Sustainable Corruption

 
Yesterday Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad was treated to the diplomatic version of “Talk to the Hand.” Playing to a house of empty seats, Mr. Ahmadinejad preached on a variation of the Islamofascist theme of Muslim supremacy, Iranian style.

Last we heard, the US was not going to honor this thug’s visa. What with the breathless 24/7 Katrina coverage, Ahmadinejad must have somehow slipped by the Customs agents while they watched nonstop death-and-doom New Orleans. Or maybe the State Department weenied out again.

This whole affair would be disturbing except for one thing: the UN — corrupt and degraded beyond any possible salvage — has rendered itself irrelevant. When you think of the UN, think of a bunch of decrepit eunuchs singing “Stouthearted Men.”

Having John Bolton holding down the Fort on First Avenue is George Bush’s greatest joke. The perfect subterfuge, it lulls everyone into thinking the Administration gives a damn about what goes on at Turtle Bay. Bolton is a man of integrity set down in a cesspool, a “diplomat” who has said that he would like the top ten stories of his bailiwick done away with. Just the man for the job of watchdog. Sheepdog. Guard dog.

And what is he guarding, precisely? Why, nothing. That’s the beauty of the whole thing. Sending Bolton sends the message that we care about the UN, and we want the best possible person in there, taking care of business.

With that sleight of hand, we can now simply ignore the UN. Sure, the President will show up for speeches and will make all the proper noises at the appropriate time, but the reality is that we will ignore the whole dog and pony show while maintaining the polite fiction of paying attention. A kind of “listening between bathroom breaks” attention.

That’s why we need Kofi Annan in charge. Or, rather, we need not to waste energy on having him removed. As Mark Steyn says,

…if, as I do, you believe 90 per cent of UN ‘reforms’ are likely to be either meaningless or actively harmful, a discredited and damaged secretary-general clinging to office is as good as it’s likely to get — short of promoting Didier Bourguet, the UN staffer in Congo and the Central African Republic charged with running a paedophile ring. A UN that refuses to hold Kofi Annan to account will be harder to pass off as a UN that represents the world’s ‘moral authority’, in Clare Short’s blissfully surreal characterisation.

You see, there is no cure for the UN. It can’t be reformed, regrouped, or ever made into anything resembling an effective bureaucracy (pardon the oxymoron).

So let’s keep Kofi:

What’s important to understand is that Mr Annan’s ramshackle UN of humanitarian money-launderers, peacekeeper-rapists and a human rights commission that looks like a lifetime-achievement awards ceremony for the world’s torturers is not a momentary aberration. Nor can it be corrected by bureaucratic reforms designed to ensure that the failed budget oversight committee will henceforth be policed by a budget oversight committee oversight committee. The oil-for-food fiasco is the UN, the predictable spawn of its utopian fantasies and fetid realities. If Saddam grasped this more clearly than Clare Short or Polly Toynbee, well, that’s why he is — was — an A-list dictator and they’re not.

Wasn’t that easy? The UN done and dispensed with. Crossed off your to-do list. Now we can get on with the job of building strong alliances with our real friends, the ones in the Anglosphere.

Sail on, Kofi. Sail on.


Hat Tip: Jihad Watch.