Maybe it is just my pathetic, college-aged sense of humor, but does any one else find it funny that the new UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon is being called a tool?

(If I were capable of photoshopping, trust me, I would.)

Every so often, I take a glance at the Christian Science Monitor. It is usually a decent source with minimal signs of bias, if any. (At least it was a couple years ago when I was a more frequent reader.) Anyway, this headline caught my eye earlier this morning: “Early accolades for UN’s new chief - with caveats”

It is a pretty interesting article, especially because I don’t feel like we have been hearing much about Mr. Moon in the MSM and/or popular blogs. Maybe, that could be because he isn’t involved in any steamy - or should I say oily? - scandals… yet. And so far, his family is on the up and up (no taxpayer funded apartments for the brother, that we know of).

So, is it possible that conservatives, from the Heritage Foundation of all places, could be optimistic about the new secretary-general? Apparently, it is:

When spending and accounting questions arose recently about the United Nations Development Program in North Korea, new UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon wasted little time moving into damage-control mode.

After all, he was fully aware of the toll that the Iraq oil-for-food scandal had taken on both the UN and his predecessor, Kofi Annan.

And so Mr. Ban summoned a top UNDP administrator, organized media access to some of the program’s senior staff, and issued a statement calling for “an urgent, system-wide and external inquiry” into the financial activities of all UN programs.

That quick action within the first month of his arrival on the job has won Ban some early accolades – including from some quarters among US conservatives that are never prone to kind words about the UN.

“Just by promising an investigation into the UNDP scandal, he sets a different tone, and that is very refreshing after the secrecy that cloaked the institution in the Kofi Annan years,” says Nile Gardiner, a UN expert and frequent critic at the Heritage Foundation in Washington.

True fact. If the UN wants to see any continued support from the US - (and I’m still for abolishing the UN no matter how nice the chief is) - they had better be changing it up a bit.

Now, for my favorite part of this article: the “caveat” mentioned in the headline. It would seem that not everyone is pleased with the way the new secretary general is handling himself.

Yet even as he wins some initial praise, Ban is also raising some questions with his first appointments, while leading others to wonder if he isn’t coming off as too much of a big-powers secretary-general. Ban, they worry, is showing signs of paying deference to a time-honored system that divvies up key posts among the powers that formed the UN system six decades ago – the US, Britain, and France in particular.

Oh, no! The U.N. is divvying up the best positions between the countries that actually pay the most money to the U.N.? What is the world coming to? I don’t know how France still gets in on the spoils system, to be honest. But whatever. If it makes the “others” angry, it can’t be that bad. And who are those “others” that are wondering?

“So far, there’s been some of the same division of senior posts on the traditional great-power spoils system that we’ve seen in the past,” says Michael Doyle, a former senior UN official now at Columbia University in New York.

Boy, if that don’t beat all. A former senior UN official gone Columbia professor. I’ll bet his parents are proud. But seriously, this is a former minion of Kofi complaining about the administration that replaced his boss. It was one thing when the spoils system favored the non-traditional great powers like Saddam and little Kojo… but anything that benefits the US has got to stop.

The entire article is worth reading - there is one really cute poem/song that Ban Ki Moon made up, haha. But, back to my opening question. In all fairness, it appears that the critics are calling the UN, not Ban Ki Moon, a tool… but it is really all the same.

Now out of the running for the humanitarian post, the US is seeking the top political-affairs post – a possibility that some UN experts say could actually run counter to US interests by making the UN look too much like a tool of American diplomacy.

Oh, come on. Could the UN really run any more counter to US interests? Especially if the US controlled the top political-affairs post?

Closing comments: Gimme a break. The day the UN becomes a “tool” of American diplomacy will be the day Ann Coulter is elected President of the US. Both great daydreams, but completely unrealistic.