Is the UN still relivant?

My unbiased, lucid comment is this whole threat/counterthreat section is absurd. Anyone who feels threatened by a Clint Eastwood quote over the Net maybe ought to rethink hanging on message forums. And then a supposed FBI agent jumps into it and starts making his own veiled threats in retaliation. Fucking ridiculous. Quit taking this stuff so seriously. Neither this board, nor you, are that important.

 

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I agree with you spyke, but remember it's all relative and we have no right tell him that he's unimportant.

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Irony is certain fellows seeing themselves, or not, in USC 18(I)(41)(875)(d).

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All right. That's it, I can't take it. G's wife works for Ashcroft.

 

Back to UN relevence;
Syria, which has asked the U.N. Security Council to condemn the Israeli raid, urged Washington not to block its resolution.

What's the point? Why the hell should Syria even waste effort?

Just add this one to the list.

 

I have no idea why we keep vetoing resolutions regarding Israel. It's not like the UN enforces them, so what's the point? All it does it give idiots like Chomsky more ammo for their tinfoil conspiracy theories.

 

MONUC finds evidence of massacre

Another setback for the United Nations and the world today as MONUC, the UN peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo, announced that it found evidence of a massacre taken place in Kachele, some 100 km from Bunia. The UN has seen 23 bodies and has yet to verify reports of another 32 already buried. UN Spokeswoman Isabelle Abric noted grimly that the victims appear to be mostly pregnant women, children, and the elderly.

There are nearly 3,400 UN peacekeepers in Bunia.

In the wake of human disasters--speak nothing in DRC of 800,000 dead in Rwandan genocide, as war has claimed over 3,000,000 victims--the United Nations inevitably faces some criticism for its failures.

But if not the Baby Blues, then who? Here we must revisit the question of why. After all, what does it matter to Americans, for instance, if 3,000,000 Africans die in a short span of years due to causes related to war? What do these 23 bodies--perhaps 55--really add up to?

And in each person's answer to that, we might find a facet of whether or not the UN is relevant.

- Report, Staff. "UN finds DR Congo massacre". BBC News Online. October 7, 2003. see http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3169860.stm

 

Those 3,800,000+ deceased aren't considering your endorsement of the "Baby Blues" particularly rousing. Why should this membership, far lesser numbered, think any better of it?

 

Highlights and analysis for G

Rather than repeating myself word for word, I'll just give you the highlights, in case you missed their significance the first time around:

- But if not the Baby Blues, then who?
- Here we must revisit the question of why.
- After all, what does it matter to Americans, for instance, if 3,000,000 Africans die ...?
- What do these ... bodies ... really add up to?

In other words, G, why does any of it matter in the first place.

If not the UN, then who? And in visiting that question it seems to me that we must consider why anyone at all.

Which brings us to the critical point:

- ... in each person's answer to that, we might find a facet of whether or not the UN is relevant.

It's not a particularly rousing endorsement, G. And yes, we do find a certain facet of your regard for the UN as well as your fellow human being in your focus on an irrelevant counterpoint.

Nonetheless, the question is not nearly as stupid as your apparent perspective. (Seriously, G, deal with the issues. As long as you frame them to include me, arguing against me is all you'll be doing, and that's even more a waste of your time than mine.)

- Why should this membership, far lesser numbered, think any better of it?

Well, why do they? I think that's the more applicable question. Should the American people abandon the US Congress altogether for its general lack of competence? What would they put in its place? Why should they bother?

Should the world abandon the UN? Well, why did people come together in the UN in the first place? Certainly we cannot expect that all of the member nations support a power grab by the United States. So we can move past the shallow and sarcastic and ask a simple question: Why do nations continue to attempt to fund and operate a worldwide venture dedicated to the cause of conflict resolution and crisis relief? Whether or not the UN is ineffectual is irrelevant to the basic question.

Because in answering that basic question, we can examine whether the UN is relevant, whether the role that it serves is relevant or even desirable.

