Ivo Daalder and Robert Kagan (who are informal foreign policy advisors to presidential hopefuls John McCain and Barack Obama, respectfully) team up in a Washington Post op-ed to argue for the irrelevancy of the Security Council. The council, says Kagan and Daalder, is too beset by competing national interests to suffice as the ultimate arbiter for authorizing humanitarian interventions. Rather, a "concert of democracies" should take on that role.

Matthew Yglesias offers an excellent retort, "to survey the wreckage in Iraq, and conclude that despite the lessons seen there we can't defer to the UN…on the grounds that the UN might sometimes say no is very weak tea."

Agreed. I would also add that contrary to popular perception, the Security Council frequently authorizes foreign military intervention on humanitarian grounds. We just don't hear about them.

In spring 2006, for example, when rioting in East Timor forced some 100,000 people to flee their homes, the Security Council authorized the rapid deployment of Australian troops to restore order. Similarly, in May 2000 when a fragile peace deal in Sierra Leone was on the verge of collapse, the council authorized a deployment of British Special Forces to fight off spoilers.

The fact is, not authorizing military intervention is the exception to the rule at the Security Council. The debates over Iraq and Kosovo are the only two instances over the last eight years in which the Council failed to authorize the use of force when one or more of the P-5 democracies wanted it to. There are eighteen other examples to the contrary. (I would not lump Darfur in the "failure to act" category because no member state has recommended that the council permit a multi-national force to invade Sudan on behalf of the Darfuris. Also, the council first authorized a traditional peacekeeping mission there one year ago.)

Foreign troops are helping to keep the peace in the most forlorn stretches of the globe today precisely because the Security Council is willing and able to act. From 1998 to 2003 some four million people are thought to have perished as a result of war in the Congo. Thanks to Security Council's deployment of some 18,000 troops there, the fighting has largely subsided.

My point is, the perception that that the Security Council is too overcome with competing national interests to permit humanitarian intervention is not in tune with reality.

Matthew Lee of Inner City Press and I hit the very small screen to debate and discuss the UN's role in Iraq, the new Darfur resolution, the UN and new media and more. Enjoy!

Earlier this week UN Dispatch offered a critique of Megadeth's title track to their new album "United Abominations." The piece got some attention from heavy metal discussion boards, and on the website of Megadeth's record label front man Dave Mustaine responds to our criticisms. "I would rather feel right and be wrong with the semantics or facts in the song...than to feel wrong and be right," writes Mustaine in a lengthy post.

Good for Mustaine to admit he misrepresented facts about the United Nations in his song, even if he still feels them to be true. (There is a word for this by the way.)

Also, to his credit, Mustaine sees the silver lining of this little spat:

"Bottom line is I am stoked to see you all having this discussion about things that matter to us all. What a victory...I dig it when [fans] get to have discussions like this because we all win; we all learn something."

We dig it too. Promoting thoughtful discussions about the United Nations and multilateral diplomacy is what this site is all about.

Last summer, UN Dispatch learned that the heavy metal band Megadeth was recording an album titled "United Abominations," which featured cover art depicting a 9-11 style attack on the UN building in New York. Naturally, we thought it distasteful in the least. But without hearing the album, we reserved final judgment. Until now.

The album was released in late May. But not being much of a Megadeth fan, I forgot to pencil the release date into my calender. Still, we at UN Dispatch refuse to let Megadeth's witless screed go unchallenged. Below the jump is a verse-by-verse response to the album's title track. We listened so you don't have to.

The track begins with a rambling, Limbaugh-esque monologue. The rant hits all the favorite themes of the fanatical right, and is accompanied by a crescendo of heavy guitar riffs that all but drowns out the last few sentences.

Less than five miles from Ground Zero sits an International hotbed, the United "Abominations" as it were. Created to prevent wars and promote peace, it failed to address the most dangerous threats facing the world.

In a mire of hypocrisy, bribes, kickbacks, and corruption, the UN enables terrorism, and ignores sex crimes by its peacekeepers. The UN is where our so-called allies undermine us, and we pay 22% of their tab to host our enemies here at home. Ambassadors from dirt-poor countries enjoy luxurious, tax-free Manhattan lifestyles, turning children into sex-slaves and enjoy Diplomatic immunity. It's a complete and utter disgrace, a blot on the face of humanity, and they get away with it.

Blaming the UN for 9-11 is a new trope, even for conspiracy mongers--and rightly so. It goes without saying that nowhere in the authoritative 9-11 Commission Report is the United Nations cited for enabling the terrorist attacks. Frankly, because of aviation treaties negotiated under UN auspices, procedures to ground all international flights to the United States on September 11 were undoubtedly made easier. Further, the 9-11 Report stresses the need for greater cooperation at the United Nations to strengthen security standards for travel documents. And, as Eric Rosand clearly states in the last UNF Insights, the UN, as the world's platform for international cooperation, is critical to global counterterrorism efforts.

The narrator then accuses the UN of ignoring sex crimes by peacekeepers. You can read the UN's zero tolerance policy on sex crimes here. Essentially, the UN responds by sending peacekeepers home to face prosecution in domestic courts. The United Nations, I should stress, does not have the ability to conduct criminal prosecutions against peacekeepers, but depends on member states to do so.

Finally, the narrator is correct to point out that the United States pays 22% of the operating expenses of the United Nations General Secretariat. He is incorrect, however, in asserting that this funds 'hosting our enemies at home.' Each of the 192 member states pays for its own diplomatic mission to the United Nations. What the United States pays in dues to the United Nations helps funds things like translation services, utility bills, the building's security, and other mundane day-to-day operating expenses necessary to sustain the UN missions around the globe

The heavy guitar riff softens. The song finally begins:

Poverty in their kitchens
Held hostage by oil-for-food
Yet their own plates are full off the fat of their lands
There's no blood on their hands, right Kojo?
They promised to tell the truth
Without leaving a fingerprint, but
They will lose the UN one way or another
The victim, I fear will be us, sisters and brothers

Assuming the antecedent to the pronoun "they" refers to the UN Secretariat, lead singer and guitarist Dave Mustaine (whose voice we now hear) seems to be implying that UN staffers are enriching themselves while the poor in their country suffer. His evidence is the alleged corruption in the Oil-for-Food program, which allowed Saddam Hussein's government to sell oil in exchange for humanitarian items. The rarely stated truth about the Oil-for-Food program is that it did what is was intended to do -- prevent a humanitarian crisis in Iraq while exerting economic pressure on Saddam Hussein and keeping weapons of mass destruction out of his hands.

An investigation of alleged corruption in the Oil-for-Food program, led by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, found that only one UN staffer, the Cypriot Benan Sevan, had solicited kickbacks from the Iraqi government. He was summarily fired and is now under indictment by a United States federal court. Kofi Annan's son, Kojo, was dragged into the Oil-for-Food witch hunt following accusations that he used personal connections to steer a UN contract to a company that employed him as a consultant. The Volcker investigation cleared Kofi Annan of any wrong doing, and Kojo has never been accused of committing any crimes. In fact, he won a libel lawsuit against a British tabloid which accused him of smuggling Iraqi oil.

