The U.N.: A Promise Never Fulfilled
September 15, 2006
Investor’s Business Daily
Original Source: http://www.investors.com/editorial/editorialcontent.asp?secid=1501&status=article&id=243212977190338

World Affairs: The United Nations has officially kicked off its search for Kofi Annan's replacement. After years of corruption and incompetence, that's good news. But more than a new leader, the U.N. needs major reform. 
For his service to the U.N., including two five-year terms as secretary-general, Annan has been amply rewarded. Awaiting are two pensions. One, as a career U.N. bureaucrat, equals about $1 million. The other, from his tenure as chief, totals about $12,000 a month. Tax-free.
In no other line of work outside Hollywood can someone do so well for spouting anti-American propaganda.
But that's the beauty of the U.N. It is arguably the most corrupt, least efficient public organization on Earth, yet its leaders have been able to make the U.S. into a villain merely because the U.S. insists that others live up to the agency's lofty founding ideals.
As usual, U.N. Ambassador John Bolton said it best last week in summing up what the U.S. wants from the U.N.: Is good management and lack of corruption too much to ask?
Indeed, the bar we've set for the the U.N. is low — yet it's one the world body can never seem to clear.
Nearly 70% of its $10 billion annual budget now goes to vaunted peacekeeping operations. The jaunty blue berets are a symbol of a U.N. presence, and are now the organization's top priority.
So how are they doing? Well, take the 15,000 troops the U.N. is trying to put into place in southern Lebanon. They've stood by as Hezbollah has retaken its positions south of the Litani River, close to the Israeli border. And the terrorists have not been disarmed.
During the border war with Israel, U.N. peacekeepers posted Israeli troop and arms deployments on a public Web site, thus helping Israel's enemies. And in Israel's earlier conflicts with Hamas in the West Bank and Gaza, terrorists somehow were able to make their escapes in U.N. vehicles.
We wish these were anomalies, but they're not. U.N. peacekeepers — there were 90,000 troops from 120 countries serving in 18 peacekeeping missions at the start of 2006 — have been accused of a long list of abuses against the very people they're supposed to protect. 
On missions in the Congo, Bosnia, Kosovo, Cambodia, East Timor and West Africa they've been accused of sex abuse. Many of the charges involve women and underage girls trading sexual favors for food, money or protection — things peacekeepers are supposed to be providing.
Yet when U.N. officials tried to curb the behavior, starting with some relatively mild restrictions — no using prostitutes while on a mission, for instance — they failed. The reason? A culture of dismissiveness, said the U.N., that could take years to change.
The U.N. doesn't do much better when it comes to its other big job — administering aid. Report after report, including one this year from the General Accountability Office in the U.S., portrays an organization rife with bungling and outright criminality.
Case in point: The oil-for-food scandal, in which about $2 billion in bribes and kickbacks were made by 2,000 companies to Saddam Hussein's regime and U.N. officials. It is possibly the largest fraud in history, and Annan's chief aide, Benon Sevan, and son Kojo both were caught up in the scandal.
From its anti-Israel bias to its cushy tax-free incomes, from its disdain for Western values to its dismissal of democracy and free markets, it has proved harmful to global progress and peace. Yet, Americans seem split on it, perhaps recognizing both the organization's promise and its failure to live up to it.
A Luntz-Maslansky Strategic Research poll this summer found 73% of Americans want the U.S. to take a more active role in the U.N. because it's the best way for us to influence world affairs. But 57% said the U.N. should be closed if it can't be made to work better.
That should be a warning for the U.N. The U.S. funds about a quarter of its budget. But when everything is toted up, we actually spend more — $3 billion, for example, in 2004.
We don't know who'll take over for Annan. Based on the U.N.'s unwritten rule about geographic rotation, the top job is supposed to go to an Asian this time. But whoever it is had better be ready.
Our man Bolton would like to see action by year-end. That means a new leader can walk in with a clean slate and make the kinds of changes the organization so badly needs. 
Or else.