July 22, 2008
Two Worthless Institutions
This story illustrates everything that is wrong with both the United Nations and the African Union:
ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA (AP) - The African Union will ask the U.N. Security Council to suspend action for a year on the indictment of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir on Darfur genocide charges, Nigeria's foreign affairs minister said on Monday.The African Union will make the request in an effort to allow progress in slow-moving negotiations to end the five-year-old conflict in Darfur, Nigerian Foreign Affairs Ojo Maduekwe told journalists.
He spoke after an emergency meeting of the African Union's Peace and Security Council, held to discuss the International Criminal Court's July 14 indictment of al-Bashir on charges of genocide and rape in Darfur.
The statute that set up the court allows the U.N. Security Council to pass a resolution to defer or suspend for a year the investigation or prosecution of a case. The council can renew such a resolution.
I used to blog a lot more about Africa and Darfur than I do today. I don't much anymore because nothing seems to ever get done. Thousands die and all we get are "slow-moving negotiations" and UN resolutions that don't achieve anything.
Some will blame the West, but the Africans themselves don't care themselves, either about Darfur or their other big disaster, Zimbabwe. I think half the reason they have troops in Darfur is to make the West happy. Just about a year ago Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe got a standing ovation from fellow African leaders.
So now we have an ICC (International Criminal Court) indictment. Big deal.
Few Western leaders will stick their necks out for Darfur or Zimbabwe, not because there's no oil, but because they'll get nothing but grief for doing so. The Africans will object if we holler too loud, and anything stronger gets problematical.
Awareness campaigns? I think everyone already knows.
Sanctions on the Sudan? We've already done what we can and they haven't done any good. Sure, we could punish China hoping that they turn up the screws on Khartoom, but that'll hurt our economy and sour relations with China.
Put the navy off the coast with a targeted blockade? We'll never get UN approval, and the legality of unilateral action is messy. Those today who proclaim the loudest that they "care" will be the first to protest direct military action.
The whole thing seems intractable. My long term solution is to completely revamp our international institutions, dumping the UN and forming ones based on shared values. I've written at some length about all this and I've said it all before so won't go into it again. Interested parties can go here.
Posted by Tom at 8:49 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 6, 2007
No Reason to Stay In the UN
Nat Hentoff (bio here) asked recently why we were still in the United Nations, and I have no good answer for him.
Zimbabwe under Robert Mugabe has gone from being the breadbasket of Africa to an economic basket case. Other African nations used to buy food from Zimbabwe, now they export food to it so that it's people won't starve. There's no drought or global warming to blame here, for the fault is entirely that of Robert Mugabe. President of the country since 1980, in recent years he has become an ever more brutal dictator.
So how does the United Nations reward such behavior? Henhoff explains
The United Nations is increasingly becoming a parody of itself while American taxpayers last year provided $439 million to the regular U.N. budget — plus a headquarters in New York that the U.N. management wants to expand. Not only has this dysfunctional and occasionally corrupt organization failed to stop the genocide in Darfur, but on May 11, the insatiably brutal Robert Mugabe's government of Zimbabwe was elevated by the United Nations to chair its Commission on Sustainable Development — dealing with land, rural and economic development, and the environment.Astonished, The Economist magazine (May 19) noted that Zimbabwe, once known as "the breadbasket of Africa," has had its agriculture "largely destroyed by its government's catastrophic policies."
This year, it was Africa's turn to lead the Commission on Sustainable Development, and the U.N.'s African members shamefully and inexcusably support Mugabe's government for that post.
And just who was responsible for electing Zimbabwe to this position? Other African nations, that's who. The chair of this commission is rotated among continents, and this year it was Africa's turn. How bad is the situation in Zimbabwe?
Zimbabwe is a disaster area. The country's own Social Welfare Commission, as reported by The New York Times on Dec. 19, found that 63 percent of the rural population and 53 percent of the urban population cannot meet basic food requirements.Under Mugabe's rule, Zimbabwe's inflation is the highest on the planet — more than 2,200 percent.
The African nations voting to bestow "legitimacy" on Mugabe's terrorism against his own people closed their eyes and consciences to the fact — as reported by The Economist — that "every day desperate Zimbabweans cross the Limpopo river, braving crocodiles and occasionally drowning, to try their luck in neighboring South Africa. Trapped into illegality there, many are exploited and abused."
Meanwhile, the liberator of Zimbabwe from white rule into its present wasteland is planning a 2008 campaign for an additional six-year term and a $4 million museum (a "shrine") of his lifetime achievements (Washington Times, May 2). Mugabe will surely win — if not by acclamation then certainly through long-practiced intimidation. In May, for example, he forbade Zimbabwe journalists — those who still risk beatings and prison for reporting the truth — from marching in commemoration of World Press Freedom Day (New York Times, May 7).
If African nations wish to ignore the horrors Mugabe is visiting on his country, I suppose that is their business. We shouldn't be a part of it, however, and as members of the UN we are.
Hentoff slaps down the notion that this situation with Zimbabwe is somehow unique
To cap the current (and chronic) disgrace of the United Nations, guess who the new officers of the U.N. Disarmament Commission are? The chair is Syria, home of abundantly armed warring factions — and the vice chair, believe it or not, is Iran, the leading prospect to blow up its region of the world. Having this proud stoker of nuclear destruction become second-in-command of the U.N. Disarmament Commission is like springing Jack Abramoff from prison to fill the new vacancy at the World Bank.
The United Nations is structurally incapable of reform. It is fatally flawed and beyond repair. Hentoff's solution mirrors my own
It makes much more sense for us to walk away from the United Nations itself, period. There are other organizations that — with more help from us and other concerned nations — can feed the hungry and provide medical aid for those in need around the world. But Eleanor Roosevelt's dream of the United Nations serving as an international beacon of human rights has become a nightmare of millions of people's betrayed hopes.
I've written much more about the UN here, essays detailing exactly how we should distance ourselves from it and what alternative institutions we should build.
Posted by Tom at 7:30 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
October 1, 2006
Kofi Annan - War Criminal
The Sunday Times of London has a piece that removes any doubt that Kofi Annan is one of the worst and most destructive men ever to have headed the insane asylum known as the UN (hat tip LGF and Powerline). The piece examines Annan's tenure at the UN, first as bureaucrat and then as Secretary General. Money quote
A more specific charge would be that, under the doctrine of command responsibility, the UN is guilty of war crimes. Broadly speaking, it has three principles: that a commander ordered atrocities to be carried out, that he failed to stop them, despite being able to, or failed to punish those responsible. The case rests on the second, that in Rwanda in 1994, in Srebrenica in 1995 and in Darfur since 2003, the UN knew war crimes were occurring or about to occur, but failed to stop them, despite having the means to do so.
Yep. That's how Dore Gold laid it out in his book, Tower of Babel, too.
Here's the part leading up to that quote
The bodies were still warm when Lieutenant Ron Rutten found them: nine corpses in civilian clothes lying crumpled by a stream, each shot in the back at close range. It was July 12, 1995, and the UN-declared “safe area” of Srebrenica had fallen the previous day. The lush pastures of eastern Bosnia were about to become Europe’s bloodiest killing fields since 1945.Refugees poured into the UN compound. But the Dutch peacekeepers (Dutchbat) were overwhelmed and the Serbs confiscated their weapons. “From the moment I found those bodies, it was obvious to me that the Bosnian Serbs planned to kill all the men,” Rutten said. He watched horrified as Dutch troops guided the men and boys onto the Serb buses.
Srebrenica is rarely mentioned nowadays in Annan’s offices on the 38th floor of the UN secretariat building in New York. He steps down in December after a decade as secretary-general. His retirement will be marked by plaudits. But behind the honorifics and the accolades lies a darker story: of incompetence, mismanagement and worse. Annan was the head of the Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) between March 1993 and December 1996. The Srebrenica massacre of up to 8,000 men and boys and the slaughter of 800,000 people in Rwanda happened on his watch. In Bosnia and Rwanda, UN officials directed peacekeepers to stand back from the killing, their concern apparently to guard the UN’s status as a neutral observer. This was a shock to those who believed the UN was there to help them.
Annan’s term has also been marked by scandal: from the sexual abuse of women and children in the Congo by UN peacekeepers to the greatest financial scam in history, the UN-administered oil-for-food programme. Arguably, a trial of the UN would be more apt than a leaving party.
The charge sheet would include guarding its own interests over those it supposedly protects; endemic opacity and lack of accountability; obstructing investigations, promoting the inept and marginalising the dedicated. Such accusations can be made against many organisations. But the UN is different. It has a moral mission.
It was founded by the allies in 1945 to “save succeeding generations from the scourge of war” and “reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights”. Its key documents – the Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the genocide convention – are the most advanced formulation of human rights in history. And they have been flouted by UN member states for decades.
