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| Kofi Annan: America's Man at the United Nations |
| 2004-12-04 |
| From The New York Times, an opinion article by William Shawcross, author of Allies: The U.S., Britain, Europe and the War in Iraq. The growing demands that Kofi Annan resign as secretary general of the United Nations are preposterous. For him to do so would be extremely damaging not only to his organization but also to the United States. I say this as someone who strongly supported the American-led effort to overthrow Saddam Hussein; as someone who, despite the heartbreaking mistakes, still supports the coalition's attempt to build a decent society in Iraq. I also think that the United Nations has repeatedly failed the Iraqi people. But I know that Kofi Annan feels the same way. Years ago, when I was writing a book about the United Nations, he told me that in 1992, he had warned the newly elected secretary general, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, that the United Nations had to do far more to resolve the Iraq situation. The situation was this: After the Persian Gulf war, the Security Council had imposed sanctions on Iraq until it could verify that Saddam Hussein had disposed of all his weapons of mass destruction. He refused to cooperate, so sanctions remained, impoverishing and starving ordinary Iraqis, but not the Baathist elite. To redress this, in 1996 the Security Council created the oil-for-food program. Over the next six years, the program undoubtedly helped keep alive millions of Iraqis. But, as was shown in the recent report by Charles Duelfer, the Bush administration's top weapons investigator in Iraq, the opportunities for corruption were immense and Saddam Hussein took full advantage of them. Who was responsible? Not Kofi Annan. The United Nations officials who ran the program reported not to him but directly to the Security Council and to the oversight committee created by Resolution 661, which in 1990 authorized the removal of Iraqi troops from Kuwait by force. Why did the Security Council members, particularly the United States, not do more at the time? It is alleged that some of the United Nations officials in charge of the program may have been corrupt. If true, this is deplorable and they must be brought to account. But again, member states were responsible for oversight, not Mr. Annan. Now it has been revealed that Mr. Annan's son, Kojo, received money from a Swiss company involved with the oil-for-food program for years after he told his father he had severed all connections. This has caused Mr. Annan obvious grief, but is what we used to call a "Billy Carter problem" - the sins of a relative being visited on a high official. Kojo Annan's actions should not be cited, as some right-wing Americans are doing, to assert that the secretary general should resign. Kofi Annan is too honest, and too intelligent, to have influenced the procurement process in favor of a firm that had an association with his son. In any case, far greater corruption was being practiced by many member states themselves. The Duelfer report showed that Russia, China and France were bending the rules as far as they possibly could in order to secure huge contracts for their companies. Kickbacks were flowing in every direction. So why did Saddam Hussein's enemies, particularly senior American officials, not deal more robustly with the miasma that was developing? Part of the reason was that Iraqi propaganda claiming that sanctions were killing millions of Iraqi children was extremely effective, and the Security Council members were therefore very anxious that the oil-for-food program continue. At the same time, of course, while everyone knew there was some corruption, no one knew the immense scale of it. In the end, one must look at the entirety of Mr. Annan's record. The United States was correct in 1996 when it denied Mr. Boutros-Ghali a second term and helped elect Kofi Annan. Mr. Boutros-Ghali was a poor secretary general and was peevishly anti-American. Kofi Annan was a longtime admirer of the United States, and he quickly restored the United Nations' strained relations with Washington - even making peace with Senator Jesse Helms, the Republican most hostile to the organization. Since then, he has done a great deal to restore morale within the organization and to raise its prestige; it was fitting that in 2001 he, and the United Nations, were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. However, the war in Iraq, opposed by a majority of the Security Council, has put him in an impossible position. And many of his finest staff members were murdered by a suicide bomber in Iraq in the summer of 2003, and others have been reluctant to return. Yes, he made a mistake recently by criticizing the American mission to clear Falluja of its terrorist nests. But at a time when the United Nations is trying to ease the American burden in Iraq, it would be unwise for Washington to have a falling-out with the organization. Further, Mr. Annan is about to start a serious effort at reforming the United Nations itself, along the lines of the report from an in-house panel released this week. Iraq remains a deeply divisive issue. The Bush administration knows this, and should be doing everything to engage the world, not to diminish a man whom millions around the world see as their champion. If Kofi Annan is forced to leave by an American claque, the results will be catastrophic not just for the United Nations but also for Iraq - and the Bush administration's hopes of a successful foreign policy in its second term. |