I don't know, G. Wars are awfully entertaining when it's your nation making pretty lights over a city thousands of miles away, but our American gang violence problem got so bad in the 1980s that the National Guard took part in the war against gangs. Just think about that for perspective. Oh, poor Americans. Yes, it's horrific that a 17 year-old girl needs to be shot four-hundred times for the crime of waving at her friend. Yes it's scary that Army Rangers home on a picnic could discharge that many rounds without hitting a damn thing. Yes it's stupid as hell that in Texas you can shoot Japs for asking directions. But compared to Liberia, Sierra Leone, and even sunny, peaceful Iraq ... you know?

The UN seems relevant in the sense that the world still comes together and tries to use it and other international bodies to improve the lives of the mass of human planeteers. And Lysander Spooner pointed out of any government that the people can only surrender to an authority those rights and faculties which they possess. (It's an abstraction, and yes, it's correct.) Now, the member states of the UN can only surrender to it what authority those states have. And as we see, the states elect to reserve much power to themselves.

So we can look at a number of options:

- Reformed UN: Reformed according to what standard? The US government has consolidated power over the years (watch the rhetoric, for instance, around the Civil War, when you see the transition from "these United States" to "the United States") according to efficiency. But expedience has not always served the principles of the American government well. Our forefathers made mistakes. Our fathers made mistakes. We make mistakes. Our children are absolutely f@cked. But underneath it all there are certain principles which the American government must necessarily reflect. The United Nations, as well, operates according to certain principles which its operation must necessarily reflect. Making it "more efficient", for instance, according to the Bush administration, would be making it tantamount to a rubber-stamp of legitimacy for American imperialism. It would seem that the UNSC permanent members' veto power should be revisited. But systematic overhaul of the UN will be a tricky issue.

- Abolished UN: In admitting that a world-cooperative quest is unprofitable, many will rejoice at the invocation of chaos and greed. The UN may not mean much to the 3.8m dead in DRC, but it means a lot to the child soldiers rescued and returned to their family who are alive today. It means a lot to the people who aren't being massacred daily. Like the Kachele massacre in Ituri. 23? 55? It sucks. And it's a blemish to be sure. But it's the first big killing in weeks. So that's 23 or 55 today. And not yesterday and the day before and the day before and the day before and .... In abolishing the UN and its role--that is, in forsaking a cooperative peace--we will celebrate the kind of savagery that makes us shudder when we look to Africa's conflicts. Eating Pygmies? Hell, that's just the start of it.

- Status quo UN: In admitting the duplicity of the players involved, we might look to those very players as the problem. This may not go far enough to cure the ills of the UN. But it could be that the UN needs only minor procedural repair while the member states need to get the sticks out of their asses and treat the UN with the genuine esteem in which they would otherwise claim to hold it. The United States, of course, provides the perfect example. For all the whining American war dogs did about a UN that simply wouldn't endorse an unnecessary and falsely-founded American usurpation in Iraq, it seems that we're all pretty much aware by this point that the US has been a leading contributor to the UN's inefficiency. Kind of like terrorism on that point ....

Really, G, open your eyes. I wouldn't mind having a discussion with you at all if I thought for a minute you were actually participating genuinely in an exchange of ideas. But when you try to reduce the focus to such tiny issues with such tiny posts, you do yourself and the rest of us disservice.

If you really want to know why they should, take a poll of member states and why they do.

Please understand, I've long been willing to admit to my neighbors that they're right and that this is just the way of things, but they seem to have trouble with the simultaneous recognition that Osama bin Laden is justified under those conditions.

And I'll hand it to you, G. Yes, the UN is irrelevant. It's old and needs to be done away with. People inevitably want to fight, why fight the trend? Blow it all up, steal what you want, kill whoever gets in the way. Fly jets into buildings, drop mortars on schoolyards, poison and burn and pulverize children. Starve, gas, torch, explode whatever people irks your politicians. Drums and bunting and smart goose-stepping uniforms. Fire and blood and chaos and smoke. It's glorious, isn't it, G? Children drugged up and turned loose with rifles to rape and pillage and murder. Bombs in cafes and nightclubs and cruise ships. Anthrax with your Harry & David. It's a mingled frenzy of blood and polished bone and sparkling chrome on SUV's. And it's everything everybody in the world ever wanted, right G?

Moral relativism serves me well, but I'm not a moral relativist throughout. There still exists in me the presumption of right and wrong, G, and I simply won't justify the Osama bin Ladens, Saddam Husseins, Donald Rumsfelds, George W. Bushes, Kim Jong-Ils, Pol Pots, Hitlers, Stalins, or otherwise of the world in order to feel righteous about hatred or bloodlust. The same energy goes much farther on a more compassionate journey.

