Being the UN Security Council Means Never Having to Say You’re Sorry
At a special session chaired by Vice President Joe Biden, the United Nations Security Council voted Tuesday to end the Saddam-era sanctions on Iraq, as well as the remnants of the Oil-for-Food program. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon was there, as well as Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari. In the way of such meetings, there was plenty of speechifying, with each of the five permanent and 10 rotating members delivering orations on the occasion. There were congratulations to the Iraqis on how far they’ve come, as well as advice, prescriptions, and urgings about stability, security, the Iraqi people, “the region, and the international community.”
Notably missing was even a single word of apology for UN complicity in the massive corruption of Oil-for-Food. You remember Oil-for-Food — the 1996-2003 relief program in which the UN took on the job of overseeing all oil sales of Saddam Hussein’s regime, and promised all proceeds would be supervised by the UN to ensure the money was spent on humanitarian aid for the people of Iraq. What came of this setup, in which the UN oversaw more than $110 billion worth of Iraqi oil and relief deals, was a bonanza of billions in kickbacks and illicit fees paid to Saddam’s regime, under cover of thousands of UN-approved contracts. Those illicit billions were skimmed out of oil revenues that were supposed to help the people of Iraq. This dirty business helped fortify Saddam’s murderous regime, and padded the pockets of a great many of his business partners.
Plenty of blame goes to the UN Secretariat, run during all but the first month of Oil-for-Food by former Secretary-General Kofi Annan — whose hand-picked head of the program, Benon Sevan, was later alleged by a UN-authorized inquiry to have “corruptly” derived “personal pecuniary benefit from the Oil-for-Food Programme” via “cash proceeds” from lucrative Oil-for-Food contracts. The UN-authorized inquiry, led by Paul Volcker, devoted hundreds of pages to the mismanagement, derelictions and abuses that went on in the Secretariat, which had the hands-on responsibility for dealing with most of Oil-for-Food’s dirty details.
But the Security Council, which doubled as the Iraq sanctions committee, also bears plenty of blame. The Security Council authorized the program, approved contracts and — as we now know, after many post-mortem investigations and congressional hearings — had its own internal wrangles, in which the U.K. and U.S. made private protests over the obvious corruption, but failed to stop the fiesta of graft — in which Saddam was ordering up such stuff as milk from Russian oil companies and Chinese weapons manufacturers.
Today, the 10 non-permanent members of the Security Council are a different batch from those who milled through the Council during Oil-for-Food (a group that toward the end included such stand-out collaborators with Saddam’s sanctions-busting graft as Syria). But the permanent five — the U.S., U.K., France, Russia and China — were, of course, along for the entire ride. And of that Perm Five, the two top business partners of Saddam were Russia and France. China also did quite well out of Saddam’s deals; the Volcker inquiry noted that China would have surpassed France as a purchaser of Saddam’s kickback-laden oil contracts, except that China made a lot of its purchases via a London subsidiary. For that matter, two of the current rotating members, Turkey and Lebanon, did substantial business under Oil-for-Food, and neither has made any visible attempt to pursue the allegations of graft raised by the UN inquiry.
Russia and France, with China tagging along, were also the Security Council members who, along with Kofi Annan, were virulently opposed to evicting Saddam. Had their wishes prevailed, there might have been none of the progress for which the Security Council on Tuesday congratulated the people of Iraq. Instead, both Saddam and an array of French, Russian and Chinese contractors might have carried right on, skimming cash from oil proceeds meant for sick and hungry Iraqis.
It’s not just the people of Iraq, the erstwhile beneficiaries of Oil-for-Food, who are owed an apology for this performance. It’s people everywhere, who are asked to trust in the good offices of the UN, and accept the doings and decisions of the UN Security Council, and its chosen administrator of the Secretariat, the Secretary-General. Apparently, diplomacy at the UN Security Council flies high above such niceties as “We’re sorry.” Or perhaps the Security Council members that during the Iraq-sanctions era raked in the most from Saddam’s Oil-for-Food franchises don’t see anything in that to regret? With the UN now supposed to serve as the nexus for sanctions on Iran and North Korea, that’s not a comforting thought.
