Fellow bloggers Glenn Reynolds over at Instapundit (http ://instapundit.com/archives/019686.php) and Wretchard at Belmont Club (http://belmontclub.blogspot.com/2004/12/throwing-kofi-to-dogs-glenn-reynolds.html) both call attention to a most interesting development in UN Secretary General Kofi Annan’s fight for his political life – namely, that the Democratic Leadership Council has called for Mr. Annan to go. According to Wretchard, the DLC’s reasoning is essentially that “Kofi must go so the UN can stay.” Both Reynolds’s and Wretchard’s pieces are worth reading, and El Jefe suggests you give them a look.
El Jefe is of two minds about whether Mr. Annan should go. Mr. Annan, because of the Oil-For-Food scandal and problems with the UN permanent employees, seems to be mired in trouble up to his very well-educated neck. Anything which puts the United Nations, by its very nature an anti-American organization, in the soup is Jim Crackin Dandy to El Jefe. This is not a moral pronouncement on the United Nations, but simple recognition that the UN is primarily of benefit to middle-weight and weak states that seek to reign in great powers such as the United States. If Mr. Annan is in trouble, keep him at the UN. God forbid that somebody might be found to make the thing work.
It is quite enough that the US largely pays for the United Nations; but it is absurd that we should actually have to pay attention to it. Seen by the Left and other feeble-minded souls as some sort of world conscience, the United Nations in reality has nothing whatever to do with real world opinion. The United Nations should better be termed the “United Dictators.” Four fifths of the countries on the globe that send representatives to the United Nations are tin-pot dictatorships of one sort or another. At most, the United Nations reflects the opinions of these same dictators, as well as the international chattering classes (a large proportion of whom live on the US east coast) who are reflexively against ANY action of an American government, let alone one led by a Republican.
Since the early 1990s, the European Union, Russia and China have steadily turned the UN Security Council into a body for pursuit of their own national and supra-national interests under the guise of multilaterialism. Example: the attitude of France, Russia, China together with various other members of the European Union towards Iraq economic sanctions since 1991, and the failure of these same powers to support the US in maintaining the arms inspection regime. Of course, this is largely because of the huge financial and political investment these same powers had in the Saddam government, but it (and the related Oil-for-Food scandal) is an altogether typical example of the games played at the UN.
For El Jefe, former UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali has always personified the UN's lack of contact with the real world. Dr. Boutros-Ghali is from one of the few aristocratic families to amount to anything in post-Nasser Egypt. An upper class Egyptian foreign ministry bureaucrat, Dr. Boutros-Ghali is one of the best educated persons in the world, speaks excellent French and English, has a splendid art collection, is a lover of western poetry, (as well as the famous Alexandrine Constantine Cavafy) and orders his beautifully-tailored suits in Paris. Dr. Boutros-Ghali is more European and International than Egyptian, and has about as much connection with what really matters in Egypt as does El Jefe. In past years, he lived mostly in Paris, Egypt not being very safe for him. The present Secretary General, Kofi Annan, has about as much real connection with Ghana, or the real world, as Dr. Boutros-Ghali does with Egypt.
In the real world, the UN is basically a whore which is cynically used and discarded at need by the world's tin-pot dictators and other assorted potentates, who cloak themselves in the disguise of the UN to further their own agendas – usually involving corruption and self-service like the Oil-for-Food scandal. All these machinations are customarily disguised in self-righteous platitudes and sloganeering about “imperialism,” “racism,” “Zionism” or whatever the in-vogue PC expression may be. Although a few suckers of the leftist persuasion actually buy the window dressing, the reason for the UN is to keep us marks from squealing when our pockets are picked.
It is hard for El Jefe and most other sentient beings to avoid the suspicion that the post Cold War interest of so many countries and well-meaning individuals in the UN and in the development of “international law” and “multilateral” solutions to everything down to jaywalking is more about the Lilliputians frantically seeking ways to tie down Gulliver (that would be the United States) than it is about the development of law. There is nothing wrong with the French, the Russians, and the Chinese, etc. seeking to do so, it is, after all, in their national interests to reduce US power. However, it is not at all in Gulliver’s interest to be so bound. What mystifies El Jefe is why so many Americans seem eager to help the Lilliputians.
El Jefe is of two minds about whether Mr. Annan should go. Mr. Annan, because of the Oil-For-Food scandal and problems with the UN permanent employees, seems to be mired in trouble up to his very well-educated neck. Anything which puts the United Nations, by its very nature an anti-American organization, in the soup is Jim Crackin Dandy to El Jefe. This is not a moral pronouncement on the United Nations, but simple recognition that the UN is primarily of benefit to middle-weight and weak states that seek to reign in great powers such as the United States. If Mr. Annan is in trouble, keep him at the UN. God forbid that somebody might be found to make the thing work.
It is quite enough that the US largely pays for the United Nations; but it is absurd that we should actually have to pay attention to it. Seen by the Left and other feeble-minded souls as some sort of world conscience, the United Nations in reality has nothing whatever to do with real world opinion. The United Nations should better be termed the “United Dictators.” Four fifths of the countries on the globe that send representatives to the United Nations are tin-pot dictatorships of one sort or another. At most, the United Nations reflects the opinions of these same dictators, as well as the international chattering classes (a large proportion of whom live on the US east coast) who are reflexively against ANY action of an American government, let alone one led by a Republican.
