The U.N. and American Business

I despise hypocrisy and double-standards. The nature of Americans is to seek fairness and justice. Many other cultures are far more tolerant of injustice, and accept different classes/castes of people like royalty and commoners, so they don’t understand our pre-occupation with trying to change the nature of our world. That comes from a moral flaw to Americans, to accept that injustice is the norm. Americans are less realistic; justice and fairness is an ideal to strive for — in our own hypocritical ways. We are the dissatisfied people that came here from other places to make things better, not just to make excuses for the status quo or about how “that’s just the way things are”. So we will fight for justice, fairness, abstract concepts like freedom, in order to make the world a better place — and many “old world” cultures will see as immature, and somewhat fanatical.

We realize that you can’t have perfect justice or fairness; and that all Justice is subjective. Is it fair that kids don’t have the same freedom as their parents? Not to the kids it isn’t. Is it fair that Women can’t build muscle as quickly as men, or that Men can’t have babies? Not to mention all the birth defects, disease, physical limitations, and so on, that we are born with? Some are born rich, others are born with abusive parents, not-so-great looks, or in nasty parts of the world/nation. Life isn’t fair. That being said, most Americans still want more fairness out of our government and legal system. We may not be able to control nature, but we can at least control our laws, our legislature and the way we interact with the world.

Now both sides tend to see the injustice, hypocrisy or flaws of “the other side” and ignore it in their allies or those that think like them. But I can’t stand excuses, and nothing tees me off like group-thinking herd mentality or political correctness (and partisanism) on either side. I don’t care if it is popular; either right or left leaning, I care if it is common sense or fair. No excuses for why inequity is more fair than equity; the ends doesn’t justify the means. Which finally brings me to my point. Let’s look at the United Nations and American Business.

If there was a CEO in the nation (in a publicly traded company) where his son worked at the company, and the Son got rich siphoning off shareholder money, and many of the other top executives were caught in all sorts of scandals, what do you think would happen? The Democrats and left, would be calling for the CEO’s head on a platter, and using it as an excuse to malign the evils of corporate America and the rich, and so on. However, the Republicans and right would not defend the CEO, they would correctly be calling for the head as well. Both sides agree that you should not have corrupt businessmen running companies. Once exposed, we nail their heads to the wall, so corruption tends not to be around for long. That’s the biggest lesson of Enron, WorldCom, and FineLiving or Martha Stewart Inc., these problems were found relatively quickly and fixed with Donald Trump’s hyper-efficient magic words, “you’re fired!” And later with the Justice Systems equivelent, “You’re Guilty!” I can guarantee you that the CEO, the Son, and many executives would be replaced, in a heartbeat, and there would be few defending those actions.

Now let’s look at the U.N. and Kofi Annan and his son (Kojo), and his executives, where the exact same thing happened, only worse. Too many are making excuses for why the U.N. is a good place, why the evil right shouldn’t pick on poor Kofi and Kojo. Kofi Annan didn’t know what his son was doing. I heard things like, “A top U.N. executive can’t know what all the people beneath him are doing”. Selective compassion that you sure did hear for poor Kenneth Lay or Bernard Ebbers; when in truth both of them probably run larger organizations (with far more complex accounting rules).

I hear many saying “we shouldn’t eliminate such a useless, er, useful organization as the U.N. just because of one mistake”. I have a few responses to that:

1) They ignore this is not one mistake; this is 60 years of not living up to their charter (name a single war the U.N. ever stopped), this is dozens of mistakes lately, this is oil-for-food which put 21+ Billion dollars into Saddam’s pocket (with the help of Jack Chirac’s friends), this is sex-scandals where in African you could only get U.N. food/aid if you’d have sex with U.N. aid workers, this is putting Khadaffi and Castro on the committee for human rights, and so on, and so forth.

2) Those same people (usually left wing extremists) are saying the exact opposite about any American businesses for far less. What is the definition of hypocrisy?

3) Most are not calling for the elimination of the U.N., so that is a strawman attack, they are calling for the CEO of the U.N.’s head, and complete reform of the organization — like they would any American Business caught in this many scandals.

If you’re in American business and you break the law or even the ethos/rules of the company (which are usually far more stringent than the law), then the company will come in, turn off your computer, escort you out of the company (the same day), help the government make a case against you (if you broke the law), they will take away your pension, and suit you for damages to the company (and it’s shareholders) and it’s reputation. If you’re in the U.N. and you break the law or ehtos/rules of the company, they’ll treat you like the catholic church treats sex-offending Preists. They’ll cover it up, obfuscate, make excuses, move you to another parish (division), and after 3 hail Mary’s, you’ve got absolution and are free to conduct your same old business like nothing happened.

So I don’t want to eliminate the U.N. over this. The U.N. does some good; they fed 25 million people, and they got involved in 16 conflicts last year. But Companies with corrupt leaders employ thousands of people and often do good as well. Heck, John Gotti and Al Capone gave freely to charity, but that doesn’t change that we took them out. So we need to force the U.N. behave by some standards, or stop paying 25% of their entire budget (not counting all the off balance sheet items we do, like sending our troops or using our equipment to fund their wars, our private organizations that do their jobs for them, and so on). So while I don’t want to eliminate the U.N., I would advocate that if they can’t reform themselves and won’t play by the same rules as American Business.

No more double standards; the U.N. either cleans up its act, or we seriously should look at eliminating it like we did the League of Nations, and hope that what replaces it is more effective. And we need to stop making excuses for the U.N. and call out the double-talking, double-standard spewing hypocrites for what they are. If you bash corruption in American business, you should be just as enthusiastic about far more rampant corruption and greed going on in the U.N. (Not making excuses because they mean well). I realize the rest of the world will see that as mean, trying to make people conform to standards and ethics. Or that we’re trying to impose our views on them, again. Or those silly Americans, trying to make the world “fair”. Tough. You want our money, then you deal with the terms that come with it. Justice is supposed to be blind; not stupid.