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Better than nothing?Your view of the UN seems to focus on the first world, just like Bolton, but about two thirds of the worlds population lives in poverty, keep in mind everyday 40,000 children die of starvation, and this is where the UN does the most good. Programs to end hunger, promote agriculture, keep populations in check, disease control, aids, refugees, peace keeping, election monitoring, and war crimes prosecution have limited but good results. A lot better than nothing.
I guess that depends on your version of "nothing," or maybe your idea of "better" is just skewed buggy:
http://whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/POLITICS/UN/peace.html
Atrocities documented in;Beasts in Blue Berets
The Reality Of The United Nations
I'm not in the habit of just copying whole articles into my website, but in this case, I feel the following is worth preserving, and as it will soon depart the original website, It's preserved here.
I've been a past supporter of the United Nations and at one time felt that the concept of a one-world government had merit, until I saw the sort of person that aspires to planetary thrones. Also, with just one planetary government, all social evolution and experimentation would cease, I'm not ready to declare that civilization has peaked, or that it is even civilized (as the following will attest).
Here, as it appeared in the New American (their subscription info is at the bottom) is the story even I found hard to believe.
Somalia
Liberia and Bosnia:In early July, Privates Claude Baert and Kurt Coelus, the two paratroopers photographed dangling the Somali child over a flame, were acquitted by a military court, which ruled that the incident — described by Baert and Coelus as a punishment for stealing — was "a form of playing without violence," according to prosecutor Luc Walleyn. And what of discipline from the UN, whose "Code of Personal Conduct for Blue Helmets" requires that peacekeepers "respect and regard the human rights of all"? Gould reports that a UN spokesman dismissed the acquittal of Baert and Coelus by insisting that "the UN is not in the habit of embarrassing governments that contribute peacekeeping troops."<snip>
"Shocking as it is, the UN scandal in Somalia is no anomaly," wrote Gould in the Village Voice. "[An analysis] of documents and reports relating to recent UN peacekeeping operations has uncovered incidents ranging from murder and torture to sexual exploitation, harassment of and discrimination against local women and children."<snip>
Cambodia:During the "frenzy of looting" that broke out in Liberia in the spring of 1996, peacekeepers used UN vehicles to make off with pilfered goods, according to the April 12, 1996 issue of USA Today. UN vehicles — and the troops responsible for them — have also been a boon to Balkan drug smugglers. The August 9, 1996 Washington Times reported that "U.S. and Bosnian officials suspect that high-ranking UN officials from Jordan based in the central Bosnian towns of Bugojno and Travnik have routinely provided UN vehicles to help smugglers get contraband past checkpoints. The officers appear to have received money and the services of prostitutes from the smugglers, led by Islamic foreigners who entered Bosnia with U.S. approval to defend the Muslim government."
Rwanda:The UN's "nation-building" mission in Cambodia — long touted as among the world body's proudest achievements — added to that unfortunate land's abundant history of lawlessness. In 1993, 170 residents of Cambodia protested the abusive behavior of blue helmet troops in a letter to Yasushi Akashi, who served as then-Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali's representative in Cambodia. Prominent among the complaints was the mistreatment of women, who were treated to abuse and harassment by UN officials "regularly in public restaurants, hotels and bars, banks, markets, and shops."
New York Times correspondent Barbara Crossette, whose primary beat is the UN, elaborated: "The bad behavior [of UN forces in Cambodia] was not limited to abuse of women. There were bar fights, brawls, and shootouts and a proliferation of brothels, stolen vehicles and general drunken boorishness. Geographical origins were no indicator of what to expect. While some Asian and African troops got out of line, it was the soldiers of a Bulgarian battalion who had the worst reputation. They went down in local legend as ‘the Vulgarians.'" Cambodia has descended again into murderous chaos, and Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, believes that "the mess that Cambodia finds itself in today is in large part a product of the UN's failure to uphold the rule of law" in the course of its "nation-building" mission.