If the UN had apologised for Oil For Food, most Europeans would not have known what they were talking about. Such is the unwillingness of the media to damage the people’s trust in international organizations. A local politician can provide a month’s worth of media fodder for uttering a slightly un-PC remark, but when a fellow European country like France is involved in corruption, it’s best not to rock the Euro boat. Russia is now a “democratic” energy supplier; no one wants to annoy the big bear. Only Italian local corruption is ever mentioned, and that is because it carries a certain panache.
Europeans willingly sacrifice local sovreignity to Die da Oben because they don’t want to worry about hard stuff like morality, democracy, and the rule of law. That would simply distract from noble efforts to save the polar bear or protest transports of atomic waste.
It has been suggested by some wags, and I fully agree with: As the UN is so dedicated in helping poor nations, its Headquarters should be moved to Haiti, along with all of its civil servants and representatives of all nation. Just think what tremedous boost it would be to the Haitian economy! It would instantly cease to be a poor nation.
Beautiful idea! Only problem is that the U.S. would get the bill for the majority of the infrastructure improvements.
Haiti’s good, Zimbabwe is better.
Just another reason to hate, despise, and loath the United Nations. It is nothing but a bloated, bureaucratic, debating society that generally lives for wasting money and getting kickbacks from corrupt dictators. It is also being run by a bunch of corrupt Muslim nations, who really should be told that they are nothing but a bunch of corrupt, bigoted, homophobic, misogynists who shouldn’t be allowed to run the local sanitation department, let alone the UN. The UN was a lousy progressive idea that was started after World War II and should be done away with, just like all other vestiges from the Cold War, like the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtin. Please, oh PLEASE, get rid of the UN and send it where it will do the most use, like Bangladesh. Sorry, that was terrible of me. They have enough problems without cursing them with the UN.
Since the UN is representative of its members, and since the majority of its members are kleptocracies of some kind, it stands to reason that the UN would become a kleptocracy also.
Where is Julian Assange, now that we need him?
YEAH, I’d like to hear/see what Julian Assange found out about Oil for Food – who is telling the lies.
How the leaders of these corrupt countries live with themselves is beyond me. The UN probably could have prevented the loss of lives of our US soldiers as well as those of the other countries soldiers if they had used the money as intended. Perhaps the Iraqi people would have overthrown Saddam or we would of had a better chance to force his hand through negotiations. This is another reason why I think we pay too much in taxes. Quit giving to the UN and shut the place down. Or are all these billions worth it to “keep your enemy close”? I think we could get by with giving the greedy pigs much less.
Yep! Just like cancer. Ignore it enough, and it will go away all by itself.
The only thing is; There doesn’t seem to be an antidote for the Democrat Party or liberalism. And there ain’t nothing more lethal. They eat their grandchildren!
THE UN, not again!
The U.S. has been more than generous to Arab and Muslim nations in direct foreign aid, military assistance and other ways. Egypt receives about $2 billion of American taxpayer dollars every year, yet it still votes against American interests at the U.N. 79 percent of the time. Jordan, a “moderate” Muslim nation, receives nearly $200 million annually in U.S. foreign aid, but votes against America at the U.N. 71 percent of the time. Pakistan votes 75 percent of the time against the U.S. at the U.N. while pocketing nearly $7 million annually in foreign aid (in addition to the money it gets to supposedly fight al-Qaida).
An even better example of the disconnect between American assistance and changed Muslim attitudes toward the U.S. is the Palestinian Authority. As former Israeli diplomat Yoram Ettinger writes for ynetnews.com, just since 2007, “U.S. foreign aid to the Palestinian Authority and to PA-controlled (nongovernmental organizations) reached nearly $2 billion, in addition to $3.7 billion contributed by the U.S. to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East since 1950.”
If the news has the word “United Nations” in it, it’s guaranteed, definite, surefire, cast iron, in the bag, clear cut, assured, straightforward, a sure thing, that it’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
The United Nations; How the 21st century has exposed its worthlessness
The basic failure of the United Nations is exactly like Woodrow Wilson’s League of Nations which relied on moral persuasion and security based on the collection of the League. The League never had any chance of success. As soon as any of his nations found that its national self-interest was threatened, the League could go run and hide. The US funds 22% of the UN budget. As of 1 January 2008, the top 10 providers of assessed financial contributions to United Nations peacekeeping operations were: the United States, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, China, Canada, Spain and the Republic of Korea.