"Justice will not be served until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are."
~ Benjamin Franklin

"Every day at the U.N., on every side, we are assailed because we are a democracy. In the U.N. today there are in the range of several dozen democracies left; totalitarian regimes and assorted ancient and modern despotisms make up all the rest. Nothing so unites these nations as the conviction that their success ultimately depends on our failure. Most of the new states have ended up as enemies of freedom."
~ Daniel Patrick Moynihan, September 1976

I want to take you, dear readers, on a trip back in time. A more innocent time perhaps when mankind’s yearnings for redemptive change seemed possible. In the heart of New York a Palace for Peace was built that still stands today. Its main tower is narrow and lean seemingly stretching with almost sinewy might as if soaring to the heavens for inspiration. The curves and planes of it’s smaller sister building’s design seek to reflect the transcendental unity of our common humanity. On a wall at the entrance to this Palace are engraved the immortal words of the ancient Hebrew prophet Isaiah that “…swords shall be turned into plowshares, and nation shall not make war against nation anymore.”

This week this special place, once thought to be man’s last best hope, was defiled by the most obscene verbal excrement. Sadly, few were surprised. For this Palace, that once glistened for what now seems no more than one brief shining moment, continues its decades-long run as the venue for what Daniel Patrick Moynihan called “brutal buffoonery”. This place is the United Nations. And its time may have run out.

Let’s continue on our time travel. Thirty years ago this week African states attacked the west, and in particular the United States, because then Amb. Moynihan had the “temerity” to denounce the brutal Ugandan dictator Idi Amin Dada. They considered calling a murderer by what he was as “rude”. They took great exception to a speech that Moynihan had given at an AFL-CIO convention in San Francisco. There, he sharply denounced a bizarre anti-U.S. address that Amin had delivered to the General Assembly two days earlier, in which “Big Daddy”, as he was known, also demanded "the extinction of Israel as a state".

Ignoring diplomatic niceties, Moynihan noted that "it's no accident, I fear, that this 'racist murderer' is head of the Organization of African Unity." When focusing on the Third World, Moynihan charged: "Every day at the U.N., on every side, we are assailed because we are a democracy. In the U.N. today there are in the range of several dozen democracies left; totalitarian regimes and assorted ancient and modern despotisms make up all the rest. Nothing so unites these nations as the conviction that their success ultimately depends on our failure. Most of the new states have ended up as enemies of freedom."

Dahomey's Ambassador Tiamiou Adjibade—then chairman of the U.N.'s African group— called the naming of Amin as a racist murderer "…a deliberately provocative act vis-à-vis President Amin and an unfriendly act toward the O.A.U. If Mr. Moynihan wishes to base his strategy in the U.N. on irreverence, flippancy and irresponsibility, let him know right now that the African group will not allow itself to be intimidated." Speaking truth became an “aggressive” act at the UN. But of course only when that truth was spoken against aggressors.

Far from being contrite, the U.S. kept on the attack. U.S. Delegate Clarence Mitchell, an official of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, compared Amin—who brutally expelled at least 50,000 Asians in 1972 for racial as well as political reasons and killed anywhere from 25,000 to 250,000 Ugandans who opposed his dictatorial regime—to Adolf Hitler. Moynihan then attacked Amin again by saying he had "slandered and blasphemed the American people by saying that we let the country be run by Zionists." A White House spokesman declared that President Ford felt that Moynihan "said what needed to be said."

Let’s now flash forward to this past week. The numbers of free and tyrannical states in the UN are just about what it was then. The tyrannies continue to monopolize the UN agenda in anti-west rampages not for anything the west does wrong, but precisely for what it does right. Live free. These tinpot tyrants and dime-store despots cannot compete on the battlefield of liberty. They dare not expose their peoples to the bright light of freedom. And today, as a generation ago, their success ultimately depends on crushing the west for only thus will they be able to keep plundering their imprisoned peoples.

But instead of one Idi Amin thirty years ago, this week saw Amin morphed into two. And with far more sinister purpose.

An Iranian racist murderer who has called for the genocidal extinction of the State of Israel and the Jewish people; denied the Holocaust and made clear that he means to lead the imposition of a theocratic tyranny on the democratic world. The entire west is his enemy. Arab-American commentator Nonie Darwish said that “Hitler was at the podium”. Well, if Ahmadinejad is the modern day Hitler, he was quickly followed by his Amin-clone, Venezuela’s puffed-up posturing caricature of “Uncle Joe” Stalin, Hugo Chavez. U.S. Ambassador John Bolton quite rightly refused to comment on Chavez, stating that he will not descend to the level of responding to “comic-strip characters.”