You're a member of the human species, G. This is something that should not be forgotten so easily.

 

the simple fact that Syria is on the Security Council (and in the UN in general) demonstrates what a joke the UN is.

 

UN

UN is at the moment impotent in political arena because like any institution UN is what the members of UN make it to be.

In practical level there is lot more than that, well, my cousin is in peacekeeping troops somewhere in Balkan and I like to think he is doing good job by doing that.
Also Unicef, UNESCO, ILO, WHO and others are doing something.

 

States at the UN SC

Oth, the UN is made up of 190+ independant states on the earth. You and no other state have no legitmacy over another, in any respect. Would I think if Israel was on the US SC be a joke? I sure would, but I wouldn't refuse her entry, or would I make her irrelevant. Who lied at the UN SC oth? It was the USA went she said all this bull shit about non-existant WMD in Iraq, that is the joke. Democracy is in no way a air of legitmacy, for us in a more modernized world it is only natural, but that is relativism beyond comprehension. Don't think that Israel is the world oth, because I seriously think you do. A joke was the league of nations, when states were thinking like you and WWII would have been avioded if states were serious about world peace.

 

tiassa:

The affected people, themselves? Hm?

Isn't effective drug addiction-abatement premised on the historically informed notion that individuals first must want to change their own behavior?

You can project the UN into any situation you want but, if folks aren't ready to change, it's just wishful Prohibition all over again.

Desire on your part is not necessarily any solution at all.

 

I am forced, by obvious, local demographics, to conclude that "they" (y'all) are driven by common ideology: schooling fish school by nature because such behavior is proven by experience to better protect *cough* "individuals" from inconvenient predation.

I'm here in a terrorist's capacity: assymetrical debate -- just enough of an irritant to wake folks from their cozy dream-state (or not, for the most wanton).

 

Allow me to applaud thee. Most licentious use of the word "terrorist"

It makes for a nice sound-bite, I admit, but where have all the flowers gone?

When children are being trafficked as sex slaves? When children are on the front lines shooting? One of the most striking photos I've seen in recent time was of a seven year-old boy returning to his home in Sierra Leone. And Sierra Leone was an ugly one, as apparently there is footage of the Baby Blues punching out children--anything to avoid the necessity of shooting them. But this particular boy of seven years had been abducted as a soldier two years prior.

Now let's just think about this, Mr. G--I think by the time you're asking five year-old children to make an informed-consent choice to go to war or not, it's a moot point. But, recognizing that my scale isn't universal, I might ask you what other choices I might expect my daughter to be equipped to handle in a little over four years?

In Liberia, folks had sandbagged themselves onto the beach in order to escape the gunfire. If war is bad, why should everybody have to engage in it before there's peace? They're pushed to the edge of the Earth--it's time for intervention.

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, children flocked together at night, hiding out in large groups in bus stations and plazas in the belief that safety came with numbers. I mean, come on ....

When they're eating Pygmies, should we blame the Pygmies, hm?

Think of it this way: the US rushed past the UN into Iraq; the US hedged on Liberia; Moammar Qaddafi is preparing to negotiate a peace deal in Indonesia. What the hell is out of balance here? The US starts a war, doesn't want to help end a war, and a Libyan goofball is called in for the third time in thirty years to mediate disputes in Indonesia? When did American leadership of the world collapse so badly that Qaddafi is playing the Jimmy Carter role?

Remember also that the 3.8m dead in DRC aren't mostly direct war casualties, but casualties of starvation that came after the fields and the livestock were all pillaged or blown to hell. and of diseases that ravaged the population as a symptom of war. It's like a two-drink minimum for the dead.

Right. Okay. So ... Bob has an addiction. Bob is stealing from his family and friends to pay for his addiction. Why are you treating Bob's mother for addiction? And when you figure that out, you should probably get Pete to stop shooting Bob up in the other arm while you're trying to help the guy straighten out.

The UN deals with the addicts so that the unfortunate people whose geographic association to the addicts makes them the victims that make the bad men so bad.