The oft-quoted "$13 billion" of corruption actually refers almost entirely to illegal oil smuggling by the Hussein regime. This was supposed to be regulated by members of Security Council (including the United States, which has a veto), not the UN administrators of the Oil-for-Food program.

Here comes the first part of the chorus. Brace yourself.

The UN is right; you can't be any more "un"
Than you are right now, the UN is undone
Another mushroom cloud, another smoking gun

Nice turn of phrase: the 'UN' to 'un' to 'undone.' It gets better. Mustaine invokes two phrases inherently linked to selling the Iraq war to the American people: 'mushroom cloud' and 'smoking gun.' Those lines were the brainchild of Michael Gerson, the president's former speechwriter who is now a columnist for the Washington Post. By warning of 'another mushroom cloud, another smoking gun,' Mustain seems to be implying that the nuclear threat from Iraq was real, or at least as real as the threat from the United Nations.

Actually, he doesn't imply it -- he says it in the very next line:

The threat is real, the Locust King has come
Don't tell me the truth; I don't like what they've done
It's payback time for the United Abominations

This is where things get weird. 'The Locust King' is drawn from the Book of Revelation, Chapter 9. Mustain's decision to use apocalyptic literature found in Revelation is quite, uh, revealing. He seems to be sympathetic to a fundamentalist doctrine known as pre-millenialism, in which an anti-Christ is said to rule the world during a period of tribulation before the messiah (Christ) returns. Some modern day pre-millenialist sects believe that the United Nations (or the Secretary General), is either literally the anti-Christ, or is setting the geopolitical conditions in which the anti-Christ will rise. Mustaine seems to believe this lunacy as well.

Next verse:

A grave and gathering danger
The decision to attack
Based on secret intelligence it'll take years
I fear to undo the failings in Iraq
You may bury the bodies
But you can't bury the crimes only
Fools stand up and really lay down their arms
No, not me, not when Death lasts forever

Again, Mustaine seems to be ascribing pre-Iraq war intelligence failures to the UN. In fact, United Nations weapons inspectors cautioned against American claims that Saddam Hussein had an active weapons program. Hans Blix, the Chief UN Weapons Inspector in Iraq during the pre-war period, even warned that American officials were misquoting his report on the state of the Iraqi WMD programs. The International Atomic Energy Agency also said that Iraq's nuclear weapons capabilities were virtually nil.

Back to the Chorus:

The UN is right; you can't be any more "un"
Than you are right now, the UN is undone
Another mushroom cloud, another smoking gun
The threat is real, the Locust King has come
Don't tell me the truth; I don't like what they've done
It's payback time for the United Abominations

At this point, you can hear French spoken in the background. The only thing I could decifer was, "Nous besoin d'ordre mondial," meaning, "We need global order." This apparently upsets Mustaine, because he launches into a monster guitar solo! Then, Mustaine returns for three repetitions of the chorus. Following that, a radio-style voice over reminiscent of the opening monologue begins, each line punctuated with "there was no UN."

NATO invaded Yugoslavia to end ethnic cleansing, there was no UN

While it is true that the United Nations Security Council never sanctioned the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999, it strains credulity to assert there was no UN presence there. The day the bombing campaign was suspended -- when NATO "invaded" -- the Security Council authorized the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK). Today, the United Nations is responsible for rebuilding the entire region, prosecuting war criminals, and deciding the future status of the tiny province.

The US invaded Afghanistan after 9/11, there was no UN

In fact, the UN has a robust presence in Afghanistan. It convened the so-called Bonn Process that established the Hamid Kharzai government. The UN also organized Afghanistan's historic 2004 elections and continues to provide humanitarian relief, promote good governance, and improve the rights of women.

Saddam Hussein violated 17 UN resolutions; The UN was asked to join the war in Iraq. The US invaded, there was no UN.

I think history speaks for itself. For the record, the "purple finger" elections were organized by the United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq.

Libya bombed a discotheque in Berlin killing Americans, there was no UN

In 1986, Libyan agents bombed a nightclub in Berlin, killing two US servicemen. President Regan retaliated by bombing two sites in Libya. It is hard to see how this episode is somehow an indictment against the United Nations.

Iran funds Hamas, and attacked the US in the seventies, there was no stinking UN

I think Mustaine may be confusing Hamas for Hezbollah, the Iranian backed militant group in Lebanon. Agents of Hezbollah bombed US marine barracks in Beirut in 1983, when the United States and other international forces were part of a UN sanctioned mission to end the bloody Lebanese civil war. Mustaine may also be referring to the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979. In this case, obituaries of the recently deceased UN Secretary General Kurt Waldheim noted that securing the release of 14 Iranian-held American hostages in 1981 was one of the most significant achievements of his otherwise unremarkable tenure.

Facing War without end, looking into the future, there (grunt) was
(grunt) no (grunt) more (grunt) UNNNNNNNN!

Only in Mustaine's dystopian fantasies.

A report leaked to the Associated Press suggests that the IAEA and North Korea have formally reached an agreement on the containment and surveillance of North Korean nuclear facilities. From the AP:

The confidential four-page report said North Korea has agreed to provide International Atomic Energy Agency experts with needed technical information, access and other help needed to shut down North Korea's plutonium-producing Yongbyon nuclear facility.

The report will be discussed by the agency's 35-nation board and is expected to be approved as early as Monday, paving the way for the beginning of the IAEA mission overseeing the shutdown and eventual dismantling of the Yongbyon facility.

This report from Vienna, plus news stemming from a meeting between Kim Jong Ill and China's foreign minister, seems to confirm a newfound willingness among the North Korean government to cooperate with the international community on nuclear disarmament. Obviously, it is too early to declare victory. But we do seem to be closer to North Korean disarmament than anytime time since 2002, when DPRK withdrew from the Non-Proliferation Treaty and booted IAEA inspectors from North Korea.

It may be opportune, therefore, to recall comments made by detractors of the diplomacy that has led us to this moment. AEI Senior Fellow John Bolton, for example, took to the airwaves last February to excoriate his old bosses for agreeing to a package of incentives to coax North Korea away from its nuclear ambitions. This, said Bolton, was "a very bad deal" that rewarded the reclusive regime. Bolton also took to the Wall Street Journal op-ed page to criticize the release of $25 million of DPRK frozen assets held in a Macau bank.

If we followed Bolton's advice and continued to refuse to engage directly with North Korea, it is almost certain that we would not have reached this important moment. (In fact, we tried that strategy from 2002 to February 2007. And in that time period, the North withdrew from the NPT, kicked weapons inspectors out of the country and successfully detonated a nuclear weapon.)

