ON THE OTHER HAND, IF THE U.N. HAD BEEN PLACED OF CHARGED OF ABU GHRAIB, IT WOULD HAVE BEEN TURNED INTO A BROTHEL


It is not surprising that one response to Abu Ghraib would be to conclude that this is what happens when unilateralism takes peace-keeping out of the hands of the powder-blue-helmeted professionals and into those of ill-trained American reservists. The problem with this argument, as Marc Steyn points out, is that the UN's track record is not exactly sparkling when it comes to the human rights abuses of their peacekeepers.

Is the UN good? Well, I'm not sure I'd even say that. But if you object to what's going on in those Abu Ghraib pictures – the sexual humiliation of prisoners and their conscription as a vast army of extras in their guards' porno fantasies – then you might want to think twice about handing over Iraq to the UN.

In Eritrea, the government recently accused the UN mission of, among other offences, pedophilia. In Cambodia, UN troops fueled an explosion of child prostitutes and AIDS. Amnesty International reports that the UN mission in Kosovo has presided over a massive expansion of the sex trade, with girls as young as 11 being lured from Moldova and Bulgaria to service international peacekeepers.

In Bosnia, where the sex-slave trade barely existed before the UN showed up in 1995, there are now hundreds of brothels with underage girls living as captives. The 2002 Save the Children report on the UN's cover-up of the sex-for-food scandal in West Africa provides grim details of peacekeepers' demanding sexual favors from children as young as four in exchange for biscuits and cake powder. "What is particularly shocking and appalling is that those people who ought to be there protecting the local population have actually become perpetrators," said Steve Crawshaw, the director of Human Rights Watch.

Unfortunately, the disfunction of the U.N. is treated as a debating point - used by unilateralists to score points, and ignored by multilateralists as inconvenient. Neither of these positions, which Bush and Kerry have stuck to with depressing regularity offer much hope for a world desperately in need of competent nation-builders.