The Spectacle at the UN

Whether one should view yesterday’s UN proceedings between Hillary Clinton and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as a comic tragedy or a tragic comedy (take your pick), the spectacle simply amounts to this: by continuing to host and provide forum for Ahmadinejad’s tirades against the UN and the US, the UN and the US and the rest of the so-called international community only end up lending credibility and legitimacy to his defiant stance against uranium enrichment restrictions. That’s the comic part. The tragic part is not realizing they are doing this. The article says: “The Iranian couldn't have been clearer that his country intends to ignore any and all U.N. pressure to stop building its bomb. He averred that the world has "not a single credible proof" that Iran intends to build a bomb, notwithstanding the world's discovery of its secret uranium-enrichment facility at Natanz in 2002 and its secret underground facility near Qom last year. He even said the U.S. should be suspended from the U.N. atomic agency's board because ‘it used nuclear weapons against Japan’ and depleted uranium weapons in Iraq.”

Why the UN would dignify anyone “that bites the hand that feeds it” defies logic. To their credit, the article goes on to add, “Delegates from the U.S., U.K. and France walked out during the speech, to their credit. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs chimed in that the remarks were "wild accusations," and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton took to the podium later in the day to accuse Iran of "flouting the rules" and declaring it is "time for a strong international response." As if walking out does it.

In an earlier blog posting, I said that “If world leaders, the UN, and the press will unite in condemning, ostracizing, and isolating Ahmadinejad, perhaps a regime change in Iran, waged from outside, is possible. Conversely, if the US and the rest of the world continue to engage Ahmadinejad in the name of diplomacy, they do nothing but lend legitimacy to a president who at best cannot distinguish a truth from a lie.“

Why is all this hard to understand?