Alienate the World

Well, not content with the war in Iraq, the House Republicans have decided that there is more that they can do to piss off the rest of the world. In a moment reminiscent of the mid-1990s, when Jesse Helms led the Republican effort to de-fund the United Nations, House Republicans have passed a bill that would drastically cut funding to the U.N. if conditions are not met. On the whole, some of the conditions are not bad (whistle-blower protection, more transparency), but the Republicans seem unwilling to do anything in a multi-lateral way. Instead, they opt for aggressive unilateralism. What they do not appear to realize is that the U.N. is, at its core, a multi-lateral institution and therefore, if changes are going to be made to it, they have to be made multi-laterally. Most likely, the whole thing is a ploy to weaken the U.N. House Republicans sense (correctly, probably) that the U.N. will not make these changes just because the U.S. has decided to demand ransom money. What they hope will happen is that they will be able to flood the media in this country with talk of corruption (yet again, they bring up Oil-for-Food, but only in the context of Kofi Annan, not the American firms that were active partners with Saddam Hussein under the sanctions) and stubbornness by the rest of the world to try to build support within this country of cuttting off funding to the U.N. The rest of the world is sick of taking orders from the American government and Americans should be disgruntled (at least) that because of their government, they are seen by the rest of the world as pushy, bossy, arrogant, ignorant assholes.