But he has done us a service by publicly airing the appalling state of the relationship between the US and the UN.
The diplomatic world came to a shuddering halt today when Mark Malloch Brown, Deputy Secretary General of the UN, was undiplomatic: he told the truth. Addressing a US audience, he noted that "the prevailing [US] practice of seeking to use the UN almost by stealth as a diplomatic tool while failing to stand up for it against its domestic critics is simply not sustainable. You will lose the UN one way or another."
Not exactly stirring stuff, but such is the nature of the truth that it caused a massive storm in the land of the brave and the free, led by the US Ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, who declared Malloch Brown's speech "a very, very grave mistake by the Deputy Secretary General. ... the worst mistake by a senior UN official that I have seen." And just to prove Malloch Brown was right in saying that the administration does nothing to protect the UN from US critics, Bolton led the march: "fundamentally and very sadly, this was a criticism of the American people, not the American government, by an international civil servant, it's just illegitimate." |