The great progress we have seen since the February breakthrough seems to prove that constructive engagement with Pyonyang is not only possible, but in fact, is a wise way to reduce the North's nuclear arsenal.

The Free Republic, in its traditionally understated way, highlights an Investors Business Daily editorial excoriating Ban Ki-moon for making the connection between climate change and the Darfur conflict. "The new U.N. secretary general invokes a Twinkie defense," says the editorial. "Excusing Islamofascist genocide in Darfur by blaming it on global warming. Forget the Chinese weapons. According to Ban Ki-moon, your SUV is responsible."

The Atlantic Monthly ran an excellent feature on this topic two months ago. Darfur, which is composed of the three provinces in Sudan's west, enjoys little natural wealth. It is a vast, unforgiving, and arid place. But it was not always as arid as it is today. As the Atlantic Monthly piece by Stephan Faris explains, southward expansion of the Sahara desert toward Darfur is a relatively recent phenomenon.

The desertification of Darfur has pit traditionally agrarian "black African" tribes in competition for arable land with nomadic tribes of ethnic-Arab herders. Of course, that alone is not sufficient to explain the accusations of genocide. Rather, when ethnic Darfuri tribes launched a rebellion against the central government in Khartoum in 2003, the government recruited and armed militias drawn from ethnic-Arab tribes, with promises that the land would be theirs. The fact that the two groups competed for natural resources in ways they had not in previous generations made the government's strategy to recruit militias that much easier.

Some may recall the so-called "Cash for Kim" scandal trumpeted by the op-ed page of the Wall Street Journal in which the Journal alledged that "hundreds of millions of dollars" had been systematically diverted from the United Nations Development Program to the coffers of Kim Jong Il. A preliminary audit of UN agencies in North Korea that was released over the weekend, finds no large scale diversions of cash to the North Korean government.

The audit confirmed that annual UNDP expenditures in North Korea have been roughly only $3 million a year for the past four years, about 2% of all development assistance coming into North Korea. To be sure, some of this money does, infact, end up with the government. To do business in North Korea, UN agencies must sometimes hire local staff, rent office, space, and otherwise spend money in the country. They must either use foreign currency, or use a state bank to convert foreign currency into the North Korean won.

Either way, some foreign currency falls into local hands. But this has been a standard business practice for aid agencies--including the UNDP. In fact, the Executive Board knew of UNDP's staffing practices in North Korea, which date back 27 years. On its website, the UNDP points out that the even some former and current members of its own executive board use similar practices in their diplomatic missions in North Korea.

The Journal tried to stoke a new scandal to tar the United Nations. It found none. But don't expect an apology. On its opinion page today, the Journal tries to spin the findings to make the report seem more damning than it actually is.

UNDP is trumpeting the auditors' finding that it spent only an average of $2.6 million a year during 2002-2006. But if it was making disbursements on behalf of other entities, the actual sums under its control--which presumably were subject to the same shoddy financial controls criticized by the auditors--could be far higher. (emphasis mine)

In fact, according to the actual report, UNDP was indeed acting as something of a "money manager" for one other UN agency in North Korea: the United Nations Office of Project Services (UNOPS). Still, the report shows that UNOPS expenditures were modest, only about $1-2 million per year for the past four years--not exactly "far higher."

Over on her Pajamas Media outlet Claudia Rosett sets her sites on Unicef. The offense? Having the temerity to warn about a potential food shortage in North Korea thusly: "A potential food crisis faces the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, with serious flooding last year leading to a possible shortfall of 1 million to tons of grain, a fifth of total food requirement for 2007..."

According to Rosett, Unicef is worthy of our scorn because the children's aid organization should have blamed the government of Kim Jong Il for the shortage instead. She may have a point. Except for the fact that the very next paragraph of the UN News Center report to which she refers, says: "Meanwhile, far less food is coming into the country because of the Government's decision not to accept humanitarian aid, Unicef country representative Gopalan Balagopal said on a recent visit to his agency's headquarters in New York." (emphasis mine.) Rosett seems to have artfully excluded this point.

Of course, anyone with even a basic understanding of North Korea would understand the underlying reason behind the dire humanitarian situation. That said, it is important to note that Unicef, like most humanitarian organizations, serve in countries at the pleasure of the host government. Humanitarian aid is based on the principle that people need not starve to death or lack basic medical care just because they are citizens of an odious regime. Humanitarian organizations are therefore loathe to jeopardize their access to vulnerable populations by condemning host governments. So when Rosett beseeches Unicef to say, instead, that North Korea "faces potential food crisis due to murderous, wasteful, degrading, abusive tyranny of Kim Jong Il's regime," she is basically asking Unicef to sign its own eviction notice, North Korea's starving children be damned.

In his guest slot on the New York Times columnist page (subscription req.), Robert Wright flips the conventional wisdom on the Security Council's rejection of a force authorization resolution for the American led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

A sacred duty of bodies that authorize things--the Security Council, Congress, zoning boards--is to sometimes not authorize things. (Imagine a world where everything was authorized!) People who want a thing authorized sometimes call the failure to authorize it "gridlock." People who don't want the thing authorized prefer to say "the system worked," and refer to people who complain about gridlock as "whiners." Who is right?

History can judge who was "right" about the wisdom of invading Iraq in the spring of 2003. For now, I think it's instructive to look at how a core group of pro-Iraq war pundits and editorialists (whom we may call "whiners") tried to inflict damage on the public's opinion of the United Nations when the Security Council refused to authorize the war.

Almost immediately following the Council's rejection of the war resolution, folks like Claudia Rosett, Anne Bayefsky, and editorialists in the pages of the Wall Street Journal and the New York Sun hit back hard. When top United Nations officials hinted that the Iraq war may have been a mistake, the gloves really came off. Alleged improprieties in the Oil for Food program turned into a witch hunt for these pundits. Calm analysis of the facts about the program quickly gave way to unsubstantiated allegations about corruption at the very highest levels of the UN bureaucracy. Soon, these folks began to call for Kofi Annan's head. (Here, it is crucial to point out that Paul Volcker's long investigation into the Oil for Food program found no reason for Annan to step down.)

The damage done to the American public's perception of the United Nations was acute. Constant media repetition of scandals at the United Nations, real or imagined, sank deep into American consciousness. On basic image issues, it is undeniable that the UN suffered from these attacks. The Gallup organization, which has conducted favorability polling on the United Nations since 1953, recorded a steep drop from a high point in Janurary 2003. The vindictive work of the so-called "whiners" may have not resulted in Annan's resignation, but it certainly helped to corrupt Americans' views of the United Nations.

That said, there are encouraging signs that the United Nations can recover. That same Gallup Poll showed that most Americans want the United Nations to play a major policy making role in world affairs. Other polling has been consistent on the point that most Americans want the United States to support the United Nations. Also, contrary to popular myth, polling by the Program on International Policy Attitudes has shown that a strong preference for multilateral approaches to global problems runs deep in the American electorate. Despite the best efforts of the "whiners," Americans are still looking toward the United Nations.

