("Whadda we need these mooks in New York for, anyway?")
This parenthetical attributed to an NYC cabbie…and possibly many others.
Every so often our Turtle Bay quadrant of the Big Apple is flooded with foreigners looking to achieve God-knows-what. Friggin' tourists! Last week, one hundred ninety two countries gathered for their semi-annual squabble. (My running count of attending nations is currently 192, give or take three or four Axis of Evil members.) Could this be worth the hassle?
Yes, it's worth it! Even Switzerland has joined! (They must've run out of Army knives.) It's worth it, even if all The UN can claim is that they stopped most of mankind from killing with nuclear bombs for half a decade! (Except for one guy named Harry.) The UN's mystical Security Council makes it so.
Only the Security Council can dispatch troops for war, or peacekeeping duties. For wary readers, I number fifteen nations holding seats on the almighty Security Council. Ten seats rotate amongst regions, which elect one country from their midst every two years; the five remaining seats go to us big-time nations with nukes. These five (America, England, France, China, and Russia) can veto any proposal they don't like. It's like a Tenth Avenue freeze-out! (See the Bruce Springsteen song of the same name.)
Now the United Nations new Secretary General, Ban-Ki-Moon of South Korea, will attempt to herd these thousands and thousands of strange cats from the JFK Airport and the mean streets of New York City, to the friendly confines of Turtle Bay and it's environs. Also, all the names and faces keep changing. Don't kid yourself, here at The United Nations Building, regime change is almost a weekly occurrence! (See Iraq, Afghanistan, and Myanmar.) You think your job is hard? Ban Ki wants to line up some support for renewing The Kyoto Treaty, before it expires in 2013. This should give him as much street cred as either 50 Cent or Ludacris.
But, The UN and its weird minions bring some bodacious baggage. Diplomats screw up regular traffic, regularly. Current and former UN officials have incurred enough in parking ticket fines to pay off the Iraq War debt. Or all the embezzled cash from the Oil for Food program. Well, maybe not that much! Lastly, some NewYorkers are getting really tired of every tinpot dictator and Supreme Leader bad-mouthing their city! (See Castro, Chavez, and Ahmadinejad.)
This begs the question: Should The US evict The UN?
Maybe we could put them on Governor's Island in Geneva? Maybe we could put them in those old nazi offices in Bonn, Germany? How about putting them on the International Space Station? You can bet there'd be no parking violation up there! Relocating The UN is a NO-brainer, if you don't count three critical factors:
1) Employees and officials spend over $300 million each year in the New York metro area. (Do you want to be the one to tell them the source of their money has been evicted? I don't!)
2) Even though having The UN in our country, and our richest city, is a real pain in the rear, America is a less likely government to try coercion or blackmail to achieve it's policies than anyone else. (That's our story, and we're sticking to it!)
3) When America withdrew from the League of Nations, The League and all of its good intentions collapsed. The rise of fascism and a fiery world war was unavoidable without this key diplomatic stopgap. America's freedom ensures The UN's freedom...ergo, the world's freedom.
So, for these reasons, most reasonable people should conclude that The UN should stay under America's protective wings, and continue to do whatever the heck it is they do, to make a better world for everyone. Even you and me! Whether we deserve it, or not. It's the right thing to do!
