U.N. corruption: Don't mend it; end it
WASHINGTON -- The ongoing scandal over the Oil-for-Food program should cause Americans to ask the following question, Libertarians say: Why is the government funding the United Nations in the first place?
"No one should be surprised that the Oil-for-Food program has been used to grease the palms of corrupt politicians," said Libertarian Party Executive Director Joseph Seehusen. "Waste and fraud have long been rampant in the UN bureaucracy. The real scandal is that U.S. politicians aren't even considering pulling the plug on UN funding."
Allegations that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein managed to siphon $10 billion from the Oil-for-Food program and funnel payments to hundreds of corrupt government officials and contractors have roiled the UN bureaucracy, sparked demands for the resignation of the secretary-general and prompted a congressional investigation.
But Libertarians have a better solution for UN corruption: End it; don't mend it.
"Republicans and Democrats can't even root out corruption in the halls of Congress, much less in the bowels of a far-flung international agency," Seehusen said. "Here are five good reasons to pull out of the UN immediately":
(1) The UN is the mother of all bloated, corrupt bureaucracies.
According to the Cato Institute's Handbook for Congress, which urges withholding all payments until the UN shows a commitment to reform, the agency is "a miasma of corruption beset by inefficiency, Kafkaesque bureaucracy, and misconceived programs."
A recent audit found $16.8 million in outright fraud and waste, including nearly $4 million in cash that was stolen from UN offices in Mogadishu, Somalia; a project director of the Relief and Works Agency who personally pocketed $100,000; and hundreds of employees who receive monthly rent subsidies of $3,800.
In addition, personnel costs eat up a whopping 70 percent of the agency's operating expenses, and former Secretary-General Boutros-Ghali admitted to the Washington Post that "half of the UN work force does nothing useful."
(2) Forcing U.S. taxpayers to subsidize foreign nations is wrong in principle.
"Foreign aid is one of the least popular government programs, with good reason," Seehusen said. "Most Americans rightly resent it when politicians ship their money overseas to finance welfare programs that are even more wasteful and corrupt than the ones Congress has created here at home."
(3) UN funds are used to prop up foreign dictators.
"Take just one example: Saddam Hussein," Seehusen pointed out. "The Oil-for-Food program funneled over $67 billion to the Iraqi government between 1997 and 2002, helping to pay for the weapons that Saddam used to slaughter both his own people and some of the U.S. troops that invaded Iraq."
Other groups that benefited from Saddam's largesse, according to an April 21 Heritage Foundation study, include the communist parties of Russia and the Ukraine; the PLO; and government officials in Syria and Lebanon.
(4) The UN has failed at its most basic mission: preventing war.
In Somalia, Bosnia and other conflicts, the agency's record is "a chronicle of failure," according to Cato, which says UN peacekeepers tend to "become a party to the conflict rather than to preserve its impartiality."
(5) The UN is anti-American.
"The 185-member General Assembly is dominated by non-Western states that routinely bash the United States, even though Americans pay 22 percent of the agency's budget," Seehusen said. "These anti-American zealots love to bite the hand that feeds them -- and Congress responds by continuing to fork over your money.
"Instead of pretending to be surprised by corruption in the Oil-for-Food program, Congress should prevent the next inevitable UN scandal by eliminating funding altogether."
<a href='http://www.lp.org/press/archive.php?function=view&record=684' target='_blank'>http://www.lp.org/press/archive.php?functi...view&record=684</a>