A more specific charge would be that, under the doctrine of command responsibility, the UN is guilty of war crimes. Broadly speaking, it has three principles: that a commander ordered atrocities to be carried out, that he failed to stop them, despite being able to, or failed to punish those responsible. The case rests on the second, that in Rwanda in 1994, in Srebrenica in 1995 and in Darfur since 2003, the UN knew war crimes were occurring or about to occur, but failed to stop them, despite having the means to do so.
It goes on like this for several pages. Read the whole thing and then tell me that we should stay in the UN.
Posted by Tom at 8:00 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
July 29, 2006
Nothing Better to do at the UN
From the department of "don't they have anything better to do" we see this being reported by Reuters
The United Nations Human Rights Committee on Friday urged U.S. lawmakers to give the District of Columbia a voting member of Congress, saying the lack of such representation appeared inconsistent with international law.
(Hat tip TigerHawk)
Certainly beats doing anything serious, like condeming Hezbollah or Hamas for their deliberate targeting of civilians. Or dealing seriously with the massacres in Sudan.
Among the members of the UN Human Rights Council, we find Algerian, Bahrain, China, Cuba, Indonesia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Russia and Zambia. All well known for their record on human rights. Abusing them, that is.
The UN Human Rights Committee appears to be a subset of the UH Human Rights Council. According to the relevant web page on the UN website,
The Human Rights Committee is composed of 18 independent experts who are persons of high moral character and recognized competence in the field of human rights.Members are elected for a term of four years by States parties in accordance with articles 28 to 39 of the Covenant. Members serve in their personal capacity and may be re-elected if nominated.
The membership of the Committee is a bit better, the members being from places like Japan, Panama, India, Tunisia, Switzerland, Ireland, Columbia, Egypt and the UK. Take a look for yourself.
It all still smacks of anti-American politics to me. With all of the governments around the world doing so much evil to their own people, this is what they consider to be important?
Posted by Tom at 3:46 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
July 28, 2006
More Moral Confusion at the UN
Jan Egeland, the guy who called US aid to Indonesia "stingy" after last year's tsunami, is at it again. Now he says that Israel has "created a generation of hatred" with it's attack on Hezbollah (hat tip TigerHawk)
Talk about being born yesterday. The Arabs have hated Israel from day one. The never accepted that country's right to exist.
But what's most interesting is that he goes to great lengths to be evenhanded in the way he condems both Hezbollah and Israel
"The rockets have to stop. The terror has to stop. But please remember that for every civilian killed in Israel there are more than 10 killed in Lebanon. It has to stop on both sides." He charged that Israel had used "excessive" and "disproportionate" force in violation of international humanitarian law, and dismissed Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni's contention that proportionality is measured in relation to the threat posed by a force.
"You cannot invent new kinds of proportionalities. I've never heard that the threat is supposed to be proportional to the response," he said. "Proportionality is there in the law. The law has been made through generations of experience on the battlefield. If you kill more civilians than military personnel, one should not attack," he said.Egeland reiterated his condemnations of Hizbullah's tactics. "Armed men should not cowardly hide among civilians. It will inflict civilians casualties," he said, calling Hizbullah's cross-border kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers "a mega-catastrophe."
But, he stressed, "Civilians must be protected, and when there are many more dead children than armed men, something is fundamentally wrong, not only with how the armed men behave and where they seek hiding, but also in the response."
From what I can tell, Egeland is saying that because not as many Israeli civilians have died, Israel should not be responding as vigorously. Or that they're killing too many Lebanese civilians.
Yes it should "stop on both sides." But here's what it comes down to: You go to Israel and ask, "what would it take for you to stop?" The Israeli spokesperson would say "Hezbollah has to stop attacking us." Go to Hezbollah and ask the same question, and the response you'll get is "Israel must cease to exist and we're going to fight it until we win." The only way to reconcile these differences is for one or the other to be destroyed.
Speaking of rockets, one fired by Hezbollah hit the top floor of a hospital in he Israeli border town of Nahariya earlier today. Fortunately no one was killed. Think many people will trip overthemselves in a rush to condemn Hezbollah?
The same article goes on to say that Hezbollah has fired a "new kind of rocket, which landed deeper inside Israel than hundreds of other strikes in 17 days of fighting." But according to Egeland, Israel is supposed to sit there and take it, becasue they cannot respond proportionally.
Proportionality
The proportionality is part of just war theory, something developed in the West by Christian thinkers which I think is a pretty good guide to actions before and during war. I wrote extensively about it last year, and you can find all of my posts on it here.
From the section on proportionality
"The principle of proportionality with regards to conduct in war "deals not with a whole war but with a single military action in that war. The criterion requires that the good to be achieved by the action be proportionate to the damage done. Again, this means values preserved compared with values sacrificed, not a single cost-accounting of lives and dollars."
and
In summary, then, the jus ad bellum criterion of proportion says one mustn't go to war unless the values to be preserved by the war exceeded the values to be sacrificed. Within the war, the jus in bello criterion of proportion says that when one takes action against enemy military units or installations, the values sacrificed in the attack must not exceeded the values that would be threatened by the continued existence of the target.
The application, of course, is where it get's tricky. Let's take a quick look at a few things that are going on.
1) Hezbollah rockets have turned Israel's third largest city, Haifa (pop 280,000) into a ghost town. Ditto for the border along Lebanon.
2)By dropping leaflets, Israel is warning residents who live near Hezbollah sanctuaties to evacuate.
3) Israel is using precision weapons when necessary. No these do not prevent all civilian casualties, but they do mimimize them
4) Just War Theory does not allow sanctuaries. It is impermissable to hide behind civilians and then scream foul when they are killed.
5) The number of civilians killed so far is far less than in previous wars.
6) The doctrine of proportionality does not contain a "one to one" rule. That is not how it works.
7) If Israel had done nothing, or stops short of destroying Hezbollah and accepts a ceasefire under the auspices of the UN, within a short time Hezbollah will rearm itself with more and longer-range missiles. They will return to firing them, this time deeper into Israel. Israeli civilians will be killed. At some point Israel will say "enough is enough" and respond, but this time Hezbollah will be even stronger, so the fighting harder, thus more civilians killed. It is therefore better to suffer some casualties now than more casualties later.
Creating "a Generation of Hatred"?
The idea that all Israel is doing is creating "a generation of hatred" is the strangest of all. The Arabs have hated Israel since 1948. Even before the state of Israel was created, the Jews and Muslims in the area did not always get along. Perhaps a few Lebanese who didn't mind Israel will now be turned against it, but even that doesn't go very far.
Here's the point; suppose that is was true that most Lebanese hate Hezbollah and want them gone. Suppose further that they are sympathetic to Israel, or at least don't hate it (ok, a lot of supposing, but hear me out). Wouldn't they want Israel to destroy Hezbollah even if it cost civilian lives?
The website of the D-Day Museum says that during the Battle for Normandy, "between 15,000 and 20,000 French civilians were killed, mainly as a result of Allied bombing", which fits with what a tour guide told me when I was over there some years ago. Yet the French were and are today thankful that we freed them (Yes they are. Despite policy differences since then, they do appreciate that we liberated them from the Nazis).
Any deaths are a tragedy. The question is whether it is better to suffer fewer now or more later. And I think the answer to that question is obvious.
Posted by Tom at 8:17 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
July 26, 2006
More Reasons Not to Trust the United Nations
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan says that Israel deliberately attacked a UN position in southern Lebanon
The UN secretary general Kofi Annan says an Israeli attack on a UN observation post was "apparently deliberate". Four unarmed military observers were killed in the air strike in southern Lebanon. ...Mr Annan later called for participants at a Mideast conference to push for an immediate ceasefire to end fighting between Israel and Hizbollah guerrillas.
Hizbollah must stop its "deliberate targeting of Israeli population centers". And Israel must put an end to all bombing, ground operations and blockades of Lebanese ports.
"Deliberately"?
Only someone completely deluded could believe such a thing. I could go through my usual analysis, but I think that John Podhoretz summed it up best over at NRO:
He's an anti-Semite who sucks up to Arab dictators and presides over an organization choking on its own immoral filth.
I think that about sums it up nicely.
But if it's analysis you want, head over to Belmont Club where Richard Fernandez does his usual masterful job. After examining various UNIFIL press releases about it's activities in southern Lebanon, Fernandez concludes that ". If each of the press releases is read in their entirety is manifestly clear that UNIFIL is performing none of these authorized missions," which are to "to a) Confirm the withdrawal of Israeli forces from southern Lebanon; b) Restore international peace and security;" and "c) Assist the Government of Lebanon in ensuring the return of its effective authority in the area."
Maybe this picture of a Hezbollah and UN flag side-by-side say it all
Michelle Malkin has details.
Posted by Tom at 9:38 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
July 25, 2006
The Israeli attack on Hezbollah
I haven't written anything about the current Israeli war against Hezbollah for two reasons, one, I've been too busy, and two, it all seems so obvious. To me, Israel must be allowed to destroy Hezbollah. If Hezbollah is allowed to survive, all that will happen is that it will reconstitute itself and resume attacks on Israel. In other words, we'll return to the situation that prompted the war in the first place.
