The front-runner to replace Kofi Annan is South Korea’s leftist Foreign Minister, Ban Ki-Moon, a man whose record embodies the very worst we’ve come to expect from the U.N.: passive-aggressive policies that appease evil and confront all efforts to define or enforce standards of civilized conduct.###
As Foreign Minister, Ban was architect and executor of a no-questions-asked appeasement policy toward North Korea. During those years, North Korea’s human rights record was the worst on earth, and probably the worst since the fall of the Khmer Rouge. Kim Jong Il’s absolutist regime, supported by $7 billion in South Korean aid since 1994, stands accused of racial infanticide, the use of gas chambers for horrific chemical weapons on entire families, and a politically selective famine that “cleansed” North Korea of millions while the regime went on an arms-buying spree. North Korea’s forced labor camps are estimated to hold as many as 250,000 people, including thousands of children. Ban and his government had little to say and nothing to ask as these atrocities went on, and go on to this very day. When resolutions condemning these crimes came before the U.N. Human Rights Commission, and later, the General assembly, South Korea’s ambassadors were instructed to either refuse to vote or abstain. Publicly, Ban’s government failed to raise more than one mild, belated, token call to improve human rights in the North, and then, only in the most vague and general sense and in response to withering criticism from abroad. (...)
Transparency in food aid distribution? Oh, we’re doing a few inspections. Gas chambers? You can’t prove that, and we’re not asking any questions! Refugees dragged back to gulags? Trust us, we’re trying “quiet diplomacy.” They’re killing half-Chinese babies up there, you say? Well, qui sommes nous? We can’t cause offense, even when our own citizens are being plucked off of beaches and fishing boats. That’s why Ban is a perfect fit for the cesspool that the U.N. has become, while well-meaning fools like Ian Davies write editorials that require cynical diplomats to cluck their tongues with pretended concern. If Ban, who has made his diplomatic bones by abetting mass murder, is elevated to the U.N.’s top position, the dominant school of thought in the U.N. will be one that’s incapable of defining objective standards of right and wrong, rejects them outright, or simply refuses to enforce them.
Embora ainda seja só mais um dos candidatos, o coreano parece ser o que tem mais probabilidade de suceder a Annan.
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