Statements
From the Trinity Community
Leadership and the United Nations:
An Essay on the War in Iraq and the Possibility of Peace
Bob Preston, Vice President Academic Affairs
For almost sixty years the United Nation has offered a forum
for discussion of the world's social, educational, political,
and civil rights concerns. Some would say that these concerns
are not just discussed -- indeed, significant progress has occurred
over the last six decades regarding the protection of children,
the resolution of conflicts, the availability of educational
opportunities and other achievements. Although many incidents
can be identified as the beginning of the United Nation, one
of them is a dinner at the White House in 1939 arranged by Eleanor
Roosevelt for her husband, the President, and a writer who had
mused whether a different configuration of the failed League
of Nations, a post World War I creation, might have prevented
the developing conflict in Europe. Although Prime Minister Winston
Churchill and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's later discussions
about the post war world have been credited as the origin of
the United Nations, this dinner may have been the President's
introduction to the idea. It is appropriate that Eleanor Roosevelt
was present at the birth of the United Nations, for she was
eventually America's leading protagonist of this world body.
In the months after World War II, during the United Nations'
formative period, Eleanor Roosevelt was selected to one commission
chairship after another. She became the principal American figure
in identifying the direction of the United Nations in the early
years when it convened in London and then San Francisco and
eventually New York. At times she was the only woman delegate
in the large assembly. Former detractors, such as conservative
U.S. Senators, as well as colleagues recognized her leadership
when it came to United Nations.
The focus of the United Nations reflected the mind and ethics
of Eleanor Roosevelt. The United Nations was designed to protect
the human rights of individuals, care for the needy of the world,
and develop alternative approaches to armed conflicts. Over
the years the United Nations has not always been successful.
Although 191 nations make up the United Nations, a handful can
determine its success or failure at any given time. These are
the superpowers. America is one of them. With a leader like
Eleanor Roosevelt, the United Nations was created and may very
well have succeeded. But when a head of state of a superpower
discredits the United Nation, when he considers it to be irrelevant,
when its processes for peaceful settlement of disputes are ignored,
the United Nations can not function.
Did the United Nations fail in the months before the War in
Iraq? It would not have if there had been leadership of the
quality provided by Eleanor Roosevelt. She was intolerant of
failure when it came to the United Nations. But no such leadership
was present to allow for the United Nations to assure peace.
The War in Iraq is ending. Now the American government is talking
about allowing the United Nations to play a major role in the
post war reconstruction of the Iraq nation and communities.
Although the United Nations could function and succeed in this
role, it does not encompass the complete vision of the United
Nations at its creation. Eleanor Roosevelt understood that.
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The author is indebted to the inspiring writings of Doris Goodwin,
David Mc Cullough, Joseph P. Lash, Peter Collier, Blanche Wiesen
Cook and Eleanor Roosevelt herself. The author spent many a
"break from research" while at Hyde Park walking through
the memories of Eleanor.
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