The problem is that Lebanon does not have a government that controls the entire country. The reason for this is that it has been fractured by years of civil war and Syrian intervention. The Cedar Revolution eliminated the latter in an overt form, but of course Syrian influence remains. Syria supports Hezbollah, and doesn't want the government of Lebanon to tolerate it. Hezbollah gained so much strength that it has cabinet ministers in the Lebanese government, so it's influence is not easy to eliminate. Indeed, it spent much of the past several years killing anyone in Lebabon who spoke out too strongly against it.
So the first step towards peace and stability in Lebanon is to eliminate Hezbollah. We've all heard that UN Security Council Resolution 1559 called for the disarming of Hezbollah, but of course that hasn't happened, and won't as long as the UN is in charge of making it happen.
Therefore, the worst thing that could happen now is for other nations to impost a premature cease-fire that allows Hezbollah to survive. This would be repeating 1982, when we allowed that terrorist Arafat and his PLO to survive and escape to Tunisia just when the IDF had them cornered in Beirut.
Alan Dershowitz lays out the case why we should not allow the UN to mediate or have anything to do with the situation. He describes how the UN legitimizes terrorism:
If anyone wonders why the UN has rendered itself worse than irrelevant in the Arab-Israeli conflict, all he or she need do is read UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's July 20 statement. Annan goes to great pains to suggest equal fault and moral equivalence between the rockets of Hezbollah and Hamas that specifically target innocent civilians and the self-defense efforts by Israel, which tries desperately, though not always successfully, to avoid causing civilian casualties. In his statement, Annan never condemns, or even mentions, terrorism, which is a root cause and precipitator of the conflict.Even Annan was forced to acknowledge that "Hezbollah's provocative attack on July 12 was the trigger of this particular crisis"; that Hezbollah is "deliberate[ly] targeting ... Israeli population centers with hundreds of indiscriminate weapons"; and that Israel has the "right to defend itself under Article 51 of the UN charter." But he doesn't stop there. He goes out of his way to insist on equating Hezbollah's terrorists with Israeli military response, which he labels "disproportionate" and "collective punishment." He condemns both Hezbollah and Israel. He also criticizes Israel for its efforts at preventing Qassam rocket attacks against its civilian populations, noting that the Hamas rockets have produced no "casualties in the past month." (This, of course, is not for lack of trying.) He ignores Hamas' long history of terrorism against innocent civilians.
Annan then calls for an "immediate cessation of indiscriminate and disproportionate violence" on both sides, again suggesting a moral equivalence. Among the most immoral positions anyone can take is to suggest a moral equivalence between morally different actions.
Dershowitz nails the entire problem with the UN; moral equivalence. It simply cannot distinguish between agressor and defender, between right and wrong, between terrorist and victim. To Annan, Israel and Hezbollah are simply two warring parties which must be brought to heal.
Unfortunately, this attitude has infected many around the world and in the US. Hezbollah hides among civilians, knowing that no matter how precise the Israeli attack, some will be killed. Despite that the civilian death toll is far less than in the 1982 operation, many insist on a cease fire "for the children". So the terrorists get to have it both ways; when they fire their rockets into Israel or send forth their suicide bombers, a few tut-tut but then quickly insist that Israel must make this or that concession "for peace". But when Israel tries to destroy the terrorists, it's "they're using disproportionate force" and "it perpetuates the cycle of violence".
Lastly Derschowitz reminds us that there have been UN peacekeepers in southern Lebanon for years, but they haven't exactly done any good
The UN peacekeepers on the Lebanese border have turned out to be collaborators with Hezbollah, videotaping the Hezbollah kidnapping of three Israeli soldiers in 2000 and then refusing to release the video--which could have helped in the rescue--on the grounds that it might compromise their "neutrality."
Yes the current situation is frought with danger. A wider war, and a spread of chaos would not been good for the situation in Iraq. It is worth the risk, however, if we can destroy or at least significantly harm Hezbollah. Let Israel do what it has to do.
Posted by Tom at 9:54 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
July 24, 2006
Book Review: Tower of Babel
However bad you think the United Nations is, however corrupt, however useless, anti-American or anti-Israeli, however much you think you know about it's misdeads, you're wrong.
It's even worse than you think. More than that, it's been that way from day one. It's not as if the UN started out well and then slowly got worse. We are forever hearing about this or that plan to reform the UN. What many people don't realize is that this has been going on since the organization's inception in 1945.
For anyone who still has a glimmer of hope that the UN has some virtue, somewhere, that redeems it, that makes the billions spent on it worthwhile, this book by Dore Gold should be the final nail in the coffin.
Because if the UN was merely useless that would be one thing. If it was simply a huge waste of billions of dollars that would be bad enough, but sufferable. What makes it worse than you think is that the UN does positive harm to any reasoned idea truth, justice, and peace in the world. And what is important to note is that this holds true whether you are a liberal or a conservative. It's not that the UN is simply anti-George W Bush or anti-neocon, as an institution is is anti-democratic and is deeply morally confused.
We saw this reflected just the other day when UN General Secretary Kofi Annan "criticized both Israel and Hezbollah for their actions since the July 12 abduction of two Israeli soldiers." Both sides. The inability to distingiush right from wrong, agressor from defender, is inherant in UN thinking. According to the account by the Associated Press , Annan justified his thinking by saying that "his priority was helping the Lebanese people and preventing more civilian casualties." Where was the UN when Hezbollah was firing rockets into Israeli cities and towns? Or, for that matter, when Hamas sends suicide bombers into Israeli pizzarias?
Former Israeli ambassador to the UN Dore Gold lays out his case in Tower of Babel: How the United Nations has Fueled Global Chaos (2004). The case he makes is in my opion iron-clad; the UN stands condemed. The only question now is how to move beyond it, and fortunately in his last chapter Gold makes some useful recommendations.
Gold avoids the temptation to simply fill the book with examples of anti-Israel bias, which would have been all too easy to do. If you didn't read on the cover that he had been Israel's ambassador to the UN(1997-1999), you'd never know it. Gold is writing for an American audience, but again, not all of his examples of UN perfidy involved the US, for he spends an entire chapter on the Pakistani-India conflict over Kashmir. Rather, Gold takes us from the formation of the UN in 1945 to the present day, stopping off wherever necessary.
The big problem with the UN can be summed up with one term: Moral Equivalency. the organization knows no difference between tyranny and democracy, between agressor and victim. All nations are simply "member states", regardless of how they treat their people. It ignores the massive crimes of dictators, preferring instead to condemn much smaller offenses (real or imagined) by the leaders of democratic states. An alien from another planet would be excused for thinking that Israel was the most murderous country on the planet, and that the Palestinians were the most peaceful people.
The men who founded the UN, mainly President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill, laid out a vision that was good in theory but has not worked out in practice. The founders had moral clarity, those who run it today have anything but. Unfortunately, it did not take long for the organization to get off track.
The current General Secretary of the UN, Kofi Annan, typifies all that is wrong with it. A lifetime UN bureaucrat, he was the Undersecretary General for Peacekeeping Operations when the Rwandan and Bosnian massacres occured. You might think that a man with such failures under his belt would resign in disgrace, but then you don't know the UN. Shortly after overseeing these disasters, he was promoted to General Secretary. But of course.
To top it off, in 1991 he was awared the Nobel Peace Prize, which tells you all you need to know about it (ok, if you really want more go here).
Of all the times the UN has failed the people of this world, and of all the examples that Gold goes through, it's hard to decide which is worst. Two that stand out were the massacre in Rwanda, and the way the UN coddled and pandered to Saddam Hussein. In the first instance the means to avoid a massare were at hand, but a deliberate decision was taken not to use it. In the second, the UN had many chances to hold Saddam accountable and failed each and every time.
Rwanda
The situation in Rwanda was complicated, but essentially during colonial times the country had been ruled by the minority Tutsi tribe(10-15%). When the country gained it's independence in 1962, the minority Hutus started a campaign to purge the Tutsis from government posts. There were also many violent attacks against Tutsis, which led many to flee the country over the next few decades. After much violence and a few wars, the UN eventually brokered a deal in which a new government would be formed. So far so good.
In 1993 the UN deployed 2,500 peacekeeping troops to Rwanda, mostly soldiers from Belgium, Bangladesh, and Ghana. They were under the command of Canadian Major General Romeo Dallaire. His mission was to enforce a peace agreement, part of which specified that he was to demobilize the warring parties, and help to create a new national army.
In early January of 1994 General Dallaire received what he believed was conclusive proof from an informant that an extremist Hutu militia was planning the "extermination" of the Tutsis. He devised a plan whereby his troops would seize arms caches that the informant had told him would be used in the massacre, thus hopefully preventing it. He then sent word of his intentions by coded cable to UN headquarters in New York.
To his astonishment, headquarters cabled back that he was to do nothing. Dallaire's cable had gone to the UN Department of Peacekeeping, which was headed by Kofi Annan. Annan's assistant, Iqbal Riza, received the telegram, and after consultation with his assistants, ordered Dallaire to stand down.