As an aside, Wright's signature book, Nonzero, argues that human progress can be traced to the development of conflict negotiation strategies that transcend zero-sum outcomes (to oversimplify of a complex thesis.) Wright devotes much space in his book describing how global governance structures and multilateral institutions (to wit: the United Nations) fits his theory. It is an excellent read. Check it out on Amazon.

In January, Dispatch reported on inflated allegations that United Nations Development Program funds were being converted widely into hard currency to the benefit of the North Korean government. In response to these allegations UNDP moved swiftly, responsibly, and comprehensively to review the concerns expressed by member states. Ultimately, these efforts led to the suspension of certain operations in North Korea.

UNDP's handling of the situation has been widely praised, but that hasn't stopped some from reraking the muck in an attempt to discredit the agency.

On March 11, an article written by Bay Fang in the Chicago Tribune (picked up by Redstate, Right Wing Nut House, and Reject the U.N.) and containing quotes from a number of anonymous sources insinuated that the UNDP "quietly suspended operations in North Korea," because "it could not operate under guidelines imposed by its executive board in January." Moreover, it suggests that the action was taken to "hamstring" an external audit that was initiated by the Secretary-General. It is laughable to say that UNDP quietly suspended operations, given global press coverage. In fact, UNDP announced publicly that it had suspended its operations because the North Korean government was unwilling to meet the new terms imposed by the UNDP, including the suspension of the use of hard currency. Fang's article also claims that the amount of hard currency in question could reach as much as $150 million, despite the fact that the total amount spent by the UNDP in North Korea over the past decade doesn't even reach $48 million.

There are other misstatements and inaccurate insinuations in the article, but what's truly problematic is that it suggests that, in response to concerns by member states, the UNDP hasn't done exactly what member states should want it to do. In December 2006, the U.S. raised concerns about the UNDP's operations in North Korea, in response to which the UNDP immediately stopped hard currency payments and the acceptance of staffers sent by North Korea. At a meeting in January, the UNDP Executive Board, which includes the U.S., initiated a set of conditions that had to be met for the UNDP to continue its mission in North Korea. When it became evident that those conditions wouldn't be met, the UNDP suspended its mission. The results of the external audit are still yet to be seen, but the UNDP's response from the announcement of concerns to this point appears to be exactly what it should have been -- swift and substantial.

In the Washington Post today Colum Lynch reports on the developing world's disquiet with some of Secretary Ban's early moves to re-organize UN bureaucracy. Apparently, some member states worry that Ban is too "pro-American," and are suspicious about whom or what is motivating him.

Pakistan's Munir Akram - Chairman of the Third World bloc G-77, and arguably one of the more effective Permanent Representatives in Turtle Bay - gives voice to some of these concerns. "There is always suspicion no matter what the U.S. does because it is such an overwhelmingly powerful player. I think that's a natural function of being a big power, of being the biggest power."

Akram may be engaging in pure speculation here, but his point should not be dismissed for it harkens to the climate of mistrust that has torpedoed previous reform efforts. In the year following the September 2005 World Summit - which outlined a broad program of structural reform - a distrustful and polarized atmosphere at Turtle Bay stymied progress on reform. The developing world largely rejected a reform package for fear that it would diminish their influence at the United Nations. If these efforts are to be re-energized, tensions between the developed and developing world must be cooled so that the give-and-take of reform negotiations can proceed toward a more fruitful outcome.

According to this article, it would seem Ban has a tough road ahead. The scars from last year's reform debates still seem fresh.

At today's Congressional hearing, American Enterprise Institute Senior Fellow John Bolton aired the radical proposal of eliminating the current dues-based system of United Nations funding and replacing it with voluntary, a la carte financing of UN operations. This has been a recurring theme in Bolton's speeches and testimonies for well over a year. And now that he is no longer the United States Ambassador to the United Nations, he seems to be pushing this extremist position with renewed zeal.

Before the House Foreign Affairs Committee Bolton testified: "A system of voluntary contributions will allow UN members to judge the effectiveness of the various parts of the UN system, and demand results. Non-responsive programs and funds can be defunded, effective agencies and personnel can be rewarded and augmented, and, most importantly, the crippling mentality of 'entitlement' that pervades the main UN organization will be stripped away."

Let's be clear: Bolton's proposal is both deleterious to American interests and dangerous to the millions of people around the globe that depend on the United Nations for their sustenance and security.

Certain UN organs, like the World Food Program and UNICEF are funded through voluntary contributions by member states. But a system of voluntary funding for UN operations and peacekeeping (which by treaty are funded through membership dues) would mean the end of the United Nations as we know it. If member countries could pick and choose what UN programs and peacekeeping operations they would like to fund, and which they would like to starve, nearly every aspect of UN operations would become politicized. Translators would be in direct competition for funds with UN peacekeepers in Sudan. Worse, UN organs would have to devote time and resources to fundraising, not fulfilling their mandate. Just imagine the head of a peacekeeping mission in Haiti or Lebanon spending his or her time panhandling member states rather than devoting his or her full energies at the task they were given.

Further, the greatest asset the United Nations brings its work--its unique stamp of legitimacy-- would no doubt be undermined should member states simply pick and choose the specific UN functions they financially support. For example, if the UN investigation into the assassination of Rafik Harriri were supported by countries that advocate regime change in Syria, the investigation and nascent independent criminal tribunal, would loose all credibility.

From an American perspective, perhaps the greatest danger a la carte UN funding poses is its potential to diminish American influence at the United Nations. The United States is currently the single largest contributor to the UN budget. And for these contributions, the United States carries great clout and influence in Turtle Bay. More so than any other member state, the United States is able to steer the agenda at the United Nations and help set its priorities. Should UN funding become de-centralized, the United States would loose this influence. It would not be stretch to imagine that some of America's detractors would seek to hijack UN organs and use the United Nations to attack American interests and policies.

Fortunately, the only place that a la carte UN funding seems to be gaining traction is the American Enterprise Institute. On Capitol Hill or at the United Nations the idea is rightly rejected for the danger it poses.

On the eve of the release of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, The Guardian revealed that the American Enterprise Institute was offering $10,000 to scientists to publish studies critical of the panel's findings. This is curious, because as The Guardian reported AEI receives large donations from energy companies who would rather you remain skeptical about the human causes of climate change.

Much ink has already been spilled chronicling the intellectual decline of the American Enterprise Institute. Today, the Washington Post adds to the chorus with a story that includes a precious quote from a self-respecting climate change researcher who would not be paid to play with AEI.

"At least two academics -- Texas A&M University atmospheric sciences professor Gerald North and Texas A&M climate researcher Steven Schroeder -- turned down AEI's offer because they feared their work would be politicized.

"Schroeder, who has worked with Green in the past and has questioned some aspects of traditional climate modeling, said in an interview that he did not think AEI would have skewed his results. But he added that he worried his contribution might have been published alongside "off-the-wall ideas" questioning the existence of global warming.

