The United Nations — An Enemy in Our Midst
The 50th Anniversary of the United Nations should be a cause for mourning not celebration. It is a monument to foolish hopes, embarrassing compromises, betrayal of our servicemen, and a steady stream of insults to our nation. It is a Trojan Horse that carries the enemy into our midst and lures Americans to ride under alien insignia to fight and die in faraway lands.
How could anything good be expected of an organization whose organizing Secretary General, presiding at the San Francisco conference in 1945, was the convicted spy-perjurer Alger Hiss? He was also the principal author of the UN Charter, which was drafted at the Dumbarton Oaks Conference. How could anything good be expected after a deal between Roosevelt and Stalin at the 1945 Yalta Conference gave three votes to the Soviet Union and only one to every other country?
The UN was marketed to Americans as the vehicle to keep world peace. Funny thing, the admission ticket to UN membership was having declared war against Germany and Japan.
The Great United Nations War, a.k.a. the Korean police action of 1950-53, taught Americans the tragic meaning of the phrase “no-win war.” It’s no wonder we couldn’t win it (despite the brilliance of General Douglas MacArthur and the courage of 54,246 U.S. soldiers who paid with their lives) when the number-two UN official, the Secretary of Political and Security Council Affairs, was one Soviet Communist after another. The secret deal that a Communist would always hold this UN position with authority over all UN military, political and nuclear questions had been made between Secretary of State Edward Stettinius (when Alger Hiss was his adviser) and Molotov in London in 1945, and was revealed in the book In the Cause of Peace, written by the second UN Secretary General, Trygve Lie (pp. 45-46).
As the years went on, the UN continued as a headquarters for Soviet espionage and a platform from which the U.S.S.R. could spread its subversive propaganda. UN credentials were the convenient “cover” for traveling back and forth between the United States and the Soviet Union.
The extravagant lifestyle of UN bureaucrats and employees and their tax-free salaries and benefits were, of course, mostly funded by the U.S. taxpayers. The conniving politicians from tiny countries used the UN as a conduit to bleed the U.S. taxpayers for money sent, not to their poverty-stricken populations, but to the ruling clique of cutthroats who had killed off their opposition.
The UN spawned a score of auxiliary agencies run by devious demagogues who dreamed up ever more exotic ways of spending U.S. dollars. UNESCO, which even had the effrontery to write curricula for U.S. schools, finally achieved a level of official corruption so egregious that the Reagan Administration pulled the United States out of it altogether.
The United Nations is constantly demanding that the United States sign and ratify more international treaties. Every one is a dagger pointed at our American Bill of Rights, our unique concept of federalism, and our national sovereignty.
For example, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child would authorize a UN bureaucracy to supervise the relationship between parents and children under the excuse of protecting the rights of the child. Signed this year by the Clinton Administration and aggressively lobbied by the tax-exempt Children’s Defense Fund (formerly chaired by Hillary Rodham Clinton), this treaty is a broadside attack on the rights of all Americans and should be rejected by the U.S. Senate.
By 1990, the UN had become a laughing-stock, a sideshow where anti-American autocrats from around the world were paid plush salaries to insult the United States. Unfortunately, President George Bush rehabilitated the UN’s reputation with his Gulf War and his rhetoric about the “New World Order.”
Now the UN and the Clinton Administration have been trying hard to get us into several foreign wars as a means of turning the UN into an international establishment that will field its own military forces. The UN and the Clinton Administration are using international women’s conferences (e.g., Cairo, Copenhagen, Beijing, and next year’s in Istanbul) to give the UN its separate power to tax and thereby assure its separate flow of revenues.
Clinton talks glibly about UN “peacekeeping” operations, but he deploys our troops to foreign lands where there is no peace to keep and “peacekeepers” are used to fight wars. The United States has no business engaging our military forces in the fights in Bosnia, Somalia, Rwanda or Haiti. UN “peacekeeping” operations now cost over $3 billion a year, while our U.S. armed forces are subordinated to foreign commanders and foreign rules of engagement.
That’s obviously a Bill Clinton goal, which he set forth in his still-secret Presidential Decision Directive 25. That’s obviously a UN goal, whose overpaid bureaucrats seek to set up the United Nations as a world government with its own police force and its own taxing authority.
