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Tower of Babble: How the United Nations Has Fueled Global Chaos

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"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."

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.

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.

This book was written by a former UN ambassador. But even though the words are diplomatic, it strongly criticizes the UN.

As Gold explains, The UN was originally the idea of Franklin Roosevelt, who in 1944 pictured a foursome of the US, Great Britain, China, and the Soviet Union policing the world. The idea then grew to include all other nations, both out of a proper sense of universality and a desire to avoid repeating the errors of the League of Nations. And the UN started out with a unity of purpose and a sense of moral clarity. It even passed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights!

But the UN's membership soon expanded to become dominated by authoritarian and totalitarian regimes. And the author clearly shows that the UN now makes global chaos even worse by siding with aggressors.

Gold shows where this trend began. In 1948, the UN was given two tests: to protect India from a Pakistani invasion of Kashmir and to protect Israel from an Arab invasion. It failed both tests, and it rewarded the aggressors. And that set a precedent. China invaded Tibet. North Korea invaded South Korea (this did trigger a UN response, but only when the Soviets refused to use their veto). The UN failed in the Congo, in Nigeria, North Borneo, Timor, and Hungary. In 1962, the failures became clear when even India learned its lesson, and decided to resolve its dispute with Goa by military force. And the author also tells about Arafat being allowed to come to the UN in 1974 and being applauded there. I think this was a key moment, and that the UN has supported terror ever since.

The author supplies some details about more recent UN misadventures, such as doing nothing to stop the murder of 800,000 Rwandans and allowing 7000 Bosnians to be murdered in UN "safe havens." And he explicitly lists the names of 46 terrorists who were students at UNRWA schools.

Gold makes some interesting points about the International Criminal Court. I hadn't realized that if a dictator were to slaughter minorities in his own nation, the ICC would have no jurisdiction, because the problem was national, not international. The ICC would have no authority to act against the dictator even if the US sent in troops. But it would have the authority to put the American troops and American leaders on trial for interfering!

The author demonstrates that we actually saw something just as arbitrary when Belgian courts threatened to put Ariel Sharon on trial for allowing Arabs to be murdered at Sabra and Shatilla, even though Israeli troops did not do the killing and even though Sharon did not find out about the killings until they were over. Meanwhile, Belgian troops serving as peacekeepers in Rwanda knew all about the Rwandan slaughters, which lasted for a hundred days, but no authority suggested putting any of them on trial.

Well, what does Gold advise us to do now? He suggests forming a coalition of democracies committed to common values and strategic purpose. And he advises us to bypass the UN. Even if the UN can be reformed, Gold says it will take a long time. Until then, warns the author, the UN must not be empowered. Yes, there are some democracies, such as France, that wish to "counterbalance" the US. But he feels that even France, once removed from its UN role, where it is tempted to say "I veto, therefore I am," might then improve its relations with the US.

This is an excellent book, and I highly recommend it.

This is a good book. It should be read together with Natan
Sharansky's "the Case for Democracy". Together, the two books
show what is wrong with the international system and how to
fix it.

The first thing that should be understood is that morality from
God is the basis for any real government. And morality must be
the basis for any relations between countries. The UN is evil
because its based on the false amoral notions of equality and
peace. Peace is a liberal fiction. There is always evil in the
world and evil must always be destroyed by the good. In fighting
wars with evil, virtue is developed in a people. Peace in the
sense of compromise with evil is the worst idea ever invented
in human history. The sooner people realize that the fight
against evil in the world will never end, the safer countries
like America will be.

Votes and councils are not what should drive intervention in
the dictatorships. Intervention is authorized by the morality
of the country that decides to take the action.

The book clear describes how the UN is on the side of the
terrorists, employes terrorists and has attempted to wreck
the war on terrorism. As has been said by our great men, your
either with America or your with the terrorists. The UN is
clearly and factually on the side of the terrorists.

