LA Times columnist Max Boot put things in perspective Thursday when he noted that if appropriate media attention were given to the scandal-ridden U.N., we would have some pretty spectacular front-page headlines.
I look at today’s Spokesman-Review (Spokane) and see a few local stories, something about "American Idols" and a ploy for the paper’s charity. Here’s some suggested, under-reported front-page stories from Boot:
"Imagine if U.S. troops were accused of sexually exploiting children in impoverished nations. Imagine if a U.S. Cabinet secretary were accused of groping a female subordinate, whose complaint was then swatted aside by the president. Imagine if the head of a U.S. government agency and the president's own offspring stood accused of complicity in the biggest embezzlement racket in history.
"Those would be pretty big stories, no? Above-the-fold, top-of-the-newscast stories. Yet the United Nations has been mired in all these scandals and until just recently hardly anybody outside the right-wing blogosphere has noticed.
"Even now, if you're not an inveterate U.N.-watcher, you probably don't know that Ruud Lubbers, the U.N. high commissioner for refugees, was accused of sexually harassing a subordinate, only to have the charges dismissed by Secretary-General Kofi Annan despite an internal investigation that supported the woman's complaint.
"Or that U.N. peacekeepers have been accused of a variety of sexual offenses involving children for more than a decade, most recently in Congo.
"Or even that Annan's son, Kojo, and Benon Savan, the head of the U.N. "oil for food" program in Iraq, are said to have benefited financially while Saddam Hussein stole $21 billion."
Boot says pulling out of the U.N. would be "unrealistic," which I definitely agree with -- but ignoring the crises within the international organization, its standard internal paradoxes (having gross human-rights abusing countries on its council for human rights, etc.), and many conflicts of interests only allows a heaping pile of scandals to heap on more scandal.
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