The reasoning behind the refusal to authorize action was that Dallaire's plan "went beyond the mandate entrusted to UNAMIR" (UN Assistance Mission for Rwanda). Further, Iqbal was to later justify his actions by saying that the UN mandate did not authorize peacekeeping forces to actively disarm warring parties, merely to "assist" them in doing so. His mindset can be seein in the cable he sent, which said, in part, "The overriding consideration is the need to avoid entering into a course of action that might lead to the use of force and unanticipated consequences." Even with genocide staring them in the face, the need to maintain neutrality and not take any risks was formost in their minds.
Dallaire sent additional warnings throughout February and March, yet the UN did nothing. By this time, Kofi Annan had been informed, so could not plead ignorance. He also pushed for additional troops, believing that he needed at least 5,000 total. Adding to the problem, no major country, such as the US, did anything to push the UN to act. The Clinton Administration must therefore bear some responsibility in the matter also.
By April the predicted massacres started, and other the next several months some 800,000 Tutsis and Hutu sympathizers were killed.
For his incompetence Annan was elevated to Secretary General a few years later. And now the man who could have prevented a massacre goes around telling us "never again", yet again does nothing about Darfur.
Iraq
On the surface, one might think that Iraq was a success story for the UN; Security Council resolutions leading up to the Gulf War and the inspections afterwards that destroyed most of Saddam Hussein's WMD. Wasn't it only the bad old USA that spoiled a largely successful inspections program with an unnecessary invasion?
The reality was that UN involvement with Saddam Hussein's Iraq from the 1980s through the 2003 invasion was mostly characterized by coddling the dictator and an overriding concern to "respect" the regime. Had the UN acted decisively during that time, Operation Iraqi Freedom would not have been necessary. The United States and the United Kingdom pushed the UN to do more, but the two nations alone could not change ingrained attitudes.
The problems started well before the Gulf War. The UN Security Council should have condemned Iraq for it's invasion of Iran, but did not, mostly because the US and USSR wanted to remain neutral, mainly because they did not want to jeapordize oil shipments. The inspections that were carried out by the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) proved a failure, when Hans Blix admitted after finding out the truth after the Gulf War that "It is correct to say that the IAEA was fooled by the Iraqis. Blix had led IAEA inspections in Iraq during the 1980s.
After the Gulf War Iraq did destroy vast quantities of WMD, mainly because it feared a US invasion. The UN agency created to oversee the destruction of the WMD was called UNSCOM (UN Special Commission). UNSCOM did a good job at first, but as time went on found itself stymed by UN bureaucrats, Kofi Annan in particular.
Annan obstructed UNSCOM leader Richard Butler in many ways, not the least of which was by creating what became known as the Oil-for-Food program. Oil-for-Food proved a disaster because Saddam was easily able to circumvent it and use the money for arms purchases (and to build palaces, not exactly what the designers of the program had in mind).
Worse was Annan's attitude. During a 1998 trip to Baghdad, Annan announced a Memorandum of Understanding with Iraq. Annan had negotiated a relaxing of inspection requirements that was nothing short of ridiculous. Vast areas of Iraq were to be off-limits to inspectors under the guise that the were "presidential sites". Further, UN diplomats would now be required to be present at what visits were allowed to these sites. Obviously, friendly diplomats could tip off the Iraqis as to what sites were to be visited.
Annan told the BBC that it was important "not to insist on humiliating Saddam Hussein." He "made a priority of treating the Iraqi regime with respect and sensitivity." After the February 1998 visit, Annan's senior staff "described the UN weapons insptecotrs as a bunch of out-of-control "cowboys" who had ignored Iraq's nationals sensitivities." On and on it went.
Gold lays all this out in excruciating detail, and it makes for painful reading. The bottom line is that the UN "could verify that Iraq had fulfilled it's original obligation to turn over its most deadly weapons." And Gold reminds us that "the UN put the burden of proof squarely on Iraq for disclosing what had happened to its weapons of mass destruction - not on the inspectors."
Recommendations
Many UN supporters treat any criticism as an endorsement of a “go it alone” strategy. They cannot imagine anything else. But the reality is that between reliance on the UN and unilateralism there is a third option; working with other states that share your values and/or objectives.
The biggest problem with the UN is moral equivalency because its members have no shared values. The very term “international community” is nonsensical, because to have a community you need to have shared values and interests. The simple fact is that the UN is broke, and nothing will fix it. It’s time for new ideas.
As such, we need to bypass the UN entirely and form our own alliances. They may be temporary ad hoc coalitions established to meet specific goals, or they may be more or less permanent. An example of the former would be the PSI (Proliferation Security Initiative), established to identify and sometimes intercept shipments of WMD and related materials. An example of the latter would be NATO, or more recently, the Community of Democracies, established by the Clinton Administration in 2000.
While it is not necessary that all members of each coalition meet our level of democracy and commitment to human rights to be a member, they should meet some basic minimum standard. For example, while we can and must work with Pakistan in the War on Terror, they don’t qualify for membership in any organization we would want to form. But we can use these organizations to incent countries to change their ways so that they do qualify.
Happily, Gold’s recommendations coincide with ones that I have made. As a practical matter we’re not going to completely get out of the UN. Besides, it would be useful to retain our seat on the Security Council, if for no other reason than to veto resolutions that might harm us or our allies. Rather, we should work to marginalize the UN and work to establish alternative institutions. Gold’s book is one step farther towards this laudable goal.
Posted by Tom at 9:10 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
February 16, 2006
The "Cartoon Intifada" Intimidation Spreads to the UN
The United Nations, believe it or not, is in the midst of overhauling it's Commission on Human Rights. Unfortunately, it's hit a little snag
A drive by a bloc of Islamic nations for a global ban on "defamation of religions and prophets" has thrown a major kink into U.S. hopes for an overhaul of the leading U.N. human rights body.The proposal by the 57-nation Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), floated last week amid violent protests over the publication in Europe of cartoons mocking the prophet Muhammad, came as U.N. delegates were trying to negotiate the charter for a new Human Rights Council.
"It's a giant monkey wrench in the process, and that is what it was designed to be," said Hillel C. Neuer, executive director of the Geneva-based United Nations Watch, a watchdog group that has closely followed the talks.
"To include this in the charter, just as an appeasement to violence, would taint the body before it even began," he said.
I told you the reaction to the cartoons was all about intimidation here and here.
The entire affair is an attempt to intimidate the West into making concessions to radical Islam, and what's happening in the UN is only the latest example.
FYI if you're not completely familiar with what what I call the "Cartoon Intifada" a great summary can be found at The Foreigner in Formosa, the latest addition to my blogroll.
As for the OIC, go to their website and check them out. Their site doesn't allow for permalinks within it, but if you go to "Press Releases" and then down to the one titled "Speech of H.E. Prof. Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, Secretary-General of the Organization of the Islamic conference, before the sixty-first session of the United Nations commission on human rights" here are some gems you'll find:
Islamophobia, which is a new name to an old phenomenon, has been recently brought to the forth after the criminal, evil and tragic events of 9/11. Although these horrendous atrocities received a swift and unanimous condemnation by the OIC, Muslim leaders and scholars throughout the world, the irrational voices of hatred and bigotry were quick to demonize Islam and Muslims. Some Western media fueled the fear of Islam linking it with terrorism.
I can't imagine why anyone would link Islam with terrorism.
I would like to hasten to admit that a gap exists between Islamic teachings as rooted in the creed, and between the practical application of them in some Muslim countries. But whenever there is a departure from these teachings, the reasons are to be found in wrong application.
Maybe so. But what I'm not seeing is any serious attempt to put an end to the problem within Islam, and that is a problem with violence.
While some Governments in the West and elsewhere have been keen to ascertain that the war on terrorism is not directed against Islam or Muslims, the measures that were taken by them, have almost solely targeted Islam and Muslims who bore the brunt of harassment and the denial of their rights and civil liberties.
I can't take it anymore. Listening to this from someone from an Arab Islamic nation is too much.
The Fundamental Problem at the UN
If you want to know what the problem is with the UN Commission on Human Rights, just go it's website and take a look at their membership. Here are some of the current members:
Cuba
Indonesia
Nepal
Nigeria
Pakistan
Saudi Arabia
Sudan
Zimbabwe
Not exactly a list of winners when it comes to human rights. Many good nations are also on the list, but the fact that the above nations are there also makes a joke out of the entire thing.
The editors of National Review have an excellent editorial on reforming this body. Read it. They identify the problem just as I have
The UNCHR's basic problem — which is, come to think of it, also the basic problem of the U.N. — is that it puts liberal democracies side by side with genocidal despotisms as though they were equally legitimate
Their solution is something along the lines of what I have suggested, create an alternative body
Regardless of whether we participate in the new council, it's time to create an alternative. The United States should lead efforts to found a new institution devoted to the protection of human rights, and involving eligibility requirements that would limit member states to genuine liberal democracies.
