Kofi Annan,

Is not the man in this article. That's for sure.

James Traub is giving Mr. Annan credit for re-legitimizing the UN.

Annan did not get the Nobel Peace Prize for temporarily averting war in Iraq. In fact, he did something harder: He restored the relevance of the U.N. The new U.N. head brought Washington back into the fold through a combination of unflagging solicitude and gentle prodding.

Yeah, right. If we go with the idea that the UN has found new relevance it is only because the US has decided to act like they are legitimate again. And that is definitely not due to any love for Annan.

No matter what one thinks of Annan, there can be no doubt about the success of his campaign to revalidate the U.N. (for which many others also deserve to share credit). The U.N. fields more than 80,000 peacekeepers, and by deploying a muscular force in Lebanon, it is playing an indispensable role in the Mideast for the first time in decades.

That first "muscular force" is only going to be muscular if and only if Israel insists that it is. It has nothing, nothing to do with Annan.

His highly ambitious campaign to reform the institution's doctrines and machinery barely avoided catastrophic failure; the achievements, on humanitarian intervention and human rights enforcement and "peace-building," were almost eclipsed by the divisiveness of the debate itself.

Yeah - it was the "divisiveness of the debate itself" that was the problem. Please. How can you write an aritcle like this and not mention the oil for food except as a sideline mentioned by critics? Or about sex for food? Or about nepotism? Or about the Tsunami disaster?

If the UN has any legitimacy at all - it is only because the US has insisted on it. And even that can be set aside when the UN is ridiculous. We tout the report on Hezbollah and ignore the one of the US. One is legitimate and the other isn't. Because we say so. Not because of Kofi.