Jon Kyl, October 11, 2002

It's hard to take seriously an organization that puts Libya in charge of investigating human rights abuses.

Yet Libya -- which shares with Iraq and Iran the distinction of being a leading sponsor of international terrorism -- is slated to head the U.N. Commission on Human Rights next year, sharing its duties with such notables as Cuba, Syria, Vietnam, and Sudan (which hasn't yet abolished slavery). Asking this unsavory crowd to deliberate on human rights abuses makes as much sense as allowing Hannibal Lecter to pick his own jury.

Just as eyebrow-raising is the U.N. Commission on Racial Discrimination, boasting a membership that includes China, Egypt, and Algeria. Which country did the commission recently drag before it to endure lectures on its supposed discrimination against Chinese-born citizens? Canada! And this is the same group that never gets around to criticizing China for a plethora of human rights abuses there.

We've come to expect such displays from the United Nations, where moral equivalence appears to be an accepted concept. And where scores of nations that oppress their own people hector the United States like rebellious teenagers: they resent America's authority, but still expect it to pay their bills and bail them out whenever they're in trouble.

In this context it becomes hard to see why many members of Congress want to require the approval of this organization before an American President can launch an attack to defend U.S. security. Specifically, these legislators would place our national security in the hands of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council - Great Britain, France, Russia, China, and the United States.

So sacrosanct has the U.N. become in some quarters that the Security Council has taken on almost magical powers during the current conflict with Iraq - its assent conferring what one Senator calls a "moral imprimatur" on any U.S. military action.

I wonder which Security Council member carries the moral authority these legislators seek. Great Britain, for one, already supports our actions and is playing its traditional role of serious grownup struggling to make the other members of the Council act responsibly.

By contrast, France prefers to use its coveted spot on the Council to work through an inferiority complex with the United States, attacking and embarrassing America only to come around at the end -- lest it be left behind and its irrelevance laid bare.

Russia is a democracy-in-training with an economy in shambles. Its belief in a free press is suspect; its treatment of minorities often troubling; and its proliferation of weapons to terrorist-sponsor Iran wholly unacceptable. The Putin government is using the Iraq crisis not to advance any grand principle of international law, but to cut a deal with the United States for Iraqi oil, and get permission to invade its neighbor -- Georgia - in pursuit of opponents of the Russian government.

And then there is China - a global leader in proliferating powerful weapons to dastardly regimes. The Communist dictatorship there continues to imprison and beat political opponents, to foment anti-Americanism among its populace, and to plot the invasion of its peaceful, democratic neighbor, Taiwan.

Some suggest China learned its lesson after unarmed, pro-democracy protesters were gunned down in Tiananmen Square. If so, it was the wrong lesson. As thousands of North Koreans flee to neighboring China to escape persecution, China's solution is simply to send them back, where many await certain death.

And these are just the permanent members of the Security Council. There are 10 non-permanent members elected by the General Assembly, and all take turns as chair. Earlier this year, the Council was headed by Syria. If the world had a most-wanted list, Syria would be near the top for its support of terrorists.

To suggest that China or Syria should decide whether or not American actions are morally justified is, frankly, bizarre.

The whole thing would almost be comedic, if we didn't remember the millions who were tortured, imprisoned, or murdered by orders from these regimes and others like them. Or if we didn't have to reckon with the fact that serious people in the United States Congress actually believe that these abusive regimes could confer "moral legitimacy" on anything.

We don't need Libya to tell us that America is a good nation.

U.S. Senator John Kyl (Republican of Arizona) is a member of the Senate Judiciary, Finance, Energy and Natural Resources, and Intelligence Committees.