"'We worried our work could be misused even if we produced a reasonable report,' Schroeder said. 'While any human endeavor can be criticized, the IPCC system greatly exceeds the cooperation, openness and scientific rigorousness of the process applied to any other problem area that has significant effects on society.'"

So there you have it: even a scientist with whom AEI personnel have collaborated in the past refused to join AEI's crusade because he considers the IPCC process a paragon of scientific rigor. I'm no climate change expert, but consider me skeptical when AEI issues its next set of public policy prescriptions on climate change.

To mark the UN's Holocaust Memorial day, Anne Bayefsky writes in the National Review Online that "the U.N. provides sustenance for the Iranian genocidal threat, which is directed at Israel now, and America next." We then learn from Bayefsky that the UN is "driven by expansionist greed" and serves as a "mouthpiece of Iranian nihilism." Finally, she criticizes the International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohammed elBaredei for having the temerity to suggest that threatening military strikes against Iran may inspire the regime to accelerate its nuclear program. Hence, writes Bayefsky, "Genocide awaits us if we wait for the U.N."

Far from being an Iranian agent, the United Nations and its sister organizations are among the only global actors actively working to curtail Iran's nuclear ambitions. (The president made this clear during his State of the Union.) The International Atomic Energy Agency is currently serving as an interlocutor between Iran and the Security Council, which last month voted unanimously to impose sanctions on Iran. And just last week, the General Assembly overwhelmingly passed a resolution that not-so-subtly chastised the Iranian president for dabbling in Holocaust denial. If anything, this symbolic vote showed that the United Nations is a mouthpiece for countries united against Iranian nihilism.

These facts hardly get in the way of Bayefsky's goal of trashing the United Nations. Yet, while Bayefsky writes polemics against dealing with Iran through diplomacy at the Security Council, she does not suggest any alternatives. Does she think a military option is prudent? Given her repeated invocations of the "G-word" I am tempted to think that she does. If so, she needs to explain herself. Otherwise, she is engaging in pointless war mongering.

Eric Shawn, the Fox News correspondent and author of (brace yourself) The U.N. Exposed: How the United Nations Sabotages America's Security and Fails the World, writes a shockingly even-handed dispatch from Kinshasa, where he traveled with the Secretary General this weekend.

From Shawn's report:

"The level of poverty is overwhelming and heartbreaking. The average life expectancy here is just 51 years old. The median personal income is $700, which is why the waitress says, God bless you, when you throw her a buck. Thrown into this mix are 18,000 U.N. peacekeepers, the largest deployment in the world, who Ban honored for their dedication and commitment. Eighty have been killed in the line of duty so far, and as we were flying into Kinshasa there came word of another fatality in the blue helmet ranks. An Indian peacekeeper was shot in the head in Southern Sudan as he was leading a team of U.N. de-mining experts that was suddenly ambushed. All they were trying to do was remove some of the millions of remaining landmines so a little girl or boy wouldn't be blown to bits.

"But this is also the place where the U.N. peacekeeper sex scandal scared the U.N. effort, with the allegations of the protectors preying on children, by trading bananas, coins or candy for sex with victims as young as 12 year old. There was little mention of that, as the nation looks to the future after holding its first democratic elections in 40 years.

"Ban praised the courage of the Congolese people, and in an address in the cavernous legislative building called the Peoples' Palace, he was interrupted by their version of applause, which requires one to loudly use the palm of your hands to bang on the desk in appreciation. The imposing building dates from the1970s era when the nation was under Soviet influence, and in this former socialist enclave Ban warned that a healthy and thriving democracy needs a political opposition where everyone can express himself or herself freely without fear of intimidation. He also met with the opposition leaders, a not so subtle reminder to newly inaugurated President Joseph Kabila, and his followers, to not get any untoward ideas.
Ban's schedule was punishing. He operated on four hours sleep and I am told, does not require much. If this first overseas jaunt is an indication of what's to come, he will be an activist leader who could defy expectations He approaches his task with sincere enthusiasm, a syndrome perhaps of holding a new big job that will likely fade in time." (emphasis mine).

In light of his trip to Kinshasa, I'm curious to know if Shawn still believes the United Nations 'fails the world.' Regardless, this kind of reporting from Fox News is rather welcoming.

A controversy is brewing at the United Nations over allegations that funds from the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) have benefited the regime of Kim Jong Il in North Korea. Last week, the Wall Street Journal opinion page--often critical of the United Nations--published a report by Melanie Kirkpatrick which revealed contents of a letter from an American UN representative raising concern that UNDP funds were being converted into hard currency to the benefit of North Korea.

Like the World Food Program and UNICEF, the UNDP must sometimes work in partnership with unsavory totalitarian regimes in order to serve long-suffering citizens. Sometimes, as is the case in North Korea, this requires hiring local staff and renting local office space. This means that foreign currency can end up in the hands of governments in one of two ways: either the agency pays fees and local staff in foreign currency (which is what happens in North Korea) or the agency must purchase local currency through the national bank. Either way, the necessities of doing business can cause less than optimal financial procedures to be followed.

Kirkpatrick admits she does not know the precise amount of hard currency that has been transferred to North Korea, but alleges that tens of millions of dollars have been transferred to the regime since 1998. Over the last ten years, however, the UNDP has only spent $29 million on programs in North Korea, or about $3 million a year since 1998. In the last two years, the UNDP says only $337,000 was handled exclusively by the North Korean authorities. And even these funds, says the UNDP, can be accounted for. Meanwhile, oversight for this program (as in all UNDP programs) is the responsibility of its Executive Board. And it is probably worth mentioning that the United States is one of 36 members of the Board.

Still, it seems that the appearance of impropriety has led Ban Ki-moon and the UNDP to take some swift action. Almost immediately following the public airing of this revelation, Ban called for an external audit the UNDP North Korea program (and more broadly of various UN country programs). For its' part, UNDP immediately briefed the press on its program, provided available information and the UNDP's assistant administrator suspended all cash payments to North Korean workers and said that "a full, independent external audit is in order to make sure that we really understand what it means to work in a country like North Korea."

Despite this quick response by both the UN Secretariat and the UNDP traditional UN critics appear to want to create a scandal before the investigation even begins. The Heritage Foundation quickly turned out a report calling for the suspension of all US funding of the UNDP until "a full independent and outside forensic audit of the UNDP's activities and the activities of other U.N. funds and programs in the DPRK are completed." According to the Wall Street Journal's editorial page, some members of Congress are already considering legislation that would cut US funding to UNDP.

This strikes me as a severe overreaction. Currently, the United States pays 11.4% of UNDP's budget.* (Unlike the regular UN budget, UNDP is funded through voluntary contributions by member states.) Cutting all US funding to UNDP would disrupt important work of UNDP projects like democracy building in countries recovering from conflict, poverty reduction programs; and combating the AIDS pandemic.

