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What he has done for the Democrat party, the president might have done for the United Nations. He has now given us the reason and opportunity to kick that festering sore out of the country. Roger Simon thinks the Prez’s vendetta is a good kick off for the Trump administration to start defunding the cesspool that is the UN. And the headquarters? Perhaps Donald Trump has some ideas for what could be done with the building.
We live in a world of unintended consequences and Barack Obama, in his overwhelming zeal to exact last-minute personal vengeance on Bibi Netanyahu in particular and Israel in general with Friday’s Security Council vote, opened the door to the defunding and serious diminution of the United Nations itself.
Donald Trump — who is seeking to spend a ton of taxpayer money on rebuilding our military and infrastructure — is undoubtedly looking for places to save. Nowhere would be better to start than that moribund center of international corruption and megaphone for tin-pot dictators, the United Nations. …
… why is Samantha Power, our current UN ambassador and putatively an expert in genocide, spending her time criticizing largely peaceful Israeli settlements while, just a few hundred miles away, soldiers of Iran’s Republican Guard are gunning down women and children in the streets of Aleppo in true genocidal fashion? Hypocritical? Oh, well, that’s Iran — Obama’s protected class.
Enough already!
Donald, you’re on. You were able to negotiate with Carrier, Boeing, and Lockheed, so these clowns shouldn’t be all that difficult. Although, in this case, it would be useful to negotiate the entire institution out of existence, or at least impoverish it to the degree it will have to decamp from Manhattan and leave that pricey TurtleBay real estate for better purposes. (I understand there’s a lot of empty space in Yemen.) And — just think — it would get rid of all those double-parking, cheapskate diplomats cluttering New York streets! They don’t even pay their parking tickets.
I wouldn’t doubt you would have all your deplorables solidly behind you in this negotiation/defunding and a lot more of the country as well, once they get full knowledge of exactly how much we’re actually paying for this insanity. As with most things, they haven’t been told by our media, who have no interest in informing the public on anything that might disrupt their narrative.
If ever some tweets were called for, this is it. Go to it, Donald. Scare the pants off them now. You made a good start when you tweeted, “As to the U.N., things will be different after Jan. 20th.”
Paul Mirengoff of Power Line linked to an essay by Anne Bayefsky.
The vicious condemnation of Israel at the UN Security Council on December 23, 2016 is a watershed moment in U.S.-UN relations – albeit not as President Obama hoped. Following the vote of fourteen in favor and one American abstention, Palestinian representative Riyadh Mansour and American Ambassador Samantha Power exchanged a telling handshake. Evidently, President Obama believes that he has put one over on Israel, Prime Minister Netanyahu and the incoming Trump administration. But here’s another possibility: treachery at the UN will not be cost free. …
… At its core, this UN move is a head-on assault on American democracy. President Obama knew full well he did not have Congressional support for the Iran deal, so he went straight to the Security Council first. Likewise, he knew that there would have been overwhelming Congressional opposition to this resolution, so he carefully planned his stealth attack.
He waited until Congress was not in session. Members of his administration made periodic suggestions that nothing had been decided. There were occasional head fakes that he was “leaning” against it. He produced smiling photo-ops from a Hawaiian golf course with no obvious major foreign policy moves minutes away. Holiday time-outs were in full-swing across the country. And then he pounced, giving Israel virtually no notice of his intent not to veto.
Profound betrayal of a true democratic friend of the United States is the only possible description. …
… The Security Council and President Obama leave a trail of devastation across the planet, with evil empowered and good forsaken. But their record does not have to be our future. Today’s vote reminds us of what it takes for evil to triumph.
Doing nothing is not an option for our new President and our incoming Congress. The time has come to undertake an urgent and full review of America’s relationship to the United Nations, and to suspend financial support until that review can identify how best to use American dollars in the interests of peace, security and human dignity. The perfidy of Barack Obama will not be the last word.
And WSJ Editors weigh in.
The decision by the United States to abstain from a United Nations Security Council resolution condemning Israel over its settlements on the West Bank is one of the most significant, defining moments of the Obama Presidency.
It defines this President’s extraordinary ability to transform matters of public policy into personal pique at adversaries. …
… Mr. Obama’s animus toward Prime Minister Netanyahu is well known. Apparently Mr. Obama took it as an affront that the President-elect would express an opinion about this week’s U.N. resolution.
It is important, though, to see this U.S. abstention as more significant than merely Mr. Obama’s petulance. What it reveals clearly is the Obama Administration’s animus against the state of Israel itself. No longer needing Jewish votes, Mr. Obama was free, finally, to punish the Jewish state in a way no previous President has done.
No effort to rescind the resolution, which calls the settlements a violation of “international law,” will succeed because of Russia’s and China’s vetoes.
Instead, the resolution will live on as Barack Obama’s cat’s paw, offering support in every European capital, international institution and U.S. university campus to bully Israel with the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. …