This is the kind of thing that could only happen with a weakling like Barack Obama in the White House. With a stronger president running the country people like this wouldn’t dare utter such disrespectful inanities.

The U.N. secretary-general for Afghanistan is calling for disciplinary action for those responsible for the burning of Qurans at a U.S. military base last week. The incident sparked days of deadly protests and attacks across the country during which as many as 30 Afghan and four American soldiers were killed.

Speaking at a press conference in Kabul, Jan Kubis, the head of the U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, tried to distance the organization from the burning of Islamic holy books and other religious materials by U.S. military personnel at Bagram Air Base outside Kabul.

“We were very hurt as the United Nations to see that other part of the international community, international military, by mistake, but allowed this kind of desecration of the holy Quran,” he said.

Kubis went even further.

“After the first step of a profound apology, there must be a second step … of disciplinary action,” Jan Kubis, special representative for the U.N. secretary-general in Afghanistan, told a news conference.

“Only after this, after such a disciplinary action, can the international forces say ‘yes, we’re sincere in our apology’,” added Kubis, without elaborating on what action should be taken.

Who is this clown? Well, he’s a Slovak, and he is the representative of the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon in Afghanistan.

He’s also a communist, or at least he used to be. According to Wikipedia, Kubis served in the Czechoslovak embassy in Ethiopia from 1980-85, and he was a section head in the Czechoslovak foreign ministry dealing with arms control from 1985-88. And from 1988-91 he worked in the Czechoslovak embassy in Moscow. Until 1990, Czechoslovakia was a communist country; it’s difficult to imagine Kubis could have risen to the positions he did and secured the postings he secured without being a communist.

So taking pot shots at the United States – and calling for prosecutions of American troops for mistakenly burning Korans already defaced by Taliban thugs amid murderous riots in Afghanistan is without question a pot shot – is second nature for a man such as Kubis.

As said above, had we an American president with sand and a reputation for same this would have been unthinkable; the damage Kubis would do to relations with the United States would have been a much larger consideration than quelling riots among Afghan barbarians.

Obama is supposedly known as a savvy politician. Were that to be true, he would issue a sharp rebuke to Kubis and declare that no American servicemember will face prosecution as a result of the Koran-burning affair. Obama would give a short statement to the effect that a decade’s worth of blood and treasure given in support of Afghan freedom and progress was enough evidence of American commitment to the Afghan people, an apology has already been given for what was an error and that America will move on and accept no more blame or recriminations from any party – and that the murder of American, NATO and UN personnel as part of the “protests” against the Koran-burnings is an unacceptable reaction the Karzai government must put a stop to.

As for Kubis, the American State Department ought to quietly – and then perhaps not-so-quietly – demand that he be relieved of his portfolio. This man was ill-suited to his current role based on his background and he has disgraced himself and the UN by calling for discipline against Americans for mistaken trash disposal and not against murderous Afghan soldiers and civilians bent on riot and assassination.

But the State Department shouldn’t even need to do this. If Moon was remotely reputable as a UN Secretary-General, he would relieve Kubis immediately after those statements, which as his representative put the UN on the side of murder, mayhem and barbarism and defeat the organization’s very purpose.