US to pull out of Saudi Arabia.

[Dinner]

If my personnal experience with them in Kosovo is any clue then the U.N. guys are totally useless. When ever anything serious came up the literally ran away or drove off hoping the NATO soldiers would fix the problem and even when things were calm they were pretty useless.

The running joke was you could tell which buildings the whore houses where in because it was the one with all the U.N. vehicles parked out front. Saddly, this was actually true.

[PLATO]

Originally posted by gsmoove23
I never understood the bad rap some people give the UN in Bosnia. I don't think you could possibly have a more difficult job of trying to keep peace there. In all of its peace keeping missions I think the UN has done admirably considering the situations that existed beforehand.

Anyway, giving the UN run of the show does not necessarily mean that the US should pull out completely but perhaps negotiate an independant role where it can still carry out necessary military operations but leave the administering and urban policing (the most difficult jobs) to the UN. Somewhat like in Afghanistan, and this time funding won't be a problem because of oil.

Whatever you feel will happen, this would quash much of the criticism thrown at the US today.

I think Ned and Oerdin have covered the UN peacekeepers quite well.

I think that if you actually had peacekeepers "run" from a bad situation in Iraq and innocents were killed that this would increase the criticism of the US.

Dysfunctional is the right word for the UNSC. Doesn't mean that it doesn't have its uses, but Iraq is not among them.

[Ned]

Well, Oerdin, it is clear that the Iraqi opposition wants nothing to do with the UN. They obviously have learned from history that the UN is dangerous because the militias know they can act with impunity. The UN SC will take no effective action due to its own politics.

I wonder at the people who thought about forming the UN. What in the world were they thinking? The coalition that formed to oppose Germany and Japan primarily were democracies that were resisting totalitarianism. But there was a notable exception. Including the USSR in the UN doomed that organization to ultimate failure. But, as I have said before, simply admitting and keeping states thereafter who were not democracies was also a mistake.

Hopefully, the forces of democracy will unite and slay the UN. We need a new organization based on prinicple, not just an organization based on statehood. It is a scandal and an outrage that Lybia leads the human rights organization and that Cuba is a member. This behavior by the UN, coupled with the recent Iraq fiasco, should inspire a new organization, based on the Iraqi coalition that replaces the UN.

[Dinner]

No I don't want to see the U.N. gone because it does a good job coordinating humanitarian relief and the WHO has done wonders containing desiese such as SARS, but, the UN should never, never, ever, be given an important role in a country like Iraq. The UN has proven time and again (Bosnia, Cambodia, Lebennon, cyprus, a third of Africa, the list goes on and on) that they can't handle difficult cases. It is just not up to the job no matter how much Chirac tries to talk it up.

[GePap]

Since the UN does not have any power of its own, but only what its members give it, all those exmaples you gave show that those with power (the US and Europe, Japan and others) don't care to pick up the financial and human costs of going into the real tough, purely humanitarian cases like thsoe you have mentioned, and thus they leave them to the UN and then blame the UN for not doing a good job when it fact that pooor job is based on the fact that these rich states don't care to give the resources and manpower to actually suceed if they are not directly in charge of them.

[Ned]

Oerdin, I agree that there are areas where the UN organization have been effective. The WHO has a place in the world. But, I suggest, this organization could be folded into the the Red Cross and the Red Cross funded by the coalition.

We seem to agree that the UN cannot ever be effective on security matters. Saddam Hussein was probably the most outrageous example of a violator of international law that we could imagine. And yet, geopolitical rivalries were enough to prevent effective action.

But even if such a new organization were formed of democracies, we still have the problem of France. It's not so much that France should not be a member of such an organization, but it should not have a veto. As of this writing, I believe the only country that should have a veto is the US - for obvious reasons.

[Dinner]

Since we are on the topic of how corrupt the current Saudi regime is I think this is a good time to show you an article from this weeks issue of Newsweek. A handful of high ranking Saudi officials have been directly tied to providing financial help to Al Quada's terrorist network even after 9/11. To its credit the Saudi officials are prosecuting those cases which the international media find out about but there is creditable evidence that the Saudis are covering up many other cases of its officials continuing to fund Al Qaeda and other Islamic terrorist networks.

[Chemical Ollie]

Originally posted by GP
And than you have poly tubbies. Who sit and play war games on their computers. Making comments like, "why not use snipers"? What a dum**** response. Like they a. had snipers there. b. knew there would be a problem.

