Where I Stand — Columnist Brian Greenspun: Leaving U.N. a bad idea

Friday, March 12, 2004 | 5:12 a.m.

Brian Greenspun is editor of the Las Vegas Sun.

WEEKEND EDITION

March 13 - 14, 2004

The United Nations -- mend it, don't end it.

I remember in my very early days two very distinct bumper stickers. The first was "Impeach Earl Warren" and the other one was "Get out of the U.N."

I have to admit, as a young boy I either didn't know who Earl Warren was or didn't particularly care whether or not he was impeached, whatever that was. I told you I was young. But I soon came to find out that impeachment was a drastic step contemplated by the Founding Fathers for Supreme Court justices -- in this case the Chief Justice -- who had committed various and sundry crimes against society.

Warren's crime, I learned, was his leadership in the early 1950s of a Supreme Court full of status quo judges, some of whom thought that leaving well enough alone was a good direction for American society. Warren, who was appointed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, was determined to give meaning to the Bill of Rights and the U.S. Constitution to all of the citizens of this great country. He led the court away from the concept that separate could be equal towards the ideal that a color blind society had to start in the public schools. Brown v. Board of Education was one of the most important cases ever decided by the high court. It prompted the above-mentioned bumper sticker.

That slogan, therefore, was wrongheaded and served only to rally those who were happy with segregation and opposed to the basic tenets of the Constitution.

The second bumper sticker took like-minded aim at the United Nations in an effort to rally those who took a very narrow view of this world in which we live and an overly broadened view of America's role within it. In short, it was a perfect whipping boy for those who thought our country could do no wrong even when we weren't doing right, and it served to rally those who never agreed with the United Nations in the first place, even though its purpose was to avoid the kind of conflict that the world barely lived through in World War II.

It is interesting how much the world of bumper stickers has not changed at all. People still want to impeach one judge or another for trying to compel change consistent with the Constitution and an even greater number of American cars are voting to get us out of the United Nations.

It was against this backdrop that I attended a Brookings Institution dinner at the United Nations recently as a guest of Secretary General Kofi Annan. You remember him. He's the guy who our own president ignored when it was time to attack Iraq and, then, practically begged to save our hides in the aftermath of the war and the realization that things weren't going as well as planned. He's the guy who responded, despite the slings and arrows hurled his way, and may be the single biggest reason why we will be able to exit that country this summer as planned.

I couldn't help thinking about those 50-year-old bumper stickers and their resurrection this past year in America as we not only heard Annan speak but also listened to a brilliant discussion that followed by the current U.S. Representative to the United Nations, John D. Negroponte, and his predecessor, Ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke.

While it cannot be denied that the two men differed, as Ambassador Negroponte put it, "by nuance" about the U.S.'s diplomatic role vis-a-vis the U.N., it was clear from both of them that the United Nations was a critical component to a safer and saner world in the coming years.

Their message was that, "Yes, the United Nations needed reform but, no, getting the United States out of that world body was a really bad idea."

It makes sense that an institution such as the United Nations, which was formed at the beginning of the Cold War and which contemplated a membership of some 50 countries, should re-examine itself after almost 60 years and an end to the Cold War. Not to mention 191 nations vying to be heard rather than the original and more manageable 50.

Both gentlemen derided the bumper-sticker mentality that would get the United States out of the only world body with the legitimacy and credibility to move mountains for the United States in places like Iraq and give the potential cover needed for the United States in places like the Middle East should some of the worst come to pass.

The message here could almost be printed on one of those bumper stickers. If the idea is so simple that it fits on the back of your car, that's where it should stay. Giving it any more importance than that does two things.

First, it makes for a very lazy and uninformed citizenry. And second, paying it much mind is like getting too close to that car's back end -- it can be exhausting.

Forget the sound bites and bumper-sticker quips about public policy. If we use the brains we were all given, we will have a better functioning democracy and more room on our cars for jokes.