It's time for them to go

The oft repeated campaign refrain from 1992 and then 2000 can just as well be applied to Kofi Annan and his cronies today.

Take a look at this post in WSJ today. It's by Kenneth Cain, no friend to Republican Administrations or Bush foreign policy, but rather, someone who witnessed the consequences of Annan's leadership. Cain is a rank and file UN lover who worked in Rawanda and Yugoslavia, places where the UN could have easily prevented genocide, but willingly failed to do so. The case he makes against Kofi Annan is breathtaking.

In Rawanda, 800,000 Tutsis died, and in a very short period of time. But they didn't have to. Cain states as follows:

Gen. Romeo Dallaire, the U.N.'s force commander in Rwanda, sent Mr. Annan a
series of desperate faxes including one warning that Hutu militias "could kill
up to 1,000" Tutsis "in 20 minutes" and others pleading for authority to protect
vulnerable civilians. But at the crucial moment, Mr. Annan ordered his general
to stand down and to vigorously protect, not genocide victims, assembled in their numbers waiting to die, but the U.N.'s image of "impartiality."

How's that again? I think he meant "fecklessness." By any standard, this was a time to light up the Hutus. Yes, there would be blood spilled, people killed, a mess made--but in this case, only a band of killers would have met their end. This decision speaks volumes about Annan's inability to lead anything but a university sociology discussion group. Since when are innocent and defenseless men, women and children ever a group that do not deserve favor over murderers?

And the same for Srebrenica in Yugoslavia. Men and boys were carted off by Serbian militas for extermination. They were taken from a so-called UN Safe Zone. I suppose safe for whom is the question.

While such a high-minded attitude towards discharging fire on hostile forces attacking unarmed civilians may make good sense among the UN foreign policy elite, the rest of us tend to take a dim view of just standing by.

It's one thing to fail to take sides in a legitimate dispute between opposing groups. It is quite another to stand by and watch murder of thousands of innocents in order to make some academic point. And this series of accounts illustrates more than anything that Kofi Annan is a very evil man.

It is hard for Annan to argue that he was not complicit in these genocides, if only becuase he prevented the so called peace keepers from doing their duty. Evil often takes the form of one failing to act when they could. Check Psalm 1...standing in the way of evil...not participating, but not opposing...it's a moral choice, not one of objectivity.

Because evil rarely ever needs help. It just needs a lack of opposition. And Kofi Annan deserves some thanks from the bad guys. His reputation of objectivity is secure with them.

Which raises another important question. Why are UN peace keepers armed if there is no situation where they would discharge their arms?

If anything, this illustrates why Americans need not be deployed among this worthless band. Because as Americans, we'd have let the bad guys have it. And a bunch of little Rawandan children would still be alive. A bunch of women would still have their men in Yugoslavia. But Kofi had a bigger point to make. Good for him.

It's time for him to go.