Inside the Asylum: Why the United Nations and Old Europe Are Worse Than You Think

Rating:
Summary: A short but valuable book
Review: This is an excellent book that everyone ought to read. It points out that although for the UN to work, "it must be a serious forum for debate and decision," it instead "corrupts debate by giving propaganda a dignity it could never otherwise achieve." In addition, this book encourages the US to "take direct action against UN organizations such as UNRWA (which is a front for terror) that do active harm."

Still, I feel that the author may be in error when he says that John Kerry, if elected, would "put American foreign policy at the mercy of the United Nations." After all, the UN is a problem for liberals, moderates, and conservatives, for Republicans and Democrats alike. I think it would have been more appropriate simply to encourage both parties to help counter it. And I think that the author's own recommendation to build on growing disillusion with the UN could help do this.

Rating:
Summary: Empirical evidence -like it or not
Review: When you see a book with a provacative title like this, the first thought usually is, what axe is he grinding(?) If you are truly a moderate and don't mind putting together 2 and 2 even if it doesn't fit the model you have created in your mind, then read this book. The evidence is indeed empirical. Why has the UN behaved the way it has for the last 20 years? Why does there always seem to be an edge of hostility from the UN, depite Americas best intentions and past proof of the worthiness of our actions? Read and find out. It explains a lot.

Rating:
Summary: A Short but Worthwhile Expose of the U.N.
Review: With the intense argument over the rightness of the invasion of Iraq, Kofi Anan's recent comment about the "illegality" of the campaign and the inability of the United Nations to take positive steps to arrest the mass murder going on in Darfur, in the Sudan, the august body that sits on New York's East River is back on the front pages of the newspaper again. Is the United Nations a force for good, a shining light of international cooperation or is it a corrupt, ineffectual enterprise that often makes the world's problems worse?
Jed Babbin - a former Undersecretary of Defense in the first Bush administration - has written "Inside the Asylum" as a jeremiad, an indictment of the United Nations and its policies. It is an articulate book, but not a long examination of the U.N. and its manifold failures, but a summary of the charges that critics have leveled at the organization for decades, but which have been amplified in recent months by the "Oil for Food" scandals which may turn out to be one of the largest financial scandals in history. Babbin details much of what is currently known about the Oil for Food program which was designed to allow Saddam Hussein to sell oil on the market in exchange for money for that would be used for humanitarian purposes. As it turns out, supervision was incredibly, perhaps criminally lax and the much of the money went into fresh arms purchases at a time when there was supposed to be an embargo and building more massive palace complexes. Hussein did this by skimming money from everyone involved in the transactions and additionally; it appears that members of the French and Russian governments received oil credits as graft. From the information that is currently available, it seems like billions of dollars were skimmed from the program while people in Iraq starved. The sheer amount of the apparent graft also presents questions about the legitimacy of the opposition to the war from France and the desire on the part of the leadership of the United Nations with to continue the program of sanctions. Motives must now be questioned.
Babbin also illustrates how bloc voting by the most odious third world regimes skews the orientation of the United Nations. He wonders how the vote of a nation like the Sudan, which murders its citizens and allows chattel slavery, should have the same representation as a Australia, Canada or Chile? The author also questions the ability of the United Nations to act quickly and decisively when large number of lives is at stake as they have been in one African situation after another and its inability to put any teeth in its own resolutions like the seventeen leveled at Iraq prior to the invasion. Babbin also makes some prescriptions, advocating a new organization with member states having to meet some minimal standards of representation and human rights. Whether a person believes in the idea of the United Nations in an abstract sense - of well intentioned people joining hands to solve the world's ills - or not, intellectual honesty demands that we admit there are fundamental problems with the organization and we must question if it is worth saving or whether it can be replaced by some other world organization or number of regional bodies.