The Redhunter

December 7, 2008

Muslim Nations and the UN: The Goal is Censorship

Last week in The Washington Times we learn that Muslim nations are unhappy with the UN. Something we can agree on, perhaps? Unfortunately, no

Muslim-majority nations are yearning for a stronger United Nations, freed from what they regard as a prevailing influence of the United States, a new survey reveals.

The poll conducted in Egypt, Turkey, Jordan, Iran, Indonesia, Palestinian territories, Azerbaijan and Nigeria by WorldPublicOpinion.org, a global network of research centers, found that people in those countries favor a more dynamic United Nations while simultaneously viewing the international organization as dominated by the U.S. and failing to deal with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

"There is a surface negativity about the U.N. in Muslim countries, but if you scratch underneath, there is actually a tremendous enthusiasm for the role that could play a robust U.N. able to stand up to the United States," Steven Kull, director of WorldPublicOpinion.org, told The Washington Times.

Nearly every option for giving greater powers to the U.N. received strong support.

A vast majority of Muslims favored the U.N. Security Council having its own standing peacekeeping force (64 percent) and being entitled to authorize military force to stop a country from supporting terrorist groups (76 percent) or to prevent genocide (77 percent).

If I didn't know these areas/countries so well, I'd be encouraged by that last paragraph. Stopping countries from supporting terrorist groups sounds good to me. Then we remember that among those countries surveyed are Iran and the Palestinian territories. I rather doubt they're asking for a force to invade themselves.

No, I think there's another reason for the strong UN support.

The Wall Street Journal has the story everyone who cares about freedom of speech should read:

"Durban II," planned for April in Geneva, promises to be an encore of the same old Israel-bashing. The draft declaration says Israel's policy toward the Palestinians amounts to no less than "a new kind of apartheid, a crime against humanity, a form of genocide and a serious threat to international peace and security." We'll spare you the rest of the diatribe.

Israel will be the conference's main object of obsession, but it's not the only target. The draft declaration also goes after the West's freedom of speech and antiterror laws under the guise of protecting religion -- read: Islam -- from "defamation."

The entire West will be in the dock for allegedly persecuting Muslims. "The most serious manifestations of defamation of religions are the increase in Islamophobia and the worsening of the situation of Muslim minorities around the world," the draft reads.

"Islamophobia" is a vague term used to brand any criticism of Islam as a hate crime. The real Islamophobes, though, Islamic terrorists who have killed hundreds of thousands of their co-religionists, get a free pass.

Instead, the draft calls for a media code of conduct and "internationally binding normative standards...that can provide adequate guarantees against defamation of religions." If this sounds like censorship, that's because it is.

The conference is being organized by the U.N. Human Rights Council, which, like its discredited predecessor, the Human Rights Commission, has been taken over by several of the world's main abusers of human rights. The Organization of Islamic Countries, the most powerful voting bloc at the U.N., managed to put Libya in charge of preparing Durban II. Tripoli is being assisted by such other pillars of the international community as Iran and Cuba. Last week a key U.N. General Assembly committee passed a draft resolution, sponsored by Islamic states, that calls for national laws against the "defamation of religions."

If the Durban II drafters have their way, any challenge of Islamic teachings, including teachings used to justify violence, would be taboo. Reprinting the Danish Muhammad cartoons, exploited by Muslim agitators in 2006 to incite riots around the world, would be a criminal offense. Even gross human-rights violations in Islamic countries -- such as the stoning of adulterers in Iran -- could be immune from criticism as these practices are rooted in religion.

This cannot stand. Nothing can be exempt from challenge or criticism.

I don't like it when my religion, Christianity, is mocked. I don't like it when militant atheists such as Christopher Hitchens or Richard Dawkins spout their nonsense about religion being not only wrong but dangerous in and of itself. I don't like it when people draw nasty cartoons about Jesus, or caricature, deride, insult, laugh at, make fun of, parody, show contempt for, or sneer at Christianity of Judaism. I myself criticize conservatives who go overboard in their attacks on Muslims and Islam.

But not for anything in the world would I take away any one's right to do any of the above.

Back To The Survey

While I do think that such nefarious reasons are part of, even much or most of the motive behind support for the UN, there are other reasons too.

Part of it is anger at Israel. It's mostly unjustified, to be sure, but it is a real motive.

