“Indispensable, if imperfect,” is how President Obama’s envoy to the United Nations, Susan Rice, has described the UN. If you accept the “indispensable” part of that phrase (and after years of watching the UN in action, I don’t), that still leaves the question of just how “imperfect” the UN has become. Since the advent of Obama’s presidency, the U.S. has been ever more willing to tolerate the imperfections. Oversight by the U.S. Mission appears to have pretty much dried up, U.S. security interests get no real traction at the UN Security Council, U.S. tax dollars keep gushing in, and America keeps trying to place at the center of its foreign policy an institution where the majority would rather spend time and U.S. tax dollars on projects such as outlawing free speech and enlisting quack science to control the world economy in the name of fine-tuning the weather to the second decimal point.
Could it be that one of the imperfections aggravating this process is the performance of Ambassador Rice herself?
So argues Richard Grenell, a former spokesman of the U.S. Mission to the UN, who served under four ambassadors during the Bush administration. Grenell makes a compelling case — which caught my eye thanks to a post on NRO’s Corner by Brett Schaefer of the Heritage Foundation. Schaefer highlights some of Grenell’s arguments, and concludes that “it appears that not even Ambassador Rice takes the U.N. seriously enough to try to make it work.” In Grenell’s article itself, worth reading in full — “Where Has Susan Rice, Our UN Ambassador, Been This Past Year?” – we get quite a tour of the lapses, failings and sheer irresponsibility of current U.S. administration dealings with the UN. He notes there is no more effort to control the UN’s sky-rocketing budget (which dips into U.S. wallets for roughly one-quarter of its funding), and no evident follow-up to matters symbolized by such items as $200,000 spent by a UN agency on renovating a guest house. He also points out that the old red-white-and-blue colors of the web site for the U.S. Mission to the UN have been transformed under Rice to UN blue, with a big UN logo (and a little American flag).
But the main thrust of Grenell’s piece is that Rice herself, despite all her talk about the importance of the UN, has been largely awol from Turtle Bay. She commutes between her penthouse in New York’s Waldorf-Astoria Hotel and Washington, D.C. — where Grenell says she has the largest office and staff of any U.S. ambassador in UN history. She has been missing at many Security Council meetings on important issues, including some on Iran, as well as the recent vote to add more UN peacekeepers in Haiti. But she finds time to go “regularly” to White House social functions, including holiday parties and the White House Halloween Party, for which she dressed up in a Walt Disney “Goofy” costume.
I’m sure the Goofy costume was all in good fun, and Grenell says Rice is the life of the party. But his article might just leave you wondering if Americans would be better off with Goofy himself representing America at the UN.
Claudia,
I saw this yesterday on the Fox site:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,583670,00.html?test=latestnews
It sounds like a plan by the UN to subject our scientific research to the social justice ethic, and it sounds terrible.
Do you have any more on this?
Thank you Ms. Rosett for your continued scrutiny of the UN. Lord knows very little of their corrupt practices ever seems to be covered in the mainstream press.
You are a candle in the darkness. And they are rare. Thank you once again.
Does anyone in our government really believe the United Nations is or ever will be an effective & necessary world organization that can &/or will produce enough of a positive effect on any issue, that it is worth the huge sums of money that is currently invested in it, each & every year?
The World Health Organization’s proposal mentioned by another poster, represents another in the now long list of efforts by UN bureaucrats & other internationalist types groups & organizations, to enrich efforts conducted by the UN or any of its affiliated organizations. Basically, that report represents another in the now incredibly long list of proposals by what many of us here in America refer to as ‘world government socialists’ whose purpose always seems to be, “SEND MORE MONEY” & by the way, do not ask us how we spend it or to account for any of our expenditures, plus never ask us to be held accountable for any of our myriad failures!
The UN is by far, the largest drain on international money, dumped into an organization whose list of failures, and yes, even their long list of what many of us call illegal or criminal contrivances, & based on their abysmal record on successful operations, there is no reason to participate in any of their plans for world governance of anything.
The “LAST” thing we in America need, is a UN body seeking to establish world health standards. Lets face it, these guys cannot manage their own headquarters building in New York. Permitting them to display their ineptness at managing health care, globally or nation by nation, could be seen as equivalent to suicide.
That the Obama administration’s ambassador does not take her function seriously & that the administration fails to follow up on UN governance today, indicates another of the failures of the concepts of socialism. These guys sink money into anything, permit oversight or authority to anyone other than ‘the people’, & then they suggest the reason there are so many problems is the free market & in some Obama administrations view, America’s constitutional government that oppresses people!
What bunk!
Great job once again Ms. Rosett! Thanks!
Claudia, I took the liberty of citing you in regards to the reporting you have done on the IMF and the World bank, so my apologies for the delay in letting you know.
What you might find interesting is an exchange between the British and Canadian Prime Ministers who were in Paris after the end of the First World War. That exchange can be found here: D. Lloyd George, War Memoirs, volume 4, page 1754, House of Lords Record Office, Lloyd George Papers, F/5/2/28, Borden to Lloyd George, 23.11.18
When you have the more successful members of the British Commonwealth with a common defense
and foreign policy (which is what DLG had in mind for the British Empire) and currency, and
in concert with those countries which were behind the iron curtain (and those European countries which border the Mediterranean Sea,
plus Portugal), a more effective way would be
found, than the UN, to ensure geopolitical stability.