I say the breakdown of East Timor into bloody violent collapse is a UN success story because that is how all UN efforts seem to end. At this point, we’ve got to conclude international chaos, genocide and civil war is in fact the UN’s primary goal.
There is one common element in every international crisis: the United Nations. While it does seem like a world away, paying attention to the raging violence and probable demise of the East Timor government is important because it is another perfect example of how the UN is not simply ineffective, but a purveyor of death and destruction around the world.
In one case, the UN’s debauchery directly condemns women and children, as it acknowledges the scourge of rape and child molestation (now dubbed the Sex-for-Food scandals) is a factor in every single one of its international missions. Missions we pay for.
Now, in East Timor, the UN has been ensconced supposedly to help to fledgling government since it declared independence from Indonesia in 1999. And what is the result of the UN’s presence and “help”? Civil war, troops and civilians rampaging through streets with machetes murdering each other, as Australian troops are sent in attempting to quell the situation. And, as usual, women and children are the first ones to be butchered.
Australia’s The Age provides background and some critical analysis of the pathetic and deadly failure (again) of the UN:
Warnings of Timor violence ignored
THE UN, Australia and the East Timorese Government had multiple warnings of the looming internal security crisis that has plunged Dili into violent chaos.
The UN was warned two months ago that East Timor’s defence force, set up with Australian aid and training to protect the tiny nation from foreign attack, was a potential threat to the country’s internal stability.
Analysts with knowledge of East Timor’s Government and military said the violence stemmed from a mix of divisions forged in the independence struggle over 24 years, and the UN’s failure to develop a proper defence force during its 1999-2002 administration. Instead, East Timor was left with an army with no clear role, united only in its resentment of the national police….
The report said the UN made “critical mistakes” in its handling of the Falintil guerillas, who resisted Indonesian rule from 1975 until 1999 and had sought a major role in the new army, known by the acronym Falintil-FDTL.
The report said the UN failed to create a proper Ministry of Defence, in part because donor countries were reluctant to fund a potentially politicised defence force that lacked civilian control and a clear defence policy.
At this point we really must view the UN as an entity as dangerous to life and liberty as Radical Islam. In fact, it is even more dangerous because it has the cloak of legitimacy as it destroys people’s lives. It is indeed beyond incompetent, it is part of the worldwide problem of chaos and violence. How much longer do we condemn the needy and struggling of the world to a “world body” that either contributes to or is worse than the murderers, war lords, plotters, and despots those countries are trying to fend off?
When will enough be enough? The first thing I would do, if this were the United States of Tammy, would be remove the UN from our soil, and completely end funding, effectively destroying it as a functioning world body keeping it from preying on the world’s most vulnerable. I would then create a new organized Coalition of the Willing, and let the scum of the Earth who want to call themselves the UN (countries like Syria, North Korea, China, Russia, Cuba, Zimbabwe, etc), maintain their despotic debating society in Brussels, where they will no doubt fit in quite nicely.
Related Links:
BBC: UN pulls staff from E Timor chaos
BBC East Timor Independence Roundup
Recently I saw an interesting program on the History Channel about mercenaries. For a show like that in these PC-ridden days, it was surprisingly objective. It described in detail how a group of about 300 mercenaries very soundly defeated tens of thousands of very brutal rebels in Sierra Leone back in the 1990’s. The mercenaries won the thanks of many local villagers for what they did. Then the UN stepped in with their “peacekeepers,” and chaos ensued again, with the rebels regaining ground. Funny how this isn’t something that I remember hearing about in the mainstream media.
The urge is upon me to share an old and probably pointless story, but I’ll be brief. Okay, so it’s 1974, and Larry, my college roommate (a YAFer), regards me as hopelessly liberal, but he intends to set me straight on the issues. With respect to the UN, he relates an anecdote from his extreme youth. Seems that his third grade teacher, a Miss Sunshine Wishful Thinking Liberal type, was explaining to the class how fabulous the UN was and how it always solved all the world’s problems peacefully. He knew as much as any third-grader about the state of the world, but he’d picked up this keyword somewhere, and instinct told him that now was the time to use it. So he raised his hand and asked: “What about Katanga?” He didn’t know a damn thing about Katanga, but the question seemed to stop the teacher in her tracks. After an awkward pause, she carefully replied, “I’m told that there was a reason for what happened,” and then she changed the subject.
Good old Larry. I’ve got to look him up one day and tell him he was right about everything.
P.S. Speaking of the UN, be sure to see this compelling movie, Hotel Rwanda. It’s a dramatization of the real-life experiences of a Rwandan hotel manager who struggled to maintain a little island of survival as the murderous mania set in. Yes, the UN was in the picture, with orders not to interfere.
Horse: Hotel Rwanda was a brilliant movie, and anyone who believes in any trace of virtue on the part of the UN needs to see it to have the scales removed from their eyes.