If that’s so, how do you explain the hostility tow ard [former U N
Secretary General] Boutros Boutros-Ghali?
In the first place, there w as an element of racism there—even
though the next choice, Kofi Annan, w as also from Africa. W hen
George [H. W.] Bush talked about “Bou-Bou Ghali,” nobody batted an
eyelash, although I doubt very much that a presidential candidate in
the U S w ould survive very long if he referred to the former prime
minister of Israel as, say, “Itzy-Schmitzy R abin.”
T here’s a lot of opposition to the U N on the extreme right. Some
of it’s tied in w ith fantasies about black helicopters and loss of
sovereignty to w orld government. But some of it’s simply a case of
avoiding blame.
Take the atrocities carried out in Somalia, w here the U S quietly
concedes that thousands of Somali civilians—perhaps up to ten
thousand—w ere killed by U S forces. If somebody threatened U S
forces, they’d call in helicopter gunships. T hat doesn’t sound so
heroic, so the resulting catastrophes became the fault of the U N.
Similarly, the U S evaded the burdens and difficulties of the
conflict in the former Yugoslavia until things w ere more or less
settled, then moved in and took over (effectively imposing a kind of
partition betw een Greater Croatia and Greater Serbia). T hat w ay,
the U S could blame everything that w ent w rong on the U N. Very
convenient.
It’s easy to focus anti-U N hostility on the secretary-general.
Let’s kick him in the pants, and kick the rest of the w orld in the
pants too. W hy should w e bother w ith w hat other countries think
about us anyw ay?
Do you think the very critical U N report on the Israeli attack on
the U N compound in Qana, Lebanon may have been a factor in
undermining support for Boutros-Ghali?
It might have been a small factor, but w ho paid any attention to
it? It w as so marginalized that I frankly doubt it had much effect.
Amnesty International came out w ith a study that strongly
corroborated the U N report. T hat also disappeared very quickly;
I’m not even sure it w as reported on at all.
T hese sorts of things can be brushed off very quickly w hen
they’re inconvenient for pow er and career interests. Both reports