Visiting the UN as Bombs Fall on Iran
Nancy Reagan donated this mosaic reproduction of “The Golden Rule” to the United Nations in 1985, when her husband was building up the U.S. nuclear arsenal.
HOBOKEN, MARCH 6, 2026. This is a time of bitter, unfunny ironies.
Three days ago, March 3, I visited the United Nations headquarters in Manhattan with my girlfriend Vicki. The timing was a coincidence. Vicki scheduled our visit weeks ago with her friend Dorothy. Dorothy works for the UN Hospitality Committee, which helps delegates and their families feel at home.
Dorothy whisked Vicki and me past armed guards at the front gate. Inside, Dorothy gave us one tour, and an Austrian guide, Helga, another. Both pointed out the many artworks adorning the UN. A pistol with the barrel twisted in a knot. A woven replica of Picasso’s Guernica. A mosaic reproduction of “The Golden Rule,” a Norman Rockwell painting.
The art conveys the message that war is bad and peace is good. I agree.
I expected the UN to be buzzing, but things seemed eerily calm. None of the men and women we passed, presumably UN employees, seemed especially animated. Kids on school tours looked bored. Helga let us peek inside the General Assembly Hall and Security Council Chamber. Both were empty.
Here and there, TV screens mounted on walls flashed reports from a UN news service, but no one seemed to be watching. One report showed an Iranian school destroyed on February 28, the first day of the ongoing assault of the U.S. and Israel on Iran.
The Iranian school was bombed during a U.S. attack on a nearby Iranian naval base, according to The New York Times. U.S. forces “were most likely to have carried out the strike” against the school, The Times concludes. The attack killed 175 people, most of them children.
Here’s the irony: March 2, the day before Vicki and I toured the UN, Melania Trump gave a talk to the UN Security Council on the importance of “protecting children during conflict,” as Associated Press put it. "The U.S. stands with all of the children throughout the world," Melania said.
If Melania’s husband even thought about the timing of her appearance, I’m guessing he thought it was funny. Shortly after his inauguration last year, Trump withdrew from several UN organizations. They include the UNFPA, which promotes women’s sexual and reproductive health; and the Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary General for Children in Armed Conflict.
In a speech at the UN last September, Trump expressed contempt for the United Nation. “All they seem to do is write a really strongly worded letter… It’s empty words, and empty words don’t solve war.”
Trump bragged that he had ended seven wars, including the wars in Ukraine and Gaza and a previous war against Iran. Yes, Trump claimed that after the U.S. bombed Iran last June, he ended that war.
Trump also ridiculed UN environmental efforts. He e called human-induced climate change a “hoax” and green energy a “scam.” Trump has withheld U.S. funding from the UN. The U.S. reportedly owes just under $4 billion in dues. Trump cripples the United Nations through his words and actions and then bashes it for being ineffective.
I’m teaching two first-year humanities classes this semester. We’re scheduled to talk about war later this month. I’ve assigned Margaret Mead’s essay “War Is Only an Invention--Not a Biological Necessity,” which the great anthropologist published in 1940, at the dawn of World War II.
Mead refutes the fatalistic notion that war is the inevitable product of human nature. War is an “invention,” she says, a product of culture. But she warns that war is deeply entrenched in our culture.
To get rid of this horrible invention, she says, we need to invent something to replace it. After World War II, the U.S. and other nations invented the United Nations to solve the problem of war.
We’ve invented many ways to resolve disputes nonviolently. They’ll work if we want them to work.
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