But that’s not what Americans want. Fifty years is plenty of time to experiment with the UN charade. It’s time to cut our losses and pull out before the UN does anymore damage to America.
What Master Do U.S. Servicemen Serve?
“No man can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other.”
So what master do U.S. servicemen serve: the U.S. Constitution or the United Nations Charter? The U.S. Army is trying to repeal the Biblical truism and tell our soldiers: Wear the red-white-and-blue U.S. Flag on the subordinate left arm, the blue UN insignia on the senior right arm, and cap it off with the UN blue helmet or the UN blue beret.
For at least three years in the Balkans and elsewhere, the U.S. Army has been quietly pursuing the practice of requiring American soldiers to wear these UN uniforms. Now, one brave soldier has had the temerity to dissent.
U.S. Army Specialist E-4 Michael G. New, a medic with the Third Infantry Division, is facing court martial for the offense of disobeying the Army’s order to “appear in United Nations uniform” instead of his U.S. Army uniform.
The order to New is one implementation of Presidential Decision Directive 25 (PDD 25), in which Bill Clinton asserted his authority “to place U.S. forces under the operational control of a foreign commander.” The Clinton Administration has kept PDD 25 a secret document under lock and key, but the State Department “summary,” dated May 1994, contains enough information to enable us to challenge its constitutionality.
On August 21, New’s Army commanders informed him that he would soon be ordered to Macedonia as part of a UN “peacekeeping” operation, for which he would be required to wear the blue UN helmet and the blue UN arm band with UN insignia. These changes are meaningful and important; if they were not, then refusing to wear them would not result in a court-martial with the possible punishment of imprisonment or bad conduct discharge.
Incidentally, the force to be detailed to Macedonia is led by a commander from Finland, and the UN Under Secretary General in charge of the peacekeeping operation in the Balkans (get this!) is an Iraqi, Ismat Kittani.
Specialist New refused to wear the UN uniform. He says, “I took an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic. My Army enlistment oath is to the Constitution. I cannot find any reference to the United Nations in that oath.”
New has consistently stated that he will obey all lawful orders, but he questions the legality of orders which he believes would transfer him from a volunteer American soldier under the American Constitution into an involuntary mercenary soldier under the United Nations. Under the U.S. Army’s Rules of Engagement for the UN “peacekeeping” operation, our U.S. forces are specifically defined as “United Nations personnel.”
New requested a full and complete legal justification for the orders he received, but he has not received any written response from the Army. He asserts that, “without a response from the Army about the justification, it is difficult if not impossible to judge the legality of any orders to become a UN soldier, and in the face of any doubt, I do not intend to surrender my status as an American soldier to wear the uniform of a foreign power.”
Specialist New’s service record proves that he is the kind of young man we hope will volunteer for the U.S. armed services. He has had an exceptionally exemplary military record throughout his 2-1/2 years of service, serving six weeks in Kuwait, and receiving several commendations and recommendations. New was decorated with the Army Achievement Medal for saving the eyesight of a soldier injured when training ammunition exploded. On another occasion, New saved the life of a fellow soldier during a training emergency in California.
In his written statement to his superiors, New said, “I am not trying to avoid a difficult or dangerous assignment or to get out of the Army. I served in Kuwait last year and have offered to serve anywhere in the world, in my American uniform, in the capacity as a U.S. Army medic under American command and U.S. constitutional protections.”
“I simply cannot understand the legal basis of the Army order to change my uniform,” New continued, “and, thus, shift or alter my status and allegiance against my oath of enlistment, my conscience and against my will. Despite my requests for information up my chain of command, my questions about the justification and, thus, the lawfulness of such an order or about how my allegiance can be transferred to the UN without my approval have gone unanswered.”
When American soldiers were killed over Iraq, Vice President Al Gore told the widows and orphans of those men that they “died in the service of the United Nations.” That wasn’t a slip of the tongue; his words reveal the Clinton Administration’s plan to use our armed forces as UN mercenaries all over the world at the whim of UN bureaucrats.
Specialist New has raised the flag of patriotism against the Clinton-Gore goal. Michael New’s trial is our battle, if we care about America.
Global Taxes for Global Entitlements?