Dore Gold also convincing describes the threat posed to America
by the leaders of the UN and the liberals in America who are
attempting to use it to create a one-world government. The
ideology of one-world-government is an anti-god abomination.
Gold describes the first phase of their plan which is setting
up international courts. The other parts of the plan he
doesn't describe. He doesn't tie in the UN's international
court with the liberals on the supreme court using foriegn law
in America. But one day if the liberals get their way with
these courts, we could wake up to find our leaders arrested
and the UN ruling an america without freedom.

He also explains how the UN encouraged and even supported
mass murder in other countries. And how the UN both enriched
its leaders and attempted to help Iraq with WMDs through the
oil for food program. The UN did everything in its power to
save Saddam and give WMDs to attack america with.

He also describes the long history of bad relations between the
UN and America's leaders. It was founded by the socialist
president FDR, but he died before he could hand rule of America
over to it. Most every president since then, with the
exception of the liberal traitor Jimmy Carter, has bypassed
the organization. None of them have had the courage to walk
away from it, but perhaps one day soon we will see Iraq,
Afghanistan, America and the colalition of the willing form a new
organization to spread freedom in the world in opposition to the
failed UN. Iraq is the central from in the war on freedom and
now that it has a free government Iraq will stand tall in the
world as a singular example of the power of freedom.

Dore Gold has boldly stated what many people have quietly discussed for years. Tower of Babble is impossible to put down and will be impossible to forget. Most frightening is coming to the realization that we are all pawns in political games of interest and that human lives are truly worth very little to the UN.
I will never be able to view conflicts in the world without wondering what covert deals are influencing its course and how many thousands upon thousands of lives are lost as a result of the UN's "neutral stance."
Dore Gold demonstrates so clearly that the UN has been repeatedly negligent at best and destructive at its worst. The UN will never be able to live up to its founding platform after WWII to never again allow for the mass destruction of people and its time we stopped believing in them at all.

In the introduction, the author shows that at least once in its existence the United Nations served the purpose it was created for. That was in 1990 when the Security Council took a stand against Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. Unfortunately, in every other instance it has failed, mostly spectacularly and often with tragic consequences. There were for example the peacekeeping disasters of Somalia 1993, Rwanda 1994, Srebrenica (Bosnia) 1995, Kosovo and Congo/Zaire. The last two crises flowed from the Bosnia and Rwanda disasters respectively. The refusal to confront evil is the major flaw of the UN. This refusal eventually morphed into collusion with evil, as the Oil For Food scandal demonstrates.

In chapter 2: Failure Foreshadowed, Gold discusses the birth of Israel in 1948 when there were no UN forces to withstand the Arab aggression. Likewise during The Kashmir War of the same year between India and Pakistan. Already the organization was betraying the vision of its founders by not acting against the aggressor. And from there it went downhill: Tibet followed in 1950, India annexed Goa in 1962 and many similar acts followed. Chapter 3: Cold War Freeze, looks at the North Korean invasion of the South in 1950, the 1956 Soviet invasion of Hungary and the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. The next chapter deals with the Six Day War of 1967 and Resolution 242. The UN remained passive and actually enabled the outbreak of war.

During the Iran-Iraq War that started in 1980, the UN again refused to condemn the aggressor and it did nothing about Saddam's 1987 chemical attacks on the Kurds. After the Gulf War, it again ignored genocide, this time against the Shia Muslims of Iraq. In chapter 6: Impartial To Genocide, the disturbing and heartbreaking events of the Rwandan genocide are recalled. General Romeo Dallaire warned the Dept of Peacekeeping Operations - then under Kofi Annan - of the impending horror, but the warning was ignored. In some instances, UN forces colluded with the mass murderers. The UN's inaction ultimately led to a regional war in Central Africa.

The next chapter deals with the tragedy of Srebrenica and the other supposed "safe havens" in Bosnia and shows the duplicity of the UN and certain European governments. Chapter 8 discusses the international criminal court, a highly politicised concept from the beginning, and one that cannot be expected to be objective. Chapter 9 provides proof of how the UN backs terrorists, with particular reference to the terrorist organization Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon and the many instances of collusion between it and the UN's UNIFIL force.

