A failure of global proportions

Unaccountable. Scandal-ridden. Hostile to American interests and the cause of human freedom. A refuge for tyrants and their lackeys. Blindly, openly, chronically anti-Semitic. And the helpless, hapless witness to some of the worst genocides in history - the very kind of atrocities it was created to prevent.

This is your United Nations.

Why even belong to such an organization?

For the United States of America, the question goes even beyond that. Why fund more than 20 percent of its bloated, rat-hole administrative budget? Why spend billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars to provide an unwarranted forum for the likes of Hitler-wannna-be Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, or Castro-redux Hugo Chavez of Venezuela?

They ought to have to take their road shows, and the whole sorry U.N. lot, elsewhere. We can find a lot better use for that prime New York real estate.

By any and every measure, the United Nations is an abject failure, and a twisted insult to the noble and humanitarian foundation upon which it was built in 1945.

Eleanor Roosevelt, first head of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, said quite hopefully at the time that the U.N. Declaration on Human Rights "may well become the international Magna Carta of all men everywhere."

Sir Winston Churchill, however, warned of the United Nations that "We must make sure that its work is fruitful, that it is a reality and not a sham, that it is a force for action, and not merely a frothing of words, that it is a true temple of peace in which the shields of many nations can someday be hung up, and not merely a cockpit in a Tower of Babel."

It has become worse than that.

An organization that pledged in its charter to "reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small" now boasts the likes of Libya and Cuba as guardians of human rights. That alone is a world-class sham.

But perhaps the United Nations was doomed from the start. The Soviet Union, human history's largest and most ignominious prison, was installed as one of five veto-wielding permanent members of the U.N. Security Council - as were the fine folks who brought you Tiananmen Square.

And, rounding out the terrific trio, there's the ever-stalwart France.

Meanwhile, the Oil for Food program expressly intended to save Iraqis from deprivation under Saddam Hussein was systematically pilfered for millions.

This is an organization dedicated to "fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person ..."?

It would be a joke if the punch line were funny. But the United Nations' failures have left a trail of lifeless bodies and broken dreams.

The United Nations bungled the Israeli-Palestinian issue from the start, and has been zealously anti-Israel ever since. Indeed, the 2001 U.N. World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa, was nothing more than a hate-Israel rally. For a time, the United Nations even declared the very existence of Israel to be racist.

Fidel Castro imprisoned 75 pro-democracy activists in 2003 - just after Cuba was reappointed to the U.N. Commission on Human Rights.

Since Pol Pot's killing fields of Cambodia, U.N. peacekeepers have failed masses of murder victims in Africa and Europe, sometimes helping shuttle them to slaughter. Some argue the United Nations' failure in Somalia emboldened the Hutu killers in Rwanda to feel free to massacre thousands of Tutsis with machetes. The United Nations ran from that genocide, as well as from Milosevic's in the former Yugoslavia.

You might recognize the name of the head of U.N. peacekeepers during the massacre of 800,000 Tutsis. He's currently the secretary-general of the United Nations, Kofi Annan.

As tainted as he is, the organization he heads is the problem. And the problem began when the institution failed to live up to the ideals of human dignity and freedom it purports to stand on.

The problem is the membership.

"You cannot expect from dictators that their aim will be to make the life of their people dignified," says former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky, "so you cannot expect from the representatives of these dictators in the United Nations to work in order to bring dignity and freedom to this world."

"The rogues and terrorists and despots and dictators who run the show are not going to give up control," Jed Babbin, former undersecretary of defense, said in the documentary Broken Promises - The United Nations at 60. "And they outvote us and they veto things.

"You can't fix the U.N. because its members don't want it to be fixed."

Aside from the atrocities committed under the United Nations' nose - and the fact that some U.N. peacekeepers are, themselves, accused of raping women and girls - consider the money wasted: American financier Donald Trump once offered to manage the headquarters' renovation for free - and to save the United Nations $1 billion. He was turned down cold.

They don't care how they spend your money. They are accountable to no one.

Did you know there was a Democracy Caucus in the United Nations? Of course you didn't. Its voice is drowned out by the Hugo Chavezes.

Why should the United Nations even allow non-democratic members? Isn't that contrary to its charter?

Kim R. Holmes, assistant secretary for International Organization Affairs at the U.S. State Department, said in a 2004 speech that "We helped to create the United Nations, and we remain committed to it." The question is why? Even Holmes acknowledged in his remarks that the organization "suffers from what I call a democracy deficit" - and he talked plaintively of a "United Nations of democracies."

After 60 years of failures, genocides, scandals and the anti-democratic takeover of the existing United Nations, why is a United Nations of democracies only a pipe dream?