You must have played even more computer war games than me, as you have 12 times more posts. Look at yourself before you throw personal comments like "dum****" around you. Have you ever been a soldier? Where I live it's compulsory. I have never been in a war zone, which I am very happy for, but one of my closest buddies has made a total of 40 months of UN service in Lebanon, Bosnia and Hebron. He has been under fire by Serb artillery, Lebanese militia AK-47:s, Israeli Air Force and also intifada kids throwing big stones right into his lap through the closed car windows. He has told me all I need to know about what it's like to be under fire.



More on the topic - according to what I read, the unit involved in this weeks shooting was 82nd Airborne. If they don't have plenty of snipers among their ranks, I am Mickey Mouse. Or a Poly Tubby if you like...

[Ned]

Originally posted by GePap
Since the UN does not have any power of its own, but only what its members give it, all those exmaples you gave show that those with power (the US and Europe, Japan and others) don't care to pick up the financial and human costs of going into the real tough, purely humanitarian cases like thsoe you have mentioned, and thus they leave them to the UN and then blame the UN for not doing a good job when it fact that pooor job is based on the fact that these rich states don't care to give the resources and manpower to actually suceed if they are not directly in charge of them.

OK, GePap, you seem to agree that even outside the areas of security, the UN does not and cannot work unless it is reformed. The question is, what is the direction of reform? Most UN apologist would like the US (read, rich countries) to fund all kinds of pro-bono activities for the third world with no strings attached. However, the people of the US (and other rich countries) are no longer willing to simply give the UN organizations carte blanc. If there are no strings attached to aid, the bad behavior that causes the need for aid in the first place can never be remedied.

I cite North Korea as a good example. Food aid there simply subsidizes a failed communist farming system. I would condition aid on reform.

[Chemical Ollie]

Well said, GePap.

[PLATO]

Originally posted by GePap
Since the UN does not have any power of its own, but only what its members give it, all those exmaples you gave show that those with power (the US and Europe, Japan and others) don't care to pick up the financial and human costs of going into the real tough, purely humanitarian cases like thsoe you have mentioned, and thus they leave them to the UN and then blame the UN for not doing a good job when it fact that pooor job is based on the fact that these rich states don't care to give the resources and manpower to actually suceed if they are not directly in charge of them.

The problem is not that the member countries are not willing to take action. The problem is that they are not willing to reach a concensus on taking action. Most notably this statement would apply to the big 5. On the SC they ALL have to agree on action.

[GePap]

The sort of orgnization you seek Ned will never see the light of day, since you secifically call for the end of National soverignty (perhaps except for the Us by allowing it a veto) as the basis of international relations. I would agree with you that National soverignty (including of the US) is not as important as it is made out to be, but political realities are what they are, and people, specially people of a "dmeocratic age" demand national soverignty, since today it is seen as one of the fundamental bases of democracy.As for Humanitarian aid: starving people don;t revolt, and most states can feed themselves, or at least, fed the politcally connected. Denying humanitarian aid just helps the regime kill the unwanted faster.

[GePap]

Originally posted by PLATO1003


The problem is not that the member countries are not willing to take action. The problem is that they are not willing to reach a concensus on taking action. Most notably this statement would apply to the big 5. On the SC they ALL have to agree on action.

But the reaosn they can't agree most of the time is cause they don't agree on how to share the costs of such operations and have no inclinations (cause these are non-issues politically back home) to start spending more on what would be needed.

[Ned]

Originally posted by Olaf HÃ¥rfagre


You must have played even more computer war games than me, as you have 12 times more posts. Look at yourself before you throw personal comments like "dum****" around you. Have you ever been a soldier? Where I live it's compulsory. I have never been in a war zone, which I am very happy for, but one of my closest buddies has made a total of 40 months of UN service in Lebanon, Bosnia and Hebron. He has been under fire by Serb artillery, Lebanese militia AK-47:s, Israeli Air Force and also intifada kids throwing big stones right into his lap through the closed car windows. He has told me all I need to know about what it's like to be under fire.



More on the topic - according to what I read, the unit involved in this weeks shooting was 82nd Airborne. If they don't have plenty of snipers among their ranks, I am Mickey Mouse. Or a Poly Tubby if you like...

Olaf, being a soldier in a UN peacekeeping outfit is like being a soldier in the US army in Vietnam. You are a target to both the enemy and civilian population and you can never take effective action to kill the enemy due to political restrictions.

No-one should ever ask anyone to serve under UN command when its boss is the UN SC.

I suspect, however, that there is not a soldier or would-be soldier anywhere in the world that would not want to serve under US command with president Bush as the Commander in Chief.

[Dinner]

I agree with Ned is so far as the aid money must always be conditional to the reciever accomplishing positive steps which will help fix the problems which lead to aid money being needed to begin with. Who gets to decide what constitutes a positive step? Why the aid donor of course.