Reuters is reporting that United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan told reporters that he and others world leaders were “disturbed” by a letter in which John Negroponte, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said that the United States may eventually have to widen the war against terrorism to include attacks on countries other than Afghanistan (likely Iraq, Sudan, and/or Somalia). Specifically, Annan pointed to a line in Negroponte’s letter that said, “We may find that our self-defense requires further action with respect to other organizations and other states.”
Normally, I might give some credence to Annan’s concerns, but unfortunately the UN Secretary General has a history of being “disturbed” at efforts to defend people from butchers.
In 1994, for example, Maj. Gen. Romeo Dallaire, then head of a UN peacekeeping mission in Rwanda, practically begged Annan intervene to prevent genocide. Daillaire had received reliable information about preparations for mass killings of Tutsis in that country. Annan, and then U.S. president Bill Clinton, firmly denied Dallaire’s requests and Annan couldn’t even be bothered to speak out publicly about what he knew until the genocide was well underway.