HATCHET : A legacy of failure and death
Posted on Thursday, December 14, 2006
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/nwat/Editorial/48079/
The international organizations — many of which exist to line the pockets of their bureaucrats (while they all wring their hands over the poverty in this world ) — are lining up to laud outgoing U. N. Secretary General Kofi Annan. The awards will pile high, but not as high as the corpses of those who suffered and died on Annan’s watch.
Annan failed millions who were slaughtered during his tenure at the United Nations. But Annan wasn’t a total failure at completing his goals — he certainly helped the enemies of freedom and human rights use the United Nations as a tool to hurt the country that does more to defend those things than any other nation: the United States of America.
Often, Annan’s desire to cut the United States down to size was done so at the expense of those voiceless citizens of the world the United Nations was created to protect. Annan’s grand vision of multilateralism trumped the U. N. goals of world peace and security.
Annan’s parting gift to the United States was a speech at the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum in Independence, Mo. earlier this week, in which he offered thinly veiled criticisms at President Bush and this Iraq policy.
Of course, Annan failed to mention that he enabled Saddam Hussein’s regime to continue its reign of terror for years, opposing every attempt by the United States and its allies to hold Hussein accountable for his evil deeds (and violations of U. N. Security Council resolutions ). The tens of thousands of Iraqis killed and buried in mass graves had no advocate in Annan. While Hussein’s evil sons literally raped and pillaged their own people, the dictator was paying off the international bureaucrats with kickbacks from a U. N. oil-for-food program. Hussein’s web of corruption was buying influence in the United Nations from greedy U. N. officials — all under the nose of Annan.
In many ways, either Annan’s incompetence or his willful denial is what ended up forcing the United States and her allies to invade Iraq and remove the dictator from power. Hussein used oil-for-food kickbacks to help bolster his regime. For a succinct and unbiased report on how far up the corruption went, I recommend reading the “ oil for food” entry at Wikipedia. org.
Unfortunately, enabling Hussein to continue oppressing his people was the least of Annan’s failures. Annan is a Johnny-come-lately to the cause of Darfur, where hundreds of thousands have been killed by paramilitary troops (Janjaweed ) in genocidal fashion, as Arabs worked to cleanse non-Arabs — both Islamic and Christian — from Sudan. Sudan, where modern slavery exists today, has been largely protected by Annan, who has been unwilling to call the ethnic killings (as reported by U. N. observers ) genocide.
(For my part, if the United Nations cannot get a multinational force into Darfur to end the widespread suffering and murder that the African Union multinational force could not, then the United States should do the job. If the Democrats are so big on “ redeployment, ” I hope they redeploy some of our troops to help end the genocide in Darfur. )
Besides protecting the Sudanese government, Annan has also allowed the United Nations to become an instrument of anti-Semitism for many of its Arab nation member states.
Another tragedy (not nearly a strong enough word ) that is a part of Annan’s legacy of failure is the Rwandan genocide in 1994. This happened while Annan was in charged of Peacekeeping Operations (although before he became secretary-general ). Annan kept U. N. forces from intervening in a conflict that ended up seeing one million people massacred.
Annan’s departure from the United Nations will no doubt free him up to be a more vocal critic of the Bush administration, but that is a small price to pay for the newfound absence of incompetence that will soon grace the United Nations.
I have high hopes that Annan’s successor, Ban Ki-moon of South Korea, will be a much more affective leader. Perhaps most importantly, unlike Annan (he’s a professional bureaucrat, who came up through the U. N. ranks, and had reason to protect the bureaucracy ) Ki-moon is a true diplomat. Ki-moon represents the best hope for reform at the United Nations, the sort of reform that will transform the obese organization from a gravy train for bureaucrats into a well-oiled mechanism that once again is a positive actor in the world.
Lucas Roebuck is a former managing editor of the Northwest Arkansas Times and the Siloam Springs Herald-Leader.