Posted on 02/25/2007 3:11:03 PM PST by TigerLikesRooster
Bound to Fail
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has taken on 'mission impossible.' Everything about The United Nations conspires against him.
By Sebastian Mallaby
Newsweek International
March 5, 2007 issue - On a celebrated Thursday in April 1953, the first secretary-general of the United Nations greeted his successor as he arrived at New York's Idlewild airport, now JFK. You are about to inherit "the most impossible job in the world," he told him. Half a century on, that warning still overshadows the heirs to the U.N. throne. Ban Ki-moon, the South Korean diplomat who stepped into the job in January, jokes that he has taken on "Mission: Impossible." This is the humor of the gallows.
Ban became the world's top diplomat after a 36-year career in South Korea's foreign-policy establishment, culminating in a two-year stint as foreign minister. His selection was the result of backroom deals rather than a merit-based contest, and his life has not prepared him for the role of charismatic statesman. South Korea is wedged between mutually suspicious powers—the United States, China, Russia and Japan—and has learned to keep its profile down; its chief foreign-policy concern is to avoid provoking war with the nuclear wanna-bes who run North Korea. Growing up in this cautious environment, Ban nonetheless stood out for his failure to stand out: "extremely nonpolitical," "consensual," "a listener." That's how he is typically described; his most effusive fans venture that he has avoided errors. During his spell as foreign minister, Ban was so expertly bland that he was known as "the slippery eel" by his countrymen.
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
If it is based on "merits," we may have some NWO type as Sec. Gen. such as Bill Clinton. I like the way it is. Perfectly useless. I don't want to see some blowhard grandstanding.
Remember, they do not call him the "Slippery Eel" for nothing...
I'm with you. The UN has had too many of those gandiose turd world a-holes who think they were elected world president.
He is a great choice. He is US educated, he is not a muslim, he is not a loudmouth, and South Korea is relatively friendly to the US.
Someone like thta you have to aim for doing the least harm. He is doing the least harm.
What exactly is the merit-based process that got us 10 years of Kofi? Kissing up to as many third world socialists as possible?
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