MARLBORO-I truly appreciated the Jeff Potter's sincerity in the recent Editor's Notebook column. It put a human face on the behind-the-scenes work that goes into making The Commons available each week. First and foremost, I want to appreciate Jeff for making the Voices section of the paper possible.
With that established, I would like to challenge his example of the United Nations as a reputable source of information.
The U.N. has a well-documented history of corruption, including (but not limited to) the Oil-for-Food Scandal, the John Ashe bribery scandal in the 2010s, and most recently, the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) scandal in Gaza.
Ironically, for over a decade, a nonprofit, UN Watch, attempted to sound the alarm on UNRWA's misuse of humanitarian aid for the funding of terrorism. Year after year, the U.N. stubbornly refused to address the problem, leading to the Oct. 7, 2023 massacre. If it wasn't an intentional oversight, it sure looks like one.
It's also quite damning that some of the worst offenders of human rights - China, Qatar, and Cuba, among others - sit on the U.N. Human Rights Council, churning out complaints against liberal democracies, so as to divert attention from their own, far more sinister human rights abuses.
Finally, for anyone concerned about the state of democracy, I would like to ask: When is the last time you cast a vote for a member of the U.N.? … Yeah, me neither. Yet, somehow, they have the audacity to challenge the sovereignty of democratically elected nations.
This lack of accountability explains the U.N.'s propensity for hypocrisy and corruption. It's precisely the reason we have three branches of government to keep each other in check. Meanwhile, the U.N. polices itself, providing us reminder of what happens when we trust powerful organizations to self-regulate.
Can we finally admit that anything reported by the U.N. needs to be taken with a grain of salt, and thoroughly fact-checked?
Patrick Burke
Marlboro
This letter to the editor was submitted to The Commons.
This piece, published in print in the Voices section or as a column in the news sections, represents the opinion of the writer. In the newspaper and on this website, we strive to ensure that opinions are based on fair expression of established fact. In the spirit of transparency and accountability, The Commons is reviewing and developing more precise policies about editing of opinions and our role and our responsibility and standards in fact-checking our own work and the contributions to the newspaper. In the meantime, we heartily encourage civil and productive responses at voices@commonsnews.org.