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Why the Bushies Want to UN-do the United Nations
New York State's Republican Senate Majority Leader, Joseph Bruno, plans to scuttle plans for a temporary UN Secretariat Building in New York's Turtle Bay neighborhood on Manhattan's East Side. Killing the project will, effectively, end the UN's presence in the United States. That works just fine for the Bush Administration -- politically and financially. But, best of all, it can't be traced back to them.
Nothing will bring the elements of the GOP's oligarchic elite together faster than killing off the last bulwark against radical imperialist Bush Administration foreign policy while simultaneously making their friends and contributors a bundle in Manhattan's cutthroat real estate market.
Team Bush has been hoping to topple the UN ever since it stood in the way of the invasion of Iraq. Their allies in the media - Fox News, the New York Sun, the New York Post, the Chicago Sun-Times and the denizens of right-wing radio rant 'n rage - have been on the attack since the Security Council vetoes of the invasion. It's all been a build-up to dislodge the UN from its current high posture in the Media Capital of the World, New York. The current obvious target of the attacks is Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary General. In February, the Bush band will berate the UN for "incompetence" and "malfeasance" for failing to carry out the Iraqi elections at the end of January, as is their charge. By the time the Bush PR campaign whips up the blame machine, it will be no matter that the US has failed to secure even the Green Zone, let alone most of the rest of Iraq. (Right now, there are less than 30 UN staffers in Iraq to manage the election, hardly enough to oversee an election in a good-sized Chicago precinct, let alone a country of 30 million people carrying out their first democratic election in memory.)
But a less obvious front for the right-wing's attacks on the UN is the physical plant of the UN itself. And it is by far the easiest, most compelling target to emasculate the world body.
The UN Secretariat Building houses most of the UN's operating bureacracy in the United States. The building is over 50 years old and, while hailed as a architectural triumph in it's day, it's age is showing: pipes burst, it's riddled with asbestos, there are no sprinklers, and the electrical system is shot. The UN had planned to build a temporary office tower just South of it's present campus while it updated the landmark Secretariat building in a multi-year, multi-billion dollar makeover, but the site for the new temporary quarters requires approval from the New York State Legislature -- and Joe Bruno isn't going to give it. Without the site for the new temporary office building, the UN will have to close down the Secretariat Building, the mult-story glass building that is the focal point of the UN's East Side campus. And they will have no place else to go - at least in New York.
Not surprisingly, that will likely cause the UN to relocate elsewhere. And with the current movment by some on the right, like MoveAmericaForward.com, to boot the UN entirely out of the United States, the international organization is highly unlikely to want to find a new home within the boundaries of the US. Imagine how effective that would be in diminishing the power and prestige of the UN in US public opinion: having the UN in, say, Geneva, would be as important in the public mind in discussions of American foreign policy as, say, the headquarters of the European Union or the South East Asian Treaty Organization. Out of sight, out of mind, so to speak.
But don't overlook the more parochial interests targeting the UN in the grand world game plan. The UN campus lies on about eight square blocks of prime Manhattan real estate. And UN agencies, offices and missions occupy dozens of buildings directly across First Avenue and into the heart of Mid-town Manhattan. We are talking real estate worth literally tens of billions of dollars - just the type of political spoils to make New York's legislature - and their friends and contributors - sit up, take notice, and grab!
So, look for the UN to be out of the United States within the next three to five years. And look for the robber barons of the New York real estate world to make a killing from it's deaprture, while the imperial "war-as-profit" brigands of the Bush Bloc sit by, grinning - with no fingerprints on the crime scene - as they savor the demise of the last roadbock to their New American Century.
Copyright, 2005. In the Arena. All rights reserved. Any duplication, distribution, or re-publication of this article must cite www.inthearena.bravehost.com and notice of intention to use must be sent to Thinking_Republican@yahoo.com prior to use.
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