This was the world I grew up in:
In his final address of the year, broadcast over United Nations Radio on 31 December 1953, Mr. Dag Hammarskjöld said:
"Our work for peace must begin within the private world of each one of us.
To build for man a world without fear, we must be without fear.
To build a world of justice, we must be just.
And how can we fight for liberty if we are not free in our own minds?
How can we ask others to sacrifice if we are not ready to do so?... Only in true surrender to the interest of all can we reach that strength and independence, that unity of purpose, that equity of judgment which are necessary if we are to measure up to our duty to the future, as men of a generation to whom the chance was given to build in time a world of peace."
(UN Press Release SG/360, December 22, 1953)
This was "reality" in the 1950's. The UN was created after two World Wars to be a forum and a structure that people who had seen the very worst of man's inhumanity and expected that with the coming nuclear age, that there was nothing to save us better than working together.
The learning process that brought us there has been denied and forgotten.
Whether right-wing United Nations haters (I hear you spewing on the wing-nut call-in talk programs) believe it or not, there is an historical reason and a purpose to the U.N. It admittedly doesn't always work as intended, but it is the best framework for peace that we have.
Should we scrap it for a Pat Robertson model plan?
And America, for the past thirty years or so (since Saint Ronnie put us on the road to fascism) is the big spoiled bully in the room, ruining the ballgame. We reject peace, we reject justice, we break treaties, we don't pay our bill, we refuse to even work with people who chose other economic systems than we've chosen, we refuse to join in anything that would benefit humanity if there is not a monetary payback in it for "us" (well, I mean our leaders and corporations - the majority of us are not invested in the schemes that make out so well.)
Dubya has insulted the U.N. for political advantage, his war prostitutes have lied from the podium, he has appointed the ugliest possible non-diplomat bully Bolton to be our representative. (He also refuses to join the ICC, the World Court, and he breaks the Geneva Conventions on Torture.)
Dubya has used the U.N. for the worst possible purpose, much as the right-wingnuts accuse other countries of doing.
The moment when I heard we had required that the copy of the painting of Picasso's Guernica in the UN general assembly was to be covered during the neocons' insane push to war, when we were lying our way to permission (that was never fully granted) to invade Iraq, I knew we had lost something as a people.
Why would a painting of the horror of a past fascist aggression be so dangerous, even if it had been momentarily caught by a camera focused on a General holding up a phony prop to make a point that we must invade an innocent bystander, and quickly?
One of our Torture Awareness Month partners, Human Rights Watch, has a page of links concerning the U.N. Human Rights Council that can keep us busy reading and writing all the month of June.
I know I don't follow all that is going on in this sphere, and should learn more.
The U.N. may not be the only answer to ending war and torture, but I have yet to hear one single U.N. basher come up with any nearly comparable ideas.
Oh yeah, that's right, silly me, I was thinking of finding a way to end war and torture! The fact is, they don't actually want to end war or torture.
It suits their purposes.
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