“It’s not sustainable for member states to enjoy representation without taxation,” Prime Minister John Major told the United Nations at its 50th birthday celebration. He thought he was demonstrating British wit in making a play on the great slogan of the American Revolution. We are not amused.
The United Nations has a big problem: the tax-cutting Republican Congress is disinclined to continue financing those overpaid foreign bureaucrats in the lavish style to which they have become accustomed. So their solution is to impose a global tax that would produce billions or even trillions of dollars without any Congressional action.
The so-called Independent Commission on Population and Quality of Life has issued a report listing dozens of innovative global devices to tax people, corporations, and international business activities. These include taxes on aviation traffic and freight, ocean freight and cruises, aviation fuel, telecommunications frequencies, communications satellites, international postal items, and trade in goods and services.
The global tax idea was first publicly launched at the UN World Summit for Social Development, held in Copenhagen, Denmark, in March 1995. James G. Speth, the Clinton-appointed head of the UN Development Program, called for a global tax on speculative movements of international funds, the consumption of non-renewable energy, environmental permits, and the arms trade.
James Tobin, 1981 Nobel Prize winner in Economics, has called for a tax on spot transactions in foreign exchange. The UN bureaucrats are licking their chops at Tobin’s prediction that “the revenue potential is immense, over $1.5 trillion a year.” They are now enthusiastically using Tobin’s prestige to advocate what they call the “Tobin tax.”
The Commission on Global Governance, a “private” group with government and foundation funding, published a volume this year entitled “Our Global Neighborhood.” Stating that “it is time for a consensus on global taxation for servicing the needs of the global neighborhood,” this report calls for taxes on flight-lanes, sea lanes, and ocean fishing areas. The report also brags that “the idea of safeguarding and managing the global commons, particularly those related to the physical environment, is now widely accepted. And the notion of expanding the role of the United Nations is now accepted in relation to military security.”
Another model for a global tax is hidden in the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, a UN treaty the Clinton Administration is trying to get the Senate to ratify. This treaty sets up a global taxing authority called the International Seabed Authority to collect fees and royalties imposed on American mining firms.
An outfit called Worldwatch Institute issued a report this year called “Partnership for the Planet.” It calls for a global tax to finance “the transition to a sustainable society — including environmental programs, social initiatives, and peacekeeping efforts.”
At the same time that the new Republican Congress is trying to put a lid on welfare and Medicare entitlements, the UN is planning to saddle U.S. taxpayers with global entitlements. The Oxfam Poverty Report proclaims that “international aid should be seen as a financial entitlement, and as part of a compact between citizens in the industrial and developing worlds.”
UN bureaucrats and advocates must be having lots of fun dreaming up ways to tax Americans to support their notions of “global neighborhood” and “sustainable human development.” The Ford Foundation produced a study last year called “Renewing the United Nations System,” which advocates an annual “United Nations lottery, administered by a special authority under the Secretary-General.”
The Ford Foundation also financed a report called “The United Nations in Its Second Half-Century,” which calls for allowing the UN to have Special Drawing Rights from the International Monetary Fund. Rationalized as a “levy on the utilization of the global commons,” this proposal would enable the UN to bypass Congress in accessing U.S. taxpayers’ money.
Other wealthy liberal foundations that have helped orchestrate the demand for a global tax include the MacArthur and Carnegie Foundations. The World Federalist Association, now headed by former presidential candidate John B. Anderson, weighs in with a recommendation for UN taxes on international travel and postal service.
Bella Abzug, who was so visible in the recent UN Women’s Conference in Beijing, also serves as a member of the advisory council of the Global Commission to Fund the United Nations. It comes as no surprise that she endorses global taxes as a way to finance and enforce the radical feminist agenda that she presented at the UN conferences on population and women’s issues.
Americans had better wake up and expel the UN before it succeeds in any of its arrogant global taxing plans. The United Nations has absolutely no right or authority to tax people or businesses or transactions. Congress should conduct an investigation of all plans for a UN global tax, making use of the excellent materials on this subject uncovered by researcher Cliff Kincaid.
The Lifesaver Bomb
The 50th anniversary of the dropping of the atom bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 was supposed to make us all hang our heads in shame. The Smithsonian Institution tried to lay a guilt trip on all Americans by a display about the B-29 that carried the bomb, the Enola Gay, and the liberal and pacifist press followed with a torrent of breastbeating.
