Republicans & Conservatives: Archives

Eric,
Most of the articles you refer to involve problems with UN peacekeeping forces. However, the UN does much more than provide peacekeeping forces. For example, numerous UN agences are, even as we speak, coordinating relief & delivering supplies to victims of the tsunami. Read any news service stories about the disaster relief going on right now, and UN agencies figure prominently. These relief workers are not ‘gutless, immoral,’ or ‘hypocritical.’ They do, in fact, serve the purpose for which the UN was created.

You might want to refine this post to what I perceive as your intended target, UN peacekeepers. If your intention is to target the entire UN due to corruption, I’d urge caution. Many nations in the world are corrupt, in that they accept bribery as an intrinsic part of doing business and of holding an official position. While the US should obviously oppose conducting business & beauracracy that way, I suspect it would be nearly impossible to solve the problem, short of refusing to communicate with other countries.

By the way, I’d like to see the structure of the security council reformed, but that’s not where you’re going with this…

Does the Oil-For-Food program in Iraq count as a humanitarian relief effort for which the U.N. was responsible for administering? If so, the United Nation record on humanitarian aid is not so good either.

phx8,

Well, the subject is perhaps a little broad. You bring up good points about relief and the corrupt nature of many member states. I didn’t even get into that but I think it is a prime reason the UN itself, as it is structured, cannot fulfill it’s stated mission. Corrupt nations have too big a role. Maybe the concept itself needs retooling.

The last thing we need is for the UN to ‘reform’ itself. It would end up being even more corrupt. It would undoubtedly want more power and more money.

Also, I assume that a logistics expert is coordinating relief supplies and the like for instance.

Eric-
The UN is utterly evil, right? Give me a break. First of all, we’ve adequately demonstrated ourselves that even a military with the best intentions can inflict atrocities on civilians, and act in corrupt ways.

You speak of a few incidents for all those soldiers that have taken place over the course of quite a number of years. This is simply an info dump of sensational information for propaganda value. Roger Ailes would be proud of you. Journalists wouldn’t be.

Armies are human enterprises. Get enough people out there, and by the law of averages, you’ll get scumbags out there. The question is, is the behavior pervasive? I mean, you criticize the UN mission in Kosovo, but their atrocities were not condoned by the UN, and the UN troops as a whole helped end Milosevic’s reign of terror there. I know you criticize me for my reservations about the War in Iraq out of this, but can you tell me that anything positive would have come if the UN hadn’t been involved?

Truth is, nobody’s perfect, and politics constantly interferes with military operations on our side as well as theirs. I’m sure I could comb through news about our military and come up with just as bad. Of course, you would reject it as a representation of all U.S. Military personnel, and rightly so. Same goes for the UN. Of course, the UN is foreign, and doesn’t always go our way, so in your eyes, they have no redeeming features.

Well, you know something, I think your perspective is too selective.

Stephen,

It’s amazing how facts become a nuisance when they contradict our worldview. What you have dismissed out of hand is clear evidence of a consistant pattern of abuse by UN employees, soldiers, and top staff. It ceases to be an isolated incident when it occurs over a decade in every place the UN does peacekeeping. Rather than pretend it means nothing, why not examine why this happens with such regularity?

The UN is utterly disfunctional and corrupt. They attend summits about famine in third world countries discussing how the world needs to do more with less while they are eating catered meals with lobster and caviar. Give me a break.

…we’ve adequately demonstrated ourselves that even a military with the best intentions can inflict atrocities on civilians, and act in corrupt ways.

You may be right. Perhaps I am doing exactly what the left did with Abu Ghraib. I’m just opposed to the UN politically, right? Well, who does that make the left opposed to by analogy?

You speak of a few incidents for all those soldiers that have taken place over the course of quite a number of years. This is simply an info dump of sensational information for propaganda value. Roger Ailes would be proud of you. Journalists wouldn’t be.

Journalists seem to be “pretty selective” about who they go after don’t they? I wonder why the UN seems to be off limits? So much for truth and openess. Is the watchdog role just for Republican or conservative organizations?

Truth is, nobody’s perfect, and politics constantly interferes with military operations on our side as well as theirs.

Except maybe Rumsfeld. He should be fired? He really is evil?

The United Nations is a key factor in the
U.S. Governments, and in particular this
administration and republican party efforts
to control world economic policy. It also
provides the U.S. with key links to other
governments that publicly it claims not to
deal with. Lets be real about the U.N., we
are as much at fault in a large way about its
conduct as anyone.

The U.S. government experiences bouts of corruption as well. Does that justify doing away with the US gov’t., or reforming it, changing it, and forcing it to live up to its potential for good?

