UNDER
A FALSE FLAG
In
addition to having the ear of the Times, Kristol the
Younger has his pulpit on ABC's This Week, where he
communes with Sam, Cokie and the two Georges (Will and Stephanopoulos),
and all agree that Pat and those dreadful "isolationists"
should just go away. But the truth is that this guy is a phony,
a fake, and a fraud who has been operating, all this time,
under a false flag. Recently, however, Kristol has come out
of the closet, so to speak, and revealed where he is really
coming from by adopting a position that completely isolates
him from his conservative brethren – he wants us to pay
our "debt" to the United Nations.
AN
ECCENTRIC "CONSERVATISM"
Now
I, for one, am not surprised. After all, what kind of a respectable
"conservative" would be pushing Colin Powell for
President? Kristol was one of the first to jump on that stalled
bandwagon. What kind of conservative cheerleads Clinton's
every war of conquest? Kristol and his fellow neocons threatened
to bolt the GOP if it wasn't more forthcoming in supporting
Clinton's bloody rape of Serbia. What respectable right-winger
would be caught dead pushing something called "national
greatness conservatism"? Yet this was the subject of
a pompous manifesto by Weekly Standard editorial writer
David Brooks. In an infamous article, Kristol and his intellectual
aide-de-camp Robert Kagan actually called for the U.S. to
establish a "benevolent world hegemony" – a
world government lorded over by the U.S. Whatever this crackbrained
utopianism might be called, "conservative" is not
a word that comes immediately to mind.
A
MYSTERY SOLVED
Now,
all of this might have been attributed to simple eccentricity
– but no longer. For now the final piece of the puzzle
falls into place and the mystery of Bill Kristol is finally
come unraveled in his defense of the UN, in an article entitled
"Time
to Pay Our Dues" [Weekly Standard, November
8, 1999], and I quote:
"For
all the faults of the UN, and for all the gamesmanship that
has surrounded the issue of how to force reforms on it, Republicans
and Democrats in fact agree that America should pay its bills.
The UN was, after all, established under American leadership
after World War II."
THE
AMERICANISM OF ALGER HISS
The
UN was "established under American leadership" only
if one counts Soviet spy Alger Hiss, who presided as Secretary
General over the first meeting of the UN General Assembly,
as an American. And is it really all that convincing to argue
that both parties agree on the alleged necessity of flushing
millions of dollars down the UN rathole? Since bipartisan
complicity in porkbarrel spending keeps most government programs
safe from the budget-cutter's axe, that the same mechanism
is working in this case is hardly surprising.
"SMARTS"
VERSUS PRINCIPLES
The
Standard urges Republicans to support the plan by Jesse
Helms that would pay U.S. "arrears" in return for
a number of "stringent reforms" of an unspecified
nature. This, they argue, "would show some political
smarts," and "deprive the Clinton administration
of one cheap, but sometimes effective, foreign policy debating
point." Completely ignored in this cynical political
calculation is the question of whether the U.S. does or does
not owe the UN a "debt."
NO
TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION
Here
is the reality: the U.S. is "assessed" (i.e. taxed)
by UN bureaucrats for a whopping 25 percent of the organization's
general budget. That is double the assessment of any
other nation. Japan pays 12.45 percent, the Brits fork up
8.93 percent, and nearly a hundred countries pay as little
as .01 percent. For having dared to suggest that the bloated
and arrogant UN bureaucracy be reformed and seriously trimmed,
the U.S. was thrown off the Advisory Committee on Administrative
and Budgetary Questions, which prepares the UN budget. Whatever
happened to the good old American slogan of "no taxation
without representation"? American taxpayers are robbed
of over $4 billion a year to fund the salaries of UN bureaucrats
who pay no taxes, flout our laws, and abuse our generosity.
I say: let them kick us out of the UN, as threatened. This
will give us the unmitigated pleasure of kicking them out
of their New York City headquarters – an eviction that
would bring cheer to any real conservative's heart.
IT
JUST AIN'T SO
The
lie that we are "cheating" the UN out of its rightful
due is the basic premise behind the Weekly Standard's
sorry excuse for an argument – but it just ain't so.
While the U.S. is assessed for 25 percent of the UN's general
fund, the price tag goes up when it comes to the UN's "peacekeeping"
(i.e. military) budget. This has expanded from $700 million
in 1990 to $3.5 billion today. We are assessed 31.7 percent
of the total, in spite of the fact that U.S. law limits our
contribution to 25 percent. And so what it boils down to is
a matter of sovereignty.
BY
WHAT AUTHORITY?
Whose
law shall be supreme in the land? Clintonians and neocons
together agree that the UN's Advisory Committee on Administrative
and Budgetary Questions trumps Congress, but I have a question
for them: by what authority?
THE
ILLUSION OF "REFORM"
The
idea that it is possible to "reform" the UN is something
that one expects to hear from the most earnestly naïve
liberals, the kind who think that we can chant our way to
World Peace: coming from the ostensible right side of the
political spectrum, this kind of mush is pretty hard to swallow.
The idea that a parasitic bureaucracy can possibly reform
itself has been proven wrong in the case of the U.S. –
what makes anyone think that it would work with an organization
of international moochers who depend on U.S. largess? As
Phyllis Schlafly points out: "The arrogant UN bureaucrats
didn't even pay lip service to reform until Rep. Joe Scarborough
(R-FL) introduced his bill called the 'United Nations Withdrawal
Act.' It would require the United States to withdraw from
the UN by the year 2000, while retaining membership in a few
independent agencies." The United Nations Withdrawal
Act – now there's a bill the title of which
warms the cockles of my right-wing isolationist heart!
