marchand chronicles

Mark Steyn Is A Genius, Editions IV & V

Twin columns from Mark Steyn yesterday, both having to do with Europe. His Chicago Sun-Times offering, "Will Europe warm up to Bush climate change?" compares Europe's constant dithering (and the Democrats') with President Bush's decisiveness:

Go back to the 2002 State of the Union that inaugurated the "axis of evil." I loved the expression mainly because all the sophisticates loathed it. Such rhetoric "gets us nowhere," complained Joschka Fischer, Germany's foreign minister. It was unhelpfully "absolutist" and "in unilateralist overdrive," sneered Chris Patten, the European Union's external affairs commissioner. Why, it was "absurd," scoffed Hubert Vedrine, the French foreign minister.

So much for the axis of ennui. Three years on, one-third of the evildoers is in jail, his people have been liberated, and their country has just held the most free and fair election in modern Middle Eastern history. That last wasn't supposed to happen, either. "They can't have an election right now," declared John Kerry, Senator Nuance himself, in the presidential debates. "I personally do not believe they're going to be ready for the election in January," said Jimmy Carter, winner of the Nobel Prize for Peanuts. "There's no security there."

But Carter and Kerry and Old Europe were wrong, and the absurd absolutist simpleton was right. Iraq is free not just because of the military skill of America and her allies but because of the political will of one man, who stuck to his guns against the opposition of the Eurocynics, the U.N. do-nothings, the Democratic Party weathervanes, the media doom-mongers, and the unreal realpolitik grandees of his own party -- the Scowcrofts and Eagleburgers.

But 'cross the pond in The Daily Telegraph, Steyn takes a mighty swipe at the UN, from the headline, "Would you trust these men with $64bn of your cash? Of course not" on down:

If I had $64 billion of my own money, I'd look after it carefully. But give someone $64 billion of other people's money to "process" and it would be surprising if some of it didn't get peeled off en route. Especially if that $64 billion gives you access to a unique supply of specially low-priced oil you can re-sell at market prices. Hire Third World bureaucrats to supervise the "processing" and you can kiss even more of it goodbye. Grant Saddam Hussein the right of approval over the bank that will run the scheme, and it's clear to all that nit-picky book-keeping will not be an overburdensome problem.

In other words, the system didn't fail. This is the transnational system, working as it usually works, just a little more so. One of the reasons I'm in favour of small government is because big government tends to be remote government, and remote government is unaccountable, and, as a wannabe world government, the UN is the remotest and most unaccountable of all. If the sentimental utopian blather ever came true and we wound up with one "world government", from an accounting department point of view, the model will be Nigeria rather than New Hampshire.

As always, read the whole thing on both counts. Stronger than Guinness and it tastes better, too.

posted by Marsh @ 3:17 PM