OPINION:
Memo to President Obama, Congress, the Department of Justice, the FBI, Boston Police Department and any others looking into the horrific bombings at the Boston Marathon finish line: Don’t bother. America did it.
That’s the penetrating insight from Richard A. Falk, a former Princeton University professor who now serves as a “special rapporteur” for the United Nations Human Rights Council monitoring the Palestinian situation. (The French for “reporter” gives him the only credibility he has. The title is honorary.)
Mr. Falk took to the al Jazeera website to explain that the bombing of a sporting event should not have been a surprise to Americans “given our drone attacks that have unwittingly targeted weddings and funerals in Afghanistan and Pakistan. … Is it not time that one among our politicians had the courage to connect these dots?”
It took U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon about 24 hours — after persistent questioning by Fox News reporter Jonathan Wachtel — to dispatch a spokesman to condemn Mr. Falk’s silly indictment of America. Mr. Ban had previously denounced the Boston bombing as “senseless violence” and even labeled it an act of terrorism, which got a lot closer to the truth than Mr. Falk.
The question is, why is a man who shoots off his mouth like Mr. Falk serving in any advisory capacity to the world body? Mr. Falk has a history of denying al Qaeda’s role in Sept. 11, 2001. The Canadian government wants Mr. Falk booted immediately. “There is a dangerous pattern to Mr. Falk’s anti-Western and anti-Semitic comments,” says Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird. “The United Nations should be ashamed to even be associated with such an individual.”
Even our own State Department agrees, describing the “absurdity” of Mr. Falk’s service, such as it is, at the U.N. That he’s still there is evidence enough that the U.N. has lost whatever credibility it ever had. The U.N. has become the diplomatic equivalent of a party school. Many diplomats covet posting to Manhattan’s Turtle Bay not to resolve disputes or assist the world’s poor, but to help themselves to New York City’s good life, a free parking pass and Fifth Avenue shopping (much of it courtesy of foreign aid from Western governments).
For proof that diplomats don’t take their jobs seriously, consider the ineffective action at the world’s hot spots, such as Syria, or the lame pleadings to the enfant terrible of Pyongyang. The United Nations, most of whose funding comes from American taxpayers — is mired in irrelevancy. If they don’t boot Richard Falk from his “monitor” role, or send him to Tierra del Fuego to monitor the civil rights of the Antarctic penguins, U.N. credibility will take still another hit.
The majority of U.N. members are from the so-called “non-aligned” states, which have pounded a drumbeat of hostility against America and the West along the East River for decades. U.S. taxpayers aren’t getting a good return on their sizable investment in this organization. Congress should curtail its funding and offer to help the good-time crowd at the U.N. to pack up and relocate. Pyongyang is lovely.
The Washington Times
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