Most Helpful Customer Reviews
46 of 50 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Unequivocal condemnation, January 31, 2005
This review is from: Tower of Babble: How the United Nations Has Fueled Global Chaos (Hardcover)
"The UN is protected by a very high wall of political correctness," writes Dore Gold, "that makes criticism of it tantamount to an attack on all of mankind. But it is high time to recognize that it has utterly failed to achieve its founders' goals: to halt aggression and assure world order." This is the conclusion that Mr. Gold, author of "Hatred's Kingdom" and Israeli Ambassador the UN from 1997 to 1999, reaches after examining the UN's record. Mr. Gold's grand narrative of failure begins in the beginning and ends in the end. His indictment of the United Nations comes even before the Cold War supposedly paralyzed it (the initial tests, writes Mr. Gold, were the first Arab-Israeli War and the first war between India and Pakistan over Kashmir) and lasts until the UN's failure to deal with Saddam Hussein, terrorism and WMD. In between are failures to deal with aggression, either across states or within them. What is refreshing is that Mr. Gold has refrained from simply barraging the UN with its failures. Rather, he has identified certain trends that explain why the UN fails either when expressing the collective will of its members or when acting with its own mind. For Mr. Gold, the primary failure of the UN is its lost moral clarity; the UN founding fathers set up a system where evil existed and ought to be resisted. From the beginning, however, this clarity subsided-there are no aggressors and victims for the UN, writes Mr. Gold, just "warring parties"; and there is no cause and effect, just a "cycles of violence." This happens to avoid compromising the UN's most cherished ideal: impartiality. Even if it means standing idle to aggression, standing by evil. In extremis, this lost moral clarity leads to moral equivalence-refusing to acknowledge that some party to a war might be more at fault than others, refraining from condemning outright violence, and seeking nonsensical explanations to justify armed struggle and even terrorism. This is tied to the proliferation of UN states that do not share the Western respect for democracy and human rights. As long as the UN reflects the aggregate of so many dictatorships, it is inevitable that it will lack either the political will or the political clout to punish those states with deviant behavior; "ultimately," writes Mr. Gold, "the UN's biggest problem is that it no longer establishes any firm standards of behavior for UN member states." The result, to name the most extreme example, is countries like Libya and Sudan being on the Human Rights Commission. If this is the failure of the UN as a collective body, then unaccountability is the failure of the UN as an organization. That Kofi Annan, head of UN's Department of Peacekeeping Operations during Rwanda and Srebrenica, was promoted to Secretary-General is only the most obvious evidence of an organization unwilling to punish its staff. This evidence, Mr. Gold continues, runs off to the accusations made against UN peacekeepers in Cambodia, East Timor, Mozambique, Bosnia, Ethiopia and Eritrea for their unethical and often egregious behavior, to say nothing of the oil-for-food program that the UN administered in Iraq. Mr. Gold's summation is reflected in Sweden's Per Ahlmark remark that the UN has become "an institution in which no shortcoming, it seems, goes unrewarded." In all, Mr. Gold's unequivocal condemnation is a welcome break from the constant adulation and non-critical glorification that the UN receives in many countries across the world. At the same time, it not clear how and whether Mr. Gold's alternative, a community of democracies that is united by values and purpose, would operate. His coalition to fight terrorism, for example, would include Turkey, a notorious human rights abuser. And it is not clear for how long this democratic alliance would sustain converging views on who is the aggressor and who is the victim without resorting to the instinctive reaction of trying to mend fences rather than point fingers of blame. All the same, if there is a case to be made against the United Nations as it exists today, then that case is well contained in the "Tower of Babble."
