Coyote Blog

Awesome article in the Observer via the Guardian Online on the UN by a former UN Human Rights lawyer:

Having worked as a UN
human rights observer in Somalia, Rwanda, Haiti and Liberia, there are
two savage paradoxes for me here. The first is that, while the media
and conservative politicians and pundits have suddenly discovered that
the UN has been catastrophically incompetent, this is very old news to
anyone with the mud (or blood) of a UN peacekeeping mission on his
boots...

The
second searing irony for me is that the American neoconservative right
has occupied the moral high ground in critique of Annan, outflanking
the left, which sits on indefensible territory in his support. But if
prevention of genocide and protection of the vulnerable are not core
priorities on the left, then what is? If anyone's values have been
betrayed, it is those of us on the left who believe most deeply in the
organisation's ideals. I am mystified by the reluctance of the left
both in the US and the UK (the Guardian 's coverage, for example) to
criticise Annan's leadership. The bodies burn today in Darfur - and the
women are raped - amid the sound of silence from Annan. How many
genocides, the prevention of which is the UN's very raison d'être, will
we endure before the left is moved to criticise Annan? Shouldn't we be
hearing the left screaming bloody murder about the UN's failure to
protect vulnerable Africans? Has it lost its compass so badly that it
purports to excuse the rape of Congolese women by UN peacekeepers under
Annan's watch? Is stealing money intended for widows and orphans in
Iraq merely a forgivable bureaucratic snafu?

The article includes many detailed anecdotes of failure and corruption. 

It is time to fix the UN, or better yet, replace it.  Many UN defenders want to blunt attacks on the UN by somehow implying that UN critics are against international cooperation.  This is silly.  Attacking Enron for being corrupt does not mean that I am against the concept of gas pipelines, just as attacking Bernard Ebbers as corrupt does not put me in opposition to long distance telephony.  In fact, just the opposite.  It is clear that Kofi Annan is trying to protect the UN as an institution, even if it means that the UN is so passive it gets nothing done.  Just check out this quote from the above article:

Next to these tributes [in the Rwanda genocide museum]
is another installation - a reproduction of the infamous fax by the UN
Force Commander, General Romeo Dallaire, imploring the then head of UN
peacekeeping, Kofi Annan, for authority to defend Rwandan civilians -
many of whom had taken refuge in UN compounds under implicit and
sometimes explicit promises of protection.

Here,
too, is Annan's faxed response - ordering Dallaire to defend only the
UN's image of impartiality, forbidding him to protect desperate
civilians waiting to die. Next, it details the withdrawal of UN troops,
even while blood flowed and the assassins reigned, leaving 800,000
Rwandans to their fate.

via Scrappleface:

As one unnamed reporter put it, "In the hours immediately following the disaster, millions of people in Thailand, India, Indonesia, Somalia and elsewhere turned their eyes toward America to discover whether the president would rush back to Washington D.C. and empathize with their plight. But Bush stayed in Crawford and made just one official statement, as U.S. military planes surveyed the damaged area and Air Force C-130 cargo planes with humanitarian goods headed for the region. It's as if Bush thinks that action is a substitute for news conferences."

LOL.  I have always hated the empathy dance after disasters, particularly the now required visit by the President to the disaster site.  What is he going to do?  The visit to the WTC site soon after the attack on 9/11 had value because it made a statement about security that gave confidence to people that they could return to Manhattan.  Why is it necessary, though, to tour hurricane damage by helicopter?  Isn't that the experts job? 

We had a number of our operations in Florida shut down for weeks after the recent hurricanes there.  Several of my friends asked me if I was going to go visit the damage.  "What for" I asked?  The damage had been described to me, and the folks in charge there who knew the area had a good plan in place for fixing things.  If I showed up, work would have to stop for a day while everyone showed me around.  The time to go back is after it is cleaned up, when you can thank everyone for their hard work.  But of course, I didn't have to deal with the media editorializing on my heartlessness because I didn't run to Florida and sight-see the damage.