{"id":13312,"date":"2012-03-08T16:03:44","date_gmt":"2012-03-08T21:03:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=13312"},"modified":"2012-03-09T10:34:33","modified_gmt":"2012-03-09T15:34:33","slug":"the-un-feckless-on-syria","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/13312\/the-un-feckless-on-syria\/","title":{"rendered":"The UN: Feckless on Syria"},"content":{"rendered":"

In my new column this week<\/a>, I profile President Obama’s manifest weakness in responding to Syria and Iran — a weakness that belies the reputation for hawkishness that he seems to have been cultivating in the press for the last week.<\/p>\n

If the president is in the market for a foil to make him look like a saber-rattler by comparison, he couldn’t do much better than the United Nations, as the Washington Post<\/em> reports today<\/a>:<\/p>\n

A UNESCO panel on Thursday avoided tackling the issue of whether Syria should be ousted from a committee that deals with human rights.<\/p>\n

Instead, the commission of the executive board of the U.N. cultural agency voted 35-8 Thursday to condemn the crackdown on civilians in the Arab state.<\/p>\n

\n

The U.S. and several other countries want to unseat Syria from the Committee on Conventions and Recommendations, which has a strong human rights component. But there apparently is no precedent to remove a nation from a UNESCO committee.<\/p>\n

Syrian President Bashar Assad\u2019s crackdown on an opposition movement has left thousands dead in the past year.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

So beware, Syria, the UN is unsheathing its weapon of choice: parchment.<\/p>\n

The depths of intellectual and moral dishonesty in the United Nations would be funny if the subject matters to which they are applied weren’t so gravely serious. The body can’t oust Syria from a human rights committee? This is the nation where the Assad regime stacks political prisoners in shipping containers and dumps them at sea<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It’s a good thing the UN is intrinsically powerless. Otherwise it’d be an accessory to murder.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In my new column this week, I profile President Obama’s manifest weakness in responding to Syria and Iran — a weakness that belies the reputation for hawkishness that he seems to have been cultivating in the press for the last week. If the president is in the market for a foil to make him look […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3264,216,1277,130,1125,2414,3413,169],"class_list":["post-13312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-bashar-al-assad","tag-foreign-policy","tag-human-rights","tag-iran","tag-middle-east","tag-syria","tag-unesco","tag-united-nations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13312"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13312\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13358,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13312\/revisions\/13358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}