--- In [EMAIL PROTECTED], "Charlie Bell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
> Um... "a compromise". Can I just see if I get this
straight...
>
> US doesn't pay what it agrees to pay towards the UN,
> to the tune of several
> hundred million dollars...
>
> Eventually, US says "If we pay half that will you be
happy?"
>
> This is good?
I am not here to debate the merits of the US not
paying its debts to the UN.
What I am saying is that there is a *very* large and
powerful isolationist faction in the United States.
This faction has had sufficient power in our Republic
(we do still agree that Republics are a good thing,
right?) to block payment of the US arrears to the UN.
A substantial minority of this isolationist faction
goes so far as to advocate the US abandoning the UN
altogether.
Those of us in the United States who *do* support
active engagement by the US with the rest of the
world, have just recently, after years of effort,
managed to broker a compromise with the isolationist
to get the United States paid in full.
The rest of the World, *especially* the Europeans,
however, immediately took this occasion of compromise
in the United States to try and bolster the stock of
the isolationists as much as possible. The
isolationists have been saying that the UN is an
anti-American organization, and that the rest of the
World basically loathes us. The engagment camp, on
the other hand, has beena arguing that the UN is a
powerful force for peace, democracy, and human rights
in the world. Furthermore, engagement of the rest of
the world increases our security and prosperity by
spreading democracy, liberty, and free trade. Of
course, just as the engagement camp starts winning
this debate in the United States, the Europeans almost
immediately decided to screw us over.
So, as an advocate of engagement, what am I supposed
to do when the isolationists say "We told you so?"
How am I supposed to argue that the Europeans are our
partners in making the World a better place after the
pull a stunt like that?
The truth of the matter is that the more Europeans
gratuitously attack America, the more damage they do
to their own interest in keeping America engaged with
the rest of the world....
> Seperate issue. Say the US is involved in 90% of the
> funding of the UN
> (assuming for the moment that the US has paid her
bills...)
> Why should the
> US be on more than 90% of the commitees?
If such a scenario were accurate, I would simply note
that not a single UN Committee could possibly hope to
have funding for its programs without the support of
the United States.
Skipping ahead for a moment:
> Two-way conversation is incredibly
> difficult when the President of the USA come to
visit
> Europe and says "I
> refuse to discuss X Y Z".
You mean like refusing to discuss any other method to
counter Global Warming except for punitive
restrictions on emissions by the United States?
And finally:
> Anyway, while the US refuses to even discuss
abolition of
> the death penalty,
> she has no place on a human rights commission.
I am going to try very hard not to flame you here, but
I am positively seething at the insulting nature of
this comment.
1) Just a week or two ago, I thought we had
established to everyone's satisfaction that while the
UN opposes the death penalty, it does not consider the
matter part of "human rights."
2) The following countries are members of the UNHCHR
through 2003:
Algeria, Cameroon, Cuba, DR Congo, Guatemala, India,
Kenya, Libya, Malaysia, Peru, Russia, Saudi Arabia,
Syria, Vietnam
Your assertion that the US's record on Human Rights
makes it unworthy of sitting on a Commission with the
above States, is deeply insulting.
Do you think that China (up for re-election in 2002)
is more deserving of a spot on the UNHCHR than the
USA?
How about France, which will happily refrain from
critizing your country's human rights so long as you
give exclusive contracts to French companies?
So, exactly what standards are you using here? Or is
it simply the standard of "Anybody But America?"
> It's not the dumping the of the treaty that pissed
everyone
> off. It was the
> unilateral dumping of the treaty, without offering
any form of other
> suggestion, compromise, or even forewarning.
No forewarning??????
The US Senate voted 99-0 against the Treaty. I don't
know how things work in Europe, but here in the United
States, new laws must be approved by the elected
representatives of the people. These representatives
voted 99-0 against those laws.
If the Europeans did not see this as a fore-warning,
then they are simply willfully ignoring the American
democratic process - and I have no sympathy for
willful ignorance. Moreover, a 99-0 landslide hardly
suggests to any reasonable person that there is room
for compromise, and instead suggests that a fresh
start is needed.
As near as I can tell the major difference between the
rest of the World and the United States is that we
actually take our Treaties seriously. Not a single
European country has ratified Kyoto, nor is it readily
apparent how a single European country could even
manage compliance with Kyoto, yet that hasn't stopped
them from taking pot-shots at the United States for
having to courage to simply declare that yes, the
emperor has no clothes, and Kyoto has been dead for
years.
Likewise, take the sanctimonious outrage the Europeans
regularly call up regarding the UN Convention on the
Rights of the Child. Europeans just *love* getting
self-righteous over the fact that the only two UN
Members to not ratify the UNCRC are the USA and
Somalia (which until recently has not had a govt. to
ratify *anything*.)
Of course, if this sanctimonious outrage was taken
seriously, you would think that children in the United
States are somehow worse off than children in China,
Congo, Afghanistan, or Saudi Arabia. That conclusion
is, of course, ludicrous - and points out the
fundamental dishonesty of the Europeans' argument.
The United States has not ratified the Treaty, and
will not Ratify the Treaty, as the UNCRC accords far
more pseudo-"rights" to children than is reasonably
justifiable in our national experience. Implementing
the UNCRC would require wholesale revisions to our
system of governance, which given the relatively
excellent state of our children, hardly seems
justifiable. Moreover, given the sheer volume of
times this argument is repeated by Europeans, it can
only be concluded that they somehow consider it
preferable to ratify the UNCRC with absolutely no
intention of implementing it (as in the case of many
nations) than to simply not ratify it and take
reasonably good care of one's children.
This conclusion strongly suggests a great deal of
hypocrisy on the part of the Europeans, and an
underlying deep-seeded desire to score cheap debating
points against America whenever possibly. Neither
reflects very well on the Europeans at all.
For all the resentment various Europeans on this list
have recently heaped on American tourists for our
inability to conform to European cultural norms,
Europeans seem to have an equally ingrained inability
to understand American culture, instead choosing to
heap calumny on Americans in every instance where we
don't act like Europeans. I'm not exactly sure who or
what this intolerance of the differences between
American and European culture benefits, but I do know
that it hurts the great many people of the world that
would stand to benefit so much from an
American-European partnership to protect democracy,
liberty, and human rights in the world at large.
JDG
=====
John D. Giorgis
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Takoma Park, MD
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Spot the hottest trends in music, movies, and more.
http://buzz.yahoo.com/
