Bush, today, at the UN:
"...The American people respect the idealism that gave life to this organization. And we respect the men and women of the U.N., who stand for peace and human rights in every part of the world...
"The United Nations and my country share the deepest commitments..."
Apparently, no one seems to have given Mr. Bush the first lesson in the founding of the United Nations. With the "us vs. them" rhetoric suggesting that the United States stands next to rather than as a part of the UN, he devalues the greatest hopes of all those who worked in San Francisco and Dumbarton Oaks in 1945-46 to bring the UN into being.
Certainly the UN's role has changed with the expansion of sovereign nations and the end of the Cold War--and even some of the authors of the charter admitted potential failings. Still Bush's rhetoric implying we do not have a role in or responsibility to the organization defiles the work and hopes of wiser men who came before our present administration.