Is the UN Even Worth It? Move it to Caracas.

The Wall Street Journal asks the question lying behind the histrionic antics of the two vertically-challenged nut-cases who earned the grateful applause of the General Assembly this week by insulting other leaders at the GA podium and dissing the very institution itself.

Sounds like the suicide of the GA is going to be long and noisy. Of course, any move to evict these squatters from New York and their plush HQ on the East River would be opposed by the GA delegations themselves, who get top-notch accommodations in NYC from their governments [when I worked in the I0 Bureau at State, I visited some of the ritzy digs of Deputy Heads of Delegations at parties and lunches. They are not luxurious, but are very above the salt.]

The not-very-funny clown from Venezuela mentioned moving the UN HQ to Caracas. I've been to Caracas, and that place is an emissions gas chamber, the valley is only accessible from the seaside airport via a long tunnel through a mountain, and the place has the charm of any crowded third-world hellhole. Recently, the deputy cacique in that torrid capital promised to turn the golf courses into high-rise slums. Chavez has done nothing to diminish the poverty level of the average Ven, and has put his personal security and national intell apparatus under the supervision of the Cubans, as he probably can't trust the Army from whence he sprang.

So the UN is welcome to decamp to Caracas, and the average New Yorker might be tempted to say good riddance.

But the WSJ has more serious things to say about the failure of this grand experiment, which has devolved into a tyranny of the majority of nations, mainly the Non-Aligned [so-called] and particularly of hopeless dictators like Mugabe and Kim Jung-Il and their ilk.
After a recitation of Iran's long-time stonewalling and the Permanent Security Council members' backpedaling, the WSJ finishes by noting:

The conclusion is hard to resist that the U.N. effort is really about persuading America that it can "live with" an Iranian bomb, just as it lives with a Pakistani bomb, because the costs of economic sanctions or military strikes are supposedly prohibitive. But a glimpse of what the world will look like if Iran succeeds was provided on Tuesday by Gamal Mubarak, the son of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Cairo's heir apparent floated a proposal for Egypt to develop its own nuclear programs, clearly a signal that the largest Sunni Arab country will go nuclear itself to prevent Shiite Iran from dominating the region. And where Egypt goes, Saudi Arabia and Turkey cannot be far behind. Is the international system really prepared to live with five, maybe six, nuclear powers in the Middle East?
The media portrayed this week's U.N. speeches as a soap opera showdown between Mr. Bush and his adversaries. But in the matter of Iran's nuclear ambitions, it is not only the Middle East that is at risk, but the U.N., which is why Messrs. Ch?vez and Ahmadinejad felt so free to mock its evident failures.

So while the UNGA's annual meeting is becoming a sort of "Last Comic Standing" succession of stand-up comics, the last laugh appears to be at the UN's expense. If the entire organization is becoming a tiresome joke, why not pack it up and move it to a joke of a country like Venezuela?