Kofi Annan's Offense - the leader of the UN is as brainless as most of its membership

Washington Post ^ | 3-28-03 | Charles Krauthammer

[DED]

Kofi Annan's Offense

In the current campaign, we have suffered from two major impediments: Turkey's betrayal and our own high moral standards. Turkey's refusal to let us send the 4th Infantry Division to attack Baghdad from the north has cost us heavily. It has allowed Saddam Hussein to concentrate his defenses to the south and essentially cut in half the size of the heavily mechanized enemy he has to deal with. (The president's supplemental budget request has $1 billion in aid for Turkey. Congress should strike every penny of it.) Even more important, we've been held back by our own scrupulousness. It is safe to say there has never been a conflict in which one belligerent has taken more care not to harm the civilians of the other. And it has already cost us. We know that the "irregulars" -- the SS thugs whose profession heretofore had been torture and repression in the service of Hussein's psychopathic son Uday -- use human shields, fight in civilian disguise and attack under a fake flag of surrender. Our restraint in choice of targets and in the treatment of those who appear to be civilians and those who appear to have surrendered has cost us not just time and territory but lives.

And yet, being who we are, we do not change the rules of engagement. Which is what makes Kofi Annan's most recent pronouncement so deeply offensive. With his customary sanctimony, he said on Wednesday that he was "getting increasingly concerned by humanitarian casualties in this conflict" and then immediately cited "the report that a missile struck a market in Baghdad."

This is staggering. If indeed the market explosion was caused by a U.S. missile, Annan knows that this was both entirely unintentional and a rare exception in a campaign of astonishing discrimination and accuracy. Annan's statement is doubly disgusting because he said nothing about Iraq's use of human shields, of fake surrenders, of placing a tank in a hospital compound in Nasiriyah. He says not a word about these flagrant Iraqi violations of the laws of war. Nor does he denounce the parading of POWs on television and the apparent execution of American and British POWs. He is instead moved to speak out in response to what is at most an accident.

Tony Blair wants us to go back and deal with Annan and the rest of the United Nations when this is over.

President Bush should tell Tony Blair, his good and courageous friend, that returning to Annan and the corrupt institution he represents is a huge mistake. It will win no hearts and minds, no more than did the futile attempt to get the second resolution out of the Security Council.

The way to win hearts and minds is not to try to appease those who wish us no good but to stay in Iraq and use the authority of the victor to build a decent and open society. We will not win the propaganda war with words. We will win it by overthrowing Hussein and exposing the nature of his barbarism -- and the shame of those who supported him and tried to shield him from the just fate American and British soldiers are trying to visit upon him today.

[DED]

Kofi Annan and the UN don't get it.

There are good guys and there are bad guys, and they can't tell the difference (which might be why Bill Clinton thinks he'd be a good choice for Secretary General, but that's another post).

Watched the news lately? Our guys are taking great risks to avoid killing civilians, while the other side is killing them on purpose. (It's one of the hallmarks of the Islamic "hero".)

A news commentator whose name I missed made an excellent point. The Iraqis are accusing us of targeting innocent civilians in missile strikes - but have the bozos who listen to them looked at clips and photos from WWII, when we didn't have the capability to target specific positions?

If our military weren't avoiding civilian targets for all we're worth, Iraqi cities would look like Dresden or Munich after WWII - almost completely leveled. Not only is this NOT the case in Iraq, we've been so accurate that the lights are still on!

Kofi Annan needs to target his rhetoric like we do our missiles. And our "friends" in the UN should have got up with our ambassador and walked out during the Iraqi diatribe on the U.S. "atrocities" and "criminal" leadership.

We need a NEW United Nations - one where only civilized countries can join (no Libya, no Syria, no Iran, no Iraq), and fools like Kofi Annan are not allowed.

[SolutionsOnly]

Krauthammer is the best! Right on target, as usual!

[jwalsh07]

He's certainly on target here.

[Othniel]

The whole UN is a bunch of weasels and hyenas.

IF that market was struck by U.S. ordinance, methinks the crater would've been considerably larger. Or am I wrong here?

[Joe Boucher]

Annan isn't brainless, he is just an anti American socialist. He wants to use Americas wealth to provide for the rest of the world. Doesn't matter that the rest of the world isn't quite up to speed with most things American. Annan like the Clintons see the vast resources of America as their own to use for thir ideals.
GET THE U.S. Out of the Freaking U.N. And we really need to stop hitlery.

[DED]

You could be right about the crater....
The media is now telling us that our guys suspect Iraq hit the market themselves. They've fired several missiles at the coalition that fell back into Baghdad!
The commander in charge of Baghdad's missile defense has reportedly been "removed from command".
What this actually means, we can only guess. Possibly that he's been dropped into a plastic shredder,had his tongue cut out, or one of the other atrocities the Hussein regime favors.

[Cicero]

It's a great mistake to think that Kofi Anan is brainless. He never would have gotten where he is without a lot of street smarts.

Rather, Kofi Anan is anti-American, anti-Israeli, socialist, pro-Islam, and above all CORRUPT. Saddam Hussein has been feeding Kofi a huge slush fund, 10 or 20 billion dollars worth, in the oil for food program which Kofi supervises. In return for huge sums of under-the-table ripoffs, Kofi gives Saddam complete control over where the oil money is spent in Iraq.

Naturally he is extremely anxious not to see an end to this enormous sweetheart deal, which makes Enron pale in comparison.

[Cato the Censor]

Drudge reported that Kofi's only success since being the UN's major domo was his seduction and conquest of Madeleine Albright in 1998 at the Figaro Hotel in Paris.

[Joe Boucher]

Seduce Albright is a success? Just shoot me.