Soon, the external audit will begin. It may provide new guidance on how aid agencies like UNICEF, the World Food Program and UNDP approach totalitarian regimes like North Korea. It may find absolutely nothing. In the interim, cutting off all funding to the UNDP until this audit is complete rather extreme response.

*11.4% represents the American contribution to the "core" UNDP budget, which is paid into by developed countries and accounts for about 20% of the full budget. Of the total budget, which is paid by developed and developing countries alike, the United States contributes about 5%, or $245 million out of $4.6 billion for 2005 (the most recent numbers available publicly.)

Claudia Rosett, who has already declared Ban Ki-moon's "half-life of integrity" to be "less than a week," is trying to gin up controversy about the appointment of the new Deputy Secretary General from Tanzania, Dr. Asha-Rose Migiro.

Rosett dredges up a September 2006 Times of London report alleging a qui-pro-quo between South Korean foreign aid disbursements and developing countries' support for Ban Ki-moon's Secretary General candidacy. (Apparently, South Korea gave $18 million in aid to Tanzania last year.) But Tanzania was just one of 192 members of the General Assembly who voted unanimously for Ban's appointment. Also, the real power brokers of the Secretary General selection process are the veto-wielding members of the Security Council. And no where has it been alleged that South Korea used its development-aid largess to curry favor with the United States, France, China, Great Britain and Russia.

Frankly, Migiro's appointment can be considered a boon for the prospect of management reforms for which Kofi Annan pressed hard in his final year. Developing countries were hesitant to back these reforms for fear that their influence in the Secretariat may wane as a result. However, giving the number-two job at the United Nations to a woman who holds great credibility in the developing world may help assuage those fears and inspire developing countries to support management reforms.

I've often wondered how Claudia Rosett, the "Journalist in Residence" of the Foundation for Defense of Democracy, will cope with Kofi Annan's departure. After all, she has earned her name tarring and feathering a man who is about to abandon his pulpit. Once Annan leaves office, those who actually follow her attempts to stir controversy are sure to lose interest.

Nevertheless, as a parting gift to the person she built a career slandering, Rosett recently produced a lengthy - if confusing - New York Sun article purporting to "prove" that Kofi Annan's nephew now lives in the same rent-controlled apartment where Annan lived prior to becoming Secretary General. Of course, Rosett admits that there is nothing illegal about this arrangement-which, incidentally, Jules Crittenden of the Boston Herald calls "the usual Third-World immigrant pile-into-the-cheap-apartment thing." Still, that does not stop Rosett from fuming about the appearance of impropriety, which she feels stems from the fact that "Annan, whose wife comes from one of Sweden's wealthier families, has spent years lecturing Americans on how the well-heeled have obligations to those less fortunate."

In case you are wondering where to find the outrage, dear reader, let me summarize: Kofi Annan's nephew lives in a rent-controlled apartment that is leased to Kofi Annan's brother, who is Ghana's ambassador to Morocco. But at one time-as long ago as 1978-this apartment served as Annan's residence. And now, this all worthy of a lengthy expose in the New York Sun because the person who currently resides in this rent controlled apartment has a rich aunt.

If this is the kind of "dirt" that Rosett is now throwing Annan's direction, I think we can safely assume that Rosett is panicking. To be sure, Rosett can still hype her manufactured controversies after Annan leaves office in January, but fewer and fewer people will care.

One has to question the moral compass of the editors of the National Review Online. In back to back "symposiums" NRO contributors take turns exculpating one of South America's most brutal dictators, then in the next breath brand Kofi Annan the leader of a terrorist organization.

On Monday, the National Review ran a series of articles on the legacy of Augusto Pinochet, which as Spencer Ackerman notes, includes a choice contribution from Mario Loyola who argues that the former Chilean dictator "worked hard to protect the bases of a modern progressive democracy." Then, on Tuesday, The National Review uses the outgoing Secretary General's valedictory speech at the Truman Presidential Library to launch a series of attacks on Kofi Annan, culminating in accusations that he is a terrorists' stooge.

Contributors to the Annan-hate-a-thon range the ideological gamut from fellows of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies to the Heritage Foundation. But it is the Hudson Institute's Anne Bayefsky who hurls the most over-the-top criticism:

"Kofi Annan will forever be remembered as the secretary-general who presided over the biggest and most insidious hijacking of the global agenda which has ever occurred. ... over a decade with Kofi Annan at the helm, the U.N. has become an instrument of terror. A place which has no definition of terrorism because the terrorists and their allies run it, while democracies pay the bill." (Emphasis added)

One has to wonder what part of the terrorist agenda is served by eradicating polio, running war crimes tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, administering elections in Iraq and Afghanistan, and keeping the peace in Haiti and the Congo?

More to the point, for the past four years right wing critics like Bayefsky have used Annan as a whipping boy to vent their innate hostility to multilateral platforms like the United Nations. My only question is how long it will take the Bayefsky crowd to turn Ban Ki-moon, who takes over from Annan in January, into a boogeyman of the right. I don't imagine it takes much time. For all along, it was not Annan they hated, but the very idea of the United Nations.

In the Pittsburgh Tribune Review an interview with anti-UN activist Nathan Tabor quickly descends into bizarre conspiracy mongering. Tabor, who authored a book called The Beast on the East River: The U.N. Threat to America's Sovereignty and Security, tells the Tribune Review that the United Nations has effectively taken control of American National Parks.

I think this would be news to Secretary of Interior Dirk Kempthorne, so let's review Tabor's claims.

"The Statue of Liberty, Yellowstone National Park, the Great Smoky Mountains, the Liberty Bell, Mt. Vernon are all under control of the United Nations."

Q: We hear about this all the time on the right-wing talk shows -- that the U.N. is taking over the national parks. How would you prove that to someone?

"I would direct them, hopefully, to buy my book. But if not, go to Google and search "world heritage sites." This was a treaty in 1972. It was UNESCO's Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Culture and National Heritage. This was ratified by the United States. Currently, there are 812 properties in 137 nations. This is what it says on its Web site: "World heritage sites belong to all the peoples of the world, irrespective of the territory on which they are located."

Q: There's nothing that has been implemented? No U.N. blue helmets at Yellowstone?

"No, not yet. But if you go to Yellowstone there are plaques that say this is a world heritage site designated by the United Nations." (emphasis mine)

So there you have it: A UNESCO plaque at Yellowstone is evidence of the UN's perfidious trampling of American sovereignty. And according to Tabor, after plaques come blue-helmets.

Tabor later claims that then-President Clinton cited Yellowstone's UNESCO designation to prevent the opening of a gold mine on property near Yellowstone. That may be true, but an American president citing UNESCO to stop a mine near an endangered national park is hardly evidence that the UN dictated this decision. Actually, it is evidence that the American president, not the United Nations, directs policy on National Parks.

That should go without saying, but for someone who seems to think that the UN blue helmets may someday be stationed at Yellowstone, you never know.

