Dean's World

I got some flack yesterday for my assertion that the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) should be rejected out-of-hand in their request for a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council. Most didn't like my reasoning, which was that non-democratic states should be denied any such elevation. Many pointed out that being democratic has never been a requirement in the past, and pointed to the former Soviet Union and China as examples.

But China and Russia were granted their status on the Security Council in a different era. Both have become markedly more free than they once were, so their presence is not as troubling as it once was. But it should be considered absolutely unacceptable to allow any more non-democratic, non-free regimes a permanent seat on the council. Not just because that's the moral position to take--although it certainly is the moral position--but because the most important security measure that free people can take is to avoid doing anything which legitimizes tyranny.

The greatest threat to world security is non-free, non-democratic states. Therefore, we cannot give non-free, non-democratic regimes the legitimacy and the power that Security Council status would bring--not if we want the world to be more secure, anyway.

The Organization of the Islamic Conference is not a legitimate representative government body. It primarily represents a handful Mafia-style kingpins and theocratic fascists who rule with an iron fist over tens of millions of people by brute force. They in no way "represent" the people they rule over--they merely oppress, enslave, and murder them.

It may be necessary for reasons of pragmatism to have dealings with such regimes, even to hold our noses and be friendly with them at times. But it is high time we stop coddling them or pretending that they are in any way "legitimate." They rule solely by brutality. On 9/11 we saw the folly of pretending that such regimes make the world more "secure" just because they are "stable."

Penny Wit expressed what I think is probably the most common viewpoint on the United Nations and its purpose--a common view I once shared and now utterly reject:

The tests for having a seat, methinks, are regional or global dominance and a devotion to the principle that people shouldn't shoot at each other unless it's really, really necessary ... and rightfully so.

This has been the view that most people have embraced for most of my lifetime--and it is high time that free peoples recognize that, for all that it sounds good, it is a) morally vacuous and b) counterproductive to the aim of a more peaceful world.

If I changed my mind on this, I know others can too. We just need to wake more people up.

Think about this seriously: the aim is to stop nations from from warring on each other except as a last resort. Inherent in that is the notion war is the worst of all possible outcomes. This needs to be challenged wherever and whenever possible, because it is a lie. Despotic regimes murdered more than four times as many people in the last 100 years as all the wars on the planet combined. Furthermore, wars are often fought for good reason, whereas despotic regimes never exist for any good reason; they exist only because of the willingness of good people to stand by and do nothing.

In some cases, those subjected to tyranny can throw off their own shackles. This should be encouraged whenever possible. But the history of the last 100 years shows that some tyrants' control is so thorough that only help from outside can tip the scales toward life and freedom.

Sometimes, that help from outside may just be little things--helping to distribute subversive literature, or sharing intelligence with the resistance. Sometimes, it may be donations of money and supplies and equipment. And sometimes--just sometimes--it might be all-out war.

You might hear some say, "oppessed people can only free themselves." Oh really? Tell that to the people who ran the Underground Railroad. Tell that to those whose ancestors were freed by the Emancipation Proclamation and the bloodiest civil war in American history. Tell it to the survivors of Auschwitz. Tell it to the survivors of the Gulag Archipelago.

The old thinking on the UN boils down to this: "War is bad, the worst thing imaginable. So, you can butcher as many children as you want, torture as many people as you like, crush as many minorities as you please, treat your women like chattel, lobotomize and execute your homosexuals, grind every religious minority into the dirt, break as many bones and chop off as many limbs as you see fit, and obliterate every human freedom that annoys you: just don't bother your neigbors."

We need to stop this. It is simply unacceptable. If we are concerned with world security, then it is a fact that the only thing which has ever been shown to increase the security of everyday people is freedom and democracy.

We should not give any more legitimacy to non-democratic regimes than we absolutely must. Generations ago it was unavoidable to allow regimes like the USSR and China such legitimacy--but today it is usually quite avoidable.

World security is in no way enhanced by giving equal standing to the barbaric regimes represented by the OIC, any more than it would be enhanced by giving such standing to Castro's Cuba, Milosevic's Serbia, Kim's North Korea, or Mugabe's Zimbabwe.

When all the governments within the OIC--all of them--grant free speech, free press, and free elections to their people, then I will be the first to stand up and say that they should be welcomed as equals fit to judge matters of world security. But not one minute before!

So long as there is still a United Nations, and free and democratic nations are still a part of that organization, then free people everywhere should speak with one voice:

"No more tyrants on the Security Council!"