Probably everyone has had the experience of speaking words spontaneously and unexpectedly that can never be recalled. Sometimes they are a truth that was better left unsaid; sometimes they are an unfortunate choice of words that were misunderstood. But no apologies, no pleadings, no later clarifications or explanations can ever erase the original words.
“Get the U.S. out of the UN” has been on bumper stickers for three decades. Even as the UN has gone on its merry way, indulging wildly in its extravagance and its anti-Americanism. But someone recently, in diplomatic words, in effect blurted out the words, “Get the UN out of the U.S.,” and it struck a responsive chord all over the country.
Poor Larry Speakes has been trying to say that this was not “a White House-approved statement,” that it did not represent “new policy,” and that the words were the “personal view” of the diplomat who uttered them. But no White House press release could drown out the “amens” echoing all over the country.
Of course, the beleaguered U.S. official at the UN didn’t talk in the sloganeering language of the anti-UN activist. What the American delegate Charles M. Lichtenstein said was: If the Soviet delegate “or any other member wish to propose that the UN get out of the U.S., I wish to assure you that my Government will put no impediment in your way.”
Continuing, Mr. Lichtenstein said, “If in the judicious determination of the members of the United Nations, they feel they were not welcome and treated with the hospitality consideration that is their due, the United States strongly encourages member states to seriously consider removing themselves and this organization from the soil of the United States. We will put no impediment in your way, and we will be dockside bidding you a farewell as you set off into the sunset.”
The unusually heated U.S.-USSR exchange was touched off by the Soviet delegate’s complaining about the fact that New York and New Jersey denied Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko the right to land his plane. This was a non-issue, since the U.S. Government stood ready to give him full landing privileges and diplomatic courtesies a few miles away at convenient, commodious McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey.
The Soviets got angry at this minor inconvenience, and Gromyko used it as an excuse to announce that he would not attend this UN session. It is obvious that the real reason Gromyko is not showing up at this UN session had nothing to do with whether his plane landed at McGuire or at JFK airport.
Gromyko chickened out on this UN session because he did not want to face the tongue-lashing that was in store for him from Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick. And who can blame him? Does any bad boy look forward to a bawling out from his teacher?
If Gromyko stood before the UN and blandly denied Soviet responsibility for the downing of Korean Air Lines flight #007, Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick just might remind the world television audience that one of Gromyko’s more famous lies was the day he sat in the Oval Office with President John F. Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 and poker-facedly denied that any Russian missiles were in Cuba. President Kennedy at that very time had the pictures of the Russian missiles sitting in his desk drawer.
The Soviets have misused and abused our hospitality in New York for 40 years. They park illegally; they ignore bills and legal summons; they scoff at lawsuits; they walk away from criminal charges; they act with the arrogance of royal immunity.
Why do we put up with this? The United States pays 25 percent of the UN budget, which was $722 million last year and will be $784 million this year.
Yet most of the Soviet personnel are spies or KGB agents.
