After a summer in which the Bush administration handed over a disturbingly large chunk of its Middle East policy to the United Nations — whose Secretary-General Kofi Annan then raced off to chat up Hezbollah and shake hands with the tyrants of Damascus and Tehran — it was a relief to spend Monday in the company of some extremely eloquent people who think that if the UN is all we’ve got, it’s time to invent something else.

The occasion was an all-day Hudson Institute conference, held Sept. 11 in New York, on “The UN and Beyond: United Democratic Nations.” The lineup included such voices of sanity as Princeton historian Bernard Lewis, Commentary’s Norman Podhoretz, Senators Norm Coleman and Tom Coburn; and Ambassador John Bolton (who displayed stunning diplomatic talent in not quite answering a question about why on earth the State Department has been supporting Kofi Annan).

Israel’s Natan Sharansky was there — the former Soviet dissident, turned democracy advocate for the Middle East. So was former Dutch parliamentarian Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who has now moved to the U.S. Born in Somalia, Hirsi Ali is known for her 2004 film, “Submission,” about Islamic women, to which an Islamic extremist in Holland responded by murdering her film director, Theo van Gogh. She has turned her clear-eyed vision on the UN, which she described as “incapable” of stopping conflicts and “incompetent” at solving them.

There was also a pollster, Frank Luntz, who reported among other things that 51% of Americans want to kick France out of its veto-wielding seat on the UN Security Council.

Luntz also suggested that after the UN scandals and failures of recent years, “The American people are one more failure away from saying enough is enough.” (Intriguing, though I have my doubts — given the UN’s rich history of smothering scandal simply by launching a carefully controlled investigation that then doubles as a cover-up; or, if necessary, pursuing the kind of reform in which, for example, the despot-ridden Israel-fixated UN Human Rights Commission is replaced by the despot-ridden Israel-fixated Human Rights Council).

All in all, the Hudson meeting was a sort of massive preemptive antidote to the mind-bender about to hit Manhattan when the annual opening of the UN General Assembly brings the usual collection of high-level thugocrats to tie up traffic and clean out jewelry stores, all in the name of UN reform and world peace. For the moment, here’s a sample:

From Bernard Lewis:

“If Churchill had had to face the kind of obstruction and opposition that Bush now faces, Hitler would have won the war.”

And, on the people living under the despotisms of the Middle East:

“Either we free them, or they destroy us.”

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Here is what I believe is the best eyewitness account of the attacks of September 11, 2001: by The Wall Street Journal’s Daniel Henninger.

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Lest it interfere with the UN’s labors in Lebanon, Kofi Annan remains coy about the identity of the mystery “facilitator” he has appointed to help secure what was supposed to be — as spelled out in UN Resolution 1701 — the “unconditional” release of the two Israeli soldiers kidnapped July 12 by Hezbollah.

What’s Annan trying to hide? From what we know so far, the likeliest candidates for facilitation Kofi-style range from overtly hostile to Israel, to apparently incompetent, to oddly embroiled in assorted UN scandals of recent years. We also know that the UN has in recent days been facilitating away on other fronts — with UN officials congratulating themselves for Israel’s lifting of the blockade on Lebanon, and withdrawal of more troops. The UN has even facilitated the entry into the U.S. of former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami, who has spent his time here shilling for the Hezbollah-sponsoring Iranian regime; this performance to be followed by a UN-facilitated visit from the current president of Iran.

Amid all this facilitating, what the UN has not yet managed to arrange is even a visit by the International Committee of the Red Cross to the kidnapped Israeli soldiers — Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev – let alone their release.

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Current wisdom says that if people in foreign lands love to hate America, the main cause is President Bush. If only we hadn’t gone into Iraq, if only we hadn’t stirred up the Middle East, if only, if only…

Oh really? With the fifth anniversary of Sept. 11 just ahead, I pulled out my notebooks from that day –

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Anyone care to ask former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami for further details on the item below? — as his UN-leveraged U.S. speaking tour takes him this evening to a $250-per-plate fund-raising dinner (or $500-per-person including private reception beforehand) in Arlington, VA for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) — and then on to Harvard. (Boldface is mine).

The U.S. Treasury has just cut off Iran’s Bank Saderat from access to the U.S. financial system, with Under-Secretary Stuart Levey noting:

“It is remarkable that Iran has a nine-digit line item in its budget to support terrorism.”

Treasury’s press release explains how despite U.S. sanctions on Iran, Bank Saderat has been using the U.S. financial system — noting further that “Bank Saderat is one of the largest Iranian-owned banks, with roughly 3400 branch offices. The bank is used by the Government of Iran to transfer money to terrorist organizations, including Hizballah, Hamas, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. A notable example of this is a Hizballah-controlled organization that has received $50 million directly from Iran through Bank Saderat since 2001.”

Levey spoke about the terrorist money trail at greater length earlier today, in a talk at the American Enterprise Institute.

