The decision by the United Nations to lower its flags to half-mast for the death of Kim Jong Il is a vulgar and all-too-predictable display of that global body's immorality. That an organization ostensibly dedicated to peace and human rights can mourn the death of a brutal dictator who starved an estimated one million of his own people is an offense to common decency and disgraces the UN and the diplomats who ordered the public display of mourning.
Rejoice not when thine enemy falleth, scripture says, and I'm not calling for parades for the death of Kim. It is not good that Kim died because it would have been better had the tyrant never lived. His death cannot bring back all the innocents he brutalized and slaughtered. But to mourn the death of a mass murderer is to inflict the final indignity on his innocent victims by trivializing their deaths. If anything, the flags of the UN should be lowered for the victims of the regime rather than the megalomaniac, crazed, bouffant-haired, movie-obsessed maniac who robbed them of their lives, dignity and freedom.
Unfortunately, the UN lauding or protecting tyrants has become so commonplace that the story of the public display of mourning barely made news.
I just completed Edmund Morris' masterful third and last installment of the life of Theodore Roosevelt where the creation of a League of Nations -- much discussed by the political leaders of the early twentieth century and finally brought into being by Woodrow Wilson at the conclusion of the first World War -- was the culmination of centuries of human longing to have a world body that served to uphold human dignity and freedom. The weakness of the League ultimately led to its dissolution and the outbreak of the Second World War and the creation, at its end, of the United Nations. But even the toothless League didn't publicly mourn mass-murderers or put people like Kaddafi on its council for human rights. These and so many other actions have led a majority of American citizens to wonder why our hard-earned tax money is funding a full fifth of the UN budget. And if these are its morals, should it continue to be headquartered on US soil? What New Yorker wants to drive on 1st Avenue by the East River and see a global tribute to one of the world's most evil men?
How would we Americans feel if, after the death of Osama bin Laden, random nations around the world lowered their flags to mourn his loss? Surely that is the way every Korean who continues to suffer under the world's most brutal regime -- including South Korea, which continues to live under constant nuclear taunts from the North -- must feel when they see the United Nations lamenting the fall of their murderer.
The UN has long been compromised by its inability to identify, rally against and defy evil. That is bad enough. But celebrating evil has brought even this curious international organization to a shameful new low.
Shmuley Boteach, "America's Rabbi," was the London Times Preacher of the Year at the Millennium and is the author, most recently, of Ten Conversations You Need to Have with Yourself. (Wiley) In January he will publish Kosher Jesus. Follow him on Twitter @RabbiShmuley.
Follow Rabbi Shmuley Boteach on Twitter: www.twitter.com/RabbiShmuley
Every time the UN tried to do just that, they bounced on the Veto of the United States.
Or else, the USA simply ignore the UN as to not having to be confronted with any moral objections, like for example the War in Iraq that claimed more than a million Iraqi lives.
Maybe, just maybe you have got it all wrong and the U.N. should not debate when to choose not to lower the flag. Maybe, just maybe, it should be a beacon that welcomes the next generation of North Korean leaders into the world community. Maybe, just maybe, not lowering the flag makes some people feel better but it isolates the country in a way that results in more years of people suffering needlessly.
But despite that, what redeeming factors is there for lowering of Kim? Why are you comparing the two, when its not even close. The country is already isolated for the most part. If the next generation of NK want to be welcome, maybe they need to show it, and change. Lowering a flag isnt going to make them all warm and fuzzy and feel welcome.
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Condolences is a human gesture of empathy. No man is an island. We belong to the body of man and as such we are one. It was the Jewish Torah that taught racism and hatred of others as a order from God in it's plagurized version of the Sumerian historical reference to the Annanaki. Thieves.
Sack cloth and ashes.
No actually it is a respectful display of protocol, and it elevates the UN above partisan responses such as yours. The UN is in fact ... "turning the other cheek," and "loving their neighbor" symbolically at least. I would have thought that you of all people would be familiar with such concepts.
Member states of the UN are (theoretically at least) equal to each other. Therefor to treat the death of any head of state differently from any other is disrespectful. No matter how we may personally think of him.
Slighting North Korea during this time of transitional opportunity would be unwise. Despite their dismal record - even considering their recent commission of military aggressions against the South.
If no progress can be made during this time of opportunity there will plenty of occasions in the future for sabre rattling and posturing for the sake of posturing - by UN member state. But not by the UN - whose role and effectiveness is completely dependent upon remaining above politics.
1. The US is evil.
2. Israel is evil.
3. The US needs to give more money to somebody.
A complete waste of American money and resources. Move it to Europe and let the EU sponsor this debacle.
The UN is saving lives by fighting malaria, illiteracy, poverty. The world would be poorer, more ignorant, sicker than it is without the UN.
But all you can see is failures and policies that disagree with how you see the world. When Israel needs the UN, they are only too happy to make use of the UN. To broker a ceasefire, or to establish some monitors along a sensitive border.
The UN is indispensable. Learn something please.
Very, very few people are honestly mourning the loss of such an odious, vile dictator, but lowering the flags is a DIPLOMATIC act, which is what the UN is supposed to excel at.