The World needs a UN. The world also needs to reform UN policies and force it to live up to its intended and stated purposes. Since the UN is comprised of member nations, it is incumbent upon the citizens of each of those nations as well as their respective governments to demand reforms.

Calling for its dissolution only begs the question, what will take its place? If it is replaced, will the people and nations of the world not have to make the very changes in the new organization of nations that are now required of the UN in order for it to live up to its mission?

Some folks just like to hate, it is so much easier than doing the hard work of improving and making better. But hate does not create solutions, it blockades them.

The UN is very corrupt and we need the UN. We have to hold those two contradictory ideas in our minds at the same time.

Stephen and David make good points about the fallibility of human enterprises. The world should cut that much slack to the U.S.

I always like to ask the compared to what question. Compared to the UN, the U.S. looks very good. A day with the UN in the Congo or Somalia make Abu Ghraib look tame. I just hope that everyone remembers that next time we decry some supposed American atrocity.

What is also interesting is how UN officials presume to criticize the U.S. From Kofi Anon, who runs the whole mess, to our recent experience with Jan Egeland, these guys are entitled to an opinion, but they sure don’t speak from the moral high ground.

Eric,

There seem to be pretty strong parallels between the problems at the UN and the problems with our own armed forces. (According to Sy Hersh, even the child rape tape has a counterpart.) Both are flawed institutions that need oversight.

As for the lack of left-wing response, isn’t the BBC a haven for lefties? Another source you cite is “PeaceWomen: Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom”. I think that name speaks for itself.

It’s amazing how facts become a nuisance when they contradict our worldview.

Your words, not mine. I believe corruption is an inherent risk and possibility in any institution of power, and I have yet to see any institution here or abroad that has not suffered its blight. From what I’ve seen, your picture of corruption in the UN is extraordinarily selective. Your politics guarantee that you won’t give them a chance.

I don’t take a pollyanna view of any institution of power. If you’re expecting me to be shocked about incidents of corruption in wrongdoing in the UN, you shouldn’t hold your breath. I take the same attitude with the US government, with congress, with our armed forces, with any authority. None merit my unalloyed faith.

I think if you do your homework, you can find a scandal of some kind in every U.S. Military engagement. Most, though, are taken care of internally. I don’t pretend it means nothing, but I least have some kind of threshold to cross before I start believing it means something greater than it does by itself.

I told you before, you get enough people in one spot and you’ll have scumbags show up with them. Would you have our military judged by the corruption and vice of a few, just because it happens every time we go into some country? It’s a silly, fallacious approach to the data. Correlation is not causation.

Understand this: The UN doesn’t have a standing army of its own. Member nations contribute troops to the UN forces, from armies of varying standards. This is one of the UN’s weakness, I believe. Of course the solution to that is one I think you and a dumptruck load of Hal Lindsey afficionados would not back.

As for the Lobster and Caviar, it is in bad taste, but do rich folk discussing hunger in our private foundations observe any sort of austerity either? I think you ascribe exclusivity to failings for the UN that in reality are much more common among the power elite.

As for Journalists, you choose an article from a rather conservative-friendly source for a person criticizing bias. And again, as you have many times, you haven’t read close enough.

First, I really doubt you can make the case that the Weekly standard itself is unbiased. The central question here is why the reporters dislike him. You grab straight for political motivation, but miss other sides of the issue.

For one thing, the Bush administration has been extraordinarily secretive and hostile to the press, even early on, even while they enjoyed generally positive press.

For another thing, the average reporter likely has a clearer, more integrated picture of the situation in Iraq and elsewhere. They’ve done the fact-checking on Bush’s claim, and many have seen the war first hand.

The Weekly Standard makes a particularly awful point in the course of the article, saying that the press needs to better resemble the mind of America. Leaving aside the ideological supposition there, it’s a really fricking stupid idea. The press is not supposed to flatter the prejudices of the public, but instead ensure a dynamic flow of meaningful information.

Reality is, no news is politically neutral. To filter for such neutrality, to actively seek to balance the news (especially with the conservative media’s activist sensibilities) is to blunt damaging information that deserves to be damaging to those involved, and underplay the successes when success deserve praise. This kind of neutrality is just spin in the disguise of objectivity.

The kind of neutrality advocated by the Journalism establishment is not political, in both the positive and negative sense of advocacy. It is instead based on a rigorous examination of facts of sources. The balance rests where the facts show it should rest.

Your problem is you take the media’s criticism of Bush personally. Fact is, he’d have an easier time of things in media if he got the kind of results he loves to talk about. If you talk about freedom and democracy, and all you have at the moment is chaos and disorder, a person working off the facts will be obligated to point out the lack of progress.

When you stop worrying about whether people will insert their own personal point of view (which they will) and start worry about the facts of the matters at hand, then you will get somewhere. Otherwise, you’re bound to the spin, regardless of it’s proximity to reality.