At various times, blogs like Atlas Shrugs and Michelle Malkin hurl sundry invectives at the UN and its Secretary General for allegedly coddling terrorists in Lebanon. Invariably, these criticisms are always more bluster than fact-based, so I am hardly surprised that these two have been silent on a recent positive development in Lebanon.

The Lebanese government just approved a draft statute of a UN backed court to try the killers of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Harriri. Details of the Tribunal's composition have not yet been released, but it is likely to be a hybrid court led by a combination of Lebanese and international jurists. It is also likely to build on the fact-finding missions of United Nations official inquiry into the car-bombing that killed Harriri and 22 others in February 2005.

The draft statute passed in the Lebanense Cabinet after representatives from the main pro-Syrian parties resigned earlier in the day. And if it gets off the ground, this tribunal will represent yet another way in which the United Nations is promoting transparency and long-term stability in the region.

My french may be a bit rusty, but I can't help but think that the outrage in this Martin Peretz post is a bit misplaced. At issue is a Ban Ki-moon interview in Le Monde in which Mr Ban says (roughly) that the United Nations should be more responsive to the needs of its member states.

Any casual UN observer knows that this is a wholly uncontroversial statement. It is perhaps the equivalent of a new football coach saying he looks forward to working with his players.

As a platform for promoting international peace and security, the United Nations is obviously more effective when member states are actively engaged. And it also goes without saying that Ban couldn't get anything done without the support of the member states. Still, this innocous statement sets Peretz off on a rambling UN-bashing tirade. Apparently, Peretz - who owns the bi-weekly New Republic - has already decided not to like Ban Ki-moon.

For the record, Mr. Ban does not take office until New Year's day.

As reported in the Washington Post today, the U.N. General Assembly has suspended voting for a week as it tries to find a solution to the deadlock caused by competing bids for membership on the Security Council from Venezuela and Guatemala. Guatemala, backed by the United States, has led over 35 rounds of voting, but has yet to secure the necessary two-thirds majority. Some have predictably and irrationally labeled this as an example of UN inaction. This claim not only betrays a basic misunderstanding of the workings of international politics but of the overwhelming benefit of multilateral versus unilateral outcomes both for the United States and the rest of the world.

In fact, the General Assembly is sending a very strong message - to extremists on both ends of the spectrum. It is clearly stating to the world that it will neither reward virulent anti-Americanism nor become too closely aligned with one superpower's desires, as some in the G-77 have claimed. This is happening despite Venezuela's two-year campaign for the seat, which included, as reported in the Christian Science Monitor, the signing of many bilateral trade pacts. According to the same article, the consensus in the General Assembly is that Hugo Chavez's rant at the World Summit has cost him significant support.

If we are truly interested in making the UN as effective as it can be, it's time that we understand what the United Nations is and what it is not. It is not a megaphone for any one nation. It is a platform for dialogue, diplomacy, and multilateralism. And the UN's carefully negotiated decisions, while not as black-and-white as those of any one nation or group, are all the more powerful for it. They carry the weight of the whole world along with it.

Next week, when the General Assembly returns to this issue, a consensus candidate will likely emerge. The process will have worked.

Writing in the National Review Online, Mario Loyala suggests that South Korea's policy toward the North means that the new Secretary General will be an agent of Chinese interests at the UN. His argument is basically this: because Beijing and Seoul have strategies for confronting North Korea that are more similar to each other than to America's own strategy for dealing with the regime, South Korea's foreign minister-turned-next Secretary General will stand up for Chinese interests as a whole at the UN. This is a quite a sweeping assertion, particularly as it is based on an extrapolation from precisely one circumstance in which the foreign policy interests of these two countries temporarily align.

For example, Loyala seems to think that South Korea's policy toward the North will somehow affect how the new Secretary General approaches humanitarian intervention in places like Darfur.

"Another Kofi Anna [sic] tradition that his successor is unlikely to uphold is his readiness to discard the U.N. Charter's cardinal principle of non-intervention 'in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state.' How Ban handles the Darfur situation will be a sign of things to come. In a misguided search for energy security, China has been militarily and financially supporting unsavory regimes in oil-rich countries like Sudan, where the political risk is prohibitive to private commercial investment. Accordingly, in its Security Council votes, China has proved among the strongest opponents of humanitarian intervention in situations like Darfur. Indeed, on the basis of 'non-intervention,' China itself resists calls for human rights reform. It is hard to imagine that Ban will break with his long-standing support for China on these issues. The U.N.'s recent success in the field of humanitarian intervention - however limited - is likely to be an early casualty of the Ban secretariat. (emphasis mine)

It is quite a logical leap to assume that South Korean hesitancy toward 'intervening' in North Korea means that the next Secretary General will have cold feet in places like Sudan, Cote d'Ivoire, Haiti, and elsewhere. I also find it hard to believe that South Korea's reluctance for a military option for North Korea is somehow based on a principled notion of state sovereignty which is tightly held by South Korea and its former foreign minister. Loyala's claim that humanitarian interventions around the world will suffer because of South Korean policy toward the North seems to have been plucked from thin air. It is little more than a scurrilous attack on the incoming Secretary General.

After taking issue with Ted Turner's positive take on the UN's handling of the North Korea crisis, Schraged at Redstate asks, "Can anyone Provide any evidence that the UN has ever actually accomplished anything beyond spending US Tax Dollars, providing a platform for Terrorists and Tinpot dictators to spew the Anti-American filth, and provide a retirement for corrupt burocrats [sic] like Kofi Anan [sic]?"

I can.

Consider this: since 1988, when the UN-sponsored Global Polio Eradication Initiative began, cases of polio have plummeted worldwide from 350,000 in 1988, to 1,263 in 2004. This success comes on the heels of the global eradication of smallpox by the World Health Organization almost 20 years earlier. And in addition to ridding the world of these scourges, UN agencies have combated obstetric fistula, and helped to contain outbreaks of deadly diseases like yellow fever and plague.

The United Nations is also on the front lines in the fight against the most terrifying global health scenario: an outbreak of bird-flu. United Nations agencies are working in east asian countries to help detect and contain the virus from spreading across borders and across shores.

In areas of peace and security, the UN has a long list of accomplishments. Let's start with the most recent. Hezbollah and Israel are no longer fighting each other in Southern Lebanon. Why? Because Kofi Annan shuttled around the region following Security Council resolution 1701 and shored up the peace. He secured peacekeepers from Europe and Israel-friendly Muslim countries (as Israel demanded) and negotiated the lifting the sea and air blockade (as the Lebanese demanded). Now, refugees have returned home in southern Lebanon and Northern Israel.

Other less visible peacekeeping missions are also paying dividends for American interests worldwide. If UN peacekeepers were not in Haiti right now, US marines would have to be. If UN peacekeepers were not in Liberia, Marines and the British Army would be there. And if Peacekeepers were not in East Timor, the Australian military would have to deploy large numbers of troops there. It is no wonder why both the Quadrennial Defense Review and National Security Strategy for 2006 would emphasize the importance of UN peacekeeping for American national security. These are the three biggest contributors to the coalition in Iraq.

