Another Abstention

Shame on Roh Moo Hyun for yet another act of historic moral cowardice. Can I say this really surprises me? I mean, are you surprised? The bright side to this, if there is one, is that there’s a rapidly growing audience watching it all. Someone in South Korea must make a national issue of the human cost of appeasement. Someone must do what is right today, rather than rue this day before the next “Truth Commission” fifty years hence.

Meanwhile, I have more rare praise for the United Nations, for setting standards and holding to them, for once. Here is Dorian Prince, ambassador of the European Commission’s delegation to Seoul:

“In this year’s resolution, we said that unless we saw some improvement this year and, in particular, unless the U.N. special rapporteur on human rights was given access to North Korea, we would raise the matter formally in the U.N. General Assembly,” he said. “Since North Korea unfortunately has not responded to those requests, we are therefore going ahead and raising the matter in the U.N. General Assembly.”

I doubt I’ll ever trust the United Nations to make my country secure, do peacekeeping in tough neighborhoods, or police the Internet, but by approving this resolution it would make a small step toward regaining some moral authority–by setting some moral standards.

Update: At least one other person had almost exactly the same reaction, I see.