I feel the highest integrity comes from a combination of moral concern and factual scruples. If you get too lax about the morality of your actions, and too negligent of the fact concerning the results and contexts of them, you can go dangerously awry in your thinking and action. So it happened with Rumsfeld.

David,

Some folks just like to hate, it is so much easier than doing the hard work of improving and making better. But hate does not create solutions, it blockades them.

Uh, David, that’s quite a leap from disgust to hate. But then I suppose that makes it easier to dismiss my argument.

Stephen,

…but I least have some kind of threshold to cross before I start believing it means something greater than it does by itself.

I noticed. That threshhold is obviously Republican in nature.

For one thing, the Bush administration has been extraordinarily secretive and hostile to the press, even early on, even while they enjoyed generally positive press.

Again, you ascribe to Bush what the UN is doing in spades, yet you completely excuse and apologize for the UN. Shall I gather all the quotes of Kofi Annan saying press stories are ‘unhelpful’ in finding out the truth? That their ‘internal’ investigation will uncover all the ‘important facts’ and fully disclose them? That the UN is essentially above being investigated by Congress, that no UN staff or official shall be allowed to give testimony or sumbit evidence?

Ignore it if you must. All I’m saying is that what the left refuses to do ‘patriotically’ for the UN, in order to ‘make it better’, they are all too willing to do for the US military and the Bush Administration. Is that partisan? Yes. I didn’t really expect it to be any different actually.

The defense you’ve constructed for the UN is basically that the US military did it too. Everyone does it. Or anyone would? Basically you seem to be saying that we should just ignore UN corruption then?

…you get enough people in one spot and you’ll have scumbags show up with them. Would you have our military judged by the corruption and vice of a few…

Let’s judge this on it’s own merits, shall we?

For another thing, the average reporter likely has a clearer, more integrated picture of the situation in Iraq and elsewhere. They’ve done the fact-checking on Bush’s claim, and many have seen the war first hand.

Pollyanna?

Stephen, you have a habit of not applying these same standards to the other side my friend. You claim bias if the source has a disclosed conservative viewpoint. Most of the press will not disclose their left leaning viewpoint. Which is worse for the integrity of the “dynamic flow of meaningful information”?

Was Dan Rather and his producers acting on this same, “clearer, more integrated picture” of the election? Please.

Eric-
You’re one to talk about Republican thresholds of belief. Those articles describe several incidents over the course of more than decade. That time lapse and the lack of additional clustering of incidents leads me to believe that you’re just being narrowly critical and sensationalistic about your read on the UN.

You talk about UN secrecy, but as I’ve told you in the past, Bush’s secrecy has been so great and worrisome that you have John Dean, once counsel for the Nixon White House raising the red flag on this.

You have little room to criticize the left’s approach to the UN, given the Republican dominated government’s approach. You guys have control of our foreign policy, so any lack of leadership is your lack of leadership.

I don’t defend anything done, but I ask that you not condemn an organization on evidence you wouldn’t accept to condemn us.

You hide behind questions of bias while you freely skew things to your side. YOu ask “Pollyana” when I only state the obvious: that reporters would be the first to get the feeds from all over the place, including the feeds that news organizations afraid of being labelled as biased by your people surpress.

The whole issue is that you can claim a concealed liberal bias anytime the news isn’t good for your party, and point is unfalsifiable. If we claim there’s not a bias, you generalize some isolated paragraphs and accuse those who don’t see that bias of not looking hard enough.

I am asking no such thing. The facts are important to me because they keep all sides honest. I don’t want to beat up on your side, only to have my own side act with corruption and incompetence.

You decry a liberal bias that even your own people say is not half as bad as you protest it to be. Your people are playing the refs, calling a foul anytime you don’t feel comfortable with the news or outcome of an event. I’m getting tired of this kind of whining, and I wish the Republican party would develop a spine and start taking responsible for their actions. I mean, is it any wonder your people are so undisciplined in terms of war, fiscal responsibility and regulation? Your party is the party of buck-passing nowadays.

What more can you expect from an organization born out of the pits of Hell itself.

I hear you Ron.

Ironically enough, it was the United States who formulated a large part of UN Policy after WW2. Britain and France wanted something that favored their Colonial Ambitions but were unable to stop the US. As a result, it became easy for India, Indonesia, Pakistan and the rest to break off and get Recognition from the World.

You are correct that the United Nations were born from the Pits of Hell. And those Pits are called the United States of America…

Thats right Aldous!

Blame the United States for everything.
Guess the ol hillary in 08 train has already started rolling.
And to think I was actually starting to respect some liberal mindsets.

What liberial mind set?

Ron Brown…are you referring to The Republican party or the U.N.? Two equally degenerate organizations.