Thursday, March 26, 1998

Time to pay what we owe U.N.

By Molly Ivins

AUSTIN - It can be argued that nonconformity is a good thing in and of itself. If we all marched in lock step, what a dull world it would be. Nevertheless, not conforming requires some judgment about when and why, and the United States of America is now out of step on some of the most obvious no-brainers in history.

One hint your nonconformity has gone from independence to lunacy is when you find your allies in out-of-stepness are noticeably bats. For example, when you find yourself allied with Libya, Syria and Iraq in refusing to comply with a global treaty to eliminate chemical weapons, this should make you think about the company you keep.

When Somalia is the only country that joins you in failing to ratify the U.N. convention on children's rights, this is an indication you should perhaps rethink your position. When not even Uganda will join you in your single-handed attempt to block efforts to reduce the use of child soldiers, it's probably time for repositioning.

And when you are odd man out on banning land mines - with countries like China, Libya and Iraq for company - and most of the world is hissing at you, well, the Declaration of Independence itself says we owe "a decent respect to the opinions of mankind."

How did we get ourselves into such awful positions? And why are we in the insane situation of asking the United Nations for support against Iraq when we're the biggest deadbeat in the organization? Everyone there is furious with us for refusing to pay the $1.3 billion we owe them.

Why are we counting on the International Monetary Fund to bail out the economies of Southeast Asia when Congress is still hedging on paying its share of billions to the fund? We may be the only superpower left, but we're starting to look like a super jackass.

Most of this madness is the result of plain, old politics having reared its ugly head. In the Texas Legislature, we used to give the If-He-Votes-Yes-I-Vote-No Award every year to the most outstanding pair of political rivals (both of them preparing to run for the same higher office, of course) who simply refused to vote together, even if it meant opposing some resolution honoring motherhood. Politics in Washington are now so mean, ugly and partisan that if President Clinton is for it, the Republicans are against it, no matter what it is.

The long-prevailing doctrine that partisanship stops at the water's edge is kaput. Paying what we owe the United Nations and the IMF and endorsing a ban on chemical weapons are all hostage to domestic politics. Republicans even managed to sink "fast-track" authority for free trade by tying it to the abortion issue, for pity's sake, causing many of our allies overseas to wonder if there's a lick of sense left in our Capitol.

Winding up on the wrong side of important human-rights questions because of petty, parochial politics is just unconscionable. Our objection to outlawing the use of child soldiers turns out to be over the fact that the minimum age for recruiting soldiers in the United States is 17. So? Why not make it 18, like everyone else, instead of holding up the whole works in Geneva? Is there some reason we need to be sending 17-year-olds into battle? Less than 0.5 percent of U.S. troops are under 18, and by the time they complete training, almost all of them are of age.

According to Human Rights Watch, as many as a quarter of a million children, some of them as young as 8, are serving in armed rebel organizations or government armies around the world. More than 2 million have been killed in armed conflicts in the past decade, and 6 million have been seriously hurt or disabled. So why are we the only country holding up the treaty?

Compliance with the Chemical Weapons Convention is hung up in the House, which combined it with legislation aimed at punishing Russia for selling missile technology to Iran. This brilliant maneuver put us in the position of threatening to bomb Iraq over alleged chemical weapons violations when we were in violation ourselves. Shrewd move, fellas.

Likewise, paying what we owe to the United Nations keeps getting jacked around by Jesse Helms, the notoriously right-wing chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan wrote in the New York Times: "Who benefits from a cash-starved United Nations? The aggressors of the world whose designs we seek to foil; the violators of human rights whose abuses we endeavor to curtail; the drug dealers and international criminals whose dealings we reveal; the arms merchants whose traffic in deadly weapons our conventions help stop. Also impeded is our humanitarian work against hunger, deprivation, the loss of homes and livelihoods."

I realize this is a naive thought, but at some point, can't we expect our leaders to forget their petty seeking of electoral advantage and Do the Right Thing?

Creators Syndicate, Inc.