A lot of it is also a feeling of impotence. With the exceptions of Iraq and Turkey, Muslims are ruled by autocrats, live in societies notorious for their corruption, and whose econonomies make our current difficulties look like paradise. Of course their frustrated. At school they learned about the glories of the Umayyad, Abbasid, Fatimid, and Ottoman empires, and realize that those days are long gone with little chance of regaining them.

As a result of this, the colonial period, and more, they believe that Islam is "not respected." Because they also have no tradition of tolerance as we understand it, their reaction is to want laws to prevent criticism of Islam.

Their reaction is understandable, perhaps, but it must be stopped nonetheless. The WSJ article notes that "the decision about whether to send a delegation to Durban II will be an early test of Secretary of State-designate Hillary Clinton and the new Obama Administration." Indeed it will be. Let's hope they boycott it.

Posted by Tom at 9:20 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 23, 2008

Creeping Sharia Update

Time for another update on how we're slowly losing our civilization to the jihad.

Losing? To the jihad? Impossible, you say?

Yes, we can lose. Let us not think that what we have will or can last forever. Our bombs and bullets are important, and surely we must win in Iraq and Afghanistan. But let's all be clear that our Muslim extremist enemies aren't simplistic enough to just come at us with their own bombs and bullets. Strykers with cage armor will help us win on foreign battlefields, but here at home we must open our eyes to what is going on around us, be strong enough to withstand the forces of political correctness when they try and denigrate us.

On with it, then.

Bye Bye, First Amendment?

The indomitable Nina Shea reports on two international conferences that were held to promote interfaith dialogue, tolerance, peace, love, understanding... you get the point. One, called the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), was organized by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and held under the auspices of the United Nations. Its 20 member states are without exception Islamic.

Reading the OIC's charter, their objectives all look quite unremarkable and innocuous. But are they?

According to Shea, the

(OIC) has pushed the U.N. to adopt a universal ban on defaming Islam. This measure would aim to curb the freedom not only of Danish cartoonists but also of scholars, writers, dissidents, religious reformers, human rights activists, and anyone at all anywhere in the world who criticizes Islam.

Not it all becomes clear. Their version of tolerance and respect are quite different than ours. Islam must be tolerated and respected; no criticism is allowed. Indeed, Shea says, the good king is trying to strike a bargain with the West; "Suppress criticism of Islam and you will be spared retaliatory violence."

The New York Post (h/t Islamist Watch) has more on what the OIC is up to:

Consider one key draft resolution at the event. Introduced jointly by the Philippines and Pakistan, it openly seeks to limit press freedoms. Sure, as read by Philippine President Gloria Arroyo, the language pays lip service to the notion of freedom of expression.

But the document then goes on to emphasize the "special duties and responsibilities necessary for the respect of the rights or reputations of others, protection of national security or of public order, or of public health and morals."

Translation: Don't even think of publishing those Danish cartoons or anything even close to them. And forget about questioning authorities in places like, say, Riyadh.

Come now, is it really that bad? Yes it is

Consider one key draft resolution at the event. Introduced jointly by the Philippines and Pakistan, it openly seeks to limit press freedoms. Sure, as read by Philippine President Gloria Arroyo, the language pays lip service to the notion of freedom of expression.

But the document then goes on to emphasize the "special duties and responsibilities necessary for the respect of the rights or reputations of others, protection of national security or of public order, or of public health and morals."

Translation: Don't even think of publishing those Danish cartoons or anything even close to them. And forget about questioning authorities in places like, say, Riyadh.

All that "freedom of speech" stuff is, you know, so old fashioned.

The second conference was called A Common Word. This one was a bit more ecumenical, with Christians apparently being represented too, including some from the Vatican.

A Common Word might prove useful, if, as Shea notes, "open discussion of these texts is permitted in Muslim societies." Otherwise, it's all pointless. We are and should be free to examine any religion here in the West, and it must be that way in Muslim countries also.

What the Muslims want is obvious; they want to make it illegal to criticize Islam, even in the West. Shea further notes that this is not as inconceivable as it may seem, for "already Canada, the Netherlands, France, and Italy, without real debate, have taken tentative steps to deploy defamation, hate-speech, and even long-dormant blasphemy laws."

Yup. Just ask Bridget Bardot about the European version of "free speech."

How About A 0% Savings Account?

