OK, I know I said I’d stop posting, but can I pass up a chance to link to some UN-bashing? I think not.
If your only news source is the Communadian Broadcasting Company, you’d think the UN was at the heart of the tsunami relief efforts. But people on the ground tell a different story:
We’ve found that to avoid running into the UN, we must go out to where the quake and tsunami actually hit. As we come up on two weeks since the disaster struck, the UN is still not to be seen where it counts — except when holding well-staged press events. Ah, yes, but the luxury hotels are full of UN assessment teams and visiting big shots from New York, Geneva, and Vienna.
…
Sitting VERY late for two consecutive nights in interminable meetings with UN reps, hearing them go on about “taking the lead coordination role,” pledges, and the impending arrival of this or that UN big shot or assessment/coordination team, for the millionth time I realized that if not for Australia and America almost nobody in the tsunami-affected areas would have survived more than a few days. If we had waited for the UNocrats to get their act coordinated, the already massive death toll would have become astronomical. But, fortunately, thanks to “retrograde racist war-mongers ” such as John Howard and George W. Bush, as we sat in air conditioned meeting rooms with these UNocrats, young Australians and Americans were at that moment “coordinating” without the UN and saving the lives of tens-of-thousands of people.
1. Don’t you dare stop posting! There’s a dearth of such
fascinating reading on the web.
2. I’m not sure why the UN-bashing though; granted, it doesn’t
work very well, but the idea of it isn’t a bad one. It just
needs a good overhaul. Starting with Kofi. Anyhow, no
organization that attempts to work on the scale that the
UN does could logistically be fully functional. The red
tape would be severely limiting. It’s amazing that they
get anything done.
Back to our conversation about Churchill and democracy. right?
It may not work, but until somebody comes up with a better one,
it’s all we have.
3. I think I just let myself in for a blast. Go ahead,
rant away. :P Gives us material for conversation.
I’m afraid I just don’t see the need for anything like the UN at all. I think there should be a League of Democracy whose only purpose would be the encouragement of democracy and the common defense of free nations. But I think that most of the functions of the UN would better be done on an ad-hoc as-needed basis — just like the tsunami relief efforts. The US and Australia didn’t make big pronouncements about it, they just had a carrier battle group on the way to the Gulf, so they started helping. No big deal. Whereas the UN, like any large bureaucracy, exists mainly to preserve its own jobs and priviledges; I’m not sure there’s any way to meaningfully reform it.
And if you follow the links in the upper right-hand corner of the page, you’ll find much more commentary like it — there’s not much use for mine.