Oh, heavens yes. That's the proper focus, isn't it? Let's worry about "Prohibition"? That's why "peacekeeping" occasionally requires rifles. And, unfortunately, that necessity of rifles and shooting is part of what bogs down the UN's efficiency.

But what sacred right to make war and hurt other people are you invoking? If the fighters are determined to kill each other, they will eventually find a way. But that's no reason at all to take everyone else in the neighborhood down with them, and at the end of the day there's still those people to worry about. I mean, I'm all for the power of revolutions, but someone please tell me why the "good guys" in Liberia were so randomly shelling houses and schools and churches?

Yeah, stop sending children to the front lines. Wishful prohibition. Fine. So be it.

Is it lonely out there in left field?

And here I put the question to you, Mr. G: Is civilization--that is to say cooperative society--a waste of your time?

And you have the target sensibility of a terrorist.

What you fail to consider at all is more revealing that the things you pretend to consider from your terrorist's perspective.

 

If I may just interject...

It's rare that I disagree with Tiassa on substantive points, but on this occasion I find myself somewhat conflicted. I have yet to fully come down one way or the other on 'humanitarian' interventionism but find myself somewhat sympathetic to Mr. G's position.

A seemingly uncontroversial point (helping people in dire need) in this case rolls staright up against my own personal beliefs regarding liberty and the right of assylum. It is a complicated picture but I'll do my best to explain what I mean succinctly.

Who intervenes? The international community? The US? Nigeria? This could be moot point, but it is essentially political and directly applies to the bigger picture - military intervention is always a power game and the results are political. Now the UN tries its best to limit this, but Nigerian troops on the streets likely means a Nigerian-leaning government in the end. This is just the start pof the problem though.

What is the 'edge of the earth'? Starvation? Death? How many deaths? What is the level of care we would expect from a government, and at what point is that country committed to accepting intervention if it us unable to carry out its functions? I think you know the significance of this Tiassa - it is not just the opening up of an entirely new justification for more war (peacekeppers can only keep the peace where it is at first present) but also limiting the power of the sovreign state. Ultimately I'm in favour of that, but it needs to be agreed unanimously and not tagged ion to human rights declarations as a hidden sub-caluse.

Is democracy necessary? What about child labour? Death penalty for theft? Imagine the difficulty. I'm sure you can think of countless countries we would be forced to intervene in. You start to come up with some strong arguments for invading Iraq as well...

So perhaps you accept the simpler utilitarian argument that, "come on, I know what you're saying but we CAN save lives here and we have a simple human duty to intervene."

I'm more sympathetic to this argument but still have my doubts. Inncocents die, there is no question, but if people are determined to fight and kill they will. Look at Europe - it took centuries of feudalism, conquest and bloodshed plus two World Wars before they saw sense. What would Europe look like now if the UN had attempted to impose settlements? Cut France in half after Napoleon? The hatred would be simmering today. The Germans and French had to realise themselves, at a deeper level, that things could not conitnue as they were. One would hope you wouldn't need two World Wars for them to see it, but that's what it took.

Imagine if the UN had intervened in the US civil war - the south can get some independence - lets draw a line through Virginia and put in peacekeepers.

How much MORE death would that have ultimately caused?

I feel for the victims which is why I think assylum is sacrosanct - we should do all we can to help those who want to get out to get out and grant them refugee status. Hell, we should organise transport out for those that want it. But anything more I'm not sure. Until we have a genuine world government (which incidentally I'd like to see - apart from slight niggle over lack of assylum...) I think we run the risk of causing more trouble than we solve. The UN record of intervention is not great, and who's really betting on peace in the Balkans over the next 100 years? Not me - next time it will just be more violent than before.

But as I say, I'm not decided one way or the other.

 

Was that Ted Danson in eye shadow?

The international community as represented by the UN is generally looked to. In the case of Liberia, they were appealing to the United States directly, believing that Liberia had historical and cultural ties with the US that would warrant some sympathy from the post powerful force of law and order Liberians could think of.

Which is why multinational forces are considered the better option, despite the difficulties of leadership by committee.

Well, specifically in Liberia I was referring to the fact that one one side of some people were sandbags and fighting. On the other side of them was the ocean. Geographically, they had no place left inside that country to run to.

