Coffee with Kofi

Tonight was a special night in Lund. The city was graced with the presence of nobel prize winner and past secretary general of the United Nations, Kofi Annan. This was the second part of a multi part lecture series sponsored by Lund University. Needless to say I made it a priority to attend (despite a final exam tomorrow afternoon). I arrived a little more than 2 hours before the event was scheduled to start. That proved not to be a minute too early as the que was already nearing the outside of the main university hall by the time I arrived. Another 15 minutes of delay in my arrival and I would not have been granted entrance to the lecture hall. As we filed into the large ballroom of the university's stately looking main building we knew we were in for a treat. The balcony was packed to the brim and the aisle ways were standing room only. I picked a perch near the front, about 20 meters from the stage. I wanted a clear view of both Kofi and the audience. I really enjoy observing the audience at events like this. You can tell a speakers abilities by watching the way in which people are engaged by their words.

After an introduction by the president of the university it was time for Kofi to take center stage. He started out with a typical ice breaker about being confused for Morgan Freeman by some tourists after he retired from the UN. The crowd loved it. He then moved into his speech. The topic was "Establishing a Culture of Prevention". The nexus of the speech was centered around the idea that "There is no peace without development, there is no development without peace, there can be no security without development and there is no security without the respect of basic human rights".

Now, say what you will about the UN. Their hesitation to aid in Rwanda during one of the worst genocides of our time to lack of resources available to aid in the conflict in Darfur to the minimal power they can exert on world leaders intertwined in the Arab-Israeli conflict....it's easy to argue that as an institution they are becoming less of a power as the clock ticks. What can't be argued though is Kofi's vision that he guided under. Despite potential missteps and hind sighted criticism that is easy to proclaim when the past is available for critique, he made a commitment to serve and enforce the umbrella policy this world agreed to known as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This document could be argued to be one of the most significant pieces of legislation that the world has come to know. Kofi believed in this and made it his mission to protect its enforcement.

It was that document that supported the outspoken criticism of the United States invasion of Iraq. Kofi made 100% clear that he was not in favor of this form of diplomacy in the instance of Iraq before the invasion was initiated. His speech tonight centered around this injustice the United States committed. He stated that "we will feel the ramifications of Iraq for years to come. The illegal invasion has drained resources from the international efforts to protect from injustice everywhere. The effects are being felt far from the center of the conflict in places like Georgia where Russia committed equally hasteful actions despite international resistance."

As I stood there and listened I felt a sense of unease spread through me. It's a feeling I'm becoming more and more accustomed to as the image of our country is presented in different contexts. It's now a daily event where I can find strong dissent and disappointment for our actions in the global arena. Whether it be newspaper headlines or comments from my peers, this is undoubtedly not our finest hour as a nation.

As an editorial side note I personally think all is not lost. Far from it I would argue. But I know that the rest of the world is not willing to play dead and lay along side our feeble remains as we engineer a plan to improve ourselves. If we rely on our historical dominance and an ethnocentric attitude that we somehow 'deserve' to be the world leader based on an ancient manifest destiny than we will undoubtedly find ourselves right where we deserve to be....not at the top, and not at the bottom, but somewhere in between as an ambiguous shell of a once world power.

Kofi ended his speech with words that can serve as a battle cry in the months to come...... "A government that is accountable to its people remains as desireable as ever."