Another Steyn double

Two great essays from the inimitable Mark Steyn today.

First, his Sunday Telegraph column blasts the UN for its mismanagement of the Oil-for-Food program, but also wonders how anyone can expect anything better from that corrupt and useless organization:

. . . the Secretary-General isn't "shocked" at all. And nor are the media, which is why the major news organisations can barely contain their boredom with the biggest financial scam of all time – bigger than Enron, Worldcom and all the rest rolled into one. If ever there were a dog-bites-man story, "UN Stinkingly Corrupt Shock!" is it.

And, in a way, they have a point: what happened was utterly predictable. If I had $64 billion of my own money, I'd look after it carefully. But give someone $64 billion of other people's money to "process" and it would be surprising if some of it didn't get peeled off en route. Especially if that $64 billion gives you access to a unique supply of specially low-priced oil you can re-sell at market prices. Hire Third World bureaucrats to supervise the "processing" and you can kiss even more of it goodbye. Grant Saddam Hussein the right of approval over the bank that will run the scheme, and it's clear to all that nit-picky book-keeping will not be an overburdensome problem.

In other words, the system didn't fail. This is the transnational system, working as it usually works, just a little more so. One of the reasons I'm in favour of small government is because big government tends to be remote government, and remote government is unaccountable, and, as a wannabe world government, the UN is the remotest and most unaccountable of all. If the sentimental utopian blather ever came true and we wound up with one "world government", from an accounting department point of view, the model will be Nigeria rather than New Hampshire.

For domestic consumption, Steyn remarks on what makes Pres. Bush remarkable:

t was business as usual on NPR the other afternoon. A lady expert was complaining that, in his State of the Union address, George W. Bush had made no mention of ''climate change.'' This is true in the narrow sense that, if you were hoping for some meaningless bit of Clintonesque hot-air micropolitics, the president didn't boldly pledge to join our European allies in pretending to abide by the Kyoto Treaty.

But, in the broader sense, Bush doesn't need to talk about climate change, because he's doing it. He's changing the climate at home and abroad. Social Security is the so-called third rail of American politics, but he's seized it and right now it's the comatose Democrats who look like they could use a jolt or two. As for the wider world, if one had to nominate a third rail of global politics, attempting to democratize the Middle East would be pretty much a shoo-in. But Bush has made it an explicit and urgent goal of U.S. foreign policy. This is a president who wants to leave his mark on more than a cocktail dress.

Read them in their entireties.