UN on the job - NOT

I thought this quote from the New York Times was especially precious:

"This is a setback in our efforts to ensure security here," Mr. Ladjouzi [head of the United Nations mission] said. "We are trying to find out who did this."

Quite so! They need that information, of course, in order to draft a properly-aimed resolution of condemnation to be read over the mass graves. In the spirit of cleaning up one's own messes, there really should be a UN mass burial site somewhere for this general purpose. Somewhere in Sudan might be good, as there is lots of grave-digging going on there anyway. (NB: Email quick note to Kofi)

The insight does not seem to have penetrated the UN fantasyland that holding hands around the campfire will not maintain the peace. You have to be bigger and meaner than the aggressors, permitting them no illusions about your ability to stomp them into the ground if they try anything.

The reason this insight can remain elusive is that the UN is not accountable for its blindness and mistakes. Nation that fail to recognize reality in that way go out of business through extermination or absorbtion. Not so the UN, which doesn't even suffer a reduction in its income. It just calls "overs" and moves on.

It's high time for another V.S. Naipaul satire, perhaps recounting the career of a Mr. Ladjouzi as he travels from place to place. His job is everywhere the same: to bring relief supplies to some bereft and threatened refugee population, disarm them of any weapons they might have, gather them into handy and lightly-guarded UN enclaves, and then stand by helpless as they are slaughtered by their enemies. After each such incident, Mr. Ladjouzi wards off despair by reviewing the certificates from his superiors in NY attesting to his tireless and selfless efforts. Thus restored, he proceeds to his next assignment. Discouragement, after all, can only be a selfish indulgence when there are so many who need the UN's help.

It writes itself.

Byron

Why Kerry is a Poor Candidate

Balzac ('Pere Goriot'): "Intellectual ideas project themselves according the othe forcefulness of their conception, and land where the brain directs them, by a mathematical law comparable to that which governs the firing of a shell from a mortar. Various are the effects thereof. There are impressionable minds in which new ideas lodge and wreak havoc. And there are heavily fortified minds, skulls with ramparts of brass, against which the will of another person flattens out and drops like a bullet against a wall. Again, there are woolly, flabby minds, where other people's ideas are deadened like gunshot in the soft earth of a redoubt. Eugene had one of those heads full of gunpowder, which blows up at the slightest shock. He was too young and eager not to be susceptible to the contagion of ideas..."

Steyn: 'In another perilous time - 1918 - Lord Haig wrote of Lord Derby: "D is a very weak-minded fellow I am afraid and, like the feather pillow, bears the marks of the last person who has sat on him." It's subtler than that with Kerry: you don't have to sit on him; just the slightest political breeze, and his pillow billows in the appropriate direction.'


Notice that Balzac's description of the "impressionable" mind really describes an intellectual, someone who is captivated by new ideas as ideas. Such people, like his character Eugene, are likely to constantly change their political and other positions, being naturally subject to the fads and fashions produced by "the contagion of ideas." John Kerry is famous for changing his mind, or being of more than one mind, on issues. Does that indicate that John Kerry is an intellectual? His backers would certainly like us to believe that he is. But Kerry is no intellectual, because his commitment to a new idea is proportional to the political opportunity that attaches to the idea, not to any judgment of its inherent quality of the idea itself. For him, the attractiveness of an idea is a matter of its usefulness, its usefulness a matter of its political appeal.

I think this may explain Kerry's inability to stick to a position, and his frequent reluctance to state a clear position at all. This is because which is the most useful political postion is something that often shifts over time, and it also varies according to what group of people you happen to be appealing to. How do you select your overall position in that case? It may also help to explain Kerry's lackluster record in the Senate, since his approach to issues rules out any possibility of sustained leadership toward a particular legislative goal. (Kerry has been consistent on certain issues, as seen in his anti-military voting record, for example; but in such cases he merely reflects the stable liberalism of his Massachusetts base.)

Most important, we may also see here the explanation for his inability to provide analytically-based proposals. Many have commented on the fact that Kerry seems somehow unable to describe any long-term strategy for dealing with the problem of terrorism and telling us why it would work. But this is precisely because Kerry does not arrive at or select his ideas by analyzing issues. Rather, Kerry adopts his ideas by analyzing sentiments. For Kerry, there is no reason to mention democracy-building in the Islamic world as long as phrases like "rebuilding alliances" and "not going it alone" continue to evoke an encouraging emotional response in his audiences. And so, he doesn't.

What Kerry's supporters want to credit as an appreciation of "nuance" or "complexity" is really nothing more than indecision about which ideas will deliver the largest political payoff. As long as that remains unclear on any particular issue, Kerry will be helpless to do anything other than temporize and equivocate. (European governments often behave this way, but in their case it is from a determination to avoid any obligation to take action. The charade now occurring in the UN with respect to Sudan is a perfect example: The term 'genocide' is assiduously avoided, because it carries an obligation to act. ) Unfortunately for Kerry, in the context of a national political campaign he will be forced constantly to state overall positions on important issues, and to keep those statements consistent. He will also be required, at some point, to describe analytically-based proposals for dealing with particular problems, and to maintain some commitment to the underlying analysis. My prediction is that these will continue to be difficult tasks for Kerry.

This is not a problem that campaign managers can easily fix. Kerry is a poor candidate for reasons inherent in the way he evaluates and responds to issues, and he would be a poor President for the same reasons.

Byron