The United Nations is, has been, and will always be, an organization that works against the interests of the American common man. We allow this because of "UN-think." We Americans have been completely brainwashed by the bureaucracy of the United Nations, and its obedient servants, the has-been "mainstream press." Somehow, too many Americans have bought into the idea that it's all right for the UN to take an American common man's tax dollars, and the blood of his sons and daughters, to use as it sees fit, while accusing, abusing, and using the generous American public as a punching bag and a piggy bank, and a free insurance company.

Currently, we have the hateful example of the UN Humanitarian Aid Chief, Mr. Jan Egeland, of Denmark, accusing us of being "stingy" in our initial pledge of aid to South East Asia, and particularly to Indonesia. That Mr. Egeland's dumbly donkey-like (jackass-asinine?) criticism comes from one of the very top officials of the UN, which, the world knows, is among the most corrupt political organizations in modern history, is especially infuriating! It is on his "watch" that $27 billion (that's $27 THOUSAND MILLION) from the UN Oil for Food Program has disappeared into pockets as diverse as $2 million to a Syrian journalist to serve as a mouthpiece in the Arab world to propagandize against the United States and for the UN, and a Scottish engineering company that paid $10 million in kickbacks to UN family- member- connected companies, to mention a couple, from thousands, of such examples of UN employees' international racketeering practices. And don't ask me about the UNICEF frauds! Just know this, there would have been plenty of money in the UN coffers to help, initially, handle the current Indonesian disaster relief, except for the vast UN-connected world class fiscal and intellectual embezzlement of American taxpayers' hard earned money! But, to be candid, my difficulty with the UN starts back with its Frankenstein-like vindictive political creation in the times between World War I and World War II.

A casual study of the "mama" of the UN, the League of Nations, easily exposes the complete failure of the "united nations"to do what the dreamers of a perfect world (the Utopians) actually, with bovine ignorance of human nature, believed could be done. The League of Nations supporters promised that the organization would prevent war. History tells us that the concept that "talking" will prevent war was (is) a ridiculous delusion. It promised more than it could possibly perform in a world of furiously competing individual nations. But that didn't keep millions of sincere war weary people from being misled. Woodrow Wilson, a professor-president, was the author of that little piece of nursery rhyme, "and they all lived happily ever after," nonsense. The League became a debating society, while countries like Japan, Italy, and Germany prepared for WW II.

The spirit of nationalism, in the 1930's, highlighted the goofiness, then and now, of expecting sovereign nations to act against their own interests. For example, in September 1931, Japan, in an attempt to protect her partial ownership and the sorely needed raw materials of Manchuria, invaded China, and took all of Manchuria away from China. The League did nothing about that military aggression, except debate. And like the UN that was to follow, no real sanctions were imposed because the great powers, upon whom the burden of enforcement (remember the United States was wisely not a member of the League of Nations) would rest, refused to run the risk of war with Japan. The outbreak of WW II in the East had its beginnings in the apparent (to the Japs) impotency of Old Europe. Italy began its invasion of Ethiopia and North Africa in earnest in October 1935. The League responded with (like the UN?) an unenforced arms embargo, a ban on loans and credit, a boycott of Italian imports, and on export of Italian controlled Ethiopian raw materials. The result? Mussolini, the dictator, "Il Duce," also took the measure of Old Europe's weakness, and prepared to join the Germans for WW II.

While all this was going on, the League of Nations was supposed to be overseeing the disarmament of Germany and Austria. In 1932, it finally got around to convening a "World Disarmament Conference" that fizzled out because of a maze of conflicting proposals, with each nation seeking to improve its own relative status (especially France, wouldn't you know?) by suggesting the reduction or abolition of weapons essential to potential opponents, while insisting on keeping the weapons it might need for its own national defense. Germany flatly refused to buckle under to France, and demanded equality of arms with France. The result? Nothing. Just like Saddam Hussein with the UN and its "mandates" years later, Germany kept building and stockpiling weapons for war. The League of Nations was as impotent as the UN is now.

When one reads the UN Charter, it looks and sounds all the world like nothing more than a repetition of the old League. The UN Charter raises extravagant hopes without means to fulfill them. The major difference in the UN and the League is that, in 1919, the outlaw state Communist Russia was not allowed to join the League of Nations, and the United States chose, wisely, not to join. Now, both Russia and our country, unfortunately, are members of the UN. But from the very beginning, neither the Communists nor America, the only superpowers, pretended to delegate any real sovereign power to the UN. There were just too many basic conflicts existing between the objectives of the Soviet Union and the United States. But in time, there have been too many situations where the United States has been too eager to merge its identity and destiny with the United Nations. And as a dangerous and deadly consequence, until very recently, it appeared to the world that we were a large cat with no claws. However, it is now abundantly clear that we are capable and willing to immediately strike our enemies where it hurts, when it becomes a matter of our own national security.

It's too bad that Britain and France and Holland didn't strike Japan, Italy, Austria, and Germany (prophylactically) in the early 1930's, as we have done in the Middle East. Think how many millions of lives could have been saved. World War II was the offspring of WW I, and the WW II midwife, the enabler, of that terrible war in which so many brave young Americans died was the League of Nations.

Will history repeat itself because of the UN? I don't think so. I think the UN is finished, kaput, devoid of any credibility by thinking Americans. I don't imagine that we will ever again wait to be attacked while a bunch of self-serving UN bureaucrats threaten us with "world opinion." The world should worry instead, "What will the Americans think?"

Kenneth Kinchen is an independent writer with a background in international business and foreign service contracting.