Bush undermines UN by trying to get its job done

It's all about the UN

Excerpt:

United States President George Bush was tonight accused of trying to
undermine the United Nations by setting up a rival coalition to
coordinate relief following the Asian tsunami disaster.

The president has announced that the US, Japan, India and Australia
would coordinate the world's response.

But former International Development Secretary Clare Short said that
role should be left to the UN.

'I think this initiative from America to set up four countries claiming
to coordinate sounds like yet another attempt to undermine the UN when
it is the best system we have got and the one that needs building up,'
she said.

'Only really the UN can do that job,' she told BBC Radio Four's PM
programme.

'It is the only body that has the moral authority. But it can only do it
well if it is backed up by the authority of the great powers.'

I say:

This should go without saying by now, but it doesn't, so I'll say it
yet again: the United Nations hasn't got any moral authority. There is
no moral authority without moral credibility, and the UN has no moral
credibility. Rwanda, Darfur, Kosovo, the Ivory Coast, the Iraq
oil-for-food scandal - all informed persons know the litany.

Also, the United Nations is *not* the best system we've got for any good
work. Not even close. Private charities in the United States are
putting the lie to Short's claims in that regard. They're responding to
this tsunmai fallout in a way that would put UN bureaucrats to shame -
if they were capable of shame.

The only way United Nations can justify their jobs is by denying all
this, and by repeating the Big Lie that they are the arbiters of moral
authority. They aren't.

So the inevitable - and rhetorical - question will be: is Bush trying to
undermine the UN, or is he trying to help people in an unfortunate part
of the world? I say that's a false dichotomy if there ever was one.
The only way to get any real good done in this world is to do it over
the objections of the United Nations.

THe UN is a purely political and bureaucratic organization, dominated by
non-democratic states. They don't care about getting things done. They
care only about protecting their own turf. Maybe Dubya's rogue
coalition will light a fire under them for a while, and they'll acutally
do something themselves, if only to save their own jobs. But only for a
while.

Oh, and here's Chris Muir's take on it.

Kofi Annan is fabulously unsuited to do any good, but so was his
predecessor, and it's a sure bet his successor will be as well. Annan
is not the root problem here. The United Nations is the root problem.

The UN needs to be backed up by the authority of the great powers, as Ms.
Short admits. But do the great powers need the UN? Who *does* need the
UN?

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