by Klaus Rohrich
april 8, 2004
In the real world we tend to reward success, while failure is something all of us avoid. When we do fail we attempt to look at the upside of our failure and utilize it as a learning experience. This concept is something that is innate to all humans, beginning at birth and serving us throughout our lives.
To witness the goings-on at the United Nations, one would think that the denizens of this vaunted organization originated someplace other than the human race. This view is supported by the fact that nothing they do seems to result in failure. at least that’s the impression one would get when listening to them talk about their programs.
Kofi annan’s one minute of silence on april 7th to mark the 10th anniversary of the brutal slaying of 800,000 innocents Tutsis in Rwanda is the moral equivalent of remembering the day you flunked out of university or the day you failed your driver’s exam. I guess it would not be so bad, if the minute of silence were held because some other organization failed to do their duty. But the truth is, those 800,000 souls were wantonly slaughtered precisely because the UN and Kofi annan have a massive testicular deficit.
Romeo Dallaire, the Canadian army General, was working for Kofi annan in Rwanda at the time the massacres began. His warnings went unheeded and his requests for additional troops to protect the Tutsis were turned down. On the contrary, rather than give Dallaire more troops, annan decided to reduce the contingent already there, leaving the Canadian and other peacekeepers sorely understaffed and undersupplied.
Picture it, some 270 UN peacekeepers, each armed with a C-7 and only 32 rounds of ammunition, standing between a rampaging throng of Hutus and a cowering multitude of Tutsis. Had the soldiers attempted to stop the murderous Hutus, it would have only taken seconds before they ran out of ammunition and Kofi could have had to hold a moment of silence for the 270 peacekeepers as well.
as it were, the moment of silence is for the Tutsis. I wonder if annan has ever considered that a few moments of gunfire might have prevented the need for a moment of silence for the unfortunate victims. But I don’t think that kind of thinking is part of the lexicon of the UN. Instead, they make specious claims about their commitment to human rights, disarmament, and nuclear non-proliferation, fighting racism, democracy and all those other feel-good concepts that have absolutely nothing to do with the UN.
But let’s examine the disconnect between what the UN says and what it actually does. Last year’s anti-racism conference in Durban, South africa was anything but. Countless delegates to the conference denounced Israel in particular and the Jews in General. The United States and Britain boycotted the conference and I am ashamed that Canada did not. The UN’s view of "racism" is totally one-sided, in that they deem it only applicable to whites. If any other race commits a racist act, then in the eyes of the UN it isn’t true racism.
In 1993, the United Nations passed Security Council Resolution #1441 demanding that Iraq divest itself of its weapons of mass destruction. It then spent the next 10 years dithering with repeated warnings and additional resolutions demanding that Iraq disarm. This culminated with Saddam’s personal choice of Chief Weapons Inspector, Hans Blix, who, of course found no weapons of mass destruction. He also couldn’t say for sure that Iraq did not have WMDs. Last Tuesday, Blix stated categorically that Iraqis were much better off under Saddam Hussein than they are today. This is tantamount to stating that Jews were much better off under Hitler than under Gerhard Schroeder. But then, one would expect no more from someone like Blix, as I am sure he is extremely resentful of being rendered publicly irrelevant.
The UN also imposed economic sanctions against Iraq, with a proviso that Iraq could sell oil for humanitarian considerations, such as the purchase of food and medications. The "Oil for Food" program became another embarrassment for the UN as its kleptocrats enriched themselves through "commissions" earned by brokering the sales. The truth came out only after Saddam was deposed and it wasn’t pretty. The only people that apparently benefited from this program was the Hussein family, who salted away billions in Swiss accounts and the UN bureaucrats responsible for overseeing the program. No wonder they didn’t want the americans to go into Iraq.
Perhaps my judgement is clouded by the fact that I am steeped in the tradition of Judeo-Christian ethics where hard work is rewarded and slothful behaviour is punished, but I think that the UN’s usefulness has come to an end. When countries like Libya head up the UN Commission on Human Rights and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq heads up the UN Disarmament Committee, then that’s a clear sign that George Orwell’s newspeak has triumphed over reason.
The UN has demonstrated that like its predecessor, The League of Nations, who refused to interfere in Mussolini’s invasion of Ethiopia, it has no moral or ethical compass. The worst mass-murdering, third world, tin-pot dictator is assigned the same status and importance as what is given to the leader of a true democracy. an organization that lacks a moral compass has no place in the hearts and mind of those committed to peace and democracy.