If we got rid of the United Nations, we'd have to turn right around and create another. We have to have such a body, an agency that allows nations to be heard, no matter how small or how powerful.


Robert Scheer: "With the radioactive dust of Hiroshima and Nagasaki still in the air, it was shock over our own human barbarism that led this country to push aggressively for a world organization that would allow negotiation to take precedence over brute force, communication over willful misunderstanding.

"In the decades since, the U.N. has undertaken hundreds of largely thankless humanitarian, arms control, nation-building and peacekeeping missions. If these actions have not cured man's rapaciousness and cruelty, they have certainly helped save countless lives and arguably prevented a third world war.

"Yet, even as we once again call on the organization to help broker peace and elections in Afghanistan and Iraq, American politicians find the U.N. an irresistible piñata, ripe for demagogic bashing."

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