And on that same topic, something that Redstate would likely agree was a highlight of the Iraq war, the "purple finger moment," was accomplished using UN workers with experience in running elections in conflict zones. Similarly, the UN helped to administer elections in Afghanistan in 2005.

So yes, the United Nations does use American dollars to pay for these services. But the return we get on our investment is a bargain.

The Drudge Report is featuring a link to a YouTube video of Ted Turner speaking at the National Press Club. In the thirty-second video, Turner is clearly expressing his reservations about the wisdom of invading Iraq in 2003, but the Drudge headline reads, "Ted Turner says he can't pick sides in War on Terror."

This is little more than a smear-job coordinated by a YouTube user who has dishonestly edited a portion of CSPAN's coverage of the event.

Turner says, "There are a lot of things about this war that disturbs me ... and one of them is the attitude expressed most clearly by our President, that either 'you are with us or you are against us.'" (emphasis mine)

"This war" quite obviously refers to Iraq, not the broader War on Terror. However, the YouTube video is edited to make this reference somewhat ambiguous. But if you watch the CSPAN feed of the event, you can see that at minute 44 -- moments before the You Tube snippet begins -- the moderator asks, "What do you think of the fact that other people who have criticized the Iraq war have had their patriotism questioned?"

It was in response this question that Turner laments the kind of political polarization that leads people to question the patriotism of those who take issue with war in Iraq. The cropped YouTube video leaves the moderator's question out, catching Turner mid-way through his response. And Drudge links to the edited snippet, ironically, in order to perpetuate the very character smear that Turner tackles head on just a few seconds before the YouTube video begins.

In his op-ed lambasting the "ineffective" United Nations, the Miami Herald's Carlos Alberto Montaner seems to forget that the United Nations has a Security Council with five veto-wielding members. Throughout the editorial he repeatedly cites the large membership of the General Assembly as a sui generis barrier to solving international crises, but he fails to ever mention the smaller Security Council, which is the United Nations organ entrusted to take on global crises as they emerge.

Says Montaner, "The United Nations is a costly, clumsy and corrupt bureaucracy that has not achieved any of the objectives entrusted to it at the time of its creation. The idea of establishing the principle of a majority -- one vote to every nation -- to settle the international clashes and crashes was foolish. How can Brazil's vote have the same value as the vote of the Seychelle Islands?"

Further demonstrating his seeming unfamiliarity Security Council--and the United Nations system--Montaner writes, "When a crisis occurs in the world, the principal actors solve, alleviate or deflect it by holding conversations in the corridors or negotiations behind closed doors, and then taking the outcome to the plenum of the assembly so that it may be approved. And if not even this can be accomplished -- as happened during the civil war in the Balkans in former Yugoslavia -- the organization is bypassed..."

It is the 15 member Security Council, not the 192 member General Assembly, that works to solve international crises like the 34 day war in Lebanon this summer, or the recent flare up in East Timor. Though it would undermine his argument, it would be appropriate to make this distinction if one's principal objection to the United Nations is that its members, taken as a whole, cannot work together to solve international crises.

Finally, Montaner asks, "Objectively speaking, what good is the United Nations? To serve as a worldwide stage for a clown like Chavez?"

Since Hugo Chavez' rant last week, this has been a favorite refrain from the anti-UN crowd. But Hugo Chavez does not speak for the United Nations, he speaks for Hugo Chavez. If one national leaders' personal distain for the leader of another member state proves that the United Nations is fatally flawed, then it would be hard to see how any international organization could ever exist in the first place. Thankfully, international relations transcend personal animosities.

Writing in the Los Angeles Times on Sunday, Jonah Goldberg gnashes his teeth over the apparent failure of United States Ambassador to the UN John Bolton to win Senate confirmation. And in the process of praising Ambassador Bolton, the conservative columnist goes out of his way to trash the UN and simply make things up about Kofi Annan.

Goldberg trots out the tired, and repeatedly disproven, claim that "most Americans think the UN is the problem." Polls consistently show otherwise: Americans overwhelmingly favor multilateral engagement with other countries through the United Nations. This poll by the Mark Mellman group shows that 60% of respondents preferred to "work through the U.N. because such efforts will be seen as more legitimate and allow us to share the costs and risks for ensuring peace and security."

Goldberg also credits Ambassador Bolton for scuttling "Kofi Annan's attempts to ban weapons in space and to, in effect, tax wealthy nations through a wealth transfer scheme that ignores U.N. inefficiency and corruption." Regarding the first charge, I assume that Goldberg is referring to the non-binding resolution on Preventing an Arms Race in Outer Space, which was generated by the General Assembly (not Annan) and was voted against by the United States. As for the second charge that Kofi Annan has some sort of scheme in place to redistribute wealth among nations, I have simply no idea what he is talking about. I sort of assume he is just making that up, perhaps for the sake of the black helicopter crowd. However, if by a "wealth transfer scheme," Goldberg is referring to the way in which United Nations dues have always been assessed then he is sorely missing the point. The U.S. pays 22% of a nearly $4 billion operating budget. In the large scheme of things, that is not a tremendous outlay for the United States government. But the return on that investment-- having a United Nations--is huge. Without America's financial contribution to the United Nations, the lights would shut off and essential programs would dry up.

Finally, Goldberg praises Ambassador Bolton for standing up "on principal" against the new Human Rights Council. But Goldberg fails to point out that Bolton's main objection to the council was centered around a rather fine detail. Bolton's position was that the members of the council should be elected by a 2/3rds majority. The resolution stipulated that new members to the council would be elected by an absolute majority (that's at least 96 countries.) In the end this made little difference; had the 2/3rds criteria been applied, only Sri Lanka, Saudi Arabia, the Czech Republic and Poland would have been kept off the Council.

Obviously, this column by an avowed conservative panders to a certain crowd that is intrinsically hostile to the United Nations. I just wish he would stick to the facts. There is plenty of room for a healthy debate about the role of the United Nations in American foreign policy without having to simply make things up.

Last week, we brought you news that Megadeth's next album will be titled United Abominations. Apparently, front man Dave Mustaine came up with that catchy phrase when he was "watching TV and saw the trucks that said 'UN' on them and said, 'Man, you are so un-cool, ineffective, anything...I thought, wow I got to run with this!'"

It seems that a similar amount of thought went into the album art. Without the flags, this could just as well be another historic New York City landmark.

A couple of weeks ago, many bloggers expressed concern that Ambassador John Bolton decided to sit down for an hour-long interview with Pamela Oshry, whose Atlas Shrugs blog is far outside the mainstream. In the past weeks, attention to Oshry has subsided. Her outrages have not.

In a post titled "How much is that Dhimmi Doggie in the Window"