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The Real Reason Kofi Annan Must Go
EFL. For a great WSJ ink dot picture of the evil Kofi, click on the link. A debate currently rages about whether Kofi Annan enjoys the moral authority to lead the United Nations because the Oil for Food scandal happened under his command. That debate is 10 years too late and addresses the wrong subject. The salient indictment of Mr. Annan's leadership is lethal cowardice, not corruption; the evidence is genocide, not oil. As the controversy roiled over the past several weeks, I was on a research trip to the two ground-zeros of Mr. Annan's failed leadership while he was head of the U.N. Department of Peacekeeping Operations--Rwanda and Bosnia. We have heard from too many conservative commentators and Republican politicians recently--most of whom reject multilateralism anyway--about Mr. Annan's qualifications to lead. But we have not heard from enough Rwandans or Bosnians. I thought I'd talk to a few. snip "Do you think the U.N. was at fault?" I asked. Not the soldiers, she said, but the leaders. "If they had done their job, and were responsible, this would not have happened." I asked if she'd heard about the current controversy over Mr. Annan's leadership. Yes she had. So I asked if she thought he should resign. It was not oil that fueled her angry answer, but genocide: "Yes," she said, waving her hand, "all the U.N. leaders. They could have reacted if they wanted to. If the U.N. goes somewhere now, how can the people there believe or trust that the U.N. will save them?" Liberal multilateralists on the left, like me, are often skittish about offering too pungent a critique of Mr. Annan, because it offers aid and comfort to the "enemy" on the conservative unilateralist right. But if anyone's values have been betrayed at the U.N. over the past decade it is those of us who believe most deeply in the organization's ideals. Just ask the men and women of Rwanda and Srebrenica. Mr. Cain served in U.N. peacekeeping operations in Somalia, Rwanda, Haiti and Liberia. Posted by: Mrs. Davis 2004-12-20 |
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