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December 11, 2006
Kofi: I Learned Projection

Kofi Annan has an op-ed column in today's Washington Post that must be read to be believed. The column, which serves as a valediction of sorts, talks about what Annan has learned from his time at the United Nations. If his rule hadn't resulted in such worldwide misery and despair, it would be one of the funniest pieces of opinion journalism so far this year.

The laughter reaches its apex here:

My fourth lesson, therefore, is that governments must be accountable for their actions, in the international as well as the domestic arena. Every state owes some account to other states on which its actions have a decisive impact. As things stand, poor and weak states are easily held to account, because they need foreign aid. But large and powerful states, whose actions have the greatest impact on others, can be constrained only by their own people.

That gives the people and institutions of powerful states a special responsibility to take account of global views and interests. And today they need to take into account also what we call "non-state actors." States can no longer -- if they ever could -- confront global challenges alone. Increasingly, they need help from the myriad types of association in which people come together voluntarily, to profit or to think about, and change, the world.

How can states hold each other to account? Only through multilateral institutions. So my final lesson is that those institutions must be organized in a fair and democratic way, giving the poor and the weak some influence over the actions of the rich and the strong.

Accountability? Accountability? This comes from the man who presided over the biggest fraud in history, the Oil-For-Food Program. His son and his cronies dipped their beaks in a program that put billions of dollars into the pockets of Saddam Hussein and spread corruption throughout the world, all the while with Annan scolding the US and the UK for their efforts to bring accountability to Saddam. After the exposure of the OFF scandal, Annan spent his time ducking any accountability at all for the debacle.

Come on, WaPo -- level with us. Claudia Rosett wrote this as a spoof, right?

There's plenty more laughs in Annan's goodbye screed. He tries to use Hillary Clinton's outline for It Takes A Village by telling readers that we are all responsible for each other's security, and that we are all responsible for each other's welfare. I'm sure that the people dying in Darfur will take great comfort in those words, in which the outgoing UN chief invokes them alongside the word "genocide" but manages to avoid applying it directly to them. Rwanda's victims also would second Annan's words, if any of them remained alive.

He then goes on to mention the rule of law and the need for states to play by the rules. However, in his quest for accountability, he fails to mention what consequences should come from failures to do so. We wanted to hold Saddam accountable for twelve years of intransigence in relation to 16 UN Security Council resolutions -- and Annan opposed the effort. We want to hold Iran accountable for its defiance of the non-proliferation treaty -- and Annan has little to say about that as well.

Accountability. Annan. Not exactly two terms one would tie together in UN history. This laughable attempt by Annan to do so will not succeed in anything except providing a much-needed laugh to Post readers.

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Posted by Ed Morrissey at December 11, 2006 6:52 AM

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