HoodaThunk?

Clare Short is a former UK official. She has made plain her belief that the United Nations should have been the sole decision-maker with regard to any action in Iraq. She has been strangely silent about the UN’s role in the “Oil-For-Food” scam that directed millions of relief dollars away from the people that needed the support and into the pockets of a murderous tyrant, his minions, the UN Secretary-General’s son, the UN official tasked with oversight of the program, and nations that would later seek to become obstacles to every attempt to apply the consequences of the UN resolutions they themselves had voted for. And to follow that performance up, she’s holding this crook-infested organization up as the planet’s most moral authority:

(Emphasis mine.) To make a statement like that, you have got to be completely blind – willfully or due to delusion – to the actions and inactions this body has taken in the last 2 years. Hell, why not go back as far as Bosnia? Let’s just all recall the events of the so-called “UN Safe Zone” of Srebrenica. Briefly put, the UN guaranteed the safety of Bosnian muslims by creating an enclave in Srebrenica and declaring it a weapons-free zone. The Bosnians who entered surrendered their weapons to the UN forces – Dutch peacekeepers – who were providing security. Tens of thousands of Bosnians were there under the watchful eye of a force of 600 lightly armed Dutch. (Note: you read that right – the UN provided a whole 600 troops, lightly armed.) The enclave was laid to siege in May by Serbs who began shelling the place in early July. The Bosnian muslim fighters asked for their weapons back but the UN refused. The UN commander on site then requested close air support. Two days later, the UN commanding general, one General Janiver, finally agreed to the request after initially refusing. The planes were launched but told to abort the attack after the shelling stopped. The Serbs were supposed to vacate the area by 6:00 am the following morning or face air attack.

At 9:00 am the following morning, the colonel in command of the enclave was informed by the UN that his request for air support had been submitted on the wrong form. The wrong form. They required the request to be re-submitted – who the hell asks a battlefield commander to submit a written request for air support in the first place, let alone on a specific friggin’ form?!? – but the aircraft had to return to a base in Italy to refuel since they’d been airborne since 6:00 am.

Make a note of that: the aircraft were on station to provide air support at 6:00 am as originally planned but were required to stay in a holding pattern for 3 hours because the UN didn’t get the request on their precious specific form.

The planes returned at 2:30 pm – 8 and one-half hours later than planned – and dropped 2 bombs on Serb positions. Two. 8.5 hours, tens of thousands of civilians depending on them for their very lives against a foe that had already busted UN enclave borders, 600 of their own people being laid to siege and they authorize two…freakin’…bombs. Of course by that time several of those “peacekeepers” were now hostages and the Serbs holding them forced the UN to withdraw. The Serbs then came in, separated out all the men between 12 and 77 from the women and children – who were placed on buses and shipped out of the area – and then summarily executed those men and boys. 7,000 of them. The UN did nothing. US forces committed to the area began operations to counter the Serbs. Not being complete idiots, they agreed to leave certain specific areas and the area began to stabilize. I say began because we still have forces over there keeping the peace that the UN was wholy incapable of doing.

This is the outfit Ms. Short would have you believe is “the only body that has the moral authority” to handle the relief efforts. And I haven’t even touched on the UN’s “relief efforts” underway in Africa. Let the UN run the show in southeast Asia and you might just have Sumatran and Sri Lankan women forced to prostitute themselves for bread and water. Ms. Short’s assertions that the UN can not only be trusted to participate in this effort but should, by right, lead it is one of the most singly moronic statements I’ve heard all year. And in 2004, that’s saying something. Ms. Short should stick to complaining about topless models in British newspapers and leave the important issues of the day to professionals who can grasp reality.