The most important aspect of "creeping sharia" is the attempt by Muslims to force their culture and laws on us. Let me be clear from the outset: Sharia (or "shariah")is a totalitarian system of laws that is antithetical to everything that we in the West hold dear. And for you leftists, no I don't want the book of Levicitus incorporated into our legal code (and I'm a conservative Christian evangelical), so don't make fools of yourselves by leaving comments about "Christian theocrats."

"Sharia Finance" is that system of banking and economy based on Sharia law. Follow the link and you'll learn all you need to know about it. You'd better, because it's coming to the United States:

The U.S. Treasury Department is submitting to Shariah - the seditious religio-political-legal code authoritative Islam seeks to impose worldwide under a global theocracy.

As reported in this space last week, Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Robert Kimmitt set the stage with his recent visit to Saudi Arabia and other oil-rich Persian Gulf states. His stated purpose was to promote the recycling of petrodollars in the form of foreign investment here.

Evidently, the price demanded by his hosts is that the U.S. government get with the Islamist financial program. While in Riyadh, Mr. Kimmitt announced: "The U.S. government is currently studying the salient features of Islamic banking to ascertain how far it could be useful in fighting the ongoing world economic crisis."

Yes well if that's what it takes to recycle those petrodollars. Looks like the Wahhabist plan to undermine us is working out nicely. Walid Phares must be smiling... or shaking his head.

What's the big problem, you say? If you weren't good and didn't follow the link to Spencer's site above, take it from Frank Gaffney:

What makes the Shariah-Compliant Finance gambit both a big and troublesome "deal" is that, unlike these other religious traditions, Shariah's adherents are pursuing a global theocracy. They believe they must impose their agenda on everybody else, religious and secular alike, using violence if necessary. And SCF is explicitly described by leading practitioners as a complement to violent holy war: "financial jihad" and "jihad with money."

In other words, there is no such thing as free-standing Shariah-Compliant Finance. According to all of the recognized authorities and institutions of Islam, Shariah is a unified, indivisible program to which all faithful Muslims must adhere comprehensively.

Not surprisingly, therefore, the Saudis & Co. are not simply seeking to insinuate Shariah-Compliant Finance into our capital markets. They are also advancing creation of a parallel Shariah-governed society through various other means.

One of these techniques will be in evidence when the Saudi monarch himself convenes a meeting in New York City in the hope of imposing Shariah blasphemy laws worldwide.

Get it now?

The Illusion of Safety

A recent case makes it clear that you don't have to actually make criticism of Islam outright illegal to get the same end result. Just this past summer, Random House was on it's way to publishing The Jewel of Medina by Sherry Jones, a book about Aisha, the child bride of Mohammed. Then they suddenly changed their mind. Was it because they thought it wouldn't sell? Unfortunately, no.

Random House deputy publisher Thomas Perry said in a statement the company received "cautionary advice not only that the publication of this book might be offensive to some in the Muslim community, but also that it could incite acts of violence by a small, radical segment."

"In this instance we decided, after much deliberation, to postpone publication for the safety of the author, employees of Random House, booksellers and anyone else who would be involved in distribution and sale of the novel," Perry said.

Ah yes, safely. Mustn't upset the Muslims, else some of them become, you know, violent.

And in this case although the decision was cowardly, the concern was warranted. In September the eventual publisher in the UK had his house firebombed.

One might take as the lesson here not to publish books critical of Islam, or you will find yourself targeted. Some will say that because of the firebombing, Random House was therefore correct. I would say that the very reason some find themselves targeted is because others refuse to stand firm in the face of threats. By backing down Random House only encouraged the extremists.

Fortunately, stout hearts at Beaufort Books in the United States and by Gibson Square in the United Kingdom published Ms Jones' book.

Parallel Legal Systems, Parallel Countries

Across the pond, they've decided to let the Muslims have their own court system. Only for family cases, they assure us. For now.

Islamic law has been officially adopted in Britain, with sharia courts given powers to rule on Muslim civil cases.

The government has quietly sanctioned the powers for sharia judges to rule on cases ranging from divorce and financial disputes to those involving domestic violence.

Rulings issued by a network of five sharia courts are enforceable with the full power of the judicial system, through the county courts or High Court.

Previously, the rulings of sharia courts in Britain could not be enforced, and depended on voluntary compliance among Muslims....

Under the act, the sharia courts are classified as arbitration tribunals. The rulings of arbitration tribunals are binding in law, provided that both parties in the dispute agree to give it the power to rule on their case.

