Feel The Love
Jason Steck, writing over at The Moderate Voice delivers a blistering send-off for retiring UN hypocrite-in-chief, Kofi Annan.
Annan has never lacked for a kind word and a soft shoulder towards the world's most cruel dictators while holding the United States to a "special responsibility" that requires that the U.S. not only avoid pursuing its interests, but also asks that the U.S. actively undermine itself whenever convenient for the Secretary-General's office. At the same time he calls the United States to its supposed "special responsibility", however, Annan refused to uphold his own by repeatedly obstructing international cooperation in crises from Kosovo to Darfur.
Even when international cooperation has proven possible, Annan has undermined it. During the period of sanctions against Iraq from 1991-2003, the Secretary-General's office was empowered to manage the "Oil for Food" program designed to decrease the impact of the sanctions on Iraqi civilians while blocking Iraqi rearmament. Due to massive corruption within the program, however, Saddam Hussein diverted money away from feeding his people to build himself grand new palaces while U.N. bureaucrats including Annan's own son skimmed millions off for their personal enrichment. When the fraud was exposed, Annan personally blocked all meaningful moves for accountability.
If there was any real responsibility at the UN, Kofi Annan should have been turned out of office on his ear a long time ago. His continued tenure there for two terms is, I suspect, a direct result of his kissing up to some of the worst governments in the world. His relentless attempts to undermine anything America has tried to do in the decade of his control of the UN made him the darling of dictators everywhere.
At all stages of Annan's tenure, he has prized his own self-serving preening over any substantial contribution to the international debate over the shape of the post-Cold War world. Annan entered the Secretary-General's office at a time of unprecedented height in the stature of the United Nations, where the institution had been placed at the center of what the first President Bush called "a new world order". Annan leaves this institution far worse than he found it, sullied by his rhetorical inanity, his nepotism, and his self-centered aggrandizement. Good riddance to Annan and here's hoping for a new day at the United Nations.
I'm quite glad Annan is going away. It is about a decade late, however. In a way, though, Annan's behavior set back the cause of "internationalism" by about 20 years, so there is a degree of good that even this vain and foolish man accomplished.
World news | Gaius December 11, 2006