I agree 100% Let's make it happen, and not be intimidated by radical Islamists who want to limit press freedom through bogus "defamation of religions and prophets" proposals.
Posted by Tom at 7:29 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
November 30, 2005
Shaking Them Up at the UN
John Bolton seems to be doing good work over at the United Nations.
A senior U.N. administrator warned yesterday evening that a U.S. proposal to pass an interim three-month budget while delegates continue to debate reform could have a disastrous effect on the United Nations.
Good. If it's bad for the UN, it's good for us and freedom seeking people everywhere.
The Bush administration has refused to pass the proposed $3.6 billion biennial budget unless it includes a variety of administrative and management reforms to make the organization more efficient and effective.To avoid a budget crisis, U.S. officials have suggested passing a sort of continuing resolution, which is common in Washington and other capitals but unprecedented at the United Nations.
"We do not want to be in a position where we adopt a budget next month and we get no more reform for the two-year life of the budget," U.S. Ambassador John R. Bolton told reporters on Monday.
But U.N. Comptroller Warren Sach said the interim budget would leave the organization in a cash crunch, forcing it to borrow from closed peacekeeping missions and dwindling management accounts.
The UN is such a corrupt organization, and so in the pocket of dictators, that it needs to be hit over the head with a two by four. If this is what it takes to force reform, then so be it.
But wait, there's more. Here's one reason, among so many, why it's so important to shake that organization to its roots.
The UN Plan to Control the Internet
The UN denies it, and I've read editorials in techie magazines at work whereby they minimize it, but the fact of the matter is that some at the UN want to assume control of the most important part of what makes up the Internet, the name servers. From StrategyPage:
The United Nations (UN) is campaigning to take over the one aspect of the Internet that can be controlled centrally, the DNS (Domain Name Server) system. This was one of the key ideas that make the Internet work. DNS is a system of server computers that contain the list of web site names, and the twelve digit long IDs that computers actually use to find sites on the net. Since DNS was invented in the United States, the organization ICANN, that supervises the assignment of web site names, is in the U.S. (as an organization independent of any government and staffed by an international crew.) But the UN believes that its American origins makes ICANN the creature of the U.S. government, and believes an international organization should control the DNS system.
Why is control of DNS so important?
Major members, or groups of smaller members, of the UN, can exercise considerable control over UN organizations. For example, uf DNS were controlled by the UN, China could insure that any site names China did not approve of, never appeared.
Now do you see?
The planners at the UN, of course, doesn't see it this way. Their stated goals, are, as you may predict, quite laudable. They "...include expanding Internet access in developing countries and fighting spam."
But given the UN's history, it is not the organization to take on these objectives. All it would likely create is a huge bureaucracy and lots of red tape. In other words, it would be hugely expensive and accomplish little.
The real danger comes from dictators who don't like to be criticized. Carlos Ramos-Mrosovsky & Joseph Barillari, in an article posted on NRO in September, explain:
Only dictators, and, perhaps, the doctrinaire internationalists who so often abet them, stand to gain from placing the Internet under "international" control. If, for example, the U.N. were to control domain names, its component tyrannies would find it much easier to censor and repress. After all, "internet public policy" is subject to interpretation, and it is hard to imagine international bureaucrats resisting — as ICANN and the U.S. largely have — the temptation to politicize their task. At first, this could even seem reasonable: E.U. officials might seek to eliminate neo-Nazi domains. Inevitably, however, dictatorships would seek to extinguish undesirable foreign web content at the source. Given the U.N.'s penchant for condemning good causes, it is easy to imagine Tehran pushing to suppress "racist" (i.e. "Zionist") websites, or steady pressure from Beijing to eliminate Taiwan's ".tw" domain. (One China, one top-level domain.)China, a major proponent of a U.N.-administered Internet, already operates the world's largest and most advanced system of online censorship. Thousands of government agents, including some from ITU Director Zhao's former Department of Telecommunications, make sure that websites, e-mails, and even search-engine results deemed threatening to the regime remain inaccessible to a fifth of the world's population. U.S. companies have shamefully participated in this system, as shown by China's recent jailing of dissident journalist Shi Tao based on information revealed by Yahoo!, Inc. Chinese Internet users are unable to access the websites of the Voice of America or, even, the BBC. The regime's filtering is so sophisticated that many sites, such as cnn.com, time.com, and, curiously, yale.edu, are filtered page-by-page, thus maintaining the illusion of openness. Other WGIG participants have similar policies. Like China, Iran, and Saudi Arabia also recognize that control over the Internet brings them closer to control over minds. It is unsurprising, then, that Mr. Zhao and his ilk support the U.N.'s drive to give them more of it.
Gotta keep an eye on 'em. For now, Bolton seems to be right for the job. But he is a recess appointment, who's term will be up in January 2007. The Democrats will likely object to him if he is renominated.
I've written about these UN plans before, but it seems a good idea to keep them in the spotlight. They'll sneak them in under the radar unless we keep a watch on them.
Posted by Tom at 8:21 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
August 31, 2005
More Reasons to Dump the UN
Today we'll tackle three UN schemes that are designed to take our money or our sovereignty. Or both.
The UN Reorganization Plan
A Global Taxation Proposal
Plan to Control the Internet
I've been on vacation or too busy to write busy most of late July and August, so most readers will have heard about these UN schemes by now. Even so, it helps to keep them in the forefront so that we can be on our guard against them.
Let's look at these one at a time
The UN Reorganization Plan
Anything that has to do with the UN has got to be comple. The better, I think, to pull the wool over our eyes.
Kofi Annan's plan was best described by Wretchard of The Belmont Club, who called it a "Grand Bargain." I first wrote about this last March:
According to the Financial Times, (hat tip Belmont Club), what Annan has in mind is a kind of "grand bargain" (the FT article is subscription only, so I'm going on what Wretchard has on his site)
Mr. Annan's officials say the package basically proposes a bargain whereby rich countries help the poor to develop, by promoting the Millennium Development Goals, while poor countries help alleviate rich countries' security concerns. In both cases, Mr Annan says, action must be underpinned by respect for human rights.Of course this means more money from the United States, Europe, and other developed nations. Don't count on any of them to support this.
And, as Wretchard points out, by "security", Annan means the Security Council. And forget about going around it. From the text of the UN report, Annan says "The task is not to find alternatives to the Security Council as a source of authority, but to make it work better"
Without going into details, Annan proposes increasing the size of the Security Council by adding members from Africa, Asia, and the Americas. He offers two proposals, which vary by the number and term of the new seats, and whether they are permanent or rotating.
This is not a plan for action; it is an attempt to permanently prevent action. With so many competing interests on the Council, gridlock would be enshrined forever.
If would also, of course, have the effect of diluting American power. As it is today, the council would not vote to enforce their own resolutions regarding Iraq.
Even if we buy the notion of a "grand bargain", it is hard to see how and deal would work. Is Annan saying that the underdeveloped nations could attempt to "buy off" their votes each time an Iraq-like situation arose? Does anyone seriously expect such a deal to work?
The good news is that the Bush Administration is firmly opposed to these measures. UN Ambassador John Bolton has put that organization on notice that the United States is firmly opposed to the plan. Simply put, the UN wants to usurp our sovereignty, and take for themselves rights such as when military force can be used. From todays Washington Post:
Bolton argued that the Security Council already had sufficient legal authority to send foreign troops to halt atrocities in places such as the Sudanese region of Darfur. He insisted that the U.N. charter "has never been interpreted as creating a legal obligation for Security Council members to support enforcement action." He also urged the deletion of language calling on nations to prevent "incitement" of mass atrocities, saying it runs counter to the U.S. First Amendment protections of speech.Bolton wrote that the United States "stands ready" to intervene in select cases where governments fail to halt mass killings on their soil. But he said that world leaders should not "foreclose" the military option by the United States and other governments "absent authorization by the Security Council."
The U.N. doctrine of humanitarian intervention, known as the "responsibility to protect," has been promoted by Secretary General Kofi Annan, European governments and human rights advocates, who had been pressing U.N. members to accept greater responsibility for intervening in countries where atrocities are taking place. They have also been pressing to ensure a more central role for the Security Council in authorizing military action, a position that the Bush administration has strenuously opposed.
A Global Taxation Proposal
The plan it to put a tax on international airline travel. Both the EU and UN are behind it. The tax money will allegedly be used for fighting either "global poverty" or "aids", depending on which article you read. One thing you'll never find is "spreading democracy and overthrowing dictators."
Predictably, France is one of the prime instigators:
As a first step, France proposes to create a pilot scheme which would serve as a showcase of the feasibility of innovative financing mechanisms while, at the same time, contributing to meet urgent financing needs (such as the fight against HIV/AIDS).Why plane tickets? As one of the main driving forces behind globalization, passenger air transport is a fast growing activity. While the industry may meet with temporary cyclical difficulties, traffic volume has increased by 7.4% since April 2004 and is currently projected to grow annually by an average 5% worldwide over the next decade.