| Posted by:Mike Sylwester |
| #36 The kind of far left that would support the Islamofascists isn't any more indicative of mainstream liberalism than the KKK is indicative of mainstream conservatism. You're blind to what's happened in the US Democratic Party during the last two years. Take another look at the 2004 US Democratic Convention's guests of honor: one has traveled to and praised lavishly the wasteland that is North Korea, the other praises Zarqawi's fascists as heroic "minutemen" who will inevitably triumph over us. And also look at the positions of what has become one of the most influential grass-roots organizations for the Democratic Party, MoveOn.org. Before you respond, you should learn more about he history of the anti-communist liberal Democratic Party wing that triumphed in Truman's day over the communist-appeasing Wallaceite wing. Read carefully Peter Beinart's piece on this in the latest issue of The New Republic before you reply. http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20041213&s=beinart121304 |
| Posted by: lex 2004-12-04 11:15:02 PM |
| #35 Tom> Only when I run out of puppies to slaughter and nuns to rape. Pardon me, Aris. I meant the liberals with whom I am familiar here in the U.S., Yeah, those were the liberals I was referring to also (American ones), and likewise with the conservatives (American ones again). Easier to compare within one nation. If I used my own nation, with four big parties ranging from conservative liberalism to socialdemocratic progressiveness to communistic authoritarianism, the comparison would be much more elaborate and confusing. I'm simplifying. lex> I've seen apologia of dictators and murderers on both sides (right-wing apologia for Putin's actions on Chechnya for example, right-wing apologia for the Shah of Iran, Pinochet, the Contras, even the Apartheid). The kind of far left that would support the Islamofascists isn't any more indicative of mainstream liberalism than the KKK is indicative of mainstream conservatism. |
| Posted by: Aris Katsaris 2004-12-04 10:57:17 PM |
| #34 That's why Mikey gets the bird... |
| Posted by: Tom 2004-12-04 10:49:18 PM |
| #33 "The growing demands that Kofi Annan resign as secretary general of the United Nations are preposterous. For him to do so would be extremely damaging not only to his organization but also to the United States." That sentence right there is cuckoo to the max. |
| Posted by: Korora 2004-12-04 10:46:53 PM |
| #32 Mikey, Aris and Gloming Crank all at once. I'm gonna walk my dog down to the bar. |
| Posted by: Sgt. D.T. 2004-12-04 10:22:21 PM |
| #31 Pardon me, Aris. I meant the liberals with whom I am familiar here in the U.S., not world-class liberals like yourself. By the way, do you drink the blood of newborn children? |
| Posted by: Tom 2004-12-04 10:19:27 PM |
| #30 yep, and we agree, Mikey |
| Posted by: Frank G 2004-12-04 10:17:11 PM |
| #29 Re #28 (Lex) I consider myself a liberal and I'll be the first to admit that it's long past time that liberalism cleaned its house of the smelly little fascist apologists like Jimmy Carter and the French journalist Colombani and Chomsky and Chomsky's retarded little brother, Mikey Boy. Lex, I know it's Saturday night, but put the bottle away for now. You can have some more tomorrrow. Other people are watching. . |
| Posted by: Mike Sylwester 2004-12-04 10:10:07 PM |
| #28 Aris, the most egregious practitioners of realpolitik in our time have been those on the left-- not the same as liberals, agreed, but the point here is that liberalism in the US and Europe has been hijacked by the admirers of Che and Chomsky and Trotsky. They're the ones who apologize for Milosevic, who stood up for the poor Taliban against those evil bullies Rumsfeld and Bush, who refer to jihadist fascist neck-sawers and child-killers as "minutemen", the brave heroes of the Iraqi "resistance" against the wicked US hegemon. I consider myself a liberal and I'll be the first to admit that it's long past time that liberalism cleaned its house of the smelly little fascist apologists like Jimmy Carter and the French journalist Colombani and Chomsky and Chomsky's retarded little brother, Mikey Boy. |
| Posted by: lex 2004-12-04 9:42:18 PM |
