September 19, 2011

by Bill Levinson

Live coverage of the UN General Assembly debating Palestinian statehood. The Palestinian delegate begins by explaining why the rest of the world should recognize Palestinian independence. He fortunately does not have an explosive device so he throws what looks like a piece of wood instead. A discussion among the Arab delegation then takes place off to the right.

If this seems disrespectful of the UN, it is intended to be. We do however apologize to the chimpanzees for equating them to UN delegates and especially Palestinians, noting that chimps are far less violent. Now we come to the serious part; we are almost looking forward to the UN destroying its own perceived authority by recognizing Palestinian statehood.

Skippy McGraw says:
June 29, 2009 at 11:24 am

You know, in the Army there is an important saying… Never give an order you know will not be obeyed. It breaks discipline and control.

The logic behind it is simple. People who are used to obeying orders will continue to obey orders. If you order them to do something that they will not, under any circumstances, obey… they will lose the habit of obeying your orders.

The same holds true for any other system of rules.

When you make laws that you CANNOT enforce, all you do is build contempt for the lawmaker, and indeed the rule of law itself.

This reference adds,

Sometimes called the First Rule of Command, “Never give an order you know will not be obeyed,” is one of the fundamental principles of officership. Command is a relationship, and must be cultivated as such – and, in many fashions, it is built on the trust a subordinate has in their commander.

Once a commander has given an order they know will not be obeyed, they open the door to questioning orders when it really matters. When giving an order that is almost certain to result in the deaths of those ordered, the absolutely last thing you want them thinking is, “Hey, remember how we already disobeyed him once? Maybe this would be a good time to do it again.” Bad plan.

This applies, incidentally, to organizations in which the death penalty is under certain circumstances applicable to anybody who disobeys an order. In an organization like the UN that relies ultimately on voluntary compliance, giving an order you know won’t be obeyed is suicide. It proves to the world that you are totally irrelevant, an observation which is supported by the UN’s impotence regarding North Korea’s murderous act of war against its neighbor along with genocides and human rights violations around the world.

If the UN votes for Palestinian statehood, we should use Israel’s open and willful contempt for this vote along with the other issues named above to argue that the UN is irrelevant, and also a waste of U.S. taxpayer money in an era in which our government just lost its AAA bond rating.