Since the early 1990s, the European Union, Russia and China have steadily turned the UN Security Council into a body for pursuit of their own national and supra-national interests under the guise of multilaterialism. Example: the attitude of France, Russia, China together with various other members of the European Union towards Iraq economic sanctions since 1991, and the failure of these same powers to support the US in maintaining the arms inspection regime. Of course, this is largely because of the huge financial and political investment these same powers had in the Saddam government, but it (and the related Oil-for-Food scandal) is an altogether typical example of the games played at the UN.
For El Jefe, former UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali has always personified the UN's lack of contact with the real world. Dr. Boutros-Ghali is from one of the few aristocratic families to amount to anything in post-Nasser Egypt. An upper class Egyptian foreign ministry bureaucrat, Dr. Boutros-Ghali is one of the best educated persons in the world, speaks excellent French and English, has a splendid art collection, is a lover of western poetry, (as well as the famous Alexandrine Constantine Cavafy) and orders his beautifully-tailored suits in Paris. Dr. Boutros-Ghali is more European and International than Egyptian, and has about as much connection with what really matters in Egypt as does El Jefe. In past years, he lived mostly in Paris, Egypt not being very safe for him. The present Secretary General, Kofi Annan, has about as much real connection with Ghana, or the real world, as Dr. Boutros-Ghali does with Egypt.
In the real world, the UN is basically a whore which is cynically used and discarded at need by the world's tin-pot dictators and other assorted potentates, who cloak themselves in the disguise of the UN to further their own agendas – usually involving corruption and self-service like the Oil-for-Food scandal. All these machinations are customarily disguised in self-righteous platitudes and sloganeering about “imperialism,” “racism,” “Zionism” or whatever the in-vogue PC expression may be. Although a few suckers of the leftist persuasion actually buy the window dressing, the reason for the UN is to keep us marks from squealing when our pockets are picked.
It is hard for El Jefe and most other sentient beings to avoid the suspicion that the post Cold War interest of so many countries and well-meaning individuals in the UN and in the development of “international law” and “multilateral” solutions to everything down to jaywalking is more about the Lilliputians frantically seeking ways to tie down Gulliver (that would be the United States) than it is about the development of law. There is nothing wrong with the French, the Russians, and the Chinese, etc. seeking to do so, it is, after all, in their national interests to reduce US power. However, it is not at all in Gulliver’s interest to be so bound. What mystifies El Jefe is why so many Americans seem eager to help the Lilliputians.
El Jefe, fundamentally, mistrusts the whole direction that international law (or “the Law of Nations”) has taken since about 1945, and possibly since 1918, and thinks that it has been a blind alley. Instead of the governments of nation-states -- each individually accountable to their own electorates -- representing their interests vis-a-vis each other bilaterally, the proponents of the UN/League of Nations type organizations want to give our sovereignty to amorphous bodies of unaccountable bureaucrats and lawyers, who are utterly unaccountable to anyone but other faceless lawyers, dictators and bureaucrats, and who certainly have no truck with the concerns of American taxpayers. For these reasons, anything that puts a spoke in the UN’s wheel is fine with El Jefe.
3 comments:
I find myself in complete agreement with you. The League and the UN were created as responses to unimaginaby horrendous wars, with the intention of preventing anything like them from recurring. The impulse behind them is understandable, but I think the history of the last 80 years demonstrates that they have been futile, and that their ability to prevent conflict is only as strong as the will (and the militaries) of the Great Powers. Since there is only one Great Power left, that means us.
UN/League of Nations type organizations want to give our sovereignty to amorphous bodies of unaccountable bureaucrats and lawyers, who are utterly unaccountable to anyone but other faceless lawyers, dictators and bureaucrats, and who certainly have no truck with the concerns of American taxpayers.
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I totally agree with your point which makes me think of Tip O'Neil's maxim that "All politics is local". Local to the World Government crowd, however, would mean 'anyone who shares my globalist ideology'. For this reason, in addition to being dumbfounded when I was alerted to the Iraq Body Count website, I also got a creepy feeling when I wondered to myself concerning the motivations of those who would be the accountants of death. Clearly they are globalists and are keeping score for a reason. Unfortunately it may the American taxpayers who will utimately figure in their application of the body count. From their website:
The UN Secretary-General has called the world community to advance a new human-centred approach to these problems. As a contribution to this effort, the Commission on Human Security (CHS) first met in New York in June 2001 and held its second meeting in Tokyo in December 2001. The Iraq Body Count project is a direct response to this agenda of Human Security... and however many civilians are killed in the onslaught on Iraq, their death toll should not go unnoticed by those who are paying — in taxes — for their slaughter.
Iraq Body Counters
Totally agree with your thoughts on this one, El Jefe. The usefulness of the UN or any other International body has been disproven so many times in recent history. Not only have they proven impotent but they have managed to commit the world's largest grand larceny scheme. Even the League of Nations had the good sense to disband when they failed to do their job. Kofi is a crook and there is little doubt in my mind that he and the whole group of UN thugs will need to be firmly booted off of US soil and out of any right-thinking future.
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