Editing 75-09-A4 (section)

=== Transcript ===
How much should Americans have to pay for a dream, a dream that didn't come true? I'll be right back.

Probably only those who lived through the horror of World War II can know how much hope we invested in the United Nations. The greatest blood-letting man had ever known was finally ended and the most cynical believed that this time we might have a peace that wouldn't lay the groundwork for another war. We were happy to pay a major share of funding the new world organization that would we hoped outlaw war.

We were just beginning to enjoy peace when North Korea crossed the 38th parallel in an unexpected, unprovoked and brutal assault that almost drove Americans based in South Korea into the sea. This was the first test of the United Nations and they responded. The war in Korea was fought under the United Nations flag. True, Americans did most of the fighting while Russia took a walk, proving that ideology is thicker than water. The Soviets didn't exactly stay out of the Korean action, our Airmen fought against MiG fighter planes and our ground forces were killed by russian-made weapons. Under the U.N. flag of course it wasn't a war, it was a police action, and so it was fought to no conclusion. The aggressor wasn't punished, he just wasn't allowed to win, but then neither were we. It was a new experience for a nation that had never lost a war. We didn't lose that one, I suppose, just some 50,000 fine young men.

Not too many years later the show opened again in a different theater, Vietnam. This time there was a difference, the United Nations wasn't having any of it. Several times we suggested that Vietnam really was their problem, the answer was no, so we went it almost alone. The U.N. never got around to explaining why this wasn't a legitimate peacekeeping chore for them. Nor have they explained why they turned us down when the North Vietnamese violated not only the 1973 cease-fire but also the Geneva Convention concerning the treatment of prisoners.

Now by its charter the U.N. is obliged to, quote, "promote universal respect for and observance of fundamental human rights." Unquote. There's more. Around the first of April we asked for U.N. help in evacuating refugees and again they said no. Hanoi, meanwhile, played a cruel game of cat and mouse. First, they denied any knowledge of 300 Americans missing in action, then a year ago they returned the bodies of 23 servicemen they admitted had died in their prison camps.

More recently they inexplicably inform Senator Kennedy's office that they did have a list of the missing after all. Now they've released the names of three more they claim were killed in action. Senator Dominici of New Mexico has authored a resolution which calls for the United Nations to produce an accounting of servicemen missing in action or we reduce our payment from 25 percent of the U.N. budget to 10 percent. Why not?

This is Ronald Reagan.

Thanks for listening.

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