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Last updated on August 9th, 2017 at 03:52 pm
Pittsburgh columnist Dimitri Vassilaros asks: “If the U.N is incapable of stopping its own personnel from abusing the people they are there to protect, what is it capable of doing?”
Good question. Another extract:
To put this monstrous criminal enterprise in perspective, let’s pretend the United States was responsible for this madness instead of the United Nations. Instead of the crime scenes being (among other places) in West Africa or the Congo, let’s say they were at Abu Ghraib prison or the detention facility in Guantanamo Bay. And let’s say it lasted days instead of decades.
How many of the U.N.‘s 191 member nations would have been horrified and outraged? How many would have demanded that the abuses end instantly, that the criminals be punished and that victims get compensation?
Why does the United States remain in the United Nations?
- The only practical reason for the United States to remain a member of the United Nations? It’s the one place where all of the diplomats of the world gather. “Hold your friends close, but hold your enemies closer.”
I’d like to think that the US tries to keep the UN in line, but that would be self-delusion on a scale surpassing even that of Cindy Sheehan.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2006 03 01 at 10:25 AM • permalink
- Scrap the UN and replace it with a body where you only get to vote if your government has been properly voted into office. The current lax rules allowing all manner of crook governments to have a vote is fatally flawed. The General Assembly is farcical as a result. The Human Rights group is often beyond farcical.
Of course, suggesting that any member nation should be wiped off the map would also be grounds for disqualification.
Perhaps then we could move beyond a situation where detention of illegal combatants is deplored, while attacks on embassies are allowed to pass.
- I think some people are being too judgemental.
Public intellectuals like myself are beginning to see rape by UN personnel and international guests in terms of a culture clash. As Kofi Annan rightly points out, it is one of these areas of cultural disparity where people need to learn to adjust.
Posted by Margos Maid on 2006 03 01 at 04:40 PM • permalink
- Usually I have some trolls to support me. Am I the only Public Intellectual in this village?Posted by Margos Maid on 2006 03 01 at 08:58 PM • permalink
- Bar talk with a Kiwi colonel one night (don’t ask, part of a misspent adulthood). At any rate, he regaled us of time spent on UN missions. He actually hated Kofi, who had been a lowly chief of military missions at the time. His story was mostly along the lines that “Once Were Warriors” were now just sorry Blue Helmet Whores, along with a bunch of 3rd World outfits who basically subsidize their militaries by doing UN work. Most eye opening was how when UN units relieved each other, the unit being relieved literally gutted the base infrastructure. I mean down to pulling the wires out of the conduit in the buildings, removing plumbing fixtures, phones, doors, windows, not to mention computers, office equipment and furniture. You name it, it was gone, no accoutability, no follow up. The infrastructure was simply re-instated at UN (read: us Western saps) expense for the relieving unit.
The colonel was a sad remnant of that part of the West who used to jauntily go off and kill the buggers who hacked heads and blew up buses full of kids and old ladies and run rape rooms, but which now only exists in scarce quantities in select countries. The beer was good, but the conversation was depressing.Posted by Vanguard of the Commentariat on 2006 03 01 at 09:38 PM • permalink
- Strange as it may seem to those of us who pay attention to facts lots of states like the UN, including many Western ones. A number of Third World countries could care less. The CIA and the KGB once teamed up in the 1980s to find out what instructions their governments were sending to UN reps on various issues. After a covert operation they discovered that 30 per cent of the countries never sent instructions at all. The reps in NY were winging it. I suspect this led to considerable bribery of UN reps to get them to see things the right way after that.
As for leaving this sewer, one reason to remain is for the US to use its veto on the UNSC to protect itself and its friends from adverse SC resolutions. There are stupid people out there who believe that the UN is a moral force for good, and will be influenced by a UN condemnation of the US for flushing Korans down toilets, or some other lunacy.
Posted by Michael Lonie on 2006 03 02 at 12:04 AM • permalink
- The UN has been scared away from sending peace keeping troops into the Darfur region of Sudan. The goverment in Khartoum has made the usual Bullshit threats that it will become a graveyard for any foreign soldiers. They also say that there is a global plan to undermine anything Islamic and Arab, also the western plan for the recolonisation of Africa BLAH FUCKING BLAH. It is time for civilised countries to break away from the UN and form our own forum for civilised debate on global improvement.
- Why does the US remain in the UN? Because there is one major US political party led by such internationalists as John Kerry and T. Kennedy, who find the culture of the UN so much more satisfying than the moors of their own country, that child rapes and enormous fraud involving sums of money never seen by the largest US multi-national corporation, all under UN auspices, are observed with bored indifference while they influence the media to excorciate the VP over a hunting accident. This influence over the media by the Anti-American left explains why the US is handcuffed to the UN.
- My nephew served in East Timor with a blue helmet detachment from the N.S.W. Police. A complaint from villagers was tabled at the monthly U.N. meeting complaining that Jordanian U.N. troops were sneaking into villages at night in small groups and using their goats for sexual purposes.The Jordanian commanding officer was unmoved by the complaints and responded in a deadpan manner Tell them “it’s either your goats or your daughters….make up your minds”. My nephew tells me the matter went no further.
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It’s a humanitarian thing. Just think of how and where all those diplomats would have to live if we quit paying for their posh New York residences.