Colombia RPCV Sam Farr shows support for United Nations
Read and comment on this story from the San Francisco Chronicle on Colombia RPCV Sam Farr and his support for United Nations. Farr is the only one of the 535 members of Congress who flies the blue and white United Nations flag outside his Congressional office in Washington. Farr started doing it only recently, just as President Bush's feud with such fellow U.N. Security Council members as France, Germany and Russia led the president to invade Iraq without the council's express backing.
"My God, we're flying all these flags around here, and I thought, 'Shouldn't the U.N. flag be flying here, too?' " Farr said recently as he stood in the corridor outside his office in the Longworth House Office Building. "If the U.N. didn't exist, we'd be inventing it right now." "We've got to do everything in our power to make the U.N. the leadership body it was intended to be," Farr said. "This president has no respect for the United Nations." Read the story at:
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The U.N.'s flag-waving fan Congressman's position bucks the Bush administration
Edward Epstein, Chronicle Washington Bureau Monday, May 26, 2003
Washington -- In the long corridors of Congress, the entrances to members' offices aren't fully dressed unless they are framed by the United States flag and that of the member's state.
Many also fly the black and white POW-MIA flag or the flag of their city or home county.
But only one of the 535 members of Congress, Rep. Sam Farr, D-Carmel, flies the blue and white United Nations flag. Farr started doing it only recently, just as President Bush's feud with such fellow U.N. Security Council members as France, Germany and Russia led the president to invade Iraq without the council's express backing.
"My God, we're flying all these flags around here, and I thought, 'Shouldn't the U.N. flag be flying here, too?' " Farr said recently as he stood in the corridor outside his office in the Longworth House Office Building. "If the U.N. didn't exist, we'd be inventing it right now."
Farr's display of support for the U.N. and his status as one of only a handful in Congress who is a dues-paying member of the United Nations Association, tells a lot about the love-hate relationship between the 191- nation international body and American politicians.
PUBLIC SUPPORTS U.N.
For years, polls have shown overwhelming public support among Americans for the U.N., but for years, the organization has been bashed in Congress as a mismanaged, if not downright corrupt, place where dictatorships thwart the United States and other democracies.
It has been derided as a useless debating society that all too often can't move effectively to prevent or stop wars.
The situation got so bad that Washington fell more than $1 billion behind in its U.N. dues, a situation that has been only partly corrected in recent years. The United States even quit the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization in 1984, citing anti-U.S. bias and mismanagement, and didn't return until 2002.
The difficulties with the United Nations were compounded in recent months when the Bush administration failed to persuade the Security Council to pass a second resolution endorsing a possible invasion of Iraq, raising talk in Washington of the council flunking a historic test.
Farr voted against last October's congressional resolution authorizing Bush to take military action against Iraq. The president's view of the United Nations runs counter to Farr's lifetime of support for the international body.
FLYING FLAGS
The 61-year-old, six-term Democrat traces his interest in the United Nations to 1955, when his parents took him to events in San Francisco commemorating the 10th anniversary of the U.N. Charter's signing in the city.
"I fell in love with all the flags flying in San Francisco from all the nations," said Farr, who later saw the world in the Merchant Marine and served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Colombia.
"We've got to do everything in our power to make the U.N. the leadership body it was intended to be," Farr said. "This president has no respect for the United Nations."
The administration says it is committed to multilateralism and to the United Nations. Its continued faith in the organization is shown by its return to the Security Council for a new resolution passed Thursday that allows the U. S.-led group to occupy Iraq, phase out sanctions against Iraq and use oil revenues to pay for the country's reconstruction, the White House says.
But, at the same time, the White House has slammed the United Nations for such decisions as re-electing Cuba to a position in the U.N. Human Rights Commission.
LONELY GESTURE
Steven Dimoff, Washington vice president of the United Nations Association, said the group appreciates Farr's lonely gesture. "It's a consciousness- raising thing. I bet people are surprised by it.
"His point is that the U.N. is what you make of it. If you engage in it, you can have a big impact," Dimoff added.
Among many of Bush's fellow conservatives, however, the United Nations is a disaster.
"Reform of the U.N. is impossible. The U.N. and its agencies are fatally flawed," said Phyllis Kaminsky, a U.S. delegate to the Human Rights Commission and a Reagan administration official.
"There are two alternatives to immediate American withdrawal from the U.N.: selective rather than full participation in U.N. activities, and targeted financial contributions. The United States should start considering the creation of an alternative world organization open exclusively to democracies, " she said at a forum sponsored by the conservative American Enterprise Institute.
But Farr calls the United Nations "the only way to build up the infrastructure around the globe for the human rights, labor, environmental conditions that are fair and equitable."
E-mail Edward Epstein at eepstein@sfchronicle.com. Click on a link below for more stories on PCOL
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