Washington, the moronic sugar-daddy

Way Past Time to get out of the UN! It is the kind of purgatory to best deposit Obama.  m/r

My argument is, if the UN is all we've got, then it is way past time to come up with something else. ~ Claudia Rosett

What America Really Needs To Do About the UN

By Claudia Rosett March 14, 2017

This week brings fresh reports that the Trump White House wants to slash funding to the United Nations, possibly by as much as 50%. That would be a wise move, and if that's what actually happens, it would be a good start and a welcome signal -- the first from an American president in many years -- that it is time for the UN to stop treating Washington as a moronic sugar-daddy. It is way past time for the UN (and Washington itself) to stop treating U.S. tax dollars as a multi-billion-dollar annual entitlement for the bigots and thug governments that so amply populate Turtle Bay. It is time for the U.S. to stop shelling out roughly $10 billion per year for the benefit of a UN in which, for instance, the member states have just elected -- I'm not kidding -- the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism,  Iran,  as head of the largest voting caucus at the UN assemblies in Vienna.

But behind any move to slash UN funding loom a number of questions. What, precisely, might America hope to achieve? Where can this go? If the aim is to reform the UN, is that even possible?

These are among the questions I address in a Broadside pamphlet published this week by Encounter Books, on "What To Do About the UN." 

The usual defense of the UN is that it may be "imperfect," but "it's all we've got" -- a refrain that tends to be accompanied by prescriptions for reforms that either won't stick, or won't work at all.

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