ANALYSIS/OPINION:
The epicenter of the so-called international community is the moral cesspool of Turtle Bay, headquarters of the United Nations. In that forum of deceit and injustice, one diplomat stands out: Nikki Haley, the outspoken, straight-talking, smart U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.
As soon as she started her job, Ms. Haley challenged the U.N.’s Orwellian-named “Human Rights Council”, whose membership includes countries with the world’s worst human rights records, such as China and Venezuela. As if to underscore its actual contempt for human rights, the Human Rights Council invited Iranian Justice Minister Alireza Avaie to address the world body this week. Mr. Avie is such a notorious bad actor that in 2011 the European Union imposed sanctions on him and other Iranian officials because, as Tehran’s former top prosecutor said, he was “responsible for human rights violations, arbitrary arrests, denials of prisoners’ rights, and an increase in executions.”
Ms. Haley blasted the Human Rights Council for the invitation, which affirmed her earlier criticism, and the ultimatum she presented to the council last June: either they reform, including withdrawing their agenda item that perennially singles out Israel for condemnation, or the United States will “go elsewhere.”
Ms. Haley started out strong and has stayed strong — in a world of madness and hypocrisy.
Ms. Haley proved herself adept at getting things done in the hardball field of U.N. negotiations by following up her strong words with important deeds. She negotiated a package of increased sanctions on North Korea that was unanimously passed by the Security Council. While President Trump was still tiptoeing around Vladimir Putin, Ms. Haley spoke her mind, and criticized Russia’s continuing aggression in Ukraine. “We cannot trust Russia. We should never trust Russia,” she asserted.
Last week brought Ms. Haley’s most heartbreaking challenge. As the death toll in the Damascus suburb of Eastern Ghouta rose to more that 500 (including 120 children) in a week of unrelenting Syrian and Russian bombardment, the U.N. kept delaying a vote to impose a ceasefire. Russia was the holdout, repeatedly refusing to agree to an immediate ceasefire.
A cease-fire agreement was finally reached on Saturday. By Sunday, it had been violated by both Assad and Iran.
Double-talking and double-dealing is standard operating procedure in the international community, whose hypocrisy knows no bounds.
Last week UNICEF, the U.N.’s children’s agency, broke our hearts with their statement about children under siege and attack in Syria. “We no longer have the words to describe children’s suffering and our outrage,” it said. At the very same time, the U.N. elected Syria to sit on a committee – whose mission is to further international peace and security!
It’s unbelievable, but true. Syria, while engaging in mass killing of its own citizens, was given the honor - with the U.N. Chief’s backing – of a seat on the UN’s Special Committee on Decolonization, whose mission is “just treatment,” of peoples “and their protection against abuses,” and “to further international peace and security,” which “must be based on the general principle of good-neighborliness.”
The hypocrisy is breathtaking.
The more contemptible the behavior of the international community, the more we need diplomats like Nikki Haley – competent diplomats, who have both courage and integrity.
I’d clone her if I could.
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