Kofi Annan Deserves a Firing Squad, Not a Cushy Retirement

Via Instapundit and the Sunday edition of the London Times (article author Adam LeBor), we get a substantially clearer picture of the legacy of Kofi Annan, and it isn't pretty. This is a man, whether through incompetence, willful blindness, or craven self-interest (more likely a combination of these three and worse), who presided over a litany of scandals that make the Clinton Administration look like a bunch of pikers. Under his watch, there were a number of scandals: the Oil-for-Food scam, the Rwanda slaughter (over 800,000 killed), the sexual abuse of refugee children in Africa, Serbian massacres of men and boys in Srebrenica, and the genocide in Darfur...just to name a few that we know about. And for this, Mr. Annan receives tons of acclaim and gaggles of awards, his incompetent lackeys in the organization get promoted, and he gets a cushy retirement.

A more fitting end would be a trial (something the innocents who were slaughtered without mercy due to his cowardice and incompetence never got) and execution once convicted. Kofi Annan and Saddam Hussein are cut from the same cloth and deserve the same fate, only Saddam is getting his just reward because the U.S. and our allies stepped outside the U.N. (who was aiding and abetting the dictator). Mr. Annan is but a sad joke, a jellyfish whose end of term can not arrive soon enough, and for which the world is substantially worse off than he found it when he arrived on the international scene...and to him I say good riddance. Follow the link and read the whole thing, but I hold out no hope that anything will change at the UN with a new "leader". The entire organization should be scrapped, the dues paid to this corrupt den of thieves by U.S. taxpayers withdrawn at once, and all of its "diplomats" expelled from our country (save those of allies like England, Japan, and Australia, et al.).

Is There Blood on His Hands?: The Case Against Kofi Annan, by Adam LeBor

"The charge sheet would include guarding its own interests over those it supposedly protects; endemic opacity and lack of accountability; obstructing investigations, promoting the inept and marginalising the dedicated. Such accusations can be made against many organisations. But the UN is different. It has a moral mission.

It was founded by the allies in 1945 to "save succeeding generations from the scourge of war" and "reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights". Its key documents – the Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the genocide convention – are the most advanced formulation of human rights in history. And they have been flouted by UN member states for decades.

A more specific charge would be that, under the doctrine of command responsibility, the UN is guilty of war crimes. Broadly speaking, it has three principles: that a commander ordered atrocities to be carried out, that he failed to stop them, despite being able to, or failed to punish those responsible. The case rests on the second, that in Rwanda in 1994, in Srebrenica in 1995 and in Darfur since 2003, the UN knew war crimes were occurring or about to occur, but failed to stop them, despite having the means to do so.

...

UN officials argue that the organization is merely the sum of its member states and the Secretariat are impartial civil servants waiting for instructions from the Security Council. If member states lack the political will or means to stop a conflict, there is nothing the UN can do. This argument has undoubted appeal, not least to the consciences of those responsible for the UN's failures. If everyone is guilty then nobody is guilty. If everyone is responsible then nobody is responsible. But it is not adequate. However responsibility is divided between the Secretariat, the Security Council and the General Assembly, the UN functions as an institution itself. It has decades' worth of experience of conflict zones, a powerful institutional memory, considerable moral authority – however battered by recent scandals – and, for many, symbolizes the hope for a better world."