Loss of the Moral High Ground

Progressive Conservatism ^ | 2/10/05 | Mark Radulich

[markkind]

In the run-up to the Iraq War, singularly the United States faced many opponents such as France, Germany, China and Russia against a land invasion to oust former dictator Saddam Hussein. Collectively, it was the entire United Nations that objected to the war and Secretary General Kofi Annan stated that this particular pending act of aggression against Iraq was, “…not in conformity with the UN Charter from our point of view, and from the Charter point of view it was illegal." In this statement Annan seeks to admonish the United States from the moral high ground placing the UN as the superior international entity.

Kofi Annan is dead wrong.

All bureaucracy’s are fallible and our own government certainly shouldn’t be throwing too many stones from the glass house on Capital Hill, however, we shouldn’t be lectured either by a vastly inferior and corrupt institution such as the UN.

At present the UN is under investigation for a litany of scandals. First and most prominent is the Oil-For-Food program. Oil-For-Food was instituted in 1996 in the wake of the 1991 Gulf War as a means for letting Iraq obtain humanitarian supplies despite being under sanction for failing to adequately disarm. As we have seen from recent reports, that’s not exactly what was happening.

According to The Australian, “Documents found in Iraq’s old ministry of oil reveal that hundreds of prominent individuals received vouchers to buy Iraqi oil at cut-rate prices and sell it on the open market – at tremendous, often seven-figure, profits.

Those named include not just Sevan but a vast array of Russian politicians, close friends of French President Jacques Chirac (including France’s former minister of the interior), British Labour MP George Galloway, former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter and, closer to home, Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri.

In short, it’s a who’s who list of high-profile anti-war and anti-sanctions voices, all revealed to be shills for Saddam.

But by far the biggest recipient of Saddam’s largesse was the UN. During the program’s existence, more than $US1 billion was kept by the organisation as a fee for administering the program. As one senior UN diplomat recently told London’s Daily Telegraph: “The UN was not doing this work just for the good of Iraq. Cash from Saddam’s government was keeping the UN going for a few years.”

So essentially the story here is that the UN was obstructing the effort to forcibly disarm Hussein in order to continue lining its own pockets with Iraq’s blood money. In addition, one would assume that they also didn’t want the US in Iraq because eventually the lid would have been blown off Oil-For-Food and the UN would be facing down a high degree of shame. Of course that’s precisely what has happened.

Another pockmark on the face of the UN is the sexual exploitation of war refugees in the Democratic Republic of Congo by UN peacekeepers. This from the Weekly Standard:

“01/03/2005, Last month a classified United Nations report prompted Secretary General Kofi Annan to admit that U.N. peacekeepers and staff have sexually abused or exploited war refugees in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The worst of the 150 or so allegations of misconduct--some of them captured on videotape--include pedophilia, rape, and prostitution. While a U.N. investigation into the scandal continues, the organization has just suspended two more peacekeepers in neighboring Burundi over similar charges. The revelations come three years after another U.N. report found "widespread" evidence of sexual abuse of West African refugees.”

According to the AP today, “Secretary-General Kofi Annan urged the Security Council on Wednesday to add at least 100 military police to a Congo peacekeeping mission to help prevent sex abuse of women by the U.N. forces.

In a letter to the 15 council members, Annan reiterated his "personal outrage" at the allegations of sexual exploitation of girls as young as 13 by U.N. peacekeepers in Congo. He said the United Nations is actively working to root out the problem, which has tarnished the reputation of the world body and the nearly 65,000 peacekeepers serving in 16 global hotspots.”

I think this falls under the heading of “too little, too late”. This is a far cry from Abu Ghraib as I’m fairly certain that those who were abuse there weren’t 13-year old girls. The shrill cries for Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfelds to resign over Abu Ghraib can still be heard from the likes of John Kerry even today. However, I do not hear that same crowd demanding Kofi Annan accept responsibility for the tragic events in the Congo and resign. At least Rumsfeld actually offered his resignation twice to President Bush.

Lastly, for an organization that supposedly trumpets world peace and diplomacy over aggression, they seem to regard Israel in much the same way the Western world regards African blacks…that is to say, not as human beings.

Allegedly, one of the UN’s mandates is to promote tolerance and stand against any sort of racism and one would assume anti-Semitism. However, according to The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), “The U.N. has tolerated and fostered anti-Semitism and anti-Israel propaganda.

• The U.N. has condemned virtually every conceivable form of racism. It has established programs to combat racism and its multiple facets - including xenophobia - but has consistently refused to condemn anti-Semitism. It only was on November 24, 1998, more than 50 years after the U.N.'s founding, that the word anti-Semitism was first mentioned in a U.N. resolution (GA Res. A/53/623).

• "The Talmud says that if a Jew does not drink every year the blood of a non-Jewish man, he will be damned for eternity." -Saudi Arabian delegate Marouf al-Dawalibi before the 1984 U.N. Human Rights Commission conference on religious tolerance. A similar remark was made by Farouk al-Chareh, the Syrian Ambassador to the U.N., at a 1991 meeting, who insisted Jews killed Christian children to use their blood to make matzos, a charge recently (2002) recycled in a Saudi government sponsored newspaper.

• On March 11, 1997, the Palestinian representative to the U.N. Human Rights Commission falsely charged Israel with injecting 300 Palestinian children with the HIV virus.”

There are more systemic problems in the UN and with the “multi-polarity” world at large at this time but my point is that will all of these scandals in mind, it is next to impossible to take the UN seriously as a standard bearer of morality. At best it is a largely dysfunctional social service provider and international grievance court, at worst it’s a league of terrorist enablers and neo-Marxist anti-Semites.

[secretagent]

At best it is a largely dysfunctional social service provider and international grievance court, at worst it’s a league of terrorist enablers and neo-Marxist anti-Semites.

The WHO conquered smallpox, but other than that...?

[An Old Marine]

Well here's a thought. Let the UN move to a nation that they approve of more, say Cuba or Syria. Then we can have a nice competition to build something nice on the East River.