The organization that says 'Nih!' to you

Now this is one silly article.

If it's true, as Fred Kaplan- who seems to blame Israel rather than Hezbollah for the current war in Lebanon, thereby telegraphing his lack of contact with reality- remarks (apparently unaware that he is, as my dad used to say, "leading with his chin) that "the most basic mission of the United Nations is to enforce international law," then the United Nations has failed in its most basic mission from the outset- and Ambassador Bolton's skepticism about the UN would seem to be vindicated. And whether or not Kaplan can overcome his delusions well enough to see it, in practice violations of international law around the world are either blithely ignored or allowed to pass with a mere shaking of the head- unless the United States (or Israel) is the alleged violator. In that case, the corrupt and ineffectual body with which Kaplan is so deeply in love goes into outrage mode.

The fact is that the UN is composed of largely totalitarian regimes hostile to human rights, with the odd smattering of degenerate, pseudo-sophisticated former world powers (read: most of Europe) whose commitment to those rights comes a distant second to their animus against the nation which replaced them on the world stage. The UN Charter does not fair well in the UN! It is neither interested in enforcing international law, nor competent to do so. It's sole justifications for existing- and they're wearing thinner every day- are as a forum in which the world may debate its affairs (however one-sidedly), and as a means by which various organizational appendages in areas like, for example, health can operate in a manner which still manages, on balance, to do more good than harm.

Recess appointments, of course, are an old American tradition, utilized by both parties; Kaplan's feigned disgust at the way Bolton got his job is as disingenuous as the notion that that a reformer who doesn't share Kaplan's own illusions about the UN- someone precisely like John Bolton- is anything but the ideal choice to be our ambassador to a body badly in need of a spanking if it is going to be of any use. At best, the UN is like the knights in Monty Python's Holy Grail, which seek to strike terror into the hearts of miscreants by saying "Nih!" to them- more or less like it said "Nih!" in the face of Saddam Hussein's twelve year defiance of its seventeen resolutions demanding that he destroy the WMD he admitted to having under UN supervision, to the genocide in Rwanda, to the ongoing genocide in Kosovo, and to every real crisis it refuses to face.

Here, by the way, is a more thoughtful view on the Bolton nomination.

HT: Real Clear Politics