I had read about the U.S. losing its seat on the U.N. Commission on Human Rights. And I thought it was both good and bad. Good because the U.S. needs to be shaken off its moral high horse every now and then, and because of the various reasons that jasona listed. Bad because there are countries on the Commission who are...well, if we were on a moral high horse, they're gleefully wallowing in a moral cesspit.
Ultimately, though, I was bound to forget about it. Like 90% of the Americans who even knew about the event. Maybe 90% is a bit too conservative a figure.
But jasona got me to thinking, and so I decided to see if anyone else was paying attention. My first stop was cnn.com, and right there on the front page was this story: "House will vote to punish U.N. over Human Rights seat". Oh, great.
House Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas, said the
U.N.'s treatment of the United States is "grotesquely
incomprehensible."
"The idea that the United Nations would take the United
States off the Commission on Human Rights while they
leave Sudan, the world's worst perpetrator, on the
commission," he said. "It's just mind-boggling."
Ok, I agree that having Sudan on the Human Rights Commission is a clear case of leaving the fox to guard the henhouse, but I don't think this issue is "grotesquely incomprehensible." Especially when, in the next paragraph, the article has the Defense Secretary explaining that this happened because those pesky foreign countries are pissy about the way Bush's administration wiped their buttocks with the Kyoto agreement [grinds teeth] and plan to build a national missile defense [cracking sounds can be heard].
Foxnews.com had nothing about this issue. Which I find strange, since this story should appeal to Fox's conservative bent. Maybe they just hadn't heard about it yet.
So, how are we going to punish the bad ol' U.N.? Why, by withholding the money that we owe them, of course! (Although it seems that we owe them a mere $244 million at this point, so they should be happy they got what they did out of us.)
So, we're not going to pay the U.N. because they didn't vote the way we want them to vote. Uh, does this seem incredibly childish to anyone but me? Are we going to take our ball away at the same time? If we go and piss off a very large number of countries, OF COURSE they're going to do things like this! Go and anger a lot of people, and they might become a wee bit vindictive; maybe, just maybe, they won't be as supportive of you as they were in the past. And not paying the U.N. certainly isn't going to help matters. Wouldn't members of Congress, of all people, understand this concept? If we're going to insist on remaining polluting, missile-happy, parsimonious bastards, then we should damn well expect the rest of the world to take out their frustration in any way that they can. And golly, maybe snubbing restrictions on pollution and building orbital weapons platforms makes us slightly less fit to lecture other countries on their human rights abuses. Obviously, slavery, rampant child labor, and military-backed brutality are terrible things; but here in the U.S., we go for the big, expensive methods.
Remember, Bush is a uniter, not a divider. Unless you're a godless foreign bastard who dares to voice your displeasure with the U.S. Then your ass is gonna be well and truly divided, buddy.