The author concludes that the major cause of these failures is the international body's moral equivalence. It does not distinguish between right and wrong, good and evil or victim and aggressor. Although he was responsible for the failure in Rwanda, Kofi Annan nevertheless became Secretary-General. The Oil For Food scandal and the underreported child sex abuse scandals have completely undermined the organization's legitimacy. It adopts numerous Anti-Israel resolutions every year but has for years ignored the genocide in Darfur. In fact the perpetrator Sudan was elected to its Human Rights Commission in 2004.

The 2001 UN Conference Against Racism in Durban was an openly Antisemitic hate fest. Unlike the EU or Africa, Israel is isolated in that it does not form part of a larger bloc, and it is always up against the Arabic and Islamic states. Although it has failed utterly to halt aggression and bring about a peaceful world order, the UN is still protected by the ideology of political correctness. Some of its agencies still perform good work, but overall the spiral is further downhill as documented in the Afterword with further revelations on Darfur, sexual abuse by UN peacekeepers, oil for food monies that went to terrorists and UN agencies infiltrated by terror groups. An example of the latter is UNRWA and its ties to Hamas.

The Appendix: The Paper Trail, provides evidence on various failures like Rwanda, Bosnia, Iraq, Oil For Food and UNRWA's ties to Hamas, mostly from the United Nations' own documents. There are extensive notes, acknowledgements and an index. The book includes maps of the Kashmir Dispute, Korean War, Cuban Missile Crisis, the Six-Day war, Rwanda, and its Neighbours, the Bosnian Conflict and Lebanon and Israel. There are also 17 black and white photographs of personalities and tragic evidence of the UN's failures. In addition to this valuable and informative book, I recommend The UN Gang by Pedro Sanjuan, Global Deception by Joseph Klein, The UN Exposed by Eric Shawn, Inside The Asylum by Jed Babbin and Nations United: How the United Nations Undermines Israel and the West by Alex Grobman.

Gold, a former Israeli ambassador to the U.N., writes a revealing account of U.N. incompetence, corruption and lack of judgement. The U.N. cannot make moral decisions about global actions. Therefore, its enforcement and moral standing is nonexistent. With imposed impartiality, it failed to act in Rwanda and Bosnia and even caused the murder of thousands in Srebrenica. Its member refuse to condemn such human rights abusers as China, Zimbabwe, Syria and Iran - while readily condemning Israel and the U.S. Take this book as a warning toward the implementation of contrivances like the International Criminal Court. Will the Chinese judge on the court vote to release Chinese dissidents? Unlikely that they will tackle thorny and needed issues.

The author, after making an earth-shaking exposure of the corruption and greedy deeds of these evil organization, ends up with a tepid note of hope. It just doesn't make any sense. "Money-for-Food" they called it, when they had been fooling the whole free world (the West) by pocketing millions themselves and their club of world dictators. Is this hope inspiring? Refusing to prevent, or do anything to stop, the killing of hundred of thousands of black Africans in Rwanda, and getting away with it? So many, mind you: so many, many issues that have gone practically unnoticed since the end of WWII that are calling for the close-down of this modern day Babylon.

This book picks the most important scandals around the world and exposes them in an easy to understand language. The facts are naked, you put the adjectives. Do we need any more evidence to call this gang a state-sponsored mafia? Will Amazon let me publish this review in my second try? How can Iran be one of the countries to tell us what human rights should be?

A must read to know what we are contributing to with our money.

The book exposes the United Nations for what it is, Nothing. Nothing but A playground for Leftists, Communists and all of the Bottom dwellers of society. about it's "moral equivalency" and Neutral everything when it comes to mass murder: Pol Pot,Stalin Etc. How it did not solve The Kashmir problem with India and Pakistan and how it claims it's for Human rights but turns the other cheek when push comes to shove. The UN? It's a Joke, and This book only reinforces it and from A Insider.