Common Sense at the United Nations

The United Nations is a classic case of good intentions gone horribly awry. Founded in 1945 to provide a multilateral basis for the institutionalization of world peace, the organization's devolved into a rank Third World talking shop of anti-Western demonization.

Does that sound a little rough? Well, check out today's Wall Street Journal for a bit on this:

When it comes to the U.N. Human Rights Council, is there anything left to say? Well, yes. In a break with precedent, this product of former Secretary General Kofi Annan's "reforms" has found a country other than Israel to criticize. The United States.

This week, two Council "experts" -- an American lawyer and an Indian architect -- accused the Department of Housing and Urban Development of denying the "internationally recognized human rights" of New Orleans residents whose former homes in public housing complexes are scheduled for demolition. The demolitions, say the experts, "could effectively deny thousands of African-American residents their right to return to housing from which they were displaced by the hurricane."

The public housing in question includes the notorious 1930s-era St. Bernard complex, which was already in a bad state before Katrina hit and an even worse state after it. The local housing authority intends to replace the complex with mixed-income housing developments, and in the meantime is granting housing vouchers to former tenants. But some of the new housing will be offered at -- horrors! -- a "market rate," to which the U.N. naturally objects. We don't remember the U.N.'s human-rights czars being quite so vocal when Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe evicted 200,000 people from their homes in 2005.

Meanwhile, the Council will soon release a 25-page report by South African "investigator" John Dugard that is its most comprehensive defense yet of Palestinian terrorism. "Common sense," Mr. Dugard writes, "dictates that a distinction must be drawn between acts of mindless terror, such as acts committed by al Qaeda, and acts committed in the course of a war of national liberation against colonialism, apartheid or military occupation." Mr. Dugard goes on to lament the "Judaization" of Jerusalem, which if nothing else is a revealing use of language.

We doubt Mr. Dugard's words provide much solace to the relatives of Israelis blown up on buses, in cafes and discotheques. But at least we now know what passes for "common sense" at the United Nations.

The U.N. embodies fundamental elements of international politics, as well as unfulfilled promise.

Maybe the next U.N. ambassador will get a chance to shake things up under a new presidential administration, even picking up where Ambassador Bolton left off?