In both developed and developing countries, airline passengers seldom belong to the poorest segments of the population. A contribution on plane tickets would therefore be progressive, a characteristic which could be reinforced if higher rates were to be set for business and first class passengers.
Translation: you, dear reader, have been stealing from the world's poor for too long and we're going to get you for it.
From what I can tell, all this is part of the UN's grand Millenium Development Goals (MDG), which you can read all about on a special section of the UN website. Of course, it all sounds so nice and wonderful. The goals run the complete gamut of do-good projects, such as "Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger", or "Promote gender equality and empower women" to "Develop a global partnership for development"
That last one sounds suspiciously like the socialist "New World Economic Order" that they tried to foist on us in the closing days of the Cold War. And you can be sure that most countries, especially the Arab ones, have no intention of granting women any meaningful rights.
The problem with all this is obvious; if they get the ability to impose one tax, more will follow. And they'll get higher and higher. Meanwhile, little good will actually follow. Not to mention that most of the money will go to line the pockets of third-world kleptocrats and UN bureaucrats. This may actually make the "Oil for Food" scandal look small by comparison.
Plan to Control the Internet
Companies in the United States, aided by enlightened government policies and research projects, were instrumental in developing the Internet. I have much personal experience in this field, having spent most of the 1990s working for some of the largest Internet Service providers.
What is this all about? Here you go:
UN bureaucrats and telecommunications ministers from many less-developed nations claim the U.S. government has undue influence over how things run online. Now they want to be the ones in charge.While the formal proposal from a U.N. working group will be released July 18, it's already clear what it will contain. A preliminary summary of governmental views claims there's a "convergence of views" supporting a new organization to oversee crucial Internet functions, most likely under the aegis of the United Nations or the International Telecommunications Union.
At issue is who decides key questions like adding new top-level domains, assigning chunks of numeric Internet addresses, and operating the root servers that keep the Net humming. Other suggested responsibilities for this new organization include Internet surveillance, "consumer protection," and perhaps even the power to tax domain names to pay for "universal access."
Consider, too, that countries like Syria, China, Brazil, Ghana are the ones pushing for the change. They don't like that the big bad US has what they consider to be undue influence.
The actual UN report behind all this can be found here (hat tip Michelle Malkin. The good news is that the UN isn't united behind any particular plan:
"...the UN group couldn't decide what should be done about it. Instead of reaching a consensus, the nations participating in the discussions listed four possible options ranging from modest changes to creating an entirely new 'Global Internet Council' under the auspices of the United Nations.
The bad news is that they are united in saying that "no single government should have a pre-eminent role in relation to international internet governance"
I can think of about a hundred reasons why we the UN should have no role in the Internet. Investor's Business Daily does too:
Given its record of mismanagement and corruption, the U.N. shouldn't be handed the keys to the Internet. It's too precious a resource. We need look only as far as the oil-for-food scandal — possibly the largest fraud in history — for evidence as to why this is true.Giving the U.N. control over the Internet would be giving it control over the future — which rightly belongs to entrepreneurs, inventors and dreamers, not faceless bureaucrats who can scarcely conceal their loathing for the free-market success the U.S. represents.
Tip of the Iceburg
The worst part is that this is just part of a long train of abuses:
* Oil-for-Food, the greatest financial scandal in modern history
* Peacekeepers in Congo, Somalia, Kosovo, and elsewhere raping and otherwise sexually abusing the very people they are supposed to be protecting
* Failure to provide relief to the victims of the recent tsunami, and then attacking the United States for forming a coalition of nations who were successful in bringing aid
* Failure to stop what is just about genocide in Sudan
* A Security Council that will not enforce it's own resolutions
* A Security Council that passes an ever-increasing number of resolutions to little or no effect on the world scene
* They put the worst human rights violators on the planet in on the UN Human Rights commission
* Iraq under Saddam was voted chair of the UN Committee on Disarmament
* A General Assembly that, in general, is virulently anti-Semitic and shows it in their actions and speech
* The World Conference on Racism, held in Durban South Africa 2001, turned into an anti-Semitic and anti-American hate-fest
* They promote fatally flawed treaties such as the Kyoto protocol on "global warming", which would have the effect of crippling the US economy
* The promotion of the World Court, whose purpose would be to prosecute Americans and Israelis, while largely ignoring third-world kleptocrats
What to Do?
As I've written before, marginalize the UN and build alternative organizations.
Posted by Tom at 9:56 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 30, 2005
The Haiti Precident
Troubles in Haiti continue
A U.S.-backed effort to reform and disarm anti-government gangs went horribly wrong 10 days ago when hooded police and machete-wielding civilian backers attacked participants at a soccer game, killing at least six persons.
The "Play for Peace" soccer match was financed and sponsored by the U.S. Agency for International Development, and was designed to steer young people away from the gang violence that has beset Haiti since President Jean-Bertrand Aristide fled into exile in February 2004.Witnesses to the Aug. 20 massacre said about 6,000 spectators were packed into the soccer stadium when police officers ordered everyone to the ground. Shots rang out, and people ran for the walled field's only exit.
Police fired wantonly into the crowd, witnesses and relatives of victims said. Outside, they said, civilians armed with machetes and more police officers attacked people trying to flee the chaos.
The United States has intervened in Haiti many times over the past hundred years or so. Each time we have attempted to set up a legitimate government and bring some order to the country things seem to go awry.
Things are no different this time. Despite our best efforts, Haiti is still an unstable country plagued by violence.
Our last invasion was in 1994, when Bill Clinton was president. He did so largely for humanitarian reasons, as Haiti certainly posed no security threat to the United States or our allies.
I have no problem with his decision to invade. I do disagree with his decision to obtain a resolution from the UN Security Council "authorizing" our operation. This helped to set a precident started by President George H W Bush, who insisted on UN "approval" to evict Iraq from Kuwait.
These actions set precidents that have come back to haunt us, as I feared they would at the time. As I have stated on this blog numerous times, we do not need approval from anyone besides our own US Congress to conduct any military operation that we see fit.
Posted by Tom at 10:08 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 19, 2005
No US Support for Expanded Security Council
In some good news today, Presdent Bush has decided not to support India's bid for a permanent seat on the UN Security council.
President Bush yesterday acknowledged India as a responsible state with advanced nuclear technology but declined to endorse its bid for a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council.After a meeting with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at the White House, Mr. Bush said he supports civil nuclear energy cooperation with India as it realizes its goals of promoting nuclear power and achieving energy security.
India's bid for a seat is part of a larger campaign to expand the Security Council. This past March, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan presented a plan for reform that Wretchard at Belmont Club called a "Grand Bargain". Quoting the Financial Times (subscription only):
Mr. Annan's officials say the package basically proposes a bargain whereby rich countries help the poor to develop, by promoting the Millennium Development Goals, while poor countries help alleviate rich countries' security concerns. In both cases, Mr Annan says, action must be underpinned by respect for human rights.
At the time I wrote a more complete analysis, interested readers can read it if they wish (see link above). For now, I'll summarize why I do not support any expansion of the UN
The Root Problem
The problem with all proposals to expand or change the Security Council, or any other aspect of the UN, is that it misses the real problem. The fundamental flaw with the UN is that any nation can be a full-fledged member, regardless of its form of government, or how it treats its citizens. All nations are equal.
The result is that tyrannies spend their time protecting their own. Several times the US and the UK have proposed sanctions against the government of Sudan for their murderous ways in Darfur, and each time such action has been vetoed by China and Russia, with France expressing reservations as well. At least we can talk to the French as democratic equals, with Russia and especially China any "dialogue" is delusional.
This failure to take into account the nature of a state's government is best exemplified by the UN Human Rights Commission in which China, Cuba, Egypt, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Zimbabwe are members.
Hats off to our president for doing the right thing. Too bad the Democrats in congress can't help him out by confirming John Bolton.
Posted by Tom at 8:29 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 18, 2005
Fun Facts
Readers of this blog will not normally be under any illusions as to just how terrible the United Nations has become. Nevertheless, it does bare reminding every now and then as to just why we need someone like John Bolton as our ambassador.
Ambassador Rudy Boschwitz is currently head of the delegation to the 61st session of the UN Commission on Human Rights. He was formerly a GOP Senator from Minessota from 1978 - 91. Yesterday he wrote an editorial that appeared in the Washington Times. He relayed just how antithetical at body has become to concepts of democracy and freedom around the world:
Americans must understand that the United Nations is not a very friendly forum for our country. The State Department puts out a study of voting patterns of the 191 nations that constitute the U.N. General Assembly. Only 10 of those 191 voted with the United States more than 50 percent of the time last year.
Wonderful. So that's what all of our foreign aid money is getting us.