But Ahmadinejad and Chavez represent a far greater danger to the free world than Amin and his collection of petty thugs ever did.

Ahmadinejad, though a wretched, sniveling toady of fanatical Mullahs whose hate is the result of the swollen envy of pygmy minds, stands at the head of a movement of radical Islam that has declared total war. No amount of seeming validation on CNN should ever make us forget that.

Ahmadinejad spoke of justice at the UN, using the word 33 times, but upholds Shari’ah law in Iran that leads to sixteen year old girls being sentenced to death because they were raped and “shamed” their families; women beheaded for having sexual relations out of wedlock; young children having their limbs crippled for stealing a loaf of bread. He spoke of fighting oppression, yet imprisons thousands of student dissidents killing them in his jails using barbarous medieval torture including gluing mouths shut as was done to Akbar Mohammadi. He spoke of being open to the world, yet sanctions the actions of Sa’ed Mortazavi, the prosecutor who killed Montreal photojournalist Zhara Khazemi by beating her over the head for taking pictures, and then sent him as Iran’s observer to the UN Human Rights Council. He spoke of brotherhood, yet has clearly stated his will to imprison the west in an Islamic Caliphate.

He spoke of peace, using the word 17 times, yet works toward nuclear proliferation and continues to finance Hezbollah killers who, as even Kofi Annan charged, had provocatively attacked Israel across the UN-certified blue line, backed by Iranian Revolutionary Guards, all in clear defiance of UN resolutions. He spoke of the “tragedy” of the Palestinians, yet Iran has been the greatest sponsor of Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorism undermining every attempt for a peaceful, two-state resolution, from the Oslo agreements to the Road Map.

Chavez accused Bush of being “the Devil”, taking a cue from his buddy Mahmoud who calls America the “Great Satan”, and threatened the free world that “the people of the South” (as if they have some monopoly on purity) are rising up to create a new order”. His idea of a “new order” is based on the recently signed Havana Agreement of ostensibly non-aligned nations. In reality the non-aligned movement has ceased to exist and the Havana document was nothing but a surrender to the dictates of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, whose regimes are a nest of nightcrawlers having no legitimacy or authority other than the bullet and the blade.

In trying to portray himself as the leader of “the people of the south”, and even calling for moving the UN to Caracas, Chavez sought to distinguish between those who live in poverty and others who rely on, or are allied with, what he termed “American imperialism”. He talked about countries that "waste their wealth and resources". Yet that is precisely what international experts agree Chavez and his henchmen are doing in pillaging Venezuela of its oil wealth leaving millions in even worse poverty than they were in when he came to power. His regime has proven more dictatorial than any “imperial” power would dare to be.

The lesson of Ahmadinejad and Chavez is the following. The free world did not go looking for this fight. First, the Jihadists brought it to us. But now the threat of millions of fanatical Muslims, backed by oil-rich regimes run by retrograde clerics, allied with third world tyrants whose people live in fear and under force, will, in the not too distant future, require a massive retaliatory response that may make the currents wars in the Middle East look small in comparison.

As Moynihan said thirty years ago, “We may not look for conflicts, but we cannot run away when challenged.” Brutal buffoons or not, the free world cannot be caught in the grip of the appeasers for we will surely suffer Chamberlain’s fate who as Churchill described wanted “ …neither war nor Hitler but got both…“. And if you, dear readers, are wondering what was the result of Daniel Moynihan’s tough approach thirty years ago - well - by the end of that notorious first week of the 1976 General Assembly session even African states began turning against their UN delegations that had supported the attacks on America and had defended Amin. In the forefront was Nigeria — black Africa's most populous state— where the Nairobi Daily Nation charged that "if anyone had been flippant and irresponsible, it is the Ugandan leader."

Moynihan was right to have spoken bluntly then. America is right in acting bluntly, and toughly, today. For the fight is not only on the military battlefield. In the years to come, this global conflict we are now engaged in, may well be decided by those free men and women who succeed in rousing so much of the west from its lethargy and make all people understand Franklin’s admonition that "Justice will not be served until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are."

Beryl Wajsman is president of the Institute for Public Affairs of Montreal; publisher of BARRICADES Magazine; and host of Montreal 940AM’s "The Last Angry Man". He can be reached at: info@iapm.ca