Zalmay Khalilzad’s New York Times’s op-ed in in today’s featured links. There’s lots of legitimacy issues which Khalilzad ignores (e.g. the U.N.’s special legacy in Iraq be it from sanctions or the associated Oil-for-Food corruption) but the major problem which Khalilzad doesn’t address is the fact that the United Nations had been in Iraq. After being targeted by a terrorist bomb, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan ordered U.N. workers to leave. The lesson, unfortunately, that insurgents and terrorists took, is that if they don’t like the direction of the U.N. process, that they can disrupt it and force the U.N. to flee through terrorism. It is an unfortunate legacy which the U.N. has yet to address, but one with which it will have to live.