But I do admit to an appreciation for the poetic implications of "the edge of the earth". And it's hard for me to explain the line between how much before the world steps in. It is in large measure subjective, because the civilized beast prefers to set the guilty free and not convict the innocent, but that can make all the difference in the world to the thousands of people who can be mowed down in the period of a few hours.

But it's like DRC: somewhere along the line, the UN decided that trying to offer food and medical relief with limited refugee extraction wasn't enough. Perhaps 3.8 million died because it was just impossible to keep up the tally, so the alarm bells don't go off until after the fact. (Consider that Liberia does not appear in the current UN Human Development Index because conditions were so atrocious that an accurate measure of the situation was impossible.)

What can we say about scale? My parents lied to me, threatened me, but I can't say they're the direct source of trauma one of my friends suspects I have yet to uncover. Comparatively, I think of one friend who usually stopped to vomit before going into her house because her nerves were so shot; I remember her picking pieces of her mother's fingernails out of her arm one day. Or another friend who spent half her childhood choking on her father's wang.

Intervention if my mother took a spatula to my brother or I? Come now. I'm not even sure what form of intervention would have helped my friend with her mother. My friend and her father? Well, obviously something needed to be done, but where was the line crossed?

While I recognize the vagaries you point to, Captain, I think that by the time the world notices and experiences that gut revulsion that evokes responsive action, humanity is already behind schedule. What is the line? Hard to say.

Ecuatorial Guinea, for instance: state radio has proclaimed the "President" to be God. El Presidente himself claims to have a permanent open channel to the divine. Yes, I think these people need a better leader for a better future, but I haven't seen any suggestion that he's crossed "the line" that requires intervention. But well on the other side of the line is Liberia, DRC, and Sierra Leone; when the international community arrived, the fight was already down to children, drugs, guns, and neighborhoods.

If a war breaks out and there's a refugee situation, one has to think of it in terms familiar to them. Should the UN have interfered in the Woodstock revival debacle when people were injured and the grounds were torn up? Hardly. A friend, battered by a rough ride on acid, freaked out at Pink Floyd after he saw another tripper die in the medical tent. ("They played Run Like Hell. I ran like hell. Straight through the wall of the tent.") Security chased a kid until he got caught in a phenomenon I've never experienced--the vacuum zone that occurs when you open a door in an arena with an inflatable roof. Apparently the kid was quite surprised as he flew away.

And if this was all that was going on at a refugee camp in the middle of a war, that would be all there was to it. The US government would send Phish, Widespread Panic, and Rusted Root over to tour the refugee camps, and life would be dandy.

But if we consider Iran right before the US invasion of Iraq, people missed a hell of a moment in politics when the Iranians said they were closing their border against refugees on the grounds that they did not want a human disaster inside their borders. The Iranians knew they couldn't take care of the refugees, knew they couldn't guarantee the refugees' security, and that took some of the sting out of the fact that nobody really wants thousands of displaced anybody--much less Iraqis--clustering just inside their border.

And while Iraq was a "quick war" in Bush's opinion ("Mission accomplished!") the lack of an extended refugee crisis was overshadowed by days of chaos following the fall of Saddam Hussein. While chaos is somewhat predictable--I can accept that observation--there is no excusing the US's announcement that it had no intention of upholding its obligations under the Geneva Conventions by refusing to intervene and maintain law and order.

Such considerations, of course, are muddled by the political clout of the US.

But what about a nation without political clout, without stronger financial resources, without the kind of security Americans enjoy?

So when you see a war break out in a backwater, you can almost guarantee that it will be either a quick coup or a long and bloody civil war that destroys the vital infrastructure of the country. Especially in the case of the latter, one must wonder where the refugees will go and what will happen to them. This wondering is among the UN's necessary purposes.

And yet the potential for disaster--thousands of refugees with no clean water, no security, no anything--isn't enough to move the international community. Somewhere the line is crossed, and one morning we wake up with a nightmare on our hands.

It's easy enough for a conservative to call freedom a privilege. It is easy enough for a liberal to call freedom a right. It is difficult for either to look at the electorate and remind them that freedom is also a huge freaking obligation. "Civilization" commands a huge tribute. The "difficulty" is nothing more than the cost of peace.

