Difficult as it is to believe, its true that Kofi Annan, head of the preeminent international organization devoted to spreading peace and freedom around the world, thinks things were better for the average Iraqi when Saddam Hussein was in power.
Here’s what Annan, who is leaving his post as U.N. secretary-general at the end of 2006 after serving a decade, told the BBC earlier this week:
“If I were an average Iraqi, obviously I would make the same comparison, that they had a dictator who was brutal but they had their streets, they could go out, their kids could go to school and come back home without a mother or father worrying: ‘Am I going to see my child again?’ ”
Hey, so what if your relatives could disappear in the night, never to be seen again because Saddam’s henchmen tortured and then killed them. Never mind that your neighbor could settle an old score with you by feeding lies to Saddam’s neighborhood spies. Never mind that you risked everything, including your life, your job, your family, just by whispering to a family member something that could be misconstrued as even remotely critical of Saddam — whose portrait once adorned every Iraqi street corner.
None of that matters because at least you could walk the streets in safety, according to Annan. It’s the same promise dictators have made throughout history. Caesar promises security and peace, but always at the price of physical, intellectual and spiritual freedom.
But then, we shouldn’t be surprised. This is, after all, the same Annan we know from the U.N. oil-for-food scandal in which hundreds of millions of dollars worth of oil revenues that were supposed to buy food and medicine for the Iraqi people instead ended up in Saddam’s pockets and those of his vicious and corrupt sons.
The U.N.’s oil-for-food scandal wasn’t his fault, Annan claimed: “The bulk of the money Saddam made came after smuggling outside the oil for food program. It was on the American and British watch.”
The truth is that Annan’s tenure as secretary-general has accomplished little of good anywhere in the world. On his watch, U.N. “peacekeepers” stood by doing nothing as Hezbollah launched hundreds of rockets to kill innocent Israelis and raped women and children in the Congo without fear of being punished. And on his watch, the U.N.’s General Assembly was allowed to become a stage for the cheap political theater of clowns like Venezuela’s Hugh Chavez.
It is no wonder that the U.N.’s prestige is likely at its lowest ebb ever, especially among the American people who pay most of the U.N.’s bills. Which leaves only one question — Why is Annan waiting until Dec. 31 to leave?
