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UNderappreciated: despite its right-wing U.S. critics, the UN often succeeds. (Dispatches).

Article Excerpt
"I'm not a big fan of the United Nations. But if the UN was good for anything, it would be something like this. Since the UN was no good for this, maybe they're good for nothing."

--REP. ROSCOE BARTLETT (R-MD.), on the eve of war in Iraq

THE UNITED NATIONS IS EASY TO HATE. With operations sprawling from Manhattan's First Avenue to the far reaches of Azerbaijan, a byzantine organizational structure including nearly 9,000 employees and a $2.6 billion annual budget, it can be inefficient, inconsistent and unresponsive. It's failed miserably at times at its primary objective--keeping the peace--by virtually ignoring Rwandan genocide and standing by as Bosnian Serbs overran the town of Srebrenica, a UN-designated "safe area." Such disappointments led former Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban to compare the UN to "an umbrella which folds up every time it rains." The late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.), a former representative to the United Nations, dubbed the chamber a "theater of the absurd."

More recently, President George W. Bush, the aforementioned Bartlett (who also introduced a 1997 bill to restrict U.S. payments to the United Nations) and neocons itching to launch the war in Iraq believed that if they bellowed enough about these UN shortcomings, they could render the...