Specifically:

- Democracy is not necessary in the short term. I'm an American, and I do fine without a formal federal democracy. I also do okay with an ineffective local democracy. Yes, democracy is necessary to the future prosperity of humanity, but it's obvious that we haven't yet learned how to do it right.
- Child labor is necessary against death. Beyond that, one of a society's primary obligations is to educate its young so that issues like child labor become unnecessary. This is part of a pseudo-Darwinian obligation to species.
- Death penalty for theft is, in my opinion, a little extreme. But I'm of the opinion that the death penalty at all is unnecessary and a stupid idea.

Specifically, you come up with some stronger arguments for invading other nations than you do for Iraq.

It's why the Bush administration relies on no-brainer arguments that are, technically, beside the point. Is the world better with Saddam out of office? I can see that well enough to say yes. But that is beside the point.

I watched a guy named Glenn Beck (I think), a radio host pushing a book, on MSNBC today, and he invoked World War II in defense of Iraq, how our grandparents said, "Never again!" (Oooh, ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh-ooooh. Maggie what have you done?) So our grandparents said "Never again," and while that's fair, how is that justification for Iraq? And the reason I ask the question is that it is that very generation that said, "Never again!" that started the wheels in motion. It is the nefarious side of the process of that very generation that said, "Never again!" that Bush is now pushing. And that's the reason why the fact that it is Bush with Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and others at his side makes this the wrong time and the wrong reasons to go to war. What happened to "Never again"? We fear Mosssadegh, an Iranian communist, and so we support a vicious Shah? (At least Mossadegh wasn't a Democrat.) The Shah is overthrown by a religious nut? An American president removes Saddam Hussein and Iraq from the terrorist-sponsor list in order to bankroll a war against the religious nut that overthrew our vicious and bloodthirsty Shah who was apparently a better choice than any imaginable future with a popularly-elected Prime Minister with sympathies toward communism and, specifically, communist nations that wanted to work with him? The same people who said "Never again!" did it again, over and over, all over the world. Africa, Central America, Indonesia, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, even South America.

The difference to Americans, as it has been so eloquently stated, is that nations like Liberia, DRC, and Zimbabwe (struggling under tyrants), or a nation like North Korea (struggling under threatening tyrant) simply aren't swimming in oil.

And the UN does mix it up all over the place. Check out United Nations Peacekeeping (Flash page). Just hovering the mouse over the "Current Operations" I'm counting fifteen active peacekeeping missions and forty-three past operations. What other political body has been tied up in fifty-eight wars in fifty years? (Okay, okay ... the CIA, but I don't think that applies to this particular issue.)

It is difficult.

Isn't that a variation on the script from The Accused, starring Jodie Foster?

I agree. But in the United States we're brought up with this nasty, stupid idea called Justice. Maybe it doesn't mean anything to anyone else around the world, but we have a problem because Americans have forgotten what Justice is and represents.

People are very determined to fight. You can't just walk into every fight with guns and shoot everyone who's fighting. Sometimes you have to figure out what people are fighting about. Is the difference between me and the kid raping children in DRC something mystical, genetic, or even necessary? Or if the people who are fighting were to have less reasons to fight ...?

On the one hand, that only would have happened if England sent Lord Acton to sit on the UNSC.

I mean, yes, the stupidity of the UN upholding the authority of one man to hold another in bondage on the basis of ethnicity would cause much death. And Acton only defended the Confederacy in principle; the human argument made its case as far as he was concerned.

Why look to history for such exaggerated examples? What if MONUC decides that intervention is to build rape rooms so the drugged-up teenagers have a sheltered place to take their child victims? Besides, the US would have used its USNC veto to block any intervention.

A few Africans in Chicago and the Atlanta suburbs have caused some friction. It seems they're unwelcome by some people's standards. I don't recall, it was the usual NIMBY for some Somali refugees. The UN is essentially moving a whole tribe or some such out of the country.

Beyond the opportunity to dig up some information on that (I'll get to it; I posted a topic about the American dream once that had to do with these folks; people thought I was nuts for finding anything happy about it), the general counterpoint is where do we draw the line and what do we do about it?

Microcosmically, it's like the debate over Harvey Milk High School, or whatever they've decided to call it. I understand to a certain degree the pressures and unnecessary horsepucky these students go through in day to day life, but I'm not sure surrendering society to bigots and reintroducing segregation is the right thing to do. Nor am I sure in the international version that handing the field to the bullies is the right thing to do.