| #27 However, the war in Iraq, opposed by a majority of the Security Council, has put him in an impossible position Not really. This isn't a balancing act but a choice between those nations pledged to uphold UNSC resolutions and those UNSC member states that were determined to undermine and thwart sanctions, thus helping achieve the eventual goal of springing Saddam from the box that they themselves and the rest of the UNSC, and Kofi, had pledged to keep him in. The latter made a mockery of UNSC resolutions, of Oil for Food, of containment, of international law. Perhaps Kofi is simply no better than he ought to be: not terribly smart, not terribly strong, not terribly scrupulous as a manager. But don't we demand better from a Nobel Peace Laureate? Speaking of which, why does the UNSC get blamed for UN failures while praise for UN success attaches to Kofi? Nice work if you can get it. |
| Posted by: lex 2004-12-04 9:35:42 PM |
| #26 Liberals do not believe in moral absolutes aside from "liberal is good" and "conservative is evil". Utter bullshit. Why don't you say we drink the blood of newborn children while you are at it? On my part I've generally seen liberals be much more absolutist in their morality than conservatives. For example realpolitik is generally considered a conservative game, and realpolitik is probably the antithesis of moral absolutism. On the other hand vegetarianism for ethical reasons tends to be considered liberal practice -- and that's a case of moral absolutism. On another matter, it's generally been conservatives who've failed to condemn torture or atleast hesitated before doing so -- it's generally been conservatives who always estimate the results of an action and whether it helps or hurts "our side" before passing judgment on it. Or the phrase "My nation, right or wrong". This expression of utter moral relativism (or even complete amorality); it's generally not considered a *liberal* expression. |
| Posted by: Aris Katsaris 2004-12-04 9:27:22 PM |
| #25 GC7327 I hope you nave links for all those unsubstantiated charges. Mike S will want to review them at 9:00. |
| Posted by: Mrs. Davis 2004-12-04 8:47:29 PM |
| #24 I heard an interview with Senator Coleman a day or 2 ago. He's definitely a good guy trying to get to the bottom of the UN oil for food scam. He was disheartened to say the least at the White House's limp wristed request that Kofi fess up. I think it's safe to say that not all files will be opened regarding this scam that Saddam had going. It's not only Kofi's son who is implicated in the doo doo. Some Americans are said to be involved as middle men in the scam, including Marc Rich and his pal, Ben Pollner. These two jerks were given pardons by Clinton, yes, but only after pressure was brought to bear on the situation by some high profile Israelis. No one in the White House wants to go that route in the quest for truth, especially as it relates to our credibility with Iraqis starved to death by Saddam and Israeli families who lost family and friends to suicide bombers, financed by Saddam Hussein, who made a fortune through the oil for food venture. Some stones are not meant to be over turned. |
| Posted by: Glomosing Crong7327 2004-12-04 8:12:14 PM |
| #23 "In space, no one can hear you scream", Not true, that last scream would punch out enough air to be heard a metre of so. |
| Posted by: Shipman 2004-12-04 6:58:49 PM |
| #22 Kofi Annan: America’s Man at the United Nations Ahhhaaahahahahhhhaaahahahahaaaa!...... Haahahahahaaahahaahaaaahahaaha!!!!!!!! |
| Posted by: Bomb-a-rama 2004-12-04 6:39:51 PM |
| #21 Read the title, knew who posted it. What a shame Mikey's mind is so small and predictable. |
| Posted by: Robert Crawford 2004-12-04 4:08:17 PM |
| #20 Ptah - spot on! All he would have to do to prove he's willing is allow Volker's committe to subpoena and provide docs to Coleman's Senate Committee. The fact he won't provides a basis to suggest his culpability (and Kojo's) in malfeasance or cowardice to expose his allies |
| Posted by: Frank G 2004-12-04 4:05:09 PM |
| #19 At the risk of saying anything else "spot-on" and risking responsibility for osteoarthritis in .com's typing finger, let me add this: The U.N. itself is a classic example of this entire morality issue. Scads of diplomats and bureaucrats do a complicated verbal dance designed to obscure the unpleasantness of any moral absolutes. Hence Saddam could defy the Gulf War peace agreement, defy resolution after resolution, and loot the Oil for Food program. Meanwhile the French, the Russians, and Kofi Annan's son -- to name just a few -- were on the take, conspiring (yes, conspiring) with the Saddam. So George Bush, known for straight talk and absolutism, gets painted as the bad guy because he has the unpleasantness to confront all this in terms of right and wrong and us and them. And for that reason, Mike Sylwester, the U.N. and Kofi Annan are basically useless. You cannot take the high moral ground or make things right by making deals with the devil. |
| Posted by: Tom 2004-12-04 4:03:37 PM |
| #18 Of course, there are other opinions. |
| Posted by: mojo 2004-12-04 4:03:07 PM |