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
99 of 115 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
United Nations: Shifting Ideology, Misplaced Power, November 16, 2004
This review is from: Tower of Babble: How the United Nations Has Fueled Global Chaos (Hardcover)
The "Tower of Babbel" delineates the history of the United Nations from its inception to present day (latter half of 2004). The Author, Mr. Dore Gold, served as an ambassador to the United Nations (UN) representing the State of Israel from 1997 through 1999. This professional association has allowed Mr. Gold to be an eyewitness to the flaws and failures of the UN, which are at once eroding and challenging the original concept of human dignity and freedom from oppression, upon which the UN was founded. From the ashes of the League of Nations which failed to maintain peace and deter tyrants, as evidenced with the horrors of the Nazi regime; the ennobling concept of the UN was envisioned. Established at the conclusion of World War II, the mandate of the UN was to prevent despotism, maintain individual human rights, and strive for universal peace. The "four policemen" of the world: the USA, China, Russia, and Great Britain, were to be the backbone of the UN. In time, as other nations were admitted, the erosion of moral clarity in the UN became prevalent. The "Tower of Babbel" demonstrates through historical record how the UN repeatedly failed to liberate the oppressed. As despotic regimes were admitted, the emphasis on the rights of the individual over the state subtly shifted to the rights of the state over the individual. An organization created to prevent oppression devolved into a defender of oppressive groups and countries, almost from its infancy. The first two major tests of the moral authority of the UN proved abject failures when the UN refused to do anything to prevent the outbreak of the first Arab-Israeli war, as well as a conflict between India and Pakistan around the same time. This was to be just the beginning of an astonishingly long record of not only failure to stop wars of aggression, but even to become an ally to the aggressor. Where clear moral behavior was to be the standard, the UN avoids taking a stance insisting instead on "objectivity." The very organization founded on the need for moral clarity in the world prefers to place the criminal on the same level as the victim. Indeed, the UN has so often demanded "moral neutrality" of itself that this mantra has written the death certificate of countless humans, even nations. The book identifies UN objectivity and neutrality as nothing less than pure immorality. It is precisely this `objectivity' that has ensured the genocide of the Darfur region of the Sudan, the creation of Palestinian refugees in the first Arab-Israeli war (not to mention 570,000 Jewish refugees from hostile Arab states), horror in Kashmir, the subjugation of Tibet, and the use of brute force to fuse new states in the Third World. The official - and even encouraged - seating of terror states, such as Syria, on the UN's Security Council marries the formal and official approval of state-sponsored terrorism to the denigration of humanity. Included in the appendix of Mr. Gold's book are numerous documents evidencing and establishing the "paper trail" of moral zigzags and 180 degree turns effected by the UN to accommodate and justify its partnership with terror and despotism. The original "Charter," the UN's deviation and eventual bastardization of its mission, its overt support of terrorist groups and regimes, its penalization of victims and reward system for aggressors are laid-out in an easily understood manner to the reader. What needs to take place to bring the UN back to its original mandate is likewise considered. Those who are unaware that the current Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, feels that sovereign states must receive UN approval before defending their own citizens and interest should read this book to more clearly see how each country in the world remains threatened by the dark underbelly of the UN. Those who are aware of the manner in which terrorist organizations and terror-supporting states have hijacked the UN should read this book to deepen their understanding of the mechanisms at work against individual liberty, dignity even individual right to life. Those who desire a better understanding of the dangerous course the UN is pursuing, as well as an understanding of what can be done to bring the UN back from the brink of world chaos, owe it to themselves - and future generations of humankind - to read this insightful treatise on how the protector of freedom and individual rights has become, instead, the enabler of tyranny, defender of genocide, and global affront to all that is valued as decent and good.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
30 of 34 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
All that you ever did not want to know about the U.N., January 9, 2005
This review is from: Tower of Babble: How the United Nations Has Fueled Global Chaos (Hardcover)
On one particular issue I for many years knew of the negative role of the U.N. that is in its one-sided anti- Israel bias- and its use of UNRWA to exacerbate the Palestinian Arab refugee problem instead of working to reasonably solve it. But this book provides a deep and thorough understanding of how the U.N. which was founded at a moment of international ' moral clarity' has degenerated into a major source of conflict and problem on the world- scene. Gold writes of how the Allies after the Second World War thought to found an organization which would help promote world- peace. Originally the only members allowed to join were those who had contributed to the war- effort against Nazi Germany and Japan. Churchill even wanted the organization to be called ' The Allied Nations' but the name United Nations was chosen. The organization almost from the outset failed in its peace- keeping tasks both in the Arab states invasion of Israel and the India- Pakistan War. Gold shows how this pattern of failure has persisted . And even more troublingly he shows how the U.N. has contributed to mass murder, including that of eight-hundred thousand Tutsis in Ruanda, and in the enclave of Sbrenica. UN peacekeepers insisted on their 'neutrality' and in fact sided with aggressors in these instances. Aside from the case studies Gold outlines the fundamental moral and ideological failings of the organization. He shows how it tends to side with aggressors, with anti- democratic regimes, with totalitarian tyrannies. He shows how the US has repeatedly been forced to bypass the UN in order to forward its own efforts at democracy. The exception to this was the first Gulf War when President Bush did forge a UN backed coalition against Saddam. But in the Second Gulf War this option was no longer possible, and George Bush Jr. had to go it with his own limited coalition. Gold also writes about the UN failure to prevent nuclear proliferation. Pakistan and North Korea have become nuclear powers in part because of the negligence of the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency. At present Iran seems to be on the same path of duping the UN agency , though there is far more publicity around the Iranian case than there was around the Pakistani and North Korean. The UN is presently under fire for the ' oil for food ' kickback scandal in which major UN officials have been implicated. Gold however says that the conclusive proof in regard to the guilt of specific individuals in this particular affair has not yet been conclusively given. As he understands it Gold holds little hope that the UN will contribute to world- peace in the near- future. He does not however advocate the US withdrawing from the organization as he believes that would only cause a backlash against the U.S. He believes an alternative organization of allied powers might however be able to bypass the UN on critical issues. The UN he shows to be a corrupt organization ruled by anti- democratic forces whose large majority guarantees a difficult future for those who care about human liberty . He too indicates that the powers of China,and Russia in the Security Council guarantee that major free- world initiatives will always be stifled. This book is very clearly written but in a sense it is difficult to read. This is because its message is so harsh and troublesome. Mankind's major organization in political terms works against the best interests, the freedom, the human dignity of mankind as a whole. I nonetheless would highly recommend it as providing a real understanding of this organization's role in the world.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
|
