June 20, 2004
NYC Letter: UN-palatable Soufflé
The soufflé is an eggy concoction in which hot gases raise a crusted canopy high above the serving dish. It makes a glorious presentation that ingloriously collapses with the first service.
The UN is a quaggy political concoction in which hot gases raise crusted rhetoric high above the founding charter. It makes a flatulent presentation that faints away with the first demand imposed on it.
Well, this may not be how the UN sees itself, but then there is very little in the UN’s self-admiring description that is coincident with its conduct or outcomes. The UN Charter, to which all member states are obliged, in its preamble declares a de minimus ethos that a good many of its members do not meet, nor make any effort to meet, nor make any secret of their non-efforts. Perhaps it is a little in-joke having Cuba, Libya, Syria, and the Sudan on the UN rolls, even funnier when they land the occasional seat on its Human Rights Commission.
The UN has been a failed political entity since its inception. Its impressive history of failures – Eastern Europe 1945-89, Vietnam 1946-1973, Korea 1950-53-the present, Hungary 1956, Suez 1956 (something of a banner UN year), Tibet 1950, 1956-59-the present, Czechoslovakia 1968, Cambodia 1970, Iran 1979-the present, Srebrenica 1993, Rwanda 1994, and of course the Arab-Israeli conflict 1948-till forever and contemporary Islamism, to name but a few – has paradoxically heightened for many the UN’s promise of a world at peace. Amazingly, given its nonaccomplishments, in 2001 the Norwegian Nobel Committee made the queerest award since 1994* of the Nobel Peace Prize “in two equal portions, to the United Nations (U.N.) and to its Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, for their work for a better organized and more peaceful world.” [All emphases added.]
The UN bosses clearly believe they do a tidy job of organizing, though this depends on how one views the organizational merit of graft and utter corruption. There are differing opinions about UN excellencies among the scrubs. Most agree the UN is good at organizing jibbering anti-Semitic tea parties, providing tables and chairs, also spit-wipes and drool buckets.
As for “a more peaceful world”, it’s hard to square that with running a terrorist taxi service. Or if you think widespread slavery, pedophilia, rape, genital mutilation, and religious persecution all in one neat package somewhat more serious than the recent episodic abuses at Abu Ghraib. Or that the state terrorism, terrorism for export, and the pensioning of terrorists by Saddam’s Iraq wasn't in need of more time to smooth these down to acceptable UN tolerances. UN luminaries to this day argue that 17 UNSCRs over 12 years hardly gave Saddam a sporting chance to sort his problems out. And using the UN Sudanese slave-trade yardstick of 22-years-and-counting, well, who can argue with them?
Now one might think the craven abandoning of one’s charges (Rwanda), illegal self-dealing (Oil-For-Food), open collusion (Srebrenica – a bonus, both sides betrayed), thinly disguised institutionalized anti-Semiticism (Durban et al.), open sympathy for terrorists (Saddam Hussein, Yasir Arafat, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin), well, these and so much else, might lead one to think even the most pneumatic of pneuma supporting the most rubbery of UN soufflés would wheeze and fall. (Short pause.) And one would be wrong.
Recently Mr. Annan -- whose painful sensitivity to the difficulties the rule of law poses for despots is the stuff of legend -- had a simple message for America, scil., follow the rules:
“A rule-based system is in the interest of all countries, especially today, because globalization makes deadly weapons relatively easy to attain and terrorists relatively difficult to restrain.”
What is Mr. Annan trying to tell us? Hhmmm, let’s see, the terrorists have a rule-based system, that would be the universal caliphate. Sign up here. A rule-based system is in the interest of all countries that agree on the rules? That makes sense, but is this what Mr. Annan is angling at? Perhaps it is this, a rule-based system is in the interest of a UN that can change the rules as it likes.
Without explicitly referencing the current U.S. administration, Annan challenged various elements of American foreign policy, including the use of preemptive strikes in the war in Iraq.“What kind of world would it be, and who would want to live in it, if every country was allowed to use force, without collective agreement, simply because it thought there might be a threat?”
Of course, by “collective agreement” he does not mean a preponderance of nations, such as the coalition that liberated Iraq or the earlier unanimity of UNSCR 1441. He means agreement satisfactory to the mercurial UN. By “threat”, he means something along the lines of a Roland Emmerich fantasy where the whole world is attacked by really scary monsters. (Unfortunately the monsters go to it after normal business hours, so the UN cannot pass a UNSCR condemning the attack till the following afternoon [14-0, France abstains] by which time most of America is ash. At this point France comes round and the UNSCR becomes another triumph of unanimity just as the last of humanity is torched.)
Annan said that the U.S.-led war in Iraq had also detracted from the global effort to raise living standards among the world’s poor.
Mr. Annan seems to argue here that achieving higher living standards for the world’s poor trumps keeping the poor alive in the first place. Okay, this is sound market policy where supply is passively increased all around by energetically subtracting demand all around. No doubt this is the reasoning behind the phlegmatic UN Sudan initiative and the non-censure of Zimbabwe. That Kofi, crazy like a fox.
Annan concluded his speech by imploring future U.S. leaders to “live up to America’s tradition of global commitment.”
Just forget the current bunch of criminal American yahoos.
Mr. Annan elsewhere:
“[C]ited the U.S. prisoner abuse scandal in Iraq in opposing a U.S. resolution calling for the blanket exemption [shielding American peacekeepers from international prosecution for war crimes] for a third straight year. … ‘For the past two years, I have spoken quite strongly against the exemption, and I think it would be unfortunate for one to press for such an exemption, given the prisoner abuse in Iraq,’ he told reporters Thursday.”
You see, the UN does not just want the stick with which to beat America, it wants an abashed America to hand it that very stick and take its UN licks and like them.
Now, Mr. Annan is free to wander about posturing as the superior representative of a superior moral order. He is probably only trying to stay even with M. Barnier or M. de la Sablière or M. Levitte, or whomever Jack is throwing over the wall as the French Brainiac-at-large these days. But, gents, please, who’s kidding whom? A handful of Polaroids showing a handful of misdeeds by a handful of Americans is not this (CAREFUL: two clicks, gruesome…and bizarre), the everyday, year-in year-out, real torture openly applauded at Abu Ghraib that Mr. Annan and M. de Villepin fought to preserve through diplomacy, duplicity, and political pouts.
Meanwhile, let’s not upset any more nutcase nations. What we easily mistake for torture, illegal weapons programs, and the pitiless existence of a people are for them hallowed cultural traditions of torture, illegal weapons programs, and pitiless existence. Cultural traditions are fine by Mr. Annan & co.
And that is the UN soufflé. Ah, well, it may stink to high heaven and it may be flat as Mr. Kerry's sincerity, but it’s easy eating for the toothless.
* For those who need reminding, the Little Chairman, a career terrorist, ran away with a third of the Peace Prize in 1994 and never looked back.