| #17 If I recall, Kofi DOES have the power to order people to release information concerning the current scandals, BUT REFUSES TO DO SO. Seems to me if he wants to clear himself, he'd start opening up and airing everything out. I mean, isn't THAT what the MSM and liberals the world over think conservatives in scandal should do? Isn't sauce for the goose also sauce for the gander? |
| Posted by: Ptah 2004-12-04 3:48:12 PM |
| #16 Tom - "Liberals do not believe in moral absolutes" Spot-on - they (or I should say their teachers / professors) missed Plato's points - and his prejudices dating from the enforced death of his mentor Socrates. In this interesting syllabus, check out "Lecture One: Plato" running through pages 5-12... Mildred Espree phreakin' "gets it"... sadly, many of her peers do not. Ms Espree, among many others, employs John Leo and Meg Greenfield (believe it or not) to update the discussion of relative and absolute truth into contemporary terms. Both are heavily quoted in the uninsane academia for "getting it". Leo's Absolutophobia and Greenfield's Why Nothing is 'Wrong' Anymore (and no. I can't locate the text for either - sorry) are apparently frequently considered as a set in logic and critical thinking class syllabi - especially as a follow-on to Plato. Here's an article with a condensed version of Leo's article to illustrate: "The "nonjudgmental," "no-fault sin," generation has been taught that each person establishes his or her own values for his or her life, and those values depend upon the situation in which one finds him or her self. Maybe this generation cannot read, write or compute, but they do know not to be "judgmental" of the sodomites, nor of those in high places." and... "Miss Sommers points beyond multiculturalism to a general problem of so many students coming to college "dogmatically committed to a moral relativism that offers them no grounds to think" about cheating, stealing and other moral issues. Mr. Simon calls this "absolutophobia"--the unwillingness to say that some behavior is just wrong. Many trends feed the fashionable phobia. Postmodern theory on campus denies the existence of any objective truth: All we can have are clashing perspectives, not true moral knowledge. The pop-therapeutic culture has pushed nonjudgmentalism very hard. Intellectual laziness and the simple fear of unpleasantness are also factors." Heh, heh. If anyone has or locates the Greenfield article - PLEASE post the text or link - THANX! These are "old" (dinosaur days) print pieces dating from the prehistoric Greenfield - Newsweek, 1986 / reprinted in Reader's Digest, 1986; Leo - US News & World Report - 1997) |
| Posted by: .com 2004-12-04 2:10:01 PM |
| #15 "...the LLL, proclaiming the existence of conspiracies all around the world..." It's very simple, Steve, let me explain it to you: Liberals do not believe in moral absolutes aside from "liberal is good" and "conservative is evil". So they, being the good guys in their own eyes, "cooperate" in groups. On the other hand, those nasty conservatives don't cooperate with each other -- they only "conspire" with each other. Thus Kofi must be good and you must be part of a Rantburg conspiracy to frame him. That also explains why it's a conspiracy for the Vice President to discuss energy policy with energy company executives. He should only discuss energy policy with people so liberal that they wouldn't take jobs in the energy industry. Who better to influence energy policy than people with no energy experience? |
| Posted by: Tom 2004-12-04 1:27:48 PM |
| #14 Shawcross has mellowed out a lot since "Sideshow". I think he has backed off a lot over what was in that book. And he was pro-war on Iraq. On the other hand, he is quite wrong about Annan. |
| Posted by: Anonymous4870 2004-12-04 1:26:19 PM |
| #13 Frank - Echo? Ummmm... Revisiting Physics 101 methinks there is no sound in a vacuum... "In space, no one can hear you scream", heh. ;-) |
| Posted by: .com 2004-12-04 1:16:44 PM |
| #12 an apologist for the Khmer Rouge That's a familiar theme, isn't it? |
| Posted by: Raj 2004-12-04 12:59:05 PM |
| #11 Shawcross is the 'journalist' who blamed Nixon for the creation of the Khmer Rouge. Shawcross is another LLL, an apologist for the Khmer Rouge and now an ally for the enemy coalition now at the United Nations. All this is likely a major reason why this garbage was published. |
| Posted by: badanov 2004-12-04 12:54:50 PM |
| #10 It's interesting how the LLL, proclaiming the existence of conspiracies all around the world -- Halliburton, Chaney, Bush, Iraqi oil, multilateral corporations, etc -- have so far missed the odiferous whiff of conspiracy in Koko's scam. |
| Posted by: Steve White 2004-12-04 12:40:53 PM |
| #9 If he's so impotent and inocent, why are the investigations being impeded so well by the UN stonewall? |
| Posted by: Mrs. Davis 2004-12-04 11:25:46 AM |
| #8 "Kofi Annan is a crook, thief, a liar, a fraud, and a generally unpleasant person" And those are his good qualities... |
| Posted by: Ol_Dirty_American 2004-12-04 11:18:48 AM |