How important to that lack of assurance is the idea of separate nations? Rather, I don't actually care about national boundaries. They do more harm than good. While I recognize the political reality of sovereign territories, the necessity of human progress compels me to stand against terrorists. And most people well-enough educated to involve themselves in international politics understand that political reality and the necessity of human progress and what those factors demand.

Or do we come back to canceling right and wrong?

In the simple form, I come back to an issue I asked Mr. G about: Why do we come together and try to solve problems in such a manner as the UN?

In fact, if we look back to the post "Highlights and analysis for G", the first section is essentially a compressed version of this post.

These are tough questions. But for the ideas I continue to lay out in this topic, I point back to the relevance of the UN and the necessity of its basic function. Because of the consequences of the warring actions the UNSC is called to consider, I think that to determine the UN and its role in the world to be irrelevant would be to hold many human virtues to be irrelevant and even false as well.

The UN is a human institution. I call tails, which says, "At least somebody is trying." Again, we come back to basic human virtues: Why is it important to organize in search of collective peace, collective freedom, collective relief from the burdens of war, hatred, and disaster?

We must demand better, always.

And if the next time is more violent, perhaps then it will be violent enough that people stop looking at the superficial aspects of warfare and start looking at the real reasons human beings don't like to get along with one another.

My direct, two-cent endorsement goes as follows: The role or concept of the UN--though perhaps not the structural UN itself--is a natural outgrowth of a collective and compassionate human endeavor. To forfeit both the organization in specific and the role in general would be to declare that one refuses the goals to which the UN was invented to aspire: peace, prosperity, opportunity, happiness, and health for human beings.

Call it a campaign pitch, if you want. 'Tis the season for that, it seems.

(A note on the title: Anyone remember that 1980s color version of Twilight Zone in which the UN finally worked out world peace, only to see the planet destroyed by the alien masters who seeded human beings as a warrior species?)

 

Kofi Annan called a "cheeky darkie"

The UN from its very inception has been run by the 'goodwill' of its members. If it fails to uphold it's mandate it's by the failure of this same 'goodwill' - I'd name countries which could do something to make the UN stronger but thats a penny in a wish pond

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Just the othger day on New Zealand radio some breakfast radio presenter "referred to Kofi Annan as a "cheeky darkie" , he re kons how can the world be led by a "darkie" - that is why the UN is a failure

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well here are the links

http://www.listener.co.nz/default,872.sm
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0309/S00261.htm
http://onenews.nzoom.com/onenews_detail/0,1227,224786-1-7,00.html
http://onenews.nzoom.com/onenews_detail/0,1227,223477-1-7,00.html

Well, with comments like this, & with at least some sympathy from somewhere for him as he still rants in the mornings on radio - kinda makes you wonder why people can't move past the colour thing - I've said it before somewhere on this site & will say it again, ALL racists are the dying branch of a felled tree, just waiting to dry up is all. If an issue can rivet your mind till your death then it's unlikely you can learn anything else. I could explain but if I have to then I'm wasting my time anyway cause it's probably over your head - "say to each as he is able to understand"

 

A typically spirited and intellectually dense defence of the UN there, thanks Tiassa. I must say that I never thought the end of civilisation would be heralded by the bartender at Cheers. Kelsey Grammar I can believe...

First off I think we may be arguing at cross-purposes here a little bit. I'm not against the UN at all nor do I think it's irrelevant. However I am not convinced that intervention in domestic state issues is something the UN ought to be pursuing.

That said, your post raised a few ideas and issues that I'd like to comment on.

I would happily endorse this wholeheartedly but for the implied support for intervention. Where to begin...

Lets begin at the beginning (always a good point) - of your post anyway.

Of course we have to have someone intervene - and the multinational force is the best option. But I am arguing that from point one of intervention we are considering, necessarily, problems related to sovreignty and power. Few countries actually possess a military capable of mounting peacekeeping operations in far-flung corners of the world so we look to regional neighbours. Hence Nigerian troops are deployed and, lo-and-behold, Charles Taylor is gone. They may wear UN hats, but they are ultimately paid for and represent Nigeria. Nigeria has regional ambitions which encompass Liberia - we are kidding ourselves if we don't understand the implicit risks of this type of operation in the long run.