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A friend sends the following excerpt from Katie Couric’s interview with President Bush:

COURIC: I know we’re almost out of time, Mr. President, and you have a very busy day ahead. But one philosophical question that many have that I’d like you to respond to, if you could, is that US policy, vis-à-vis Iraq, and the United States’ close alliance with Israel, certainly highlighted in recent events between Israel and Lebanon, has galvanized terrorists worldwide. In other words, these policies have created more terrorists than they have eliminated.

Actually, what’s galvanized terrorists worldwide is training and funding and backing for years by the likes of the totalitarian ayatollahs of Iran, the Saudi Wahhabis, the Syrian Baathists, Moammar Gadhafi, Yasser Arafat, and — yes — the former Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein (patron, in its day, of Palestinian suicide bombers; host to Al Qaeda delegations visiting from Afghanistan; and erstwhile warden of one of the 1993 World Trade Center bombers, Abdul Rahman Yasin).

Couric’s question — which she presents not as a question, but a statement — leaves me with a vision of how she might have interviewed President Roosevelt, if she’d been on the beat during World War II: “I know we’re almost out of time, Mr. President. But don’t you think the U.S. alliance with Britain is upsetting the Nazis?”

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The Philadelphia Inquirer has asked me to write a monthly column, and for the first, today, it seemed fitting to write about Sept. 11 — then, and now.

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Iran’s President Mahmoud “Mushoom Cloud” Ahmadinejad, now wants to come debate President Bush at the UN General Assembly in New York, so “world nations” can “hear the viewpoints.” That’s ridiculous. Bush already gets plenty of air time.

If Ahmadinejad is that eager to ascend the UN stage and trade views, why don’t we invite him to square off against Iranian dissident Ahmad Batebi? Of course Batebi would have to be released first from the Iranian prison where he was reported last week to be on hunger strike (scroll down past the news of two Iranian dissidents, Akbar Mahammadi and Valiollah Fayz-Mahdavi, who died in Iranian prisons this summer, and you’ll find the recent item about Batebi). Surely Batebi’s attendance could be facilitated by the same State Department officials who issued a visa so Americans could take in firsthand the views of former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami– now on a U.S. speaking tour . Come to think of it, it was during Khatami’s presidency that Batebi was first imprisoned, beaten and tortured in Iran. Maybe the UN General Assembly should put them all together on a panel, right up there on that UN stage. So the world can hear.

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It might make for a great Arnold-Schwarzenegger-meets-the-UN movie:

The Facilitator.

But no, it’s Kofi Annan’s latest maneuver, announced Tuesday, to introduce conditions into what is supposed to be Hezbollah’s unconditional release of the two Israeli soldiers abducted July 12. Instead of a UN “mediator,” there will be a “facilitator.” And the better to facilitate, Annan wants his (or her) identity kept secret. So, the guessing game has been on to figure out who this might be. I have no inside track, but here’s a short list of a few folks who in one way or another have facilitated for Annan on previous ocasions:

Lakhdar Brahimi - (Algerian) A former longtime Annan aide, also a former official of the Arab League, who while working for Annan in 2004 called Israel the “poison” of the Middle East, and last month wrote a New York Times Op-ed headlined “Let’s Start Talking to Hezbollah.” Brahimi was named today by The Jerusalem Post as being The Facilitator, but the UN has not confirmed this, so we still don’t know for sure.

Giandomenico Picco – (Italian) A former Annan personal envoy and former UN hostage negotiator with close ties to Iran. Picco has been relatively quiet since the story broke last year that his work for Annan at the UN overlapped at one stage with his chairmanship of a company doing big business with the UN.

Staffan de Mistura – (Swedish) A veteran of early days of the UN Oil-for-Food program in Iraq; who later worked for at least four years as Kofi Annan’s personal envoy to southern Lebanon, following Israel’s withdrawal. De Mistura in his Lebanon work focused on “preventive diplomacy initiatives,” which evidently did not work out too well. But maybe he had a chance during those four years to observe Hezbollah’s blueprints for hostage-holding facilities.

Iqbal Riza – (Pakistani) Annan’s trusty former chief-of-staff, who retired early last year after shredding three years’ worth of UN executive-suite documents potentially relevant to the UN Oil-for-Food scandal. Riza was quickly brought back to the UN by Annan as a special adviser on the UN Alliance of Civilizations, which just invited former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami to New York.

And my personal favorite. It’s a long shot, but: Kofi Annan himself — (Ghanaian).

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Or, for that matter, whatever happened in Annan’s lexicon to the UN member state known as Lebanon?

The New York Times is reporting that UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan now plans to appoint a secret UN representative to mediate talks over prisoner release between Israel and — no, I’m not kidding — a party Annan is reportedly referring to as “Lebanon-Hezbollah.”

Come again? UN Security Council Resolution 1701, passed unanimously August 11, calls clearly in the third paragraph of its preamble for the “unconditional release of the abducted Israeli soldiers” — who were kidnapped July 12 without provocation, from inside Israel’s borders. Repeat (italics mine): “unconditional release.” So what, exactly, does Annan propose to have the UN mediate?

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