A Bureaucrat's Dram... I mean Dream

 
In his inimitable style, Wretchard is having his way with Mr. Annan's new ideas re the reform of the United Nations (that first typed itself as the "Unintended Nations." There is much to be said for observing slips of the pen/keyboard).

we find that Annan has themed his proposals in almost concious competition with those of the Bush Administration. His report subtitle is "In larger freedom: towards development, security and human rights for all". Superficially, it is an "alternative" agenda towards these same goals, atttainable in the kinder, gentler way that so characterizes the 'World Body'.

"Superficial" is the key word there. Simply based on its past record the least likely mechanism for "human rights for all" is the Untied Nations. As Wretchard says, the place is a bureaucrat's dream:

It was a dictum in Field Marshal Zhukov's Army that a good commander never reinforced failure only success. It is a maxim of the United Nations that progress is achieved by doing everything that never worked all over again. Probably nowhere is the bankruptcy of Annan's vision (and I use that word consciously) more evident than in Paragraph 29, where he lays out the UN vision for a better world. It is a laundry list of all the special interest 'development' goals the UN has acquired over the years where problems of different orders of magnitude and positions in the chain of causality are jumbled together; a bureaucrat's dream and a human being's nightmare.

The ghost of Max Weber is stalking the halls. He is smiling.