And then there's child prostitution in six different countries:Nightmare in Rwanda
The same lawlessness infected the UN mission to Rwanda, which suffered a Cambodia-style genocide earlier this decade. Crossette noted that Rwandans accused UN troops "of illicit trading, hit-and-run driving, sexual harassment and criminal abuse of diplomatic immunity they have bestowed on themselves. The disruptive personal behavior of some troops has been a factor in Rwanda's demand that all peacekeepers be withdrawn from the country...."
Also contributing to that demand is the fact that UN forces in Rwanda actually abetted the worst bloodletting in recent memory — the Rwandan genocide of 1994, in which a half-million Tutsis were annihilated in approximately 100 days. "Many of the mass murderers were employees of the international relief agencies," testified Peter Hammond of Frontline Fellowship in Holocaust in Rwanda. In one incident recounted by Hammond, Belgian UN troops stationed in a heavily fortified compound in Kigali "deceived the [Tutsi] refugees by assembling them for a meal in the dining hall and then [they] evacuated the base while the refugees were eating. Literally two minutes after the Belgians had driven out of their base, the Presidential Guard poured into the buildings annihilating the defenceless Tutsi refugees."
Then there's Haiti:Follow the Brothels
The market in prostitution — including child prostitution — thrives wherever blue berets decamp. According to Gould, records of UN peacekeeping missions document that "brothels have sprouted nearby — and in one case allegedly inside — UN compounds. In the latter case, prostitutes were allegedly employed by the UN and were reportedly even shipped on UN planes to fornicate with a UN staff member in hotels paid for by the UN."
Last December a UN study on children in war reported that blue berets had been involved in child prostitution in six of the 12 countries which had been studied. In country after country unfortunate enough to attract the UN's "humanitarian" intervention, "the arrival of peacekeeping troops has been accompanied with a rapid rise in child prostitution," the document reported. Following the signing of a peace treaty in Mozambique in 1992, for example, "soldiers of the United Nations operation ... recruited girls aged 12 to 18 years into prostitution."
UN in Haiti accused of second massacre in Cit Soleil - January 21, 2007
And the Cholera UN forces inflicted on the residents:According to residents of Cite Soleil, UN forces attacked their neighborhood in the early morning hours of Dec. 22, 2006 and killed more than 30 people including women and children. For many this was a repeat of UN military operations on July 6, 2005 when more than 26 people were killed in a successful assassination attempt on Emmanuel "Dred" Wilmer and four of his closest followers.
Cholera Linked to U.N. Forces, But Questions Remain
Haiti's Cholera Outbreak
Cholera Linked to U.N. Forces, But Questions Remain
Martin Enserink
An eagerly awaited report from an independent panel leaves little doubt that United Nations peacekeeping forces from Nepal inadvertently introduced cholera to Haiti last fall, triggering an epidemic that has killed almost 5000 and whose end is not yet in sight. The four-member committee, which presented its findings to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in New York City on 3 May, dispatches with the theory that Vibrio cholerae had been lurking in local waters and emerged as a result of favorable ecological or environmental circumstances.
This sums up the U.N and it's "ideals" best, and tell us all much of why your views are SOOOO misguided buggy:
From the quoted article at THE NEW AMERICAN
Haunting Prophecy
Gould described the UN as "a bizarre universe of intrigue and outrage, where diplomats from 185 countries — stuffed suits simmering with regional, religious, and class-bred hatreds — try to promote world peace." Such is the character of the institution whose masters crave the power to enforce "world law." <snip>
More than seven decades ago, while the U.S. Senate was debating ratification of the League of Nations Covenant, Senator William Borah (R-ID) sought to cool the ardor of the League's supporters by dousing it with a bracing shower of cold reality. Those who believed that a world army would consist of stainless champions of "world peace" were ignoring the unyielding facts about human nature. A world army, Borah declared, would consist of "the gathered scum of the nations organized into a conglomerate international police force ordered hither and thither by the most heterogeneous and irresponsible body or court that ever confused or confounded the natural instincts and noble passions of a people." Can there be any doubt that the UN has vindicated Borah's dismal prophecy?
Alas that is another discussion entirely.
