Kofi Annan, U.N. General Secretary since 1997, is promoting nation-building and humanitarian credentials of his reformed outfit for postwar reconstruction of Iraq. American President George Bush is less than keen and Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain has moderated his pro-multilateralist rhetoric following his meeting with Bush last week.

Even erstwhile keen supporters of United Nations, such as Japan, a surprising member of "coalition of willing", are hesitant. Japan contributes close to one fifth of international body's regular budget. Yet, disillusioned by its inability to gain permanent membership of Security Council despite its economic clout, Japan announced, in January, its intention to cut its participation by 5 percent.

The United States seems to wish to consign organization to humanitarian aspects of Iraq's restoration. Last Friday, U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) granted $8 million to U.N.'s Children's Fund (UNICEF) to pay for sanitation, healthcare and potable water schemes in Iraq as well as for micronutrients, vitamins and medicines for its malnourished and disease-stricken populace.

Succumbing to its niche typecasting, United Nations has launched an unprecedented $2.2 billion "emergency appeal for immediate humanitarian assistance for people of Iraq over next six months, with $1.3 billion devoted to a massive food aid operation ... to help displaced, refugees, children, elderly and other especially vulnerable groups". The donor funds will augment proceeds of revamped oil-for-food program, now entirely under control of General Secretary.

So, is United Nations really "just a farce" and its members mostly "petty despots" as Conrad Black, The Canadian media mogul, has it in recent interviews? Or, paradoxically, has this international body been strengthened by its faithful depiction of resistant world opinion in face of perceived Anglo-Saxon bullying? The global assembly's future largely depends on an incensed and disenchanted United States.

Unable to rely on kindness of strangers, Annan is reaching out to new constituencies.

At 1999 World Economic Forum in Davos, he challenged global business community to enter a "Global Compact" with U.N. to uphold "human rights, labour standards and environmental practices." The International Chamber of Commerce, representing 7,000 business organizations in 137 countries, picked up gauntlet and published a joint statement at a July 1999 meeting with United Nations bigwigs.

This uneasy partnership drew severe criticisms from non-governmental organizations world over. Corpwatch, a California-based NGO, observed acidly that "in first 18 months of Global Compact, we have seen a growing but secret membership, heavy influence by International Chamber of Commerce, and a failure to publish even a single case study of sustainable practices. The Global Compact logo has been used without attribution by DaimlerChrysler, even as Global Compact officials insist that use of general UN logo is strictly controlled. The Global Compact represents a smuggling of a business agenda into United Nations. It should not be considered a contribution to or framework for Johannesburg Summit."

The United Nations - like NATO and other Cold War critters - is an organization in search of a purpose. The demise of USSR constituted a tectonic shift in international affairs. The U.N.'s inability to accommodate its institutions to supremacy of United States, demography of China, decline of Britain and France and economic clout of Germany and Japan are symptoms of denial and delusion that are detrimental to future of this otherwise benign and useful establishment. The war in Iraq is merely a rude wake-up call. And about time, too.

Sam Vaknin is the author of Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited and After the Rain - How the West Lost the East. He is a columnist for Central Europe Review, PopMatters, and eBookWeb , a United Press International (UPI) Senior Business Correspondent, and the editor of mental health and Central East Europe categories in The Open Directory Bellaonline, and Suite101 .

Visit Sam's Web site at http://samvak.tripod.com

But being a-human or super-human also means being a-sexual and a-moral. In this restricted sense, Hitler was a post-modernist and a moral relativist. He projected to masses an androgynous figure and enhanced it by fostering adoration of nudity and all things "natural". But what Nazism referred to as "nature" was not natural at all.

It was an aesthetic of decadence and evil (though it was not perceived this way by Nazis), carefully orchestrated, and artificial. Nazism was about reproduced copies, not about originals. It was about manipulation of symbols - not about veritable atavism.

In short: Nazism was about theatre, not about life. To enjoy spectacle (and be subsumed by it), Nazism demanded suspension of judgment, depersonalization, and de-realization. Catharsis was tantamount, in Nazi dramaturgy, to self-annulment. Nazism was nihilistic not only operationally, or ideologically. Its very language and narratives were nihilistic. Nazism was conspicuous nihilism - and Hitler served as a role model, annihilating Hitler Man, only to re-appear as Hitler stychia.

What was role of Jews in all this?

Nazism posed as a rebellion against "old ways" - against hegemonic culture, upper classes, established religions, superpowers, European order. The Nazis borrowed Leninist vocabulary and assimilated it effectively. Hitler and Nazis were an adolescent movement, a reaction to narcissistic injuries inflicted upon a narcissistic (and rather psychopathic) toddler nation-state. Hitler himself was a malignant narcissist, as Fromm correctly noted.

The Jews constituted a perfect, easily identifiable, embodiment of all that was "wrong" with Europe. They were an old nation, they were eerily disembodied (without a territory), they were cosmopolitan, they were part of establishment, they were "decadent", they were hated on religious and socio-economic grounds (see Goldhagen's "Hitler's Willing Executioners"), they were different, they were narcissistic (felt and acted as morally superior), they were everywhere, they were defenseless, they were credulous, they were adaptable (and thus could be co-opted to collaborate in their own destruction). They were perfect hated father figure and parricide was in fashion.

This is precisely source of fascination with Hitler. He was an inverted human. His unconscious was his conscious. He acted out our most repressed drives, fantasies, and wishes. He provides us with a glimpse of horrors that lie beneath veneer, barbarians at our personal gates, and what it was like before we invented civilization. Hitler forced us all through a time warp and many did not emerge. He was not devil. He was one of us. He was what Arendt aptly called banality of evil. Just an ordinary, mentally disturbed, failure, a member of a mentally disturbed and failing nation, who lived through disturbed and failing times. He was perfect mirror, a channel, a voice, and very depth of our souls.

Sam Vaknin is the author of Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited and After the Rain - How the West Lost the East. He is a columnist for Central Europe Review, PopMatters, and eBookWeb , a United Press International (UPI) Senior Business Correspondent, and the editor of mental health and Central East Europe categories in The Open Directory Bellaonline, and Suite101 .

Visit Sam's Web site at http://samvak.tripod.com