ZenPundit
Monday, January 03, 2005
 
AN IMPORTANT POST FOR THOSE WHO SEE A NEED FOR A MORE RESPONSIBLE DEMOCRATIC PARTY

I was not intending to blog tonight being tired and out of sorts until I saw something quite important at The American Future - a frequent occurence on Marc Shulman's blog Some very senior Democrats held what I can only describe as " a closed door intervention" with the erstwhile UN Secretary-General Kofi " What, me worry ? " Annan, currently on track to tie Kurt Waldheim as the most morally disreputable SG in UN history, while matching U Thant for the most useless. Marc excerpted:

"First, they said, Mr. Annan had to repair relations with Washington, where the Bush administration and many in Congress thought he and the United Nations had worked against President Bush's re-election. Second, he had to restore his relationship with his own bureaucracy, where many workers said privately that his office protected high-level officials accused of misconduct."

Speaking as an incurable hawk with a penchant for big-picture analysis, I found this to be refreshing. The UN, to say nothing of the reputation of the thoroughly discredited Mr. Annan, is beyond repair at this point but the Democratic Party may still be salvageable. I'm not going to hold my breath but this burst of truth-talking realism was a healthy development. Now if only the Democrats will start saying things like that in public.

Frankly, long-term world security depends a lot more on the Democratic Party freeing itself from the grip that the Chomskyian nutjob Left has over that party's than it ever will on the antics of the UN.

 
Comments:
I read an article on this in the International Herald Tribune a day or two ago. What I found somewhat reassuring about all this is that the people who were counseling Annan were all pretty much reasonable, mainstream Dems when it comes to foreign pol. I may diagree with them, but they certianly do not come out of the Chomsky wing of the party. Its good for the Sec Gen to get some solid advice from people who he could consider allies in the US, but frankly I see Annan as a symptom of what really plagues the UN. The UN, and particularly its bureaucrats and officials suffer from an unwarranted sense of entitlement, specifically an entitlement to legitimacy and authority. Hopefully, Holbrooke and the rest made it clear that given the current path of the institution, it will have a difficult time remaining relevant.
 
Marc,

You are, I believe, correct. waldheim's Nazi past came out after he was elected president ( ?) of Austria.

Andrew wrote:

"Its good for the Sec Gen to get some solid advice from people who he could consider allies in the US, but frankly I see Annan as a symptom of what really plagues the UN."

Very well expressed. So do I. Annan is probably genuinely bewildered by all the fuss over UN nepotism and corruption that are mild by Gap and even New Core standards.
 
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