The American Spectator

Another Perspective

It is fitting that a frivolous, decadent, unserious United Nations would reveal its warped mindset through MTV. United Nations mouthpiece Hans Blix's recent interview with the teen fantasy channel is a useful clip for the research of future historians. "I'm more worried about global warming than I am of any major military conflict," Blix said to MTV. Historians can point to this quote as exhibit A of the U.N.'s cluelessness during the war on terror.

While Saddam Hussein built weapons of mass destruction, the U.N.'s chief inspector worried about global temperature increases. While the U.N. ignored broken resolutions in Baghdad, its dilettantes talked about failed protocols in "Kyoto." While it minimized human threats, it exaggerated environmental ones.

"You have the instances like the global warming convention, the Kyoto protocol, when the U.S. went its own way. I regret it. To me the question of the environment is more ominous than that of peace and war," Blix said. He declared "world conflicts" a relic of the past, but "the environment, that is a creeping danger."

Even as Blix showed no skepticism about the dangers in the skies above, he showed a dogged skepticism about the evils in front of his nose. He said to MTV that "personally I don't understand what [the Iraqis] would use chemical or biological weapons for any longer. The Iraqis are not threatened by the Turks or by the Iranians or by the Saudis and they tell me that these are not weapons of mass destruction, they are weapons of self-destruction." His report, he insisted, "nowhere says or maintains that there remain weapons of mass destruction. We cannot exclude it in a good many cases, but that's not the same thing as saying they are there."

Blix joins Neville Chamberlain in history's procession of great buffoons. Chamberlain thought that he could sit down with Adolf Hitler, take out a couple of "pencils," and gentlemanly review a sheet of concerns between the nations. Blix thought he could do the same with his inspection sheets. "If they have some weapons, if they have some anthrax, they should deliver that. We're not saying they do have it, but if they do have it, put it on the table," he said.

Blix's statement that the Iraqis "tell me that these are not weapons of mass destruction" is similar to Chamberlain's beaming announcement that Hitler had solemnly promised him that he wouldn't invade his neighbors.

Blix has always preferred ideology to inspections. Facts don't impress themselves on him. Hence he can stand before a lunatic who torches oil fields for spite and speak of global warming as the environmental menace.

Fiddling with MTV while Baghdad would soon burn, Blix also spoke of poverty as a world danger and cause of war. "Why do they become terrorists? Why do they become so desperate they are willing to blow up airplanes or buildings?" he asked. "Therefore we have to look at the social problems…To wield the big stick and strike here and there and have big surveillance of telephones or whatnot, that can be done, but to get at the social conditions -- better democracy, more education in the Middle East, giving the hope for the many youngsters in that part of the world -- now that's harder. Look at the Palestinians with the huge, huge percentage of unemployed. What does that breed? Anyone who's unemployed in the world, you feel there's no meaning and there's a risk that you drift over to something desperate. Yes, we have to tackle the social problems as well."

It is no surprise that inspector Blix has managed not to notice that this war is a response to the work of trust-fund terrorists and a multibillionaire despot.

topics:
Education, Environment, Global Warming, Military, Iraq, Iran, United Nations, Oil