On this day, the 24th of October 2007, it is 67 years since the United Nations was officially born. In Sweden we celebrate this day with our flag flying proudly in every available spot. In Sweden the United Nations is important, it is our best and last defense, and our only hope of reason if anything goes wrong in our relations to other nations. Since we have no national defenses of our own to speak of, our proud army mainly consisting of two guys and a rifle, we depend on the world being a safe place to live in. We need the protection of international agreements of civilized behavior in order to survive. Alone we wouldn’t stand a chance.
But such a reality seems entirely lost on most Americans. When you live in one of the largest nations on the planet, and having access to the world’s largest military, I suppose it’s easy to indulge in the notion that the United Nations is nothing more than a boring bunch of bureaucrats doing nothing worth noticing. But what they also chose to forget is why the U.N. was created in the first place.
The wars that ransacked the globe almost seventy years ago, took the lives of over 50 million people. That is one sixth of the American population. But while Europe suffered the worst of it, along with Japan, America got through it more or less intact. I grew up with images of World War Two; we read books about the horror of it all in seventh grade. My grandparents told stories of the suffering they went through, with food rations and the constant fear of a German invasion. We live with the wars in a way I doubt Americans do. For you war means sending troops somewhere else. To me war means having homes and entire cities destroyed. So perhaps it isn’t so surprising that the United Nations means more to me than to most Americans.
But the U.N. was built on American soil, figuratively as well as literally. One might even say the United States of America is the heart of the United Nations. It was the founding fathers of your union that first came up with the idea that humans of all races and cultures could set aside their differences and unite under one flag, one mission. That we were all equal and therefore had equal importance in all dealings of world affairs. That is why even small nations like Sweden feels safe to live in. That we, without military or financial power, can believe that we have as much of a right to live in peace and freedom, as a powerful nation like America. All this is thanks to the endless dialogs between faceless bureaucrats in the far away hallways of the United Nations.
Because of this it is with an aching heart that I, and many others, are starting to understand how little this organization really means to America. When General Powell tried to lecture the Security Council on why they should invade Iraq it was physically painful to watch. And to hear the American U.N. ambassador Bolton speak so casually about the very organization that gives me my freedom, was truly appalling. Americans seem to think the U.N. is useless unless it does America’s bidding. But that is the whole point of the organization. Not to do anyone’s bidding, not to make it easy for anyone to go to war or interfere with other nation’s sovereignty, that is the foundation of the United Nations. It is suppose to be the voice of reason, the place for lengthy talks that should go on until neither side can remember what the initial conflict was all about. The U.N. is the shrink that nations visit together in order to sort out their relationship without violence or unnecessary force. And yes it can be excruciatingly boring; certainly less exiting than the adrenaline rush of war, but it is also the only way humans can survive. Today we have the power to wipe out all life on planet earth. This fact should never be taken lightly. We need a place of reason to avoid having our human emotions take us to the brink of existence and we need people willing to put their national belongings aside, and consider what is best for the whole of mankind.
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