So what's the problem if they want to have their own court system? Isn't it all voluntary? And don't the Jews have their own courts?

I rather think that we should all know by now that there's not much of anything that's voluntary under Muslim rule. The whole purpose of this is for Islamist community leaders to keep their people, and especially their women, in their place.

Then there's the whole aspect of social cohesion. Diversity yes, but let's draw some limits. At the end of the day we have to all recognize the same laws. Once you head down the path to parallel legal systems you effectively have two different countries.

As for the objection "aren't the Jews allowed their own courts," oh please. The Jewish community is hardly expanding, their culture is not at all based on coercion, and they don't threaten anybody and everyone knows it. More to the point, their system is not parallel to English law but simply complementary. And they're not really legally binding.

Londonistan it is, then.

No Weenies Allowed

Just thinking about this story makes he hungry. Again, from our friends in the British Isles we have this:

Some 300 modern-day Scouts (the word Boy was dropped in the 1960s) settled down to a meal prepared in a 'kitchen marquee' and consisting entirely of vegetarian food - so as not to offend any religious faiths.

Clare Haines, a spokesman for the Scout Association, said: "It was really to do with religion that we were not able to provide sausages and burgers and all that kind of food.

"We have been very careful to make sure food is provided to everybody's tastes and beliefs, so no one feels left out.

"They enjoyed their vegetarian meals, especially vegetable chilli, fresh salads and jacket potatoes."

Oh yes I'm sure they did.

Although the story didn't mention any particular religion, I've never heard of Christians objecting to burgers and weenies.

Not At Your Desks, You Don't!

Glad I don't live in Scotland. I always eat at my desk at work. Of course, we don't really have a lunchroom so it's not much of an option. This time the virus of political correctness strikes Scotland:

The NHS (National Health Service) in Lothian has advised doctors and other health workers not to have working lunches during the 30-day fast, which begins next month.

The health service's Equality and Diversity Officer sent an e-mail to all senior managers, giving guidance on religious tolerance. This includes ensuring Muslim staff are given breaks to pray, and time off to celebrate Eid at the end of Ramadan.

It is understood they also advised hospital managers to move food trolleys away from areas where Muslims work.

A Brief Time-Out

Lest you think I'm just picking on merry old England, au contraire. Just scroll down through my "creeping sharia" posts and you'll see I've gone after everything from Muslim footbaths at George Mason University to the Islamic Saudi Academy.

Ok, now back to picking on England

The Polls! The Polls!

Some people have bought into the standard PC line that "the vast majority of Muslims are just like us, it's only a few extremists causing all this trouble."

I wish.

Less than two years ago John Hood reported on a poll in the UK that showed that

...nearly four out of 10 of British Muslims aged 16 to 24 say they would prefer to live under Sharia law than under British law. That's according to a survey commissioned for the independent think tank Policy Exchange. "The emergence of a strong Muslim identity in Britain is, in part, a result of multicultural policies implemented since the 1980s which have emphasized difference at the expense of shared national identity and divided people along ethnic, religious and cultural lines," said the main author of the report.

Some 13 percent of the young British Muslims expressed admiration for "organizations like al Qaida."

Polls showing this sort of attitude are a dime a dozen, and have been reported on regularly. Either you have your eyes open, or you don't.

Posted by Tom at 10:00 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

September 20, 2008

Book Review - Surrender is Not an Option

William F. Buckley Jr. once called Jeane Kirkpatrick "St. Jeane" for her work at the United Nations during the Reagan Administration. To those of us on the right who remember the odious Andrew Young as ambassador to the UN under Jimmy Carter, "St. Jeane" was a godsend. Instead of apologizing for our country as Young so often did, she put the dictators of the world on defense and forthrightly stated our case.

To conservatives, John Bolton is a sort of latter-day Jeane Kirkpatrick. To liberals, he is a loud-mouth "ugly American" who is brash and arrogant. Readers of this blog well know that I am in the former camp.

Bolton may not have had to clean up the mess of Young and the Carter Administration, but he had his work cut out for him nonetheless. The UN is corrupt, and at best useless and at worst a positive harm to US and Western values. It a swamp of kelptocrats whose purpose in life is to draw a salary and prevent Western values from taking hold in other regions of the world. Process, not progress, is the watchword of the day.

