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May 14, 2009

The company we keep

Rick Moran
Great news for all you UN supporters out there. The United States won a victory at the United Nations yesterday.

What kind of victory, you might ask? Don't ask.

The Obama White House is celebrating our election to the UN Human Rights Council.

What a coup! Think of it boys and girls. We get to take a seat on a council along with other leading lights in the international human rights movement. Neil Farquhar of the New York Times gives us the names of other countries who will help us judge human rights issues:

The United States won a seat on the United Nations Human Rights Council on Tuesday, joining a group that the Bush administration had pilloried.
The controversy surrounding the 47-member body, which assesses the rights records of United Nations member states, was underscored by the General Assembly's re-electing other nations condemned by human rights organizations for abusing their own citizens. They include Cuba, China, Saudi Arabia, Russia and Cameroon.

"We have not been perfect ourselves," said Susan E. Rice, the American ambassador, after the United States got 167 votes out of 192. "But we intend to lead based on the strong principled vision that the American people have about respecting human rights, supporting democracy."

The Bush administration considered the Human Rights Council beyond redemption because of the group's repeated focus on Israel's treatment of the Palestinians under occupation while playing down significant human rights failings among its members.

But the Obama administration decided that it could be more effective in changing the council's behavior if it joined the organization.

It should fill us with humility and gratitude that we have someone like Susan Rice serving as our UN Ambassador.

"We have not been perfect ourselves" may be the most idiotic, morally bankrupt, ridiculously naive statement ever made by a US diplomat. To place US human rights violations anywhere near the same universe as those committed by Cuba, China, and for God's sake, Saudi Arabia not only demonstrates a towering historical ignorance but a self loathing for one's own country so profound that it should call into question her fitness to continue in that position.

The question isn't whether we can change the UN Human Rights Council. The question should be why we would want to do that in the first place? The monumental hubris involved in believing that you can "reform" a council that will always have thugs and criminal regimes as members shows just how far this administration will go to implement it's impossibly stupid worldview.

God save us from these idiots.
 

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