Monday, November 29, 2004
We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us...
...it's an old joke, but it came to mind because some of the blogosphere is in danger of ruining a great racket we have going. The racket is this: Conservatives hate the UN. We bitch, moan, and complain about it all the time. You know the drill - it's a dictator protection society that produces nothing but corruption and resolutions blaming Israel for everything, up to and including the lackluster ratings for "Joey." Because of the above complaints, we tend to ignore the UN pretty much every time it opens its yap, and frankly, we kind of like living without the restraints a credible United Nations might provide. Stuff like UNSCAM fits the worldview nicely.
This causes great consternation among the sort of people who think the only place on Cuba where human rights abuses occur is Guantanamo Bay. But they play along. They decry our failure to respect the UN, but they downplay the abuses that have caused us to lose respect. UNSCAM, for instance, may very well be the product of the fertile imagination of Ahmed Chalabi. It's certainly not the sort of thing that would require anyone to lose their jobs, for heaven's sake. Pretty much anything that could go wrong at the UN will result in the left rising en masse, and declining to give a shit.
This system has worked for many years. It gives everyone something to gripe about, and the UN itself has provided gainful employment for people who would otherwise have difficulty with the responsibility involved in manning the fryer during your typical McDonald's lunch rush. (It's harder than it looks.) Unfortunately, Glenn Reynolds (among others) is threatening to upset the applecart by lobbying for Vaclav Havel to replace Kofi Annan as head of the U.N. Now, I understand how tempting this idea can be. It sounds so good. Vaclav Havel has personally fought for all the things the U.N. is supposed to be for. You couldn't ignore a U.N. that Vaclav Havel was in charge of. Too many of us have cited Mr. Havel favorably to just write him off.
Some people actually get this. If Havel took charge, he may actually work hard to restore the U.N. to respectibility. If that happened, we'd actually have to listen to them. Sure, the United Nations may actually transform itself into an organization that defines human rights violations as something other than "proximity to Jews." Sure, he might work to end the fiction that the heads of police states are equal in legitimacy to democratically elected leaders. Sure, he might investigate corruption in a transparent manner and restore accountability. Sure, he might make the UN live up to the ideals of its charter, and make it a force for global good, and the gnashing of teeth caused among those who have enough freedom themselves to favor "stability" in other, less free parts of the world may provide some entertainment value, but is any of this really worth having "world opinion" collected together in one unreliable, easy-to-ignore location?
I say thee no way! Continue the racket! Save Kofi's job!
Why? Because you don't want to have wait 30 years to get your fries.
This causes great consternation among the sort of people who think the only place on Cuba where human rights abuses occur is Guantanamo Bay. But they play along. They decry our failure to respect the UN, but they downplay the abuses that have caused us to lose respect. UNSCAM, for instance, may very well be the product of the fertile imagination of Ahmed Chalabi. It's certainly not the sort of thing that would require anyone to lose their jobs, for heaven's sake. Pretty much anything that could go wrong at the UN will result in the left rising en masse, and declining to give a shit.
This system has worked for many years. It gives everyone something to gripe about, and the UN itself has provided gainful employment for people who would otherwise have difficulty with the responsibility involved in manning the fryer during your typical McDonald's lunch rush. (It's harder than it looks.) Unfortunately, Glenn Reynolds (among others) is threatening to upset the applecart by lobbying for Vaclav Havel to replace Kofi Annan as head of the U.N. Now, I understand how tempting this idea can be. It sounds so good. Vaclav Havel has personally fought for all the things the U.N. is supposed to be for. You couldn't ignore a U.N. that Vaclav Havel was in charge of. Too many of us have cited Mr. Havel favorably to just write him off.
Some people actually get this. If Havel took charge, he may actually work hard to restore the U.N. to respectibility. If that happened, we'd actually have to listen to them. Sure, the United Nations may actually transform itself into an organization that defines human rights violations as something other than "proximity to Jews." Sure, he might work to end the fiction that the heads of police states are equal in legitimacy to democratically elected leaders. Sure, he might investigate corruption in a transparent manner and restore accountability. Sure, he might make the UN live up to the ideals of its charter, and make it a force for global good, and the gnashing of teeth caused among those who have enough freedom themselves to favor "stability" in other, less free parts of the world may provide some entertainment value, but is any of this really worth having "world opinion" collected together in one unreliable, easy-to-ignore location?
I say thee no way! Continue the racket! Save Kofi's job!
Why? Because you don't want to have wait 30 years to get your fries.