John Bolton made his mark when he got a recess appointment as Permanent US Representative to the UN, serving from August 2005 until December 2006. His book, Surrender Is Not an Option: Defending America at the United Nations, is mostly about his experience at that institution.

Bolton attended Yale University, graduating summa cum laude, and made his mark by standing up for conservative values in the face of much opposition. On "Class Day", which was just before graduation, he addressed the assembled parents and students with a few remarks. For his efforts he was heckled by the leftists, who could not stand any dissent. "A typical example of liberal 'tolerance'" he dryly remarks. In addition to his B.A. Bolton earned a J.D. from Yale.

His early career, from 1974 through 1999, was mostly spent in private legal practice, though with stints in the Reagan and first Bush Administrations in a variety of positions, perhaps the most important of which as serving as Assistant Attorney General from 1985 to 1989.

IN 1975 the United Nations General Assembly passed it's infamous Resolution 3379, which equated Zionism with racism. Repeal of this odious measure became the test by which Israel and many pro-Israel groups in the US would measure the UN.

At the State Department

During President George W. Bush's first term Bolton served as Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security. Among other things, he was influential in establishing the Proliferation Security Initiative(PSI), whose purpose it was to interdict WMD shipments around the world. Hardly a unilateral effort, it started out with eleven member states and has grown to 75 countries today. What made the PSI effective was that it was "an activity not an organization", while the UN was just the opposite.

His "happiest moment at State was personally "unsigning" the Rome Statue that created the International Criminal Court (ICC)" ICC advocates contend that it simply provides a framework for trying "crimes against humanity" where there was no other judicial system that could do the work. Bolton saw it as something that would be exploited by those with an anti-American agenda to go after American politicians and military leaders. Typically the State Department was against the "unsigning", because their main (seemingly only) concern was that our action would make others unhappy. Bolton, on the other hand, only considered the well-being of the United States, and the rest of the world could go fly a kite if they didn't like it.

Bolton also thwarted attempts by elements at the UN to sneak in "global gun control" provisions which would have superseded our Second Amendment. Many attendees of the UN Conference on Small Arms and Light Weapons had a hidden agenda, which Bolton smoked out and shot down.

The "catechism" of what Bolton calls the "Risen Bureaucracy" was that "North Korea(DPRK) can always be talked out of its nuclear weapons program." As it is, his conclusion after years of effort is that the DPRK "will never give up nuclear weapons voluntarily" but "often promises to do so," and those promises fool many people.

Among the players in the administration, Rice was always "maneuvering for position," and it was to know her true thoughts. Richard Armitage comes across poorly. Powell comes across well, and Nick Burns so so.

Appointment to the United Nations

As is well known Bolton's appointment to become ambassador to the United Nations generated much opposition in the Senate. Bolton took the entire exercise in stride, though, never seeming to become upset or bitter about how it turned out. His persona, in fact, seems to relish opposition. Of the senators who opposed him, Christopher Dodd is probably the biggest villain.

One of the charges against him was that he tried to pressure an intelligence analyst named Christian Westerman. While I have neither the time nor the inclination to investigage this story elsewhere, Bolton makes a persuasive case in the book that the charge was a fabrication.

The other charge was more personal, that he wasn't a nice person. My take is that Bolton is more just blunt, and won a lot of bureaucratic battles, the result being that several people used his confirmation battle to settle personal scores.

In the end he was not confirmed by the Senate, so President Bush gave him a "recess appointment", whereby he was made interim Permanent US Representative, which lasted from August 2005 to December 2006.

At the United Nations

Revelations about what became known as the Oil for Food scandal were hitting in full force as Bolton took up residence at Turtle Bay. Paul Volker, formerly chairman of the Federal Reserve, made his report, which was highly critical of much of the UN bureaucracy involved in oversight of the program. Although the report made waves (tsumanis, really), in the United States, the UN leadership made sure that the report went nowhere and was buried without a trace. Among other incidents this confirmed Bolton's view that the UN needed a major overhaul.

Much of his tenure there, then, was dedicated to reforming the UN. Secretary General Kofi Annan would pretend to go along, but in the end always stymied any attempt at real reform, preferring to move the deck chairs around a bit. The other force preventing reform was simply that many nations see the UN as a means to soak the richer nations of money, and the last thing they wanted was an organization that spotlighted their corruption and human rights abuses.

