"Mankind's LAST HOPE FOR PEACE?"
When the leaders of the nations met in San Francisco in 1945 to form the
“United Nations,” the world had exhausted itself in a global war. Europe lay
in ruins. Vast regions of Russia were devastated. Hundreds of cities were
ghastly specters of shattered buildings and rubble. Tokyo was a vast ruin of
charred cinders where more people died from a massive firestorm following US
incendiary bomb attack than died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Millions of
dazed, hopeless refugees, rendered homeless by war, faced one of the worst
winters on record in Europe.
The meetings in San Francisco were for the purpose of drawing up the
charter for the newly forming “United Nations.” This was tacit admission
that the world’s first attempt at legislating against war following World
War I, the hopelessly inept “League of Nations,” had completely failed.
Over a million Americans had been killed or wounded; a small number
considering the more than thirty million who died in Russia, or the millions
more in Holland, Belgium, France, Norway, Britain, Poland, Czechoslovakia,
Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria, Italy, Japan, and in dozens of other nations.
Hundreds of thousands died at sea.
With the advent of the nuclear age, it was acknowledged that mankind had
finally achieved, through science and technology, the ability to exterminate
himself, and literally destroy all life on the planet. This stark fact was
admitted openly by those who addressed the infant United Nations “Security
Council.” General Douglas MacArthur told the US Congress, “We have had our
last chance!” He said unless some greater and “more equitable means” was
found to resolve difficulties among and between nations, “our Armageddon
will be upon us.” It was solemnly avowed by the leaders of the civilized
world that this newly forming “United Nations” was indeed the “world’s last
chance for peace.”
My father, Herbert W. Armstrong, was an accredited press representative in
San Francisco. He saw and heard Andrei Gromyko, the Soviet Prime Minister
echo such platitudes. Yet, behind the scenes, it was obvious that the Soviet
Union did not intend withdrawing from Germany or eastern Europe; that she
had entered the war against Japan only moments before the Japanese surrender
for the specific purpose of gobbling up territory; that she would very
quickly attempt to subvert Greece to obtain warm water ports.
Very shortly after World War II, Sir Winston Churchill characterized the
Soviet incursion into Europe as “an Iron Curtain” that had descended. His
words proved prophetic. For over forty-four years, the “Iron Curtain”
remained in place, dividing East Germany from West Germany, and dividing
Europe. The Berlin Wall was a powerful visual symbol of this division. All
the while the “United Nations” deliberated, passed resolutions, argued,
accused, and generally acted like an ineffective old schoolmarm attempting
to scold her wayward students.
While the world engaged in a frenzied arms race, the ambassadors to the UN
from Russia, China, Britain and the US engaged in a constant barrage of
accusative rhetoric.
From the moment of its inception, the paper tiger on the East River in New
York was doomed to failure. The “Cold War” had begun. Since the beginning of
the Cold War, there have been at least 65 major and minor wars fought on our
planet — in which member nations of the “United Nations” fought each other
to bloody exhaustion, with the UN neither capable of preventing the war, nor
stopping it prior to the desires of the participants.
One of the first was one in which I had a peripheral part; the “forgotten
war” in Korea. One of my ribbons of which I am least proud is the blue and
white striped “UN Ribbon.” President Truman tried to placate the Communist
nations and their sympathizers by calling the Korean War a UN “police
action.” The pretense that it was a United Nations’ action, rather than a US
one, was a hollow farce. The battle-scarred veterans of the Chanjin
Reservoir, Bloody Ridge, Heartbreak Hill and Porkchop Hill, as well as those
who landed at Inchon know better. At all times, the US had the vast majority
of troops in the field, and the US seventh fleet offshore.
The point is, the nations who joined the so-called “United Nations” and
issued lofty platitudes about peace proved they could engage in destructive
wars; proved that the UN was powerless to halt such a war short of the
desire of the participants to do so. The ugly, protracted fiasco that was
Viet Nam saw major powers: members of the UN “Security Council,” pitted
against one another in bloody conflict. The Soviet Union poured money, arms
and troops into Korea, and its vassal states did the same in Viet Nam.
Russia and the US, meanwhile, engaged in an exhausting arms race, feverishly
extending their hugely expensive competition into space; building tens of
thousands of nuclear weapons of all kinds; producing nuclear submarines and
manned bombers, as well as MIRVS (multiple nuclear warheads atop each huge
missile), containing more destructive force than all the bombs unleashed by
all participants during World War II. For decades, we lived in the hazy “in
between” of the war which must not be fought, and the peace which cannot be
achieved. MAD (“mutually-assured destruction”) prevailed. But only because
Russians, like westerners, treasure life. Had a nation whose populations
fervently embrace self-destruction as an instant guarantee to heaven
possessed all those missiles and warheads, this world would long ago have
been reduced to a cinder hulk.
And while the world waged these, and other wars, ineffective “Secretaries
General” from third world countries decried the violence; the UN issued
resolution after resolution crying out for peace; and the farce of the UN’s
“independent spirit” was rendered all the more obscene.
