Doubting Thomas

The silliest column

In another ridiculous column, "The Best Man for the U.N."Thomas recommends someone other than John Bolton as US Ambassador to the UN. He recommends someone who's been there before, ex-President George HW Bush. Why does Friedman like Bush 41 for the job?:

Sorry, but we don't need a management consultant as our U.N. ambassador. What we need is someone who can get the most out of what the U.N. does offer to America. There is no secret about the U.N. - at its worst it is a talking shop, where a lot of people don't speak English and where they occasionally do ridiculous things, like appoint Libya to oversee human rights, and even mendacious things, like declaring Zionism to be racism.

But at its best, the U.N. has been, and still can be, a useful amplifier of American power, helping us to accomplish important global tasks that we deem to be in our own interest.

At worst the UN is worthless?
No, at worst the UN is harmful to the cause of freedom. "Zionism is racism" isn't simply mendacious. It was a statement of purpose that gave legal cover to a generation of Palestinian terrorism against Israel. It legitimized the Arab rejection of Israel's right to exist.
Dr. Jeane Kirkpatrick documented exactly how the world organization subverted its organizations to forgive PLO terror and assail Israel in "How the PLO was legitimized." So know it's not mendacity it is excusing evil. And it's not only been in the Middle East where the UN has failed to act against evil.
The UN failed to stop the genocide in Rwanda a decade ago. Its leaders seem more interested in makework programs designed for keeping their positions of privilege than in actually making a difference. (The UN has a school for diplomacy in Ghana, Kofi's nation of origin.)
And in an item I'll keep harping on: it protected Hezbollah after the terrorist organization kidnaped and murdered three Israeli soldiers in October 2000, saying it couldn't take sides. But by failing to aid Israel, the UN essentially sided with a terrorist organization over a member state. It's hard to imagine a more damning failure of the UN than its alliance with Hezbollah especially after it certified Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon as complete, depriving Hezbollah of any pretext for attacking across the border. Of course this outrage was simply an outgrowth of years of anti-Israel agitation.
No the UN needs shaping up. And it requires someone who won't simply work with the bad players, but someone who will confront them and force them to change.
There are few liberal mantras that are emptier than the one claiming that the Bush administration needs more people who don't simply accept the views that make the president comfortable but will challenge the prevailing wisdom.
It's empty for a few reasons.
1) It's clear that President Bush has changed his views since coming into office. He isn't isolated from new and/or challenging ideas; he embraces them if he finds them convincing.
2) If they really believed that someone willing to question the accepted wisdom and practices is a good thing, they'd endorse Bolton because he would hopefully force the UN to confront its malcontents instead of simply gladhanding them.
But Thomas argues:

If we had engineered more of a U.N. seal of approval before going into Iraq, we would have had more allies to share the $300 billion price tag, and more legitimacy, which translates into more time and space to accomplish our goals there. It's not a disaster that we went into Iraq without the U.N., but life would probably have been a lot easier (and cheaper) had we been escorted by a real U.N. coalition.

Right.
Norman Podhoretz had it right:

Here, I thought, the answer lay in what I had come to see as Bush’s characteristic modus operandi. Thus, just as he had challenged the UN to enforce its own resolutions on Iraq; just as, far from “rushing into war,” as his opponents charged, he had waited many months before taking action without the blessing of the Security Council; and just as he would later do in backing the negotiations aimed at keeping Iran from developing and North Korea from deploying nuclear weapons—so in this instance he was giving his critics every chance to show that they could attain the goals they claimed to share with him by means other than the use of force, or at least without rocking every boat in sight.

The UN never would have approved the war in Iraq; it was too compromised by the interests of its leadership and those it holds in esteem: France, Russia and Germany. For Thomas to argue that the UN's approval would have helped the American war effort in Iraq is naive at best; mendacious at worst.
So no, I don't think that someone like George HW Bush is the right guy to represent the US in the UN. We need someone who will make it clear that there is never an excuse for terror no matter how seemingly noble the motive. The failure to make this clear will only invite future 9/11's.
Is it too cynical to wonder if the reason Thomas has this fixation on Bush 41 was because he became the recipient of all sorts of wonderful leaks from Sec of State Baker? (Thomas endorsed Bush 41 for President last year. Now he endorses him for a second stint as Amb to the UN. This is getting tiresome.) It must have made Thomas feel awfully important. Now I guess he wishes to return the favor.

Posted by SoccerDad at April 28, 2005 06:37 AM | TrackBack