As such, one of Bolton's goals was to replace the UN's discredited Human Rights Commission with a newly designed "Human Rights Council". Rules for membership would be changed so as to keep the worst abusers off the council. With the old commission, the worst of the human rights abusers tried their hardest to get on the commission, the better which to prevent investigations into their own abuses, and to retarget the commission's energies toward their real enemy - Israel. Unfortunately, in the end the HRC is no better than the old commission. The abusers won.

One characteristic of the UN was it's focus on process over progress, or substance. As long as a peacekeeping operation reported back to the Security Council, everyone (except the United States) was happy. Heaven forbid anyone should ask whether the peacekeeping operation was making a difference, or that the diplomats were making any progress in resolving the conflict.

Another of Bolton's initiatives involved the DPRK. Since the Six-Party talks weren't going anywhere, he wanted to use the Security Council to force (diplomatically, of course) the DPRK to give up its nuclear weapons. Japan was to prove a strong ally in our efforts there. In the end, the deal achieved in February 2007 was "radically incomplete." It contained too many flaws, and represented the triumph of the "permanent government" of go-along-get-along bureaucrats. As mentioned earlier, neither talk nor incentives will persuade the DPRK to give up their nuclear weapons. In the end, only a collapse of the north and reunification will resolve the situation on the Korean peninsula.

Throughout his tenure, Bolton attempted to bring the issue of Iranian pursuit of nuclear weapons to the Security Council for serious sanctions, but to no avail. The EU-3 (UK, France, Germany), insisted that they could handle Iran through negotiations, believing that they could talk Iran out of pursuing nuclear weapons. Despite years of effort, no real progress was ever made. Instead, Iran used the time to perfect the fuel cycle and most likely work on bomb design. Bolton concludes, accurately I think, that the result is that we are on the "road to the Nuclear Holocaust."

The UN spends a lot of time, energy, and money on peacekeeping operations. Much of its efforts are focused on Africa, which is logical considering the troubles on that continent. The problem is that there is little desire to achieve actual results, the objective more being to simply "show concern," easy to do when the West is doing most of the financing. Even asking whether a given UN action or operation is helping or hurting the situation is "politically incorrect."

The Middle East, specifically the Israel-Palestine conflict, also consumes much time. Anti-Israel bias at the UN is pervasive. The double standards applied to Israel during its 2006 war with Hezbollah in Lebanon were breathtaking. Further, the war illustrated what is perhaps the biggest moral failure of the UN; its refusal to recognize that in most wars or conflicts both sides are not equally guilty, but rather most of the time one side is more in the right. But few at the UN were willing to see anything wrong with groups such as Hezbollah.

Lessons Learned

Feelers were sent out to key Senators to see if they may have changed their minds about Bolton at the end of his recess appointment in December of 2006, but to no avail. Deciding not to take another position in the Administration, Bolton retired from public service.

Bolton concludes that the EU will avoid confronting problems (such as Iran) and will "kick the can down the road" through endless negotiations. Process has been substituted for progress.

The UN badly needs reform, not so that "the US can get what it wants," as our critics (foreign and domestic) say, but rather so that it, too, can actually work towards solving problems rather than allow them to go on forever as long as there is a "process."

However, Bolton is not one who wants to withdraw from the UN. He sees it as useful, but warns that we must avoid "the trap of channeling all or most of our efforts through the UN system." We should look to and use other institutions, for example NATO and the OAS, when they suit our needs.

Another problem is our own State Department. Too many there see their role as pushing their own agendas rather than that of the president.

Unlike some who only make their true feelings known years afterward in a memoir, Bolton made his views known throughout his career. A fighter like Jeane Kirkpatrick two decades before him, he was an unabashed champion of the United States and Western values and didn't put up with any nonsense from anyone. While this no doubt earned him some enemies, it also earned him, and our country, much needed respect. It is a shame that the Senate did not have the wisdom to confirm him as ambassador.

The Book

Much of the book is a blow-by-blow account of the details of each of the subjects outlined above, as well as many more. Although rich in detail, it gets to the point while reading where I found myself skipping pages. While invaluable for the researcher, at times the detail can be a bit much for the general reader.

If you are of the type that believes that the UN is mostly corrupt, does as much harm as good, and should be hit over the head with a 2x4, then you will like this book. If you are of the sort who thinks that the US has too much power, uses it too often, and needs to be "reigned in," you probably don't like Bolton anyway so will not like this book.

Posted by Tom at 11:50 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

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.

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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