At the six-week session of the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) this spring — a commission made up of 53 countries, including some of the worst human rights abusers — we could only come up with a consensus resolution — albeit a fairly strong one — about Darfur that did not mention the government of Sudan by name as an abuser, though the implication was pretty clear. Last year, when we insisted on a strong Darfur resolution condemning Sudan, the vote against it was 50-1 (the one being the United States) with two abstentions. The CHR membership has too many arsonists and too few firemen.
This year, Ambassador Boschwitz says, the situation on the commission was so bad that they did not even try to get any resolutions condemning Iran, Zimbabwe, China or "even Turkmenistan, where the dictator has renamed the months and days of the week after family members."
So what did the commission busy itself with?
But the commission had no difficulty this spring (or any other spring) in condemning Israel — not once but in four separate resolutions. In the last session of the 191-nation-member General Assembly, 26 human rights resolutions aimed at member states were passed. Amazingly, 22 of those 26 condemned the State of Israel.
That's nice. The one democracy in the Middle East gets all the blame. Nothing new there, unfortunately.
We're all familiar with the excreable 1975 "Zionism is Racism" resolution. What the Democrats do not seem to remember is that it was John Bolton who, in 1991, was instrumental in getting that overturned.
More reasons not only to send John Bolton to the UN, but to look for alternatives to that outfit.
Posted by Tom at 8:01 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 2, 2005
Resign, Kofi, Resign!
So Kofi Annan has threatened to resign:
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has claimed that a "lynch mob" is out to "destroy" him in the wake of the Iraq oil-for-food debacle and other U.N. scandals.Don't let the door hit you on the way out.
In his first major interview since he was criticized in a report into the discredited oil-for-food scheme, which the United Nations administered, Mr. Annan refused to rule out stepping down in the fall, a year before his second term is due to end.
Maybe this new report of sexual abuse by UN peacekeepers, this time in Liberia, have something to do with it (hat tip Captain Ed):
It just keeps getting worse and worse.UN peacekeepers sexually abused and exploited local women and girls in Liberia and more accusations are expected, a UN spokesman said Friday.
Stephane Dujarric said a preliminary investigation by the UN mission in Liberia indicated that some allegations against its personnel could be substantiated, while others could not.
"The allegations range from the exchange of goods, money or services for sex to the sexual exploitation of minors. The peacekeeping department here in New York as well as the mission on the ground are taking appropriate follow-up action," he said.
A UN official speaking on condition of anonymity said the number of allegations could eventually total 20.
The head of the mission in Liberia, Jacques Paul Klein, is to step down when his contract expires at the end of the month, a UN spokesman announced Thursday. His deputy Abou Moussa will temporarily take over.
The allegations of sex abuse in Liberia are just the latest to be leveled against UN peacekeepers who have been accused of exploiting the very people they were sent to protect in missions from Bosnia and Kosovo to Cambodia, East Timor and Congo.
Posted by Tom at 9:52 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 30, 2005
Another Plus for John Bolton
Another reason why John Bolton should be our new ambassador to the United Nations are the reasons given for opposing him. Yesterday fifty-eight ex-diplomats sent a letter to Republican Senator Richard Lugar, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in which they urged Congress to reject his nomination. The diplomats came from both Republican and Democrat administrations, which tells us all we need to know about why we're in our current situation.
Their criticism dwelled primarily on Bolton's stand on issues as the State Department's senior arms control official. They said he had an "exceptional record'' of opposing U.S. efforts to improve national security through arms control.
I'm not sure exactly what this refers to, but I'll tell you that in my opinion pursuing arms control misses the point. The reason why there are conflicts is due to opposing ideologies and ways of thinking, which are brought to the forefront by totalitarian and dicatatorial regimes. The best way to improve national security is to spread democracy. Now, that said, certainly preventing the spread of some weapons is beneficial. But simple pursuit of arms control does not necessarily enhance our national security.
Well, good. I don't want him to "negotiate", I want him to clean up the place. The old go-along-get-along-don't-ruffle-feathers attitude is what got us into this situation in the first place. Enough of the old way. We're going from Andrew Young to Jeanne Kirkpatrick here. And just as the left screamed bloody murder when Kirkpatrick went to the UN and gave them hell, they're screaming now.But the former diplomats also chided Bolton for his "insistence that the U.N. is valuable only when it directly serves the United States.''
That view, they said, would not help him negotiate with other diplomats at the United Nations.
Further, the problem with the UN directly serving the United States is...?
Tellingly, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, ambassador to the UN under Reagan, did not sign the letter (or at least I can't find that she did. However, I'm sure that if she did her name would have been mentioned in news stories. I am so far unable to find the actual letter on the Internet).
If anyone can find the actual letter please post the links in the comments section. I've searched the usual big-name blogs but can't find anything on it yet.
Posted by Tom at 11:30 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 29, 2005
Reform at the UN - or Replacement?
The other day in the paper I saw the following story about the United Nations:
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan yesterday called for an international inquiry into the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, after an initial U.N. inquiry found that the Lebanese government, intelligence and police services had bungled the criminal investigation.There may have been a time when I would have applauded this type of action, and believed that such an inquiry might get to the bottom of the matter. After all, the Lebanese police can hardly be expected to issue any report critical of Syria, the likely perpetrator. But those days are long passed.
The scandals and problems at the UN are many, so please excuse me if I miss a few;
- Oil-for-Food ('nuf said there)
- Peacekeepers in Congo, Somalia, Kosovo, and elsewhere raping and otherwise sexually abusing the very people they are supposed to be protecting
- Failure to provide relief to the victims of the recent tsunami, and then attacking the United States for forming a coalition of nations who were successful in bringing aid
- Failure to stop what is just about genocide in Sudan
- A Security Council that will not enforce it's own resolutions
- A Security Council that passes an ever-increasing number of resolutions to little or no effect on the world scene
- They put the worst human rights violators on the planet in on the UN Human Rights commission
- Iraq under Saddam was voted chair of the UN Committee on Disarmament
- A General Assembly that, in general, is virulently anti-Semitic and shows it in their actions and speech
- The World Conference on Racism, held in Durban South Africa 2001, turned into an anti-Semitic and anti-American hate-fest
- They promote fatally flawed treaties such as the Kyoto protocol on "global warming", which would have the effect of crippling the US economy
- The promotion of the World Court, whose purpose would be to prosecute Americans and Israelis, while largely ignoring third-world kleptocrats
The situation has gotten so bad that even Kofi Annan has recognized that something needs to be done. As such, he has issued a 62 page proposal for reform, the text of which can be found here.
The Grand Bargain
According to the Financial Times, (hat tip Belmont Club), what Annan has in mind is a kind of "grand bargain" (the FT article is subscription only, so I'm going on what Wretchard has on his site)
Mr. Annan's officials say the package basically proposes a bargain whereby rich countries help the poor to develop, by promoting the Millennium Development Goals, while poor countries help alleviate rich countries' security concerns. In both cases, Mr Annan says, action must be underpinned by respect for human rights.Of course this means more money from the United States, Europe, and other developed nations. Don't count on any of them to support this.
And, as Wretchard points out, by "security", Annan means the Security Council. And forget about going around it. From the text of the UN report, Annan says "The task is not to find alternatives to the Security Council as a source of authority, but to make it work better"
Without going into details, Annan proposes increasing the size of the Security Council by adding members from Africa, Asia, and the Americas. He offers two proposals, which vary by the number and term of the new seats, and whether they are permanent or rotating.
This is not a plan for action; it is an attempt to permanently prevent action. With so many competing interests on the Council, gridlock would be enshrined forever.
If would also, of course, have the effect of diluting American power. As it is today, the council would not vote to enforce their own resolutions regarding Iraq.
Even if we buy the notion of a "grand bargain", it is hard to see how and deal would work. Is Annan saying that the underdeveloped nations could attempt to "buy off" their votes each time an Iraq-like situation arose? Does anyone seriously expect such a deal to work?
Perhaps we should back up a moment. What is the purpose of the UN? In another post, Wretchard thinks that the UN can or should fill these rolls:
- To set a global agenda that brings the principal concerns of the nations to the forefront. This is the function that the General Assembly is supposed to fulfill;
- To keep the peace through the collective action of the Great (a function of the Security Council) and;
- To provide essential international services, which nation-states would not provide otherwise, through specialized technical agencies.
Wretchard proposes a electronic "moderated forum", by which I think he means web-based discussion group. Nice idea, but no one will buy it. Honest discussion is the last thing third-world kleptocrats want.
My Analysis and Recommendations
Fundamentals
The basic problem with the United Nations is that all nations are admitted as equals, regardless of their form of government or human rights records. Every country is simply a "member state". The UN is not immoral so much as it is amoral.
It is for this reason that it cannot agree on a simple definition of "terrorism", or for years a resolution remained on it's books equating "Zionism" with "racism". It is also why China, Cuba, Egypt, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Zimbabwe can be on its Human Rights Commission, and why Saddam's Iraq could chair it's commission on disarmament.
The Security Council
We need to forget trying to change the Security Council. The entire purpose of the Security Council is to prevent action. The founders set it up with a balance of power in mind that would prevent the most powerful nations from waging war with it's approval. And given that they had just finished a world war that left 52 million dead, this was hardly an unreasonable goal.
