Kofi

Yesterday I listened to as much of Kofi Annan's farewell address as I could stomach, which wasn't much. He took a few self-righteous moments to scold the Bush Administration.

"Human rights and the rule of law are vital to global security and prosperity," Annan's text said. When the U.S. "appears to abandon its own ideals and objectives, its friends abroad are naturally troubled and confused," he said.
"[President Truman] believed strongly that henceforth security must be collective and indivisible. That was why, for instance, that he insisted when faced with aggression by North Korea against the South in 1950, on bringing the issue to the United Nations," Annan said.
"Against such threats as these, no nation can make itself secure by seeking supremacy over all others."
http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/12/11/D8LUN86O0.html

Gee Kofi, some of us think Harry Truman would have done exactly what George Bush and Congress chose to do - bypass the impotent and corrupt U.N. and build its own coalition.

And speaking of corruption.

Srebrenica is rarely mentioned nowadays in Annan’s offices on the 38th floor of the UN secretariat building in New York. He steps down in December after a decade as secretary-general. His retirement will be marked by plaudits. But behind the honorifics and the accolades lies a darker story: of incompetence, mismanagement and worse. Annan was the head of the Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) between March 1993 and December 1996. The Srebrenica massacre of up to 8,000 men and boys and the slaughter of 800,000 people in Rwanda happened on his watch. In Bosnia and Rwanda, UN officials directed peacekeepers to stand back from the killing, their concern apparently to guard the UN’s status as a neutral observer. This was a shock to those who believed the UN was there to help them.

Annan’s term has also been marked by scandal: from the sexual abuse of women and children in the Congo by UN peacekeepers to the greatest financial scam in history, the UN-administered oil-for-food programme. Arguably, a trial of the UN would be more apt than a leaving party.

The charge sheet would include guarding its own interests over those it supposedly protects; endemic opacity and lack of accountability; obstructing investigations, promoting the inept and marginalising the dedicated. Such accusations can be made against many organisations. But the UN is different. It has a moral mission.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2099-2368626_1,00.html

Hearing Kofi pontificate about the shortcomings and excesses of the Bush Administration is very much like listening to Ted Kennedy lecturing conservative Supreme Court nominees on morality. It's like hearing Jimmy Carter criticize a sitting president - offering the same wisdom and expertise that drove this country to perhaps its lowest point in its history... Mmm... That would be the Carter years.

Goodbye, Kofi. Perhaps your greatest accomplishment is that through your corruption and incompetence, the cold light of truth was shined upon the biggest global joke in the history of the planet... Mmm ...That would be the United Nations.