When President Bush announced in September of 2002 that America would rejoin the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization after an 18-year absence, this newspaper ran a critical editorial headlined “The Unesco Blunder” arguing that it was a waste of $60 million in taxpayer money and that not even the Clinton administration had rejoined Unesco. We were reminded of that editorial yesterday upon viewing the photograph – reproduced on our front page today – of Fidel Castro presenting the Venezuelan anti-American leader Hugo Chavez with a $5,000 Unesco award. This came but hours after Mr. Chavez’s vice president had called Mr. Bush the “North American Hitler,” the Associated Press reports. Mr. Castro is a ruler-for-life who jails political dissidents and whose country is on the American list of state sponsors of terrorism.

It was only the latest in a series of Unesco embarrassments since America rejoined. Last fall, over the objections of only America and Israel, the organization approved a “cultural diversity” pact that amounted to anti-American trade protectionism. That prompted syndicated columnist George Will to write that Unesco “is reverting to the sort of mischief tinged with anti-Americanism that caused President Reagan to withdraw the U.S. from the organization in 1984.” Last month, a Unesco “goodwill ambassador,” Harry Belafonte, called the Department of Homeland Security a “new Gestapo” and went to Venezuela to call President Bush “the greatest terrorist in the world.” Unesco has written us that, contrary to a report in the Sun, he wasn’t traveling for or speaking for Unesco; it strikes us as all too fine a distinction, if he’s a Unesco ambassador. No doubt Unesco is going to try to make much of the fact that Cuba, rather than it, paid for the Unesco award for Mr. Chavez.

Mr. Bush may have achieved his goals in rejoining Unesco. He received some plaudits from the left-wing press. “A U.N. Agency Is Revitalized by Re-entry of the U.S.,” is how the New York Times headlined its cable from Paris two weeks after Mr. Bush made his announcement. A Democratic former senator, Timothy Wirth, who heads Ted Turner’s United Nations Foundation, wrote an article calling Mr. Bush’s decision “a welcome display of US collaboration in international bodies.” Mrs. Bush made a trip to Paris to visit Unesco, a visit during which she received her famous kiss on the hand from President Chirac.

Back in September of 2002, Mr. Bush said, “as a symbol of our commitment to human dignity, the United States will return to Unesco. This organization has been reformed and America will participate fully in its mission to advance human rights and tolerance and learning.” If the president is seriously committed to human dignity and advancing human rights, the right move would be to pull America right back out of Unesco, because the events of the past few years – and the photograph on our front page – have shown that Mr. Bush was mistaken when he said the organization has been reformed.