A possible replacement for Kofi Annan

Kofi is out -- his son is corrupt and thinking that Kofi is not stretches the imagination too far for even the most die-hard UN groupie.

This is just from the Oil For Food scandal. We haven't even gotten to the rape and pedophilia scandals, the cafeteria trashing, the horrible deaths of the Bosnians "protected by UN Forces", the unpaid parking tickets, the slaughter in Darfur. The big and the small are dragging this august institution into irrelevancy.

Glen Reynolds writing in The Wall Street Journal suggests Vaclav Havel as a replacement. Portland blogger Michael J. Totten has another suggestion which didn't make sense at first but actually does after thinking about it:

How About Howard Dean?
...Standing up to the Bush Administration earned him plenty of street cred all over the world. UN fetishists and apparatchiks go for that sort of thing. He's also earning some street cred with me because he at least partly understands what's wrong with the so-called "international community."

Dean may have opposed the Iraq war, but he's not a foreign policy limp noodle like Kerry. He just thought that one war in particular was dumb. Say what you will about him, but he doesn't shrink from a fight. He's the kind of man who likes to roll up his sleeves and get scrappy.

Michael then quotes from Dr. Dean:

Europeans cannot criticize the United States for waging war in Iraq if they are unwilling to exhibit the moral fiber to stop genocide by acting collectively and with decisiveness. President Bush was wrong to go into Iraq unilaterally when Iraq posed no danger to the United States, but we were right to demand accountability from Saddam. We are also right to demand accountability in Sudan. Every day that goes by without meaningful sanctions and even military intervention in Sudan by African, European and if necessary U.N. forces is a day where hundreds of innocent civilians die and thousands are displaced from their land. Every day that goes by without action to stop the Sudan genocide is a day that the anti-Iraq war position so widely held in the rest of the world appears to be based less on principle and more on politics. And every day that goes by is a day in which George Bush's contempt for the international community, which I have denounced every day for two years, becomes more difficult to criticize.

Michael then makes this trenchant comment:

Kofi Annan would never, ever, think or say anything like that. And I seriously doubt his replacement will ever think or say anything like that. Howard Dean might not be ideal, as Vaclav Havel would be. But he'd be such an improvement over Kofi Annan I'd pop a champagne cork if somehow, miraculously, he got the job.

He'd be at least slightly more likely to get Europeans to listen and work with us. He'd also be willing to kick some ass when it needs some kicking. As far as domestic politics go, he might help bridge one gap between American liberals and conservatives. He could make conservatives happy because he'd do a much better job than Kofi Annan. And because he's such a hero to activist liberals, he could help them see that the UN really is broken. They won't listen to Bush, but they will listen to him.

It is not a matter of listening to what people say -- it is also trying to figure out what they would not say. I still think that Vaclav Havel would be the best person for the job but Dean has my interest.