'Just World News' with Helena Cobban

RICHARD PERLE, VIEWED FROM AFRICA:

RICHARD PERLE, VIEWED FROM AFRICA: Sitting around waiting in the the ICTR press office earlier this week, I pisked up a copy of The East African. UN Public Affairs Officer Straton Musonera, who hails from Rwanda, saw what I was looking at. "Did you see that?" he asked, outraged. It was a syndicated article by Richard Perle titled something like, "The UN has no place in the New World Order."

Well yes, I had scanned through the piece, and had been disgusted by some of the Prince of Darkness's more aggressive arguments against the UN.

"Richard Perle!" I said. "What can you expect?"

"You know him?" Straton asked. "So who is he?"

I pointed to the tagline at the bottom of the piece. "Look, it says here: 'a member of the Pentagon's defense Policy Board.' Well, of course till a couple of weeks ago he was the Chairman of the DPB. But he's still very influential."

"You mean, he's actually an official? I thought he was just some journalist. My God!"

Oh yes, Straton. And he's not just some low-ranking paper-pusher, either. He is part of the small group of policy advisors who are driving the administration's present policies....

Honestly, how can we, as Americans, defend having such a malevolent figure as Perle enjoy such influence over our government's policy? Okay, okay, I know I should probably describe him as "misguided" rather than "malevolent"... But still, my general point stands.

Note in this regard, too, that if any group of people should feel abandoned or betrayed by the UN, it should be survivors of the Rwandan genocide, like Straton and his friends. Their "case" against the UN has even in recent weeks been vociferously articulated by several high-ranking members of the US administration.

But even though the Rwandan genocide survivors have a huge and quite understandable criticism to make regarding the UN's failure to stop the genocide in 1994, still, most of them are quite realistic enough to see that the UN plays a vital role in the world today: one that their nation, like all other small nations, relies on.

So Richard Perle's arguments against the UN may play well to that part of the US electorate that has long distrusted the organization, and that feels that the US can get along quite well without it. But I think it would very hard to sell his arguments in most other parts of the world. And that even includes, as far as I can see, in Rwanda.