This isn't an argument against intervention as such, but you must recognise the inherent nuts-and-bolts problems of intervention. The ideal and the reality rarely match up.

It is hard to say - and that is my argument. I know when the line is crossed for me, because I feel irate when I see the news and rant about the state of the world. But I am not World Emperor (regrettably - I'd be grateful for Sciforum's support in getting this post by the way) and if we are to start intervening as a matter of course rather than whim I suggest we need a mechanism beyond a Security Council vote. We need something evryone can sign up to and accept prior top the fact and if possible we need to make this a non-veto issue so we are not obstructed by power politics.

The line is vague, that's why we need a big bold marker to draw it so we can all be clear where it is. Tiassa, you know the implications of this in today's UN - a UN which was pretty close to going along with the US on Iraq lest we forget (to its credit, though not its reputation, it didn't).

I want to debate the line. If I know where it is I might come down on your side of it.

I need to press this point. If we are to try and avoid the inherent problems of disparity of influence and power in the UN we need rules. We can't, unfortunately, leave it up to specifics as you yourself have so clearly shown.

If you are going to convince me that intervention will not, in the end, be used to justify forms of Imperialism and regional power struggles you need to show me that only in the most extreme circumstances can we resort to intervention, and that intervention will not be up to the Permanent 5 whose motives I question.

But even if you do that I will still be reluctant. My argument about doing more harm than good is not a great one and brings to mind the somewhat rediculous questions posed my Ethics lecturer when studying Philiosphy - You can save 1 man now but upon saving him his continued life will result in the accidental death of 4 others, one of whom would have gone on to find a cure for cancer but another of whom would have become Hitler.

Now a big part of yells that if I see a life that can be saved then I really should save it. But I can't get over the futility of risking your life by trying to save people set on suicide. I'm not talking about the innocents here but the comabatants. Perhaps I am too cynical on this.

You make some points about justice as well, but I am not entirely sure that I understand what you mean here.

I also have a point on justice - but I think it may run at a tangent to the debate. I think the UN fails on this score. For the UN the peace process is just that - a process. It is a separation of the fighting forces and the aim of working out a compromise. That is not justice. We tried to compromise with Hitler by accepting his take-over of the SudatenLand. Perhaps in 1942 we would have given him half the Ukraine as a compromise. The UN is big on peace talks, but pretty short on justice.

That is another problem with intervention - a just settlement is never the reult. Look at Israel. We're now talking about how much of the West Bank Palestinians should get and focus on 'talks' and 'compromise'. No, that's not the way to lasting peace.

Just an aside on this - I think a global state of some sort would be a force for good. But that little Hobbesian corner of me longs for the right of assylum - and a world government rules that out. We tacitly consent to the rules of society form a 'state of nature' by virtue of remaining in the country. If there is nowhere else to go, we lose a vital freedom - the freedom to opt out. To me that's still important. German Jews were very happy to have this freedom in the 1930s and I need a pretty high degree of certainty that things won't turn against me if I give this up. We're talking a HIGH degree.

To conclude:

Tiassa, I'm all for the good international society - the one that tries to alleviate suffering and stop wars. The one the 'special generation' (or whatever that book caled them) set up. No question. I support the UN in its efforts to imporve lives, reduce pverty and help those in need no matter where they are. I support a forum where the leaders of the world can meet and discuss ways of making things better.

Count me in.

But..

I'm not sure histry has ended. I think there are Civil Wars that still need to be fought. I think there are human disasters we can barely affect which will ultimately prove to be a force for good. I think revolutions are still going to happen. I think war crimes will be committed. I think some of this will be necessary in moving human civilisation forward.

...and I think humanitarian intervention is a risky business in this world. I need to know where that line is Tiassa so I can be pretty certain we don't end up doing more harm than good.

 

"I think there are Civil Wars that still need to be fought. I think there are human disasters we can barely affect which will ultimately prove to be a force for good. I think revolutions are still going to happen. I think war crimes will be committed. I think some of this will be necessary in moving human civilisation forward."

I think you need to stab yourself viciously in the balls with a pencil to understand suffering. Do it now, and grow some humanity. You are speaking drivel.