My New Year's wish

Kofi Annan and George W. Bush have at least this much in common: they both spent much of 2004 fighting to keep their jobs. Just three months ago, it looked like both men might be fired by year's end. But both celebrated the start of 2005 fully secure in their respective posts.

Annan's future as Secretary-General of the United Nations remained in jeopardy until the beginning of December. In April, the world marked the tenth anniversary of the Rwandan genocide — and recalled Annan's personal failure to intervene as then head of UN peacekeeping. Even as Annan apologized for his inaction in Rwanda, he was poised to make the same mistake again in Darfur. Even when it became clear that the Sudanese government was sponsoring an ethnic cleansing campaign, Annan resisted the use of UN power to punish the perpetrators and protect their victims. Some American editorialists began to question the effectiveness of Annan's leadership.

On top of these criticisms, Annan was embarrassed by allegations of corruption in the UN oil-for-food program. When his son Kojo was implicated as a suspected profiteer in the oil-for-food scheme, the Secretary-General's credibility hit an all-time low. On Dec. 1, Senator Norm Coleman (R-MN), chair of the Congressional subcommittee investigating the scandal, wrote an oped in the Wall Street Journal calling on Annan to resign. When asked about the Coleman oped, the Bush administration declined to lend Annan its support.

That changed on Dec. 9, when John Danforth, the US ambassador to the UN, said: "We are expressing confidence in the Secretary-General and in his continuing in office." The day before, Annan had received a standing ovation when he came before the UN General Assembly. British Prime Minister Tony Blair and other Western leaders chimed in with their own votes of confidence. Annan now says that he has no plans to step down.

I am not interested in taking a side in the debate over Annan's integrity or ability. I am interested, rather, in what I take to be a bizarre feature of the whole story: the fact that opposition to Annan has been labeled a "conservative" or "right wing" stance.

What is the logical connection between being a conservative and doubting the competence of a world leader with a questionable track record? Clearly, one could be liberal and doubt President Bush's fitness to lead the United States. So why can't one be liberal and doubt Kofi Annan's fitness to lead the United Nations?

Those who insist that criticism of Annan is part of a "right wing" agenda usually claim that it's all just a thinly veiled attack on the institutional authority of the UN. According to this theory, American censure of Annan is nothing more than retaliation for his refusal to support the war in Iraq. By many accounts, the whole business reveals the right wing's determination to discredit and punish anybody who dares stand in the way of American militarism.

Complaints about Annan have been labeled "conservative" because it is generally believed that Annan's detractors are hiding their real, partisan grievances behind a cover of apparently "fair" criticism. It is widely supposed that disenchantment with Annan actually has very little to do with corruption and incompetence and everything to do with American conservatives' contempt for international institutions. The idea is that there is a vast right wing conspiracy to undo the UN, and Kofi Annan is its innocent victim.

I cannot pretend to know the "true" motivations of Annan's American critics. But it seems to me entirely possible that one could be alarmed by Annan's record of service without being driven by some sinister hidden agenda. Some people may indeed have conspiratorial reasons for criticizing Annan, but that does not mean there aren't also plenty of perfectly good, honest reasons to seek his resignation.

Conspiracy theories are problematic not because they are frequently wrong, but because they are cop-outs. They allow us to avoid the hard intellectual labor of parsing difficult arguments. The conspiracy theorists think that since many of the people who want to fire Annan happen to be right wing nuts, the rest of us needn't bother ourselves with any sort of critical evaluation of Annan's performance.

We can speculate all we want about the ulterior motives of our conversation-partners, but in the end, we have no excuse for not taking the substance of their arguments seriously. My hope for the New Year is that we muster the intellectual courage to evaluate all plausible claims—including the charges against Annan—at face value. Jeremy Golubcow-Teglasi is a religion major from Potomac, Md. He can be reached at golubcow@princeton.edu.