The Cold War may have been marked by stalemate, but it was a stalemate of which Franklin Delano Roosevelt would have approved. I also think that it was a good thing.
The world has now moved beyond the Cold War. Instead of containment, we are now properly trying to encourage and spread freedom throughout parts of the world (Reagan's "rollback" was nothing compared to what is happening today, apologies to the Gipper).
Stalemate is no longer acceptable, if we believe that Security Council authorization is necessary in order for war to be legal and just. One of the most unfortunate consequences of the Gulf War was the notion that only the Security Council can authorize war. Since I can think of no reorganization of that body that would make it act in a more responsible manner, and since I certainly do not accept the idea that only it can authorize war, I propose that we simply ignore it.
Let the left scream. It's what they're best at, anyway.
At this point we need to stop and point out the founders of the UN, most notably FDR, can be forgiven if they foresaw none of this. As I mentioned, their objective was to prevent another world war, and in that they succeeded.
The General Assembly
In the General Assembly all nations have one vote regardless of GDP or population. Fortunately it is also powerless. Nevertheless, it can be quite troublesome, especially when it passes odious resolutions such as the infamous one which equated Zionism with racism.
We cannot do much about this body, and although it is troublesome it is also powerless. My proposal is to let it be.
Peacekeeping
As Captain Ed has noted, the UN recommendations on ending sex abuse by it's own peacekeeping troops is nothing but a whitewash. The UN "solution" is to simply transfer responsibility to the nations that provide the troops. But this would leave the foxes to guard the henhouse. The problem at the root of the sex-abuse scandal is that the governments whose armies are involved condone, tacitly or otherwise, this type of behavior. Attempts to enforce standards of behavior are not likely to succeed given the nature of these governments.
We therefore need to require that nations who wish to send peacekeeping troops meet minimum standards of democracy and human rights within their own countries. Given that
they see peacekeeping as a moneymaking enterprise (the UN pays them much more per soldier than they cost to support) they will have every incentive to reform. They will squawk loudly at first, and there will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth, but we can succeed if we do not blink.
Financial
I believe that it is impossible to seriously reform the United Nations. I would therefore withdraw as much monetary support as we legally can and then proceed to ignore it.
Our task, then, is to build an alternative institution or institutions. It or they need not even be permanent, but may be ad hoc, that is, designed to meet a present need, and then disbanded when it's goals have been met. This institution(s) would be built around several principles:
- Membership is dependent upon having some basic form of representative government
- Membership is dependent upon meeting basic human rights standards
- Withdrawal from the organization is an option
- The organization exists for a specific purpose, and once it has achieved its goal or met its objectives it must disband or reorganize
- The Council for a Community of Democracies - founded in 2001, " a leader in the worldwide Community of Democracies, an inclusive transnational movement fostering democracy and cooperation among the world’s democracies and assistance to aspiring democracies in their transition through a new Democracy Transition Center;"
- The Proliferation Security Initiative - a global effort that aims to stop shipments of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), their delivery systems, and related materials worldwide. Members of the PSI are Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Singapore, Spain, the UK and the US.
Posted by Tom at 11:28 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
March 14, 2005
Bolton's Principles
John Bolton, who was recently appointed by the president to be our next ambassador to the United Nations, has a firm set of ideas for dealing with that body. Bolton laid out these principles in a 1997 essay which was part of a Cato Institute publication titled "Delusions of Grandeur". In his essay, "The Creation, Fall, Rise and Fall of the United Nations", he outlines five things that we should insist on when dealing with the UN:
- "The new secretary-general must deliver on reform." This remains as relevant now as it was eight years ago. Mr. Bolton still believes that the key to reform lies in breaking down the United Nations' traditional fiefdoms in the development program, environment program, the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees and others, and treating the United Nations as a single system.
- The United Nations should "stick with traditional peacekeeping," which means following the old rule that permanent members of the Security Council -- the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China -- should not take part in peacekeeping. Moreover, "what should be relegated to history's junk pile at the first opportunity are the chimerical Clinton notions of U.N. 'peace enforcement' and 'nation-building' and 'enlargement.'
- "Do not reform the Security Council." Mr. Bolton wants the current permanent members to keep their veto, a power that he sees as "the greatest single protection the U.S. has at the U.N. ... The desire to remold the Security Council now to conform to theoretical models of contemporary global politics should not obscure our present ability to make the council function effectively, at least in certain circumstances."
- "Management and financial reform remains essential." Mr. Bolton questions the financial basis of the United Nations, under which each country pays dues that are meant to be assessed roughly in accordance with their wealth. "Eliminate assessments altogether, moving toward a U.N. system that is funded entirely by purely voluntary contributions from the member governments ... [which] would allow each government to judge for itself whether it was getting its money's worth from the U.N. and each of its component agencies."
- "Face reality" and accept the United Nations' limitations and the realities of national interest, and from the American point of view, remember, "The U.N. is only a tool, not a theology. It is one of several options we have and is certainly not invariably the most important one."
Other than that I see his appointment as nothing but positive. The UN desperately needs to be shaken up, and to be told things that it doesn't want to hear.
Best of all, Bolton has all the right enemies. The usual suspects in the Democrat Party have promised to oppose his nomination, which I take as meaning that President Bush appointed the right man.
Posted by Tom at 3:34 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 5, 2005
Crisis in the Congo: UN Sex Abuse Charges
Fox News has been at the center of investigating the various scandals that have rocked the United Nations over the past few years. Most people by now are familiar with Oil-for-Food, the one in which during the 90's bureaucrats around the world enriched themselves at the expense of the Iraqi people. Over the past few months new scandals have emerged, ones involving massive abuse of the civilian populations by UN peacekeeping troops.
I'm not going to attempt any new reporting or analysis here, rather just want to keep the issue in the forefront for anyone not following these stories. The reason is not to "bash" the UN, as some would allege,but rather to illustrate how the institution as it now stands often does more harm than good. It is my belief that at this point, the onus is on the defenders of the UN to explain why we should continue to pay all of our dues to this outfit.
On with the latest scandal. First, a bit of background;
Five years ago, more than 10,000 peacekeepers working for the United Nations came to the Democratic Republic of Congo,to help end a six-nation war. But reports of sexual abuse of local women and girls began soon after they arrived from Morocco, South Africa, Australia, India and Europe.Eventually, someone caught on. But the response has been too little too late
In January, the U.N. Office of Internal Oversight Services released a report claiming peacekeepers regularly had sex with the Congolese women and girls in exchange for food or small sums of money."We have had and continue to have a serious problem of sexual exploitation and abuse," William Lacy Swing, the U.N. special representative to Congo, said.
The scandal intensified after the recent discovery of hundreds of violent, pornographic photos and videotapes of children, supposedly taken by a U.N. official. The images depict naked Congolese children in positions of severe physical degradation performing sexual acts with and under the control of a man, the United Nations admits, who is one of their own.
The worst part is that this sort of abuse is nothing new
The Congo scandal is not the first time U.N. peacekeepers have come under scrutiny. Past reports of ill practices surfaced in Cambodia, Bosnia, East Timor, Kosovo and Somalia. Despite that history and after four years of sex abuse reports by U.N. peacekeepers in the Congo, there still is no procedure of investigation or accountability on the ground.
UN officials have of late insisted that they have a "zero tolerance" policy toward such abuses. But Fox News reporter Steve Harrigan, on the scene in the Congo, reports otherwise
There are many reasons why this is allowed to occur. First, you have troops from third world countries who are often more than organized mobs. They more resemble an eighteenth-century European army than a modern force, back in the days when looting was an accepted way of exacting retribution on an enemy and rewarding one's own troops.When night falls in Goma, U.N. peacekeepers can still be seen leaving their base in search of sex.
Some of them duck down in the rocks with prostitutes in lava fields. Others patronize brothels located near the base. These are clear violations of the rules under "zero tolerance," which includes a strict curfew and a ban on contact between U.N. peacekeepers and local women.
The UN pays a per diem to countries who contribute troops. It is a fixed amount, $1,028 per month per soldier/peacekeeper, regardless of the country that sent him. The issue is that it costs a European or American taxpayer much more per soldier than it does a third-world taxpayer. The result is that peacekeeping is a money maker for these countries. What this means is that when there are abuses no one wants to rock the boat for fear of upsetting the gravy train.
UN bureaucrats from the third world see the UN as a gold mine, where they can live in New York or Paris and receive salaries unimaginable in their home countries. They do not want to kill the goose that lays golden eggs.
Then you have the simple fact that the UN is accountable only to itself. There is no incentive to root out and eliminate abuse.
I used to think that the UN was at least good for humanitarian missions. Then came it's abject failure to deal with the south-east Asian tsunami disaster, and the revelations of these sex abuse scandals.
I've written quite a bit about the United Nations on this blog, as regular readers know. Among my posts are these: