Kofi Annan has perfected the Holy Man style of public performance. He speaks very quietly, in that exquisitely enunciated African accent, and people just take if for granted that he is a Good Man and a Good Thing. But Per Ahlmark (linked to by Instapundit) shows him to be a less than perfect human being. He describes the inaction and treachery of the UN, as lead by Annan, in first promising, and then failing, to protect the Bosnian Muslims from the Serbs. But, he continues:
No one should be surprised by the UN’s inaction, because only the year before it had demonstrated utter incompetence in facing the fastest genocide in history – the slaughter of 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus in Rwanda in just 100 days. UN forces in Rwanda in 1994 were Annan’s responsibility before and during the crisis.
Annan was alerted four months before Hutu activists began their mass killings by a fax message from Romeo Dallaire, the Canadian general commanding UN forces in Rwanda. Dallaire described in detail how the Hutus were planning “anti-Tutsi extermination”. He identified his source “a Hutu” and reported that arms were ready for the impending ethnic cleansing.
Dallaire requested permission to evacuate his informant and to seize the arms cache. Annan rejected both demands, proposing that Dallaire make the informant’s identity known to Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana, a Hutu, even though the informant had expressly named the president’s closest entourage as the authors of the genocide blueprint.
This is the man who is being seriously proposed as the next ruler of Iraq, because he would be an improvement.
Annan, Ahlmark makes clear, is an object of religious worship, a human repository of millenarian hopes, rather than a man who has earned the adoration he basks in.
A similar error of false adoration was made by the more elderly admirers of Kofi Annan, when younger, with that other African Holy Man of severe actual unholiness, Julius Nyerere. As with Nyerere, it is hard to tell what proportion of Annan’s catastrophic blunders to attribute to sheer stupidity, and how much to actual wickedness. I suspect a combination of the two in the form of a murderously stubborn stupidity, which combines intellectual mediocrity with an immoral unwillingness to admit to error, possibly all floating in the same delusions as those that engulf the minds of his worshippers, but perhaps caused by mere vanity.
Robert Mugabe is another such. Although, having a slightly more severe and steely public persona, he is more readily identified as the mass murderer that he is. He should have gone to RADA. At the very least he should lose the Hitler moustache.
The vision Kofi Annan personifies with such theatrical precision is that of a single, infinitely benign World State, which will cure all ills, correct all injustices, right all wrongs, and put down the mighty from their seats. Allelujah. Especially those horrid Americans. That this same man might be an ill, a perpetrator of injustice, a wrongdoer and far too mighty one, and that the vision he personifies might be a road to ruin of our entire species, starting with its poorest and most unfortunate, and that those ghastly Americans may in fact be energetically rescuing the human race from a great and self-sacrificial folly with no good purpose to it whatever, is a thought that is simply not bearable to the World Statists. So they caste it aside. Mere evidence has nothing to do with it. To cease from the worship of Kofi would mean changing their entire way of thinking and believing and feeling, and that they will not do, no matter how much blood soaks their altar.
An excellent discourse on Annan and the UN.
I met Annan and dealt with him up close about 10 years ago on Somalia and some other UN peacekeeping operations shortly after he took over responsibility for UN peacekeeping operations.
My initial impression of him was that he was a truly decent person. As I saw more of him, I started to wonder if he was not more comparable to the Chamberlain model – a basically decent person who was/is constitutionally unable to recognize evil; but therefore, in his own way, very dangerous.
I have, over the intervening years, watched his performance and have often wondereed if there was not something significantly more sinister in his make-up. I hope I am wrong and that he is more a modern-day Chamberlain type, which would be bad enough, but the balance has been tipping increasingly against him for some time.
Is it that the UN secretariat is so obsessed with being neutral or impartial that it is not able to make a moral distinction between a dictatorial thug and a duly elected democratic leader Or is there a more calculated and sinister refusal to do so. And if so, why?
I am certainly no fan of the UN. I have seen it reasonably up close from several perspectives. I would summarize my view of the UN as disgust, distrust, and very real fear of what would happen if it, and here I mean the secretariat, ever acquired any real temporal power. World government is certainly where I beleive it wants to go.
I suppose the UN has its uses, but we should approach it with our eyes wide open and always watch our back. It is not an organization we can aford to trust with anything of real importance.
Your excelent summary touched a nerve with me based on my personal experiences with the UN, so I feel compelled to comment. I have certainly experienced first hand the palpable, visceral anti-americanism that pervades the UN.
I believe you are uncannily right on the mark with your comments and you have expressed many of my thoughts far more eloquently than I ever could..
Excellent post from Brian and interesting comment from Anon.
I have always thought Annan was a posturing, self-regarding dimwit. But is it really possible for anyone to be that stupid in a high profile position and not have been knocked off his perch by now? Probably not. I have revised my opinion and now think he’s a posturing dimwit with the kind of dull, self-protective cunning that actually serves many people in lesser positions quite well.
Keep in mind that Annan is an improvement over his predecessor, and that the US campaigned to get Annan in office, in large part because they expected he’d be more pliable to US wishes.
The UN has turned into an anti-American (and anti-West in general) institution, which, given that it was a US idea, foisted on the rest of the world, is certainly a nice example of the law of unintended consequences.
