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# Posted 8:32 AM by Ariel David Adesnik

OUCH! Anne Applebaum slams the UN Human Rights Commission in one of the most devastating columns I've read lately. Yes, yes. We all know that it's hard to take the UNHRC seriously when it is headed by Libya, and when its annual activities involve blasting Israel and praising China.

But Applebaum goes much further and shows how the Commission has become one of the primary vehicles for providing multilateral legitimacy to brutal and systematic violence in places such as Sudan and Checnya. And it isn't just the dictatorships (or even the French) who are to blame. The US is one of the main reasons that the Commission has made such pitiful efforts to censure Russia.

In short, the UNHRC is a vehicle through which the United Nations' commitment to protecting national sovereignty can ride roughshod over the UN's much weaker commitment to human rights. While conservative critics of the UN tend to laugh off the Commission as just another manifestation of misguided and ineffective idealism, the fact is that it is a highly effective and dangerous body that threatens a transatlantic interest in protecting human rights.

Considering how entrenched the interests represented by the commission are, it is hard to accept the suggestions of thoughtful reformers who assert that the United States' victory in Iraq offers both the UN and its critics to reshape the institution in a way that will enable it to become a serious defender of human rights. The fact is that the UN will never take on that role for as long as its commitment to state sovereignty prevails over its lip service to human rights.

Now, this doesn't mean either that the UN has no productive purpose to serve or that it will find itself irreparably weakened by the "unauthorized" war in Iraq. As I've argued before, the UN will be strengthened in certain ways even if it is weakend in others. But when it comes to taking action against unrepentant dictators, whether in the Balkans or the Middle East, the United States will have to lead the way.

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