Annan’s Ugly Exit

December 12, 2006
The New York Post
Original Source: http://www.nypost.com/seven/12122006/postopinion/editorials/annans_ugly_exit_editorials_.htm
 
Outgoing U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan traveled to the Harry Truman Library yesterday to deliver his valedictory. It was yet another sanctimonious broadside against the Bush administration. Ho hum… 
 
As Truman himself once said, in a different context: “That's plain hokum. If you can't convince 'em, confuse 'em: It's an old political trick.” 
 
What Truman would say today about Annan himself, and the organization he has headed for the past 10 years, can only be imagined.
 
Annan, who leaves office in 19 days, said he chose the Truman Library in order to pay tribute to his far-sighted American leadership in a great global endeavor—and to draw a distinction with the current president.  He noted that Truman insisted, when faced with aggression by North Korea against the South in 1950, on bringing the issue to the United Nations—in contrast to the Bush administration on Iraq. 
 
This turns history on its head a bit: Truman could do so only because the Soviet Union was then boycotting the Security Council—and thus couldn't veto the authorization of military force against North Korea. Nowadays, the United Nations can't, or won't, move swiftly no matter what the emergency—witness the continued genocide in Darfur. 
 
Annan also appeared never to have heard of the Truman Doctrine, as defined by the then-president: It must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures. 
 
Wise and courageous words—uttered in the same spirit that animated President Bush to act in Iraq, when Kofi Annan's United Nations refused to do so. Just as Annan & Co. even now refuse to act on the nuclear ambitions of such rogue regimes as Iran and North Korea. 
 
Frankly, it's no secret why Annan prefers to bash President Bush rather than focus on his own sorry tenure in office. As secretary-general, Annan presided over Oil-for-Food, perhaps the biggest financial scandal in history—and in which his own son was involved.  He presided over yet another financial scandal, involving the U.N.'s procurement office. There was even a drug-smuggling ring operating out of his mailroom. His efforts at reforming the world body's basic infrastructure—particularly when it comes to human rights—were exposed as ludicrous, at best. 
 
On an equally bizarre note, Annan yesterday proclaimed that all of the U.N.'s member nations solemnly accepted the shared responsibility to protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. 
 
As in, again, Darfur?  Please. 
 
Clearly, Annan hopes to confuse his listeners by ignoring the real problems facing the United Nations—and to evade his proper share of the blame for its descent into a cesspool of corruption and incompetence. 
 
Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Ill.) yesterday said it best: Under Annan, the United Nations has become notorious for the near-absence of standards of decency for the thuggish regimes that are too often empowered by its antiquated rules and procedures. That Annan chose instead to bash the United States, added Hyde, was completely predictable. 
 
Harry Truman, certainly, understood the noble principles on which the United Nations was founded six decades ago.  Kofi Annan, during his tenure, betrayed them time and time again.