Saturday, January 08, 2005
Simply UNbelievable
If the UN had an ounce of credibility left after the Oil-for-Food scandal, the orgainization's tsunami relief efforts should do away with that too. Here it is two weeks after the disaster struck, and the UN is unable to bring any meaningful help to the vast areas of devastation.
Diplomad reports that UN officials and staff are still only to be seen at the best (remaining) luxury hotels, and traveling to and from meetings in Mercedes, SUVs and their ubiquitous Toyota Land Cruisers. They come with all the pomp and self-importance of the best do-nothings. Kofi perhaps thought it might bring some comfort to the tidal-wave ravaged to know that no less than the "United Nations Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator and the Secretary-General's Special Coordinator for Humanitarian Assistance in Tsunami-afected countries" was being dispatched.
The Belmont Club reopens a thread that has been prominent in his recent writings: what good comes of the UN? Here and here and here are earlier fine and more extensive pieces on this issue.
It becomes difficult to argue that this debate is driven solely or even principally by animus against the world body, as apologists have taken to doing. The evidence of complete ineffectiveness, if not outright counterproductveness, is so overwhelming that it requires an act of supreme will - or political malice - to overlook it. The bureaucratic inertia, the high-minded yet ultimately empty rhetoric, the barely concealed anti-American group-think; all this and so much more is unpersuasive only to those devoted to a post-national one-world agenda or those that have it in for the US - two groups that often bunk together anyway.
I think the UN would be in its last days if there weren't hints that the prez is extracting a massive quid pro quo from Kofi, to let the defrocked institution maintain legitimacy - for now.
Diplomad reports that UN officials and staff are still only to be seen at the best (remaining) luxury hotels, and traveling to and from meetings in Mercedes, SUVs and their ubiquitous Toyota Land Cruisers. They come with all the pomp and self-importance of the best do-nothings. Kofi perhaps thought it might bring some comfort to the tidal-wave ravaged to know that no less than the "United Nations Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator and the Secretary-General's Special Coordinator for Humanitarian Assistance in Tsunami-afected countries" was being dispatched.
The Belmont Club reopens a thread that has been prominent in his recent writings: what good comes of the UN? Here and here and here are earlier fine and more extensive pieces on this issue.
It becomes difficult to argue that this debate is driven solely or even principally by animus against the world body, as apologists have taken to doing. The evidence of complete ineffectiveness, if not outright counterproductveness, is so overwhelming that it requires an act of supreme will - or political malice - to overlook it. The bureaucratic inertia, the high-minded yet ultimately empty rhetoric, the barely concealed anti-American group-think; all this and so much more is unpersuasive only to those devoted to a post-national one-world agenda or those that have it in for the US - two groups that often bunk together anyway.
I think the UN would be in its last days if there weren't hints that the prez is extracting a massive quid pro quo from Kofi, to let the defrocked institution maintain legitimacy - for now.
# posted by mds : 2:42 PM
