Has Kofi been percolating too long?

http://www.jewishworldreview.com | I reject this view that holds Kofi Annan to be thoroughly corrupt. I believe it possible that he is merely monstrously incompetent. But I don't see that it makes much of a difference. If he is presiding over a system that is rife with vitiation, does it really matter if he is complicit or merely purblind?

Right now, we are in a particularly fevered and fertile stage of the inquiry into this absurd scenario where the U.N. presided over Saddam's oil sales. On Feb. 4 it was announced that Paul Volcker and his investigators had released a partial verdict, and later that night Kofi proclaimed that he had punished two of the men whom the report criticizes. These men are typical of the grey eminences of these absurd international bureaucracies; their names are not remotely familiar to us in any other context. To see their pictures is to begin yawning.

This one fellow, Sevan, suddenly accused of deadly sins, has spent his entire life in the pursuit and prosecution of drabness and dreariness in all its most pompous and hollow forms. He attributes the mysterious bulking of his bank account by one hundred and sixty thousand dollars to the bequest of his dear maiden aunt who died recently in Cyprus. The saddest thing of all is that I am inclined to believe him. I have a feeling that he used to send her post cards with the Empire State building on them to gladden her doting heart in her dotage.

Subsequently it has been announced that large quantities of Kofi's official documents are being sought by Volcker's panel but there has been some dispute about the sleuths reading personal e-mails. I hope this gets sorted out quickly before we get leaks concerning Kofi's New York night life, about which I am desperately eager to know as little as possible.

Additionally, the panel has indicated that they have requested an 'interview' with Kojo Annan, son of Kofi, who was receiving a hefty salary from a Swiss company that was making a great deal of money off this U.N. program. Kojo has agreed to be interviewed but somehow a few months have elapsed during which his schedule has regrettably precluded his creating a specifically appointed time and place for this colloquy. Volcker says that he is looking forward to the meeting, whenever it can finally be arranged. Now I have never been to a Chinese restaurant in China, only to the epigones that dot our own culinary landscape, so I cannot identify the smell of rat. But the women in my life occasionally prevail upon me to eat some icky ichthyic offering, and this certainly smells fishy to me.

So let us review: the U.N. bungled the program and allowed Saddam to grow richer and more powerful without helping the citizenry of Iraq. Kojo is almost certainly crooked, and he is on the run while claiming to be cooperating. Sevan is either just another number bumbling his way through a maze of trickery or another trickster conniving his way through a maze of idiocy. And Kofi is either Tony Soprano or Forrest Gump.

We had a similar situation in South Florida recently. In a neighboring county, officers of the sheriff's department were caught forcing one felon to admit to one hundred and forty or so crimes in order to clear their caseload of unsolved crime. The deception was unmasked when his attorney noticed that sixty of those were committed while he was in prison on one minor infraction or another. When this was all revealed in the press, the sheriff held a press conference firing those officers and promising a thoroughgoing internal investigation. A few months later the voters returned him to office.

It seems to me that if you have one hundred and forty cases declared solved by your office and at least sixty of them are absurd on their face that your ability to undo this is a fair mark of your competence. If that slips past, you are either in on the conspiracy or out to lunch. In either case, you should be replaced.

In Britain they call it "taking responsibility". If a government minister presides over a major debacle, he is expected to resign even before the investigation determines if his fault lies in malice or ignorance. The question of complicity or conspiracy becomes an abstract legal question that may be determined over time by branches of law enforcement. But the issue of unworthiness for office is considered to be settled immediately.

Is Kofi a great criminal mastermind? Is Kofi a great administrative dunderhead? I cannot give a definitively affirmative response to either one of these questions. But I know that there is one 'Yes' answer between the two. Bottom line: it's Kofi break time, we should not keep Annan on.

JWR contributor Jay D. Homnick is the author of many books and essays on Jewish political and religious affairs. Comment by clicking here.

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