October 1, 2007

Bush to UN: You’ve Neglected Your Mission, So America Will Lead

You didn’t hear much about it, but last Tuesday President Bush used the words of the United Nations’ own founding documents to damn that corrupt and ineffectual institution – while re-asserting his own global emphasis on democracy, free markets and the defeat of tyranny and terrorism.

It wasn’t hard to read between the lines and ascertain Bush’s ultimate point: The UN has failed to lead, so the United States is going to have to do it.

In a 21-minute address to the General Assembly, Bush essentially told the UN that it does some good things, but it is failing through corruption and neglect to tend to its primary mission, which is to ensure that people throughout the world have political freedom and an opportunity to better their own lives.

This is not a new tact for Bush, nor is it a new theme. He has long quoted the UN’s founding documents to remind it that it was founded to take seriously the business of liberty. On Tuesday, he did so again:

“The first article of the Universal Declaration begins, ‘All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights,’” Bush reminded the luminaries, who haven’t really forgotten, but for the most part simply don’t care.

Bush enters the UN’s stated mission into the record primarily as a way of once again giving futility its due. We are far beyond the point where anyone expects the UN to lead on these issues. It is far too comfortable with the presence of regimes that would not stand a chance of survival if the UN’s vision ever came to pass. That’s why Bush concluded his remarks by declaring that America, not the UN, will lead in the pursuit of these principles.

But first, he named names – and not just the famous Axis of Evil, either. Yes, remaining charter members Iran and North Korea got their moment in the sun, but they were joined by Belarus, Syria, Zimbabwe, Cuba, Sudan, Venezuela and especially Burma – all nations who deny their people fundamental freedoms.

Then he excoriated the UN’s ridiculous Human Rights Council, which has become nothing more than a tool for the exercise of the organization’s underlying anti-Semitism.

“This body has been silent on repression by regimes from Havana to Caracas to Pyongyang and Tehran – while focusing its criticism excessively on Israel,” Bush said. “To be credible on human rights in the world, the United Nations must reform its own Human Rights Council.”

Finally, he took the UN to task for its own ethical failures – problems so deeply rooted in the UN’s bureaucracy and political machinations, few could reasonably expect, and Bush surely does not expect, that the ethical reform he demanded will ever come to pass.

But the vision Bush set forth in his second inaugural address – that of pursuing freedom and democracy around the globe – requires that the UN lead, follow or be pushed out of the way, and the latter is the only possible option. In order to make that happen, it is necessary to first damn the UN with its own words.

The organization was founded to promote freedom and democracy. It failed, and long ago stopped trying. Its primary failing is its willingness to regard every regime as the equal of every other. The agents of Chavez, Castro and Ahmedinejad sit in the General Assembly as equal partners of freely elected governments in free nations. This is a structural corruption that will not be rectified, and thus renders the UN incapable of ever fulfilling its founding mission.

You have to admire Bush’s commitment to his vision. No sooner did he declare these principles in January 2005 than some of his own supporters – perhaps best exemplified by Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan – declared themselves horrified that a U.S. president would make such a bold statement of policy and purpose. Noonan went so far as to call it “messianic.”

But even with criticism from his own camp, the struggles in Iraq, sagging poll numbers, the congressional election defeat in 2006 and a presidential campaign in which global freedom barely shows up on the radar – Bush persists.

That’s because he understands that the “realist” preference for “stability” always produced the illusion of peace, but fed radicalism and disenchantment such that it led to 9/11 and other less spectacular atrocities.

An American president’s insistence that so-called stability must give way to true global freedom, at the expense of many in the global establishment, upsets just about everyone.

The speech received little coverage, perhaps because the U.S. media considers Bush and his low approval rating to be irrelevant. There was a time when the cause of freedom in any nation, and an American president’s declaration of support for it, merited major coverage.

It still should. And anyone who wants to succeed Bush will more fully deserve the chance to do so if he pledges to carry this vision forward in 2009 and beyond.