It’s been a long time since I looked at an issue of Forbes, a magazine I used to like. Now after spending most of my time with the New York Sun and James Taranto, I had a look at the latest issue yesterday. What struck me most was the overall tone–about as much backbone and principle as a plate of overcooked spaghetti. Here’s Steve Forbes on the UN:
The comforting notion that the UN is somehow the legitimizer, the ultimate arbiter of international affairs, despite its sorry record, has been blasted away….Now it’s unfortunate that our president appears to think the same thing, but pundits don’t have to worry about political constraints. And the idea that we would leave the primary protector of dictators in place just in order to run “humanitarian” programs is completely reprehensible. Now that the evil of the UN has been exposed for all Americans to see, this bozo still wants to compromise with it! And for what? For some important interest of America’s? No, for reasons of inane altruism! It’s so easy to see why the conservatives in this country have been so ineffective against the left, when they will bow and scrape and sign on behind injustice if it’s justified in the name of altruism. It’s disgusting. Thank God Steve Forbes never got close to being president.
The UN won’t cease to exist. It will still run refugee and health care programs. It will hold conferences around the world to pontificate on various global ills, real or imagined. It may play useful roles in building up civil institutions in war-torn areas, although it has exhibited little competence in that endeavor in Bosnia. The UN could even play the role of peacekeeper in parts of the globe that have no real strategic importance, such as it could have done–and murderously did not–in ethnically divided Rwanda in the mid-1990s. [Forbes, 3/14/03]