Annan is a symptom of UN's sickness...

Boston Globe ^ | Dec. 5, 2004 | Jeff Jacoby

[FairOpinion]

On Wednesday came another call for Annan's ouster, this one from the chairman of the Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which has amassed evidence that Saddam Hussein used stolen oil-for-food dollars to underwrite terrorism and suborn at least one senior UN official.

But odds are the world won't much care about getting to the bottom of the latest UN scandal. UN scandals rarely provoke lasting outrage. There was no global uproar when the brutal regime in Libya was chosen to chair the UN's Human Rights Commission. Nothing happened to the UN after its troops allowed Serbs to slaughter 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the "safe haven" of Srebrenica. Sex scandals seem to erupt wherever the UN goes -- the latest involves charges of rape, child abuse, and prostitution by UN personnel in the Congo -- but they never cause heads to roll in Turtle Bay. Annan himself became secretary general despite his failure, when he headed the UN's peacekeeping operations, to pay attention to warnings of genocide in Rwanda.

Annan is merely a symptom of the UN's sickness, not the cause of it. His resignation would do nothing to reform the UN into the engine of peace and liberty its founders envisioned. Better that Annan remain in place as a symbol of UN fecklessness and failure, and a spur to those who can envision something better.

[FairOpinion]

I agree with the author. Kicking off Kofi won't solve the major problem: the entire UN needs to be dissolved.

[goldstategop]

Agreed. Two thirds of its members are thugs and the UN won't change its values. Leave Kofi in place and let the organization die a slow natural death. It will not be missed.

[FairOpinion]

"let the organization die a slow natural death."

I would actually prefer that we use this as an excuse to get out of the UN.

If US & Japan withdraws, there goes 40% of the UN's funding.

Let France and Germany, not to mention Russia make it up, if they want.

Contributions to the UN's budget:

USA 22 %
Japan 19.628 %
Germany 9.493 %
France 6.283 %
United Kingdom 5.380 %
Italy 4.922 %
Canada 2.573 %
Spain 2.448 %
Brazil 1.702 %
Netherlands 1.688 %
Australia 1.604 %
Korea, Republic of 1.318 %
Russia 1.200 %
Belgium 1.098 %
Sweden 0.998 %

http://www.auswaertiges-amt.de/www/en/aussenpolitik/vn/vereinte_nationen/finanzen_html

[26lemoncharlie]

Get the US out of the UN, and get the UN out of the US!!

[GloriaJane]

And those are the people that John Kerry admired so highly that he wanted to put our safety in their corrupt hands.

Thank God President Bush won!

[Jaysun]

Annan is merely a symptom of the UN's sickness, not the cause of it. His resignation would do nothing to reform the UN into the engine of peace and liberty its founders envisioned.

Amen. I maintain that the vision of an "engine of peace and liberty" was more of a hallucination than a feasible idea, the very concept is pie in the sky hippie bullsh*t. Let the UN go on as long as they'd like - without residence in and support from America.

[Cobra64]

the entire UN needs to be dissolved.

Count me in for a contribution to drop a MOAB on that filthy building. (And yes, I have been in the UN many times on business),

[SkyPilot]

Which is just as well. Annan is merely a symptom of the UN's sickness, not the cause of it. His resignation would do nothing to reform the UN into the engine of peace and liberty its founders envisioned. Better that Annan remain in place as a symbol of UN fecklessness and failure, and a spur to those who can envision something better.

The UN is a corrupt institution, one that long ago squandered whatever moral legitimacy it had. The UN's founding documents venerate justice and human rights, but for the past 40 years, the organization has been dominated by a bloc of states -- essentially the Afro-Asian Third World -- most of whose governments routinely pervert justice and violate human rights.

Rwanda, Sudan, the Congo, Ivory Coast..........Annan cares nothing for Africa or the Third World (oh sorry......"Developing Nations"....must be PC).

Annan is a disgrace. Jeff is right---let him fester there like the infected scab that he is. Annan is the perfect hood ornament to the United Nations.

[Route101]

I don't know why anyone would even listen to the U.N....they are a joke. They do not represent the people of the world...they are screwing the people of the world through corruption and payoffs.

[iopscusa]

Consider the UN a target and Kofi is the bulls-eye. Make it a obvious & tragic joke and proceed to unrelentingly destroy it.

[mewzilla]

Whoa. I can't believe this appeared in the BG. Either this got by the papers' editors, not to mention Tom Oliphant who's probably having kittens after reading this, or the excrement is about to really hit the fan with regard to the UN. Boy, I hope it's the latter.

[NoControllingLegalAuthority]

On another thread here, I read employees of the United Nations in New York City have amassed unpaid traffic fines of $195 million. They break the law and claim diplomatic immunity. They are criminals and Americans are fools not to throw all of them out of the country.

The UN is an organized crime syndicate that makes the Mafia look like lemonade peddlers.

[Carry_Okie]

Annan is the scab on a boil.

[Paleo Conservative]

I agree with the author. Kicking off Kofi won't solve the major problem: the entire UN needs to be dissolved.

Even better, it could serve as a replacement for Vieques. It wouldn't even have to be evacuated first.

[PGalt]

The UN is an organized crime syndicate that makes the Mafia look like lemonade peddlers.

Great comments bump! I yield my time to the FReeper from the great state of Tennessee.

[SkyPilot]

The UN is an organized crime syndicate that makes the Mafia look like lemonade peddlers.

Great comment. The sad part is that old ladies taxes and hungry, single mother waitresses working at Waffle House pay the UN bills while the corrupt staffers of the UN go to topless bars in NYC such as Scores to stuff $100 bills into G-strings.

[partridge thatcher]

Kofi Thulsa Doom
Forget about changing the American Constitution! The 'Barbarian' Arnold Schwarzenegger, as the new UN Secretary -General, might have just the right amount of 'no holds barred' to deal with that pit of vipers!

[GailA]

MASTER LIST UN OIL/SEX FOR FOOD SCANDALS