Nemo – and how embarrassing to us that those consequences were not foreseen from day one. What did the founders expect of an organisation funded by around 40 advanced countries with well developed notions of humanity and justice and around 100 thugs, dictatorships and kleptocracies?
The UN serves no discernible purpose that would not be better served by individual countries, or informal coalitions of countries, better. And cheaper.
Isn’t it perfectly possible for him to be a good man, and trying to do his best, while still presiding over an organisation that can be utterly poisonous in detail, and knowing it? It seems to me that if one believed in the UN principles one might easily attempt to get it to work, or at least work better, from within. There is nothing to be gained from denouncing an organisation one wishes to reform. That just ensures you’ll never get the chance.
By its very constitution, as a political prize and battleground for all the world’s governments, the UN must be one of the least managable and reformable creatures ever. Even the EU is a model of shared purpose, democratic control, and decorum by comparison.
Actually, the U.N. does serve a greater purpose. To hide the utter impotence and irrelevance of some countries – especially France and Germany – behind a superficial veneer of respectability; to provide enough international pomp and pretense to turn weakness and unreliability into noble virtues.
It does, of course, work best in those same countries.
Kofi might be a fool or a wicked man; I don’t know him personally, but I don’t believe that.
If you think the purpose of the UN and of Kofi is to actually do at least some good work – then their utter failure would indicate that Kofi is a fool or a wicked person. But this is not the case.
The UN does not exist for doing anything beside pious noises and empty gestures. This Kofi does extremely well. So I must conclude he is a wise man, well suited for the magnificient job he has got himself.
Another part of his job description would be: avoid at all costs antagonizing anybody (except Israel). At this too, he is very good. So, again, he is the right person for his useless job. No, Kofi is not the problem. The UN is the problem.
Perhaps the true purpose of the UN is to perpetually remind the world that nobody ever learns from history (remember the League of Nations?) and that hope will always triumph over experience. In this respect, one must admit that it is a remarkably successful and economical endeavour.
EG
As Mark Stein (amongst others) has pointed out K.A.’s own son was directly involved in the “oil for food” scam in Iraq (taking large sums of money).
The U.N. is, at best, a corrupt joke and, at worst, a would-be world state. “U.S. out of the U.N.” is an old idea which has never been more correct than it is today. Britian also should leave the U.N. and all subsiduary organizations.
This is something that people who support a traditional conservative foreign policy (nonintervention) and people who support the Bush administration L.B.J. style “neoconservative” (interventionist) foreign policy can all agree about.
Whether one favours wars with various nations overseas or not, the United Nations should not be supported.
Ah, General Miller — a fellow military man, I see!
But what’s a “Furher?”
The media silence around UNSCAM is deafening. Nonetheless, it will not be possible to bury the story forever, especially after the Volcker Commission and the US Government Accounting Office, an exceptionally thorough non-partisan body responsible to Congress, release their findings.
When that happens, the mainstream media will be forced to confront the truth about the UN Secretariat: it was an active participant–in fact, the central participant– in a brutal mass murderer’s money-laundering scheme that allowed him to starve thousands of his own citizens and funnel money to islamist terror front organizations.
At this point, the mindless mantra of so many well-meaning people in the US– that we need to have the blessing of the UN, or that of our French non-allies– will have about as much force as suggesting that the pedophile-protecting Catholic Church should endorse political candidates.
A debate will arise as to whether this is Kofigate, ie an isolated incident, or an inevitable outcome of a structurally flawed institution. If most come to believ e the latter, then without question the structure of the Security Council and the role and responsibilities of the General Security will have to change, or else be ignored altogether.
Those who consider themselves friends of the UN and its mission should begin to develop an alternative idea for the institution. It will not remain in its present form much longer.
Ultimately, I think the question of Annan being incompetent or malicious is not worth answering; it’s an argument that’ll just run on and on. Rather, let’s look at what he should have done, and how many of his decisions were proven wrong. He has not proven to be much of a leader, and he certainly hasn’t enhanced the reputation of the UN. Actions speak louder than words, and it seems like every time Annan directs the UN to act, he directs them to do not enough or completely the wrong thing.
Me, I think we’d all be better off without him.
’nuff said.
A follow-up to some of the comments above–I doubt that the UN bureaucracy could produce a different type of leader than KA. He is the epitome of the UN “culture,” so what are the odds someone like say Tony Blair would rise to prominence there?
Eric (on Kofi Annan):
Well, Eric, OBL must have heard you as I see that he is offering 10kg of gold to anybody who kills KA. Takers anybody?
I see many references to UN ineptness, wastefulness and virulent anti-Americanism, but no comments that this is primarily due to overrepresentation of Europe within the UN. Half of the Security Council seats and a hugely disproportionate number of UN bureaucrats are European. As could be argued that Kofi is more-or-less European seeing has he has spent much of the past several decades in Europe and is married to a Swede.
Vanity, failure, impotence and a desire to return to the glory of their imperialistic past where all world events were largely controlled from Europe are the reasons for this. The UN is the device.
There is no rehabilitation for this organization. It should be tossed in the scrapheap; replaced by a democratic and representative international organization that can be help to account.
Kofi Annan rocks and you all suck! I love all this gun reference crap – what is that about are you afraid the liberals might sneak up behind you and change your mind?
And if that is the quality of your argument (and it clearly is) than I don’t think there is much risk of the likes of you changing anyone’s minds back to the simperling Guardianista line.