What “meaningless children’s causes” are you refering to in UNICEF?

WHO does massive amounts of work to fight malaria so i dont now how you think they do not.

You say WHO’s anti-tobacco work is “fashionable” and a distraction from ‘real’ work. Smoking is the second biggest cause of death in the world every year- it would be a bit odd, dont you think, if the World’s Health Orginsation didnt try to address that, no?

Once upon a time, UNICEF was basically a charitable agency that helped keep children alive. Ever since the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child, it has become an ideological front group that promotes meaningless “children’s causes” in lieu of practical measures to save children. In that same time period, child mortality reductions in the region of greatest need, sub-Saharan Africa, have lagged far behind those in other regions, and rates have actually increased in some areas (http://www.dfid.gov.uk/pubs/files/mdg-factsheets/childmortalityfactsheet.pdf ; also a good editorial in the Lancet – hardly a right-wing mouthpiece – December 2004).

Likewise, the WHO, rather than focusing its resources on eradication of malaria – still by far the greatest worldwide health threat, especially in developing countries – promotes a political agenda targeted at helping third-world countries take on…cigarette companies. This accomplishes basically nothing in terms of health, but it is fashionable enough to make for good fundraising.

I could go on about the UNDP, the World Bank, etc., but the principle is the same: while there may be pockets of good, the UN in all its manifestations is a huge collective, granted immunity from criticism and reform under its “we are the world” banner. The real work of humanitarian aid and economic opportunity gets done by churches, private organizations, and – gasp – capitalist entrepreneurs. To the extent that the UN co-opts, drives out, or creates a moral exemption for this kind of work, it is a big, world-wide negative. Let’s give it our worst.

If nothing else confirms the general thinking of this blog-syndicate then your last sentence does. That a preference to rogue states with nukes to even your myopic view of America is openly stated calls into question the maturity of all those you seem to consider your developed brethren.

America will go to hell if it ever elevates itself to the mental Tower of Babel that is current in European thinking. Maybe next time you’ll dupe the Chinese into rebuilding your continent for you.

Save your schoolyard critique for your educational equals in your own weight class.

Bolton was a disaster.

I’m all for the US getting out of the UN….and getting off the world stage altogether. I’ll take my chances with rogue nations with nukes rather than having to deal with 300 million fat, undereducated, mean-spirited blowhards who’ve long been the laughing stock of the developed world.

You exactly prove my point- just as the left wing are incapable of believing that Bush can do anything right; in the same way you seem incapable of seeing any good that the UN does i.e. UN organised the first elections in Iraq post-saddam, millions of children’s lives saved by UNICEF, millions kept alive through WFP food each year etc. etc.

John Bolton’s diplomatic incompetence sabotaged United States goals and policy at the UN. He was the best friend Castro, Chavez and Ahmadinejad ever had in Turtle Bay. He should have been fired long ago.