Do you realize that a full forty per cent of all UN condemnations have been
aimed at tiny Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East? The
anti-American, anti-Israeli bias of the UN has been obvious for decades.
Today, Europe chimes in with its own kind of anti-Semitism, with hundreds
of incidents of attacks against Jews and Jewish institutions from Belgium to
Germany, and from Holland to France. Both the US and European media have
decried the Israeli “occupation” of Palestinian towns and cities; have
continually demanded that Israel withdraw from territories she won in
defensive wars for her very survival.
In contrast, the United States was not fighting for its survival when
General Sam Houston defeated Santa Ana’s armies at San Jacinto in 1836, nor
was the US fighting for its survival when she defeated the Spanish in the
Spanish-American war, annexing Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and Guam. As I
have explained previously, one would have to redraw the entire map of the
world if one operated on the principle that any territories won by the
victors in warfare should be returned to the original owners. This wholly
naive and ignorant concept seems to imply that an aggressor places nothing
at risk when such aggressor attempts to annihilate a neighbor in warfare,
then loses the war!
Today, the major “sticking points” in any so-called “peace process” are
three: (1) Arafat and his gang demand that the Israelis hand over Jerusalem,
which the Jews call their “eternal capital” dating back to the time of King
David. (2) Arafat and his gang demand that the Jews abandon billions of
dollars worth of towns and villages; “settlements” all over the West Bank
and in Gaza, dispossessing hundreds of thousands of Jewish families from
their homes. It was because Texas was settled by Americans that Santa Ana
tried to drive them out. (3) That the “refugees” dating from 1948, 1956 and
1967 wars be allowed to “return to their homes” which simply do not exist.
Why do such refugee camps exist? Because none of the Arab states will
absorb their own Arab brothers, and because it was politically expedient to
keep tens of thousands of them living in the squalor and poverty of such
camps to play on world public opinion. For decades, the Palestinians in such
camps are the only people in the world who live on international welfare.
For decades, the US gave the Palestinians tens of millions of dollars of
American tax money. In 1948, the US gave the Palestinian refugees $25
million. Israel chipped in $3 million. All of the oil-rich Arab nations
combined donated a paltry $600,000; barely more than a half million.
The world’s much vaunted “last chance for peace” has proved to be at the
very root of much of the evil in the world. It has become a propaganda
vehicle for dozens of anti-American nations to vent their spleen; pass
resolutions condemning the US, while their foreign diplomats commit crimes,
get away with hit and run murder, and generally do anything they wish on
American soil under diplomatic immunity.
In truth, the UN is the “disunited non-nations.” When a tiny “nation” like
“the Republic of Cape Verde” (former “Cape Verde Islands off the southwest
coast of Africa: I have been there several times, flying a fan-jet Falcon,
for refueling stops), population under a half million, with just over 2
television sets per 1,000 population (which is mostly illiterate) commands a
vote equal with that of Britain or the United States in the General
Assembly, something is horribly wrong.
God Almighty says the feeble, nationalistic, religiously biased, racist
organizations of this world will NOT BRING WORLD PEACE!
The UN is a hollow sham; a shameful farce; a proven failure.
Here is God’s indictment of the incredibly inept, confused, hollow attempts
of mankind to govern himself apart from God: “Associate yourselves, O ye
people, and ye shall be broken in pieces; and give ear, all ye of far
countries: gird yourselves, and ye shall be broken in pieces; gird
yourselves, and ye shall be broken in pieces.
“Take counsel together, and it shall come to nought; speak the word, and it
shall not stand: for God is with us [“Immanuel,” meaning Christ, who will
replace all human governments].
“For the LORD spake thus to me with a strong hand, and instructed me that I
should not walk in the way of this people, saying,
“Say ye not, A confederacy, to all them to whom this people shall say, A
confederacy; neither fear ye their fear, nor be afraid.
“Sanctify the LORD of hosts himself; and let him be your fear, and let him
be your dread” (Isaiah 8:9-13).
Today, UN Secretary General Kofi Anan wants to send an investigative team
to Israel so they can condemn the Israeli incursion there to root out
terrorists, and prove the Palestinian claims that the Israelis “massacred”
innocent civilians. The other day, an Israeli camera on board a helicopter
captured the incredible scene of a gang of Palestinians hurrying along a
road toward Jenin with a flag-draped coffin. In their hurry, they dropped
it, and the living Palestinian inside who was playing dead scrambled to his
feet. When they realized Israeli police were coming, they all ran.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon denied Kofi Anan and his investigators
permission to enter Jenin, saying they had made up their minds about guilt
and innocence even before they arrived.
Is Kofi Anan and the UN truly the “world’s last hope for peace?”
Thank God, the answer is NO! But it is the last man-MADE hope for peace.
The ONLY hope for mankind is the intervention of God in human affairs; the
return of Jesus Christ as a conquering, ruling King of Kings!