lecture. What a joke we make of ourselves as a founding member, the institution standing on our soil.

And yet the United Nations as a body supports the effort to bring stability to the less stable areas of the world, multi-laterally condemns terrorist nations, contributes national dues for the betterment of disadvantaged economies, commits its resources to child care and world health, brings its collective pressure to bear in the furtherance of human rights and cooperates in the protection of the environment . . . and on and on.

Yes, it wastes money and has grown too cumbersome . . . as have we as a nation. Yes, it rubs our nose in our ignorance when it thinks we are ignorant . . . as have we as a nation. Yes, it frequently goes off in a direction that is not popular to us . . . as have we as a nation. So what? The whole world doesn't always think we are correct in the middle east, in Cuba, in south and central America or, for that matter, within our own shores. Maybe, just maybe we are not always correct. Yet the UN is a deliberative group of national identities, an international congress of small and large nations of the world that sets itself down to bargaining tables to muddle through as best it can, rather than taking its marbles and going home.

Pre UN, the world operated on singular power structures, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Holland, France and England all had their time in the sun and the legacy of that rule by the powerful was colonial empires and endless wars. We have war enough in the world even yet, war enough for anyone who wants to find an army to join and yet we have somehow escaped the kind of conflagration that came twice during twenty years in the early part of this century. The wars that have taken the largest toll, Afghanistan and Vietnam, were both fought by power structures who would have their way no matter the justice or justification.

Now, for better or for worse, we are the power in the world and it chafes under the collar to be publicly pilloried and at the same time expected to always choose wisely. We are not always wise . . . they are not always wise . . . no one can be always wise and that's why the United Nations with all of its failings deserves our financial and membership support.

Any nation that goes to war, after that war has settled in and the destruction of lives and homes and wealth and national honor has been brought to bear, would plead for a table at which to talk. Any nation that has lost and crippled its beautiful young people, where every window is shot out and fear has become a way of life, would beg for a table at which to talk.

We have a table. We, the nations of the world, have at long last created such a table. How we shame ourselves as we declare our national purpose to be the peace and freedom of all men and withhold our support of that cherished table.

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