Victor Davis Hanson lays bare the oily false moralism of the U.N. typified by its out-going leader, Kofi Annan. Here are a few quotes excerpted from an article that deserves to be read in full.
. . . By any fair measure the current international renegade in matters of trademark infringement, copyright violation, or cutthroat acquisition of resources is an undemocratic China. Yet we know that Annan would not go to Beijing to lecture
to that unpredictable Communist dictatorship about its felonies when he can better harangue his patient American hosts about their supposed misdemeanors.
If Annan is really concerned about greater equity with the former third world, a good place to begin would be the European Union’s agricultural subsidies that harm the ability of impoverished nations to earn foreign income, or the amoral European policy of selling things like reinforced bunkers to Saddam’s Iraq or precision machine tools to Iran.
. . . Note that nowhere in Annan’s lamentations was there any remorse about the $50 billion Oil-for-Food scandal, much less his own son’s murky Billy-Carter-like role in it. Nor do we hear of the Annan family’s petty moral slipperiness — whether exporting luxury cars under the auspices of U.N. tax immunity or farming out government-subsidized apartments to relatives. Annan talks global and acts local.
. . . How much better for the soul to be gently chided with moral platitudes about Western insensitivity than electro-shocked about Middle Eastern, African, or Asian genocide that will go on until someone does something very messy to stop it.
. . . We live in a time when morality is defined by wrinkled brows, not action, and a moral sense is found in barking at a benevolent host while purring to dangerous carnivores.