Give Him Hell Harry

The UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan is leaving office.

He won't be missed.

Kofi Annan traveled all the way to Truman Library to give his goodbye speech. The Secretary General couldn't help but once again to take a swipe at President Bush and his administration.

It's getting boring....

As Truman himself once said, in a different context: "That's plain hokum. If you can't convince 'em, confuse 'em: It's an old political trick."

What Truman would say today about Annan himself, and the organization he has headed for the past 10 years, can only be imagined.

But I'm sure Harry would give him hell.

Why the Truman Library?

Annan, who leaves office early next month, said he chose the Truman Library in order to pay tribute to his "far-sighted American leadership in a great global endeavor" - and to draw a distinction with the current president.

He noted that Truman "insisted, when faced with aggression by North Korea against the South in 1950, on bringing the issue to the United Nations" - in contrast to the Bush administration on Iraq.

Kofi doesn't seem to know his history very well.

Truman could do so only because the Soviet Union was then boycotting the Security Council - and thus couldn't veto the authorization of military force against North Korea.

Nowadays, the United Nations can't, or won't, move swiftly no matter what the emergency - witness the continued genocide in Darfur.

Kofi also is ignorant of the Truman Doctrine.
"It must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures."

Wise and courageous words - uttered in the same spirit that animated President Bush to act in Iraq, when Kofi Annan's United Nations refused to do so.

Exactly the same way the United Nations and Kofi refuse to act on rogue nations such as Iran and North Korea who both harbor nuclear ambitions.












Why did Kofi use this opportunity to attack President Bush rather than focus on his own sorry tenure in office?

As secretary-general, Annan presided over Oil-for-Food, perhaps the biggest financial scandal in history - and in which his own son was involved.

He presided over yet another financial scandal, involving the U.N.'s procurement office. There was even a drug-smuggling ring operating out of his mailroom. His efforts at reforming the world body's basic infrastructure - particularly when it comes to human rights - were exposed as ludicrous, at best.

On an equally bizarre note, Annan yesterday proclaimed that all of the U.N.'s member nations "solemnly accepted" the "shared responsibility to protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity."

Umm...Darfur?

Maybe Kofi can confuse us and ignore the cesspool of corruption and scandal that the UN has become under his leadership.

Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Ill.) yesterday said it best: Under Annan, the United Nations has become notorious for the "near-absence of standards of decency for the thuggish regimes that are too often empowered by its antiquated rules and procedures."

That Annan chose instead to bash the United States, added Hyde, was "completely predictable."

Harry Truman, certainly, understood the noble principles on which the United Nations was founded six decades ago.

Kofi Annan, during his tenure, betrayed them time and time again.