THANKS
A LOT, JESSE!
When
Boutros-Boutros Ghali, the former UN Secretary General, dared
to let the cat out of the bag by openly calling for a global
income tax to support UN "peacekeeping" (i.e. warmaking),
the U.S. decided to get rid of him: he had become too much of
a political liability. But under Kofi Annan, BB's successor,
the dream of a UN tax is about to come true – ironically
thanks to none other than Senator Jesse Helms, the alleged
"isolationist, whose legislation represents a major breach
of American sovereignty. For if a version of the Helms bill
passes the House, the arbitrary "assessments" of
the UN bureaucracy have won out over American law – a
precedent that future generations of Americans may one day
remember as an infamous betrayal.
ABORTION
AND INTERNATIONALISM: AN UNHOLY ALLIANCE
In
the past, the debate in Congress has always been centered
around the issue of abortion funding: should U.S. tax dollars
go to subsidize Third World abortion mills? The answer is
obviously an emphatic no, but the issue, so narrowly
approached, cannot generate enough opposition. A more wide-ranging
critique of foreign aid in general, including aid to the UN,
could mobilize a broader coalition: pro-life forces need to
join up with noninterventionists of the left and the right
and expand the campaign to stop all foreign aid. Kristol and
the Weekly Standard wing of the War Party support the
UN because it is an instrument of Western imperialism, a useful
"humanitarian" cover for the Great Powers (led,
of course, by the U.S.) to assert their hegemony, while Planned
Parenthood and the abortion lobby use the UN to internationalize
and legitimize their activities. It is time to balance out
the equation.
LEFTISTS
WAKE UP
As
the UN incubates a fascist state in Kosovo, the ugly reality
of an aspiring World Government is becoming apparent to more
and more people all over the world. It used to be that UN-bashing
was the exclusive province of the so-called Far Right, but
during the Kosovo war – and especially in its aftermath
– leftists are waking up to the fact that the UN is an
instrument of the elites. Forget all the woozy-minded "we-are-the-world"-type
propaganda you've been fed all these years – the reality
is a UN-ruled Bosnia where media are closed down for criticizing
the military occupation.
NO
ILLUSIONS
Conservatives,
for their part, have had few illusions about the United Nations.
They know full well it was founded by a bunch of Commies and
socialists of one stripe or another, who banded together in
San Francisco – where else? – and decided it was
time to start building a world government. Ever since the
UN was founded, its bureaucracy has generated an avalanche
of proposals and official reports that would limit the rights
to property, speech, and association, abrogate the U.S. Constitution,
redistribute America's wealth on a global basis, and whittle
away our sovereignty. As the founder of "Conservatives for
the UN," Kristol is going to find himself a member of a very
small club.
THE
GOOD NEWS
The
Standard complains that "if House Republicans
now throw their support to the Helms legislation, they can
go a long way toward removing any taint of isolationism that
would make Americans question the party's fitness to govern."
I have news for Bill Kristol: foreign aid is not popular with
Americans, and the failure to give in to the UN's blackmail
would prove far more popular than Kristol and his cronies
are willing to admit. And I have more news for Kristol
& Co.: the Republicans, and conservatives in general,
are turning toward what is called "isolationism"
as inevitably and naturally as a flower turns its face to
the sun. When the House GOP voted against supporting Clinton's
war on Serbia, Kristol threatened to bolt the GOP, yet never
followed through. When will he wake up to the fact that most
conservatives, today, are isolationists? For then and
only then will he finally take off his Halloween costume and
reveal himself for what he is – just another Upper West
Side liberal.
FROM
WACO TO KOSOVO
Isolationism
is the post-cold war reality, at least on the right side of
the political spectrum, and Kristol had better get used to
it. Now that the mighty Soviet Union is imploded, conservatives
see that the main danger to liberty is not in the Kremlin,
or some other foreign capital, but right here in the capital
city of the good old USA. On the Right, connections are being
made: between a federal authority that feels free to murder
dissidents at Waco and a U.S. military unleashed against the
equally innocent and hapless people of Serbia, Iraq and the
Sudan. This is the silver lining in the dark fabric of the
past eight years, the one benefit of the crimes of Bill Clinton
– who has done more to educate conservatives as to the
evils of big government and global intervention than any conceivable
amount of propaganda. Only time will tell if this has been
too high a price to pay for enlightenment.
CATAPULTED
INTO THE MAINSTREAM
"By
approving the Helms plan," avers Kristol, "House
Republicans can make it clear that they are not the party
of Pat Buchanan, now safely and appropriately relegated to
the fringes of national politics." If they do that, this
will help Buchanan, not hurt him: selling out on the foreign
policy front will drive conservative Republican activists
into the Buchanan Brigades in droves, precisely because
the traditional conservative opposition to the UN finds no
expression in the GOP. Instead of relegating Pat to the "fringes
of American politics," as the Standard so disdainfully
puts it, the continued capitulation of the Republican Congress
to Clintonian demands – on such issues as the funding
of the Wye Accords between Israel and the PLO, as well as
the issue of UN dues – catapults him into the mainstream
and swells the ranks of the Buchananites. This is why the
Republican Establishment lives in mortal fear of Pitchfork
Pat.
RELAX
AND ENJOY IT
Well
then, let them tremble. They are paying the full price of
their arrogance. A specter is haunting Bill Kristol and his
tiny band of Republican internationalists – the specter
of Buchananism. So sit back, my fellow isolationists, and
watch the fun – this is going to be a very interesting
election year.
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