Newsweek featured pages of ugly pictures accompanied by a poll reporting that Americans now think dropping the bomb on Japan was “wrong.” But the poll demographics tell a different story. The senior citizens whose lives were on the line in World War II approve of the bombing, while the younger generations that don’t remember World War II have the luxury of sanctimonious second-guessing.
For the men who fought World War II, the atom bomb was a lifesaver in every meaning of the word. Dropping the bomb on Hiroshima meant the difference between life and death to hundreds of thousands of our best and brightest young men. Dropping the atom bomb on Hiroshima meant that those fine young American men could come home, grow up to live normal lives, marry and raise families, instead of dying a tortured death 5,000 miles away. The lucky ones would have had identifiable graves.
What the Hiroshima bomb accomplished was to preempt General George Marshall’s horrendous plan to defeat Japan: an island-by-island invasion at a projected cost of a half million American deaths.
The first phase, called Operation Olympic, would have sent 650,000 American servicemen starting November 1, 1945 to try to capture the island of Kyushu. It would have been a slaughter because the Japanese were prepared to defend Kyushu with 540,000 troops and 5,000 kamikaze planes.
The follow-up invasion, called Operation Coronet, was scheduled to start the drive toward Tokyo on March 1, 1946. U.S. plans projected an invasion force of two million men.
Marshall couldn’t have had any illusions about the hideous human cost of such an island-by-island invasion. Iwo Jima had given us a preview. On February 19, 1945, 30,000 Marines landed on that little five-mile island, and five days later planted the U.S. flag, an event immortalized in the most famous war photograph in all history. When the Iwo Jima battle ended a month later, the price we had paid for raising our flag was 26,000 casualties including more than 6,800 dead (including three of the six men in the photograph).
Japanese soldiers were tough fighters. Under orders not to be captured alive, only 1,000 were taken prisoner while 22,000 died defending Iwo Jima.
With those kinds of casualty figures, only a reckless disregard of American lives could cause a U.S. leader to send American troops to invade Japanese home islands. But that was George Marshall’s plan, even though he knew from the coded messages we had intercepted that Japan planned to defend its home islands with 2.3 million troops, another four million Army and Navy employees, and an armed militia of 28 million, all sworn to fight to the death.
The term “Marshall Plan” has gone into the history books as the title of post-World War II foreign aid, and perennial advocates of sending U.S. taxpayers’ money and jobs overseas have hung a halo around the man and the plan. In truth, when we hear the term “Marshall Plan,” we should always think of Marshall’s horrendous, unnecessary, costly plan to sacrifice American and Japanese lives in an island-by-island invasion. Hiroshima saved us from Marshall’s folly.
Admiral William D. Leahy, Truman’s military adviser, predicted that 30 to 35 percent of U.S. soldiers would be killed or wounded during the first 30 days of an invasion of Japan. The Hiroshima bomb saved those lives, as well as those of about 400,000 Allied prisoners of war and civilian detainees held by the Japanese, whom Japan had planned to execute in the event of an American invasion.
President Harry (the buck stops here) Truman didn’t have any difficulty making the atom bomb decision, and he shouldn’t have. He told reporters in 1947 that “I didn’t have any doubts at the time” because the decision saved 250,000 to 500,000 American lives.
“I’d do it again,” Truman said in 1956. In 1962, he added, “I knew I’d done the right thing.”
Nor did other Americans at the time have any qualms about the loss of life in the country that had started the war with a sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. During World War II, Newsweek cheered the fact that “perhaps one million persons were made homeless” by our firebombing of Tokyo.
The argument is made today that we should not have dropped the bomb because “Japan was already seeking to surrender.” In an interview with veteran journalist Philip Clarke in 1962, Truman answered, “The bombs were dropped after Japan had been warned that we had discovered the greatest explosive in the history of the world and then we asked them to surrender. They did not do it.”
Japan didn’t even surrender after the Hiroshima bomb was dropped. It took the second atom bomb at Nagasaki, three days later, to induce Japan to surrender.
Instead of being haunted by the ghosts of Hiroshima, Americans today should remember the American heroes of Iwo Jima, Guadalcanal, Midway, and Okinawa, and rejoice that the survivors of those bloody battles lived to come home to America instead of being killed on the beaches of Japan.
