President Trump's UN speech attracted a fair amount of controversy among the chattering classes. It shouldn't have.
The United Nations has become a byword for useless, dysfunctional bureaucracy a mere 72 years after its founding.
Like Belshazzar's feast, it spends lavishly and conducts itself with opulence, but is rotted through with corruption and does little of any value while squatting in mordant self satisfaction.
Leave it to President Donald J. Trump to point out the wrong direction the UN has traveled since its founding in the aftermath of two devastating world wars, and to challenge it to change direction and become the force for good it was intended to be.
The president called for the UN and its members to reverse course, and to become what the UN was supposed to become on its inception...a group of sovereign, independent nations who prized freedom, democracy and peace and were willing to work together to promote them and to take action against rogue nations who threatened those ideals. If you read the original UN charter, you get a sense of just how far the UN today has removed itself from what it says.
Scandals like 'oil for food' where even the Secretary General's son was implicated in money laundering for Saddam Hussein to avoid UN sanctions abound. Countries like Iran routinely threaten genocide. And violate with impunity even UN Security Council series 7 resolutions like UNSC 1701, which called for the disarming of terrorist group Hezbollah and prohibiting UN members from rearming them. Iran and Syria rearmed Hezbollah without incurring any penalty whatsoever.
UN peacekeeping forces are more noted for trading food supplies for enforced prostitution, ignoring their supposed duties and allowing violence against civilians than for fulfilling their actual missions.
That's exactly why President Trump quoted Harry Truman, who stressed that the success of the United Nations depended on the “independent strength of its members.”
And unlike his predecessor, President Trump was unafraid to voice this simple truth;
“The United States of America,” Trump said, “has been among the greatest forces for good in the history of the world, and the greatest defenders of sovereignty, security, and prosperity for all.”
And our president was equally honest about confronting thoe rogue nations who threaten peace and security. He called out the disgusting regime of Kim Jong-un in North Korea, saying thatthe patience of the United States is great, but not inexhaustible. Asthe president explained, If North Korea persists in its policy of nuclear blackmail, the United States “will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea.” He continued: “Rocket Man is on a suicide mission for himself and for his regime.”
Needless to say, the Leftist press worldwide fainted away collectively at that. But what President Trump said was the simple truth. The same is true about what President Trump had to say about the equally rogue, criminal regime of Iran, one of the world's biggest sponsors of terrorism, a foe of America who was openly complicit in 9/11.
The UN's ignoring of the Iranian regime's march towards nuclear weapons is so ingrained that they aren't even making an attempt to have it look like they're doing something. Not only has Iran has prohibited the UN from any inspection of their military facilities where there's been clear indications of manufacturing and testing nuclear weapons components, but the IAEA, the UN's nuclear watchdog now allows Iran to self inspect their nuclear facilities that the UN is allowed to get a glimpse of. To accuse the IAEA and the UN of gross negligence whenit comes to Iran is a gross understatement.
You see, President Trump wasn't just giving a display of American resolve. This was a direct challenge to the UN, plain and simple. The UN, after all is supposed to be the forum where dangerous regimes like Iran and North Korea are supposed to be addressed and dealt with. While Trump was quite clear that America could handle these rogue regimes on their own, He said it would be far better if the UN actually did what it was supposed to do and dealt with these major threats to world peace. “If the righteous many do not confront the wicked few,” Trump said in another memorable line, “then evil will triumph.”
Trump even had the intestinal fortitude to address Socialism.
No ideology has ever been so discredited by the evidence of history, but like a serially cheating wife or husband still offers hope to a long suffering spouse that this time, it will really be different. Except, of course, it never is.
Trump used the UN's failure to address the human tragedy now going on in Venezuela, once one of the richest countries on earth where Maduro's socialist regime is literally starving its population to death. It wasn't so long ago the Barack Obama, Bernie Sanders and other Leftists were using Hugo Chavez and Venezuela as an example of how well socialism could work. Now, as the once rich country descends into poverty and chaos, they don't mention Venezuela any more.
“The problem in Venezuela,” Trump said, “is not that socialism has been poorly implemented, but that socialism has been faithfully implemented.”
So how did President Trump's speech go over? To most of the delegates of the UN, not very well. Being publicly unmasked like that is the last thing they wanted, let alone being challenged to make the UN what it was created to be. And of course, Trump's usual political enemies in the press and in the Democrat party went predictably ballistic. But as usual, the president has hit another bulls eye when it come to talking to the American people and to friends of freedom everywhere.
Speaking truth to power is a Leftist cliche', but that is exactly what President Trump's UN speech did, in one of his finest moments.
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