GW Hardly the First to Question the Value of the U.N.

Last night while plowing through the my latest reading project, Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East, a book I highly recommend to anyone interested in the politics of the Middle East (and who isn't!), I came across a quote from LBJ in which he described the U.N. as "a zero" and explained to an aide that if Israel's hopes for peace rested with the U.N. then he could not blame them for striking their enemies preemptively.

The notion today that the Bush administration's reluctance to rely on the U.N. in shaping American decisions abroad is somehow a dangerous departure from fifty plus years of established American relations with the U.N. is ridiculous. Every adminstration from Truman through Clinton has acted through the United Nations when such action would benefit the United States (or at least cause it no harm) but has not hestitated to circumvent the world body when they felt that U.S. strategic interests were at stake.