| #7 I'm sorry. I forgot to take my gullibility pills this morning! Kofi Annan is a crook, a thief, a liar, a fraud, and a generally unpleasant person. He is directly responsible for the oil for bombs program. He is partially - indirectly (thru his deliberate and calculated inaction) responsible for the Rwanda Genocide and the current Genocide occuring in western Sudan. There is a reason for the vote of no confidence from his own staff. Not only should he step down but he should be charged. |
| Posted by: CrazyFool 2004-12-04 10:33:21 AM |
| #6 Here are some of the problems, from this entry on today's RB: In the eastern Congo, scene of an operation that began as an EU military display under French leadership and is now one of the U.N.’s biggest peacekeeping missions ever, the blue helmets have apparently been routinely sexually abusing pre-pubescent refugee girls, creating a camp full of 13-year-old mothers. Months ago, the U.N. promised to issue a report on the situation. It was finally released two weeks ago, according to the BBC. The outcome: Kofi Annan released a statement saying "it is vital that the investigations be speeded up." Uh huh. One would think Mr. Anan had no responsibility for that investigation, for the pace at which it proceeded or for speaking out on behalf of oppressed black GIRLS being abused badly by troops under UN auspices. What is at stake is much larger than Anan or the UN per se. It is a pigpile of willful ignorance, tolerance of corruption and short-term thinking among the comfortable elite who don't mind seeing suffering continue so long as their perks and pensions aren't affected. In Germany, the International Herald Tribune is reporting that the abuse of German army conscripts is part of a widening scandal. "The accusations involve stories of instructors dressed in Arab costumes beating recruits, giving them electric shocks and dousing them with cold water," the paper reports, even though none of the recruits are Iraqis. The report comes after scandals surfaced in German defense spending. Meanwhile, Spiegel reports that a couple of U.S. leftists have been welcomed into German courts to file a suit against Donald Rumsfeld for "war crimes" committed by U.S. soldiers at Abu Ghraib. ... you could be forgiven for thinking that opposition to U.S. policies in Iraq and elsewhere is a consequence of ideological or strategic disagreements. But there is no ideology any more. There’s only anti-Americanism, scandal, and corruption. And of course stupidity (or willful ignorance on the part of an entire culture): According to a survey of 4,000 Britons under the age of 35 reported in the Independent, 60 percent of them have never heard of Auschwitz, and of those who thought the name was familiar, three quarters really didn’t know much about what had gone on there. At least they’ll never forget. Indeed. But they are likely to repeat it as a result, if they last that long. |
| Posted by: rkb 2004-12-04 10:26:03 AM |
| #5 Part of the problem with Anan is that, like many in the EU bureaucracy in Brussels, he has never held elected office or in any other way been accountable for making hard decisions with real consequences. He doesn't begin to have the moral stature or the experience of Dag Hammerskald, for instance. He has way overstepped his authority by announcing, for instance, that our presence in Iraq is "illegal". That is not the official role of the Secretary General and he has not earned the stature to speak out at a personal level. Indeed, his role in Rwanda and Sudan suggest a significant cowardice on his part. I have less than full confidence in Mr. Anan's reported future efforts to reform the UN. I've seen way too many bureaucracies try to do that from within and the results are, shall we say, predictable .... |
| Posted by: rkb 2004-12-04 10:11:14 AM |
| #4 Mike cites the NY Times, defending Kofi. Anyone else hear an echo here? |
| Posted by: Frank G 2004-12-04 10:10:20 AM |
| #3 Mike, look, if it was just one thing like his son's involvement in that Oil-for-Food scam, even painting it as generously as it is done here, you'd be right. But add in the fact he did nothing about Rwanda, is doing virtually nothing about Darfur, is giving France a pass on their behavior in the Ivory Coast, whitewashes the harrassing behavior of one of his top people towards the UN staff (he's the only Secretary General to have a no confidence vote from the staff, think about that, Mike)....precisely why should he stay there? I can sum this whole article up with this: "Yeah, he's incompetent, but the next guy will REALLY not like the US, so you better shut up and be thankful!" No thanks. |
| Posted by: Desert Blondie 2004-12-04 10:08:10 AM |
| #2 I ain't buying...........off with his head! |
| Posted by: RJB in JC MO 2004-12-04 9:57:10 AM |
| #1 Kofi Annan is too honest, and too intelligent, to have influenced the procurement process in favor of a firm that had an association with his son. Yeah, we can trust him. He's not like the others. Keep trying, Mike. |
| Posted by: tu3031 2004-12-04 9:52:05 AM |