UN: Saddam Shipped WMD Before War

Spader

Yeah the UN could have sent in more troops but it would have taken that one of the members of the security council..Russia Usa...France..whoever...proposed a resolution about doing so.

Nobody did.

The UN does not have an army of its own to send anywhere.

The UN............ IS its members.Its military force depends on its members.


The most powerful member of the security council i now and was then Usa.

Spader

Roadee

1. Yes.......I am a Mod......thank you for noticing

2. No.......I never accused you of flaming anyone......just there comments!! In which is perfectly fine, after all, as the saying goes here in the PD....."flame the ideas, not the person" But I keep reading what one person will post, and then you going off in a far away galaxy.....ranting about something completely different then what they have posted... (remember I made the suggestion that you READ what other's are saying before you flame there comments.......this is why.)

3. Freedom of expression is VERY welcome here......as long as it falls within the rules of DH.



I am sorry......but this statement is just WRONG for more reason's than I can even care to take the time to list. Actually......those comments are just straight out laughable!! So....under this line of thought.....if I have video of Raid killing someone....from start to finish........it doesn't count....since I am not a law enforcement officer?? And on another note.....I have no idea what you are ranting about...apparently you never read my comments.....if you had......you wouldn't be making the above comments. I never once said that there were WMD.....go back and read what I said a few more times.....maybe you just aren't understanding it correctly......or maybe just skimming through it ignoring a few words here and there??


After reading the above statement.......I would like to give you a little word of advice......RELAX. You are a VERY new member here on DH.......how about you take the time to get to know how things work around the PD and how the member's of DH that post in here are...maybe make some friends......before you start "appearing" like you have an attitude. You wouldn't want anyone to get the wrong impression about you........would you?

Roadee
DH Super Moderator

Falstaff

I agree, time for clinical detachment...lol

raid517

This thread has grown a bit...

GJ

raid517

And?

What's your message? Dismantle the UN? Ohh goody, lets do that and then see what kind of totally messed up world we would be living in then. Your problem is in blaming the UN for virtually all of the worlds ills - but ultimately unless you are blind or just blindly biased, there has to be some degree of recognition that sometimes "shit happens" - sometimes countries and people do terrible things - and often there isn't many people in this world who are very much interested in stopping them. In this regard you vastly over estimate the UN's abilities - it is not an extra national government with a huge army and airforce and a mandate to intervene in various counties affairs as and when it sees fit. I don't know how much more it is possible to drive this point home to you - but the UN is simply a collective of individual member states. That means it is only able to implement the collective will of those individual member states as and when that will exists. If no such collective will exists nothing will get done.

In any case I think if you look at the voting records the US (which I presume by your tone you believe should have total primacy over every aspect of international geopolitical affairs) has a far from spectacular voting record when it comes to many of the so called humanitarian disasters that seem to too frequently happen in this world.

You want to tear down the UN - but think it through for half a minute. Do you imagine for one second that the US would want to - or even be in a position to take on the task of resolving all of the world's problems? These things you referred to didn't just happen under the UN's nose - they happened under America's nose too. And America is as guilty as anyone of doing nothing. So what that eventually they did something in Bosnia - if Blair hadn't been elected in 1997 and hadn't persuaded Clinton to act, I doubt anyone would ever have lifted a finger. It took nearly 6 years for them to act - by which time 100's of thousands had been butchered. I still remember being actually physically sick after seeing many of the images that came out of Bosnia on an almost daily basis. (An interesting point to note is that if Clinton had refused to act, Blair to his credit had committed to sending UK forces into Bosnia, unilaterally if needed, to finally put an end to the slaughter).

So, since it seems unlikely that the US would do a much better job than the UN currently does, you have to ask what is all your pointless shouting about? You dismantle it and nothing, zero, zilch ever gets done. No charity work, nothing. Nobody talks and everyone plots against everyone else - and the whole world is set awash in a sea of mistrust and paranoia. How would that be any better to what we have now? And even if you did replace it, what would you replace it with? Do you think that whatever else was dreamed up would be any more effective than the UN? The bottom line is that the UN may or may not suck, but right now and for pretty much the rest of the foreseeable future, it's the best we have. People will never agree, nations will always have their own agendas, their own national self interests and while that is true - as it will always be true, no model you concoct for a forum where people can talk and try to avoid stepping each others toes will ever be wholly effective as a means of solving the world's conflicts.

It can lessen them, it can serve as a place where people negotiate, it can if most members arms are twisted hard enough, sometimes impose solutions - but really in truth it is likely that it (and any similar body) will always be limited in the extent of what they can do.

Anyway I think your book review is a little skewed. A number of other reviews I read gave a lot less vitriolic account of the authors experiences.

I guess the best thing to do is to actually read it, before using something that none of us here have actually seen, as the corner stone of your argument.

GJ

Roadee

Raid..........


I hate to say it.......no......I REALLY hate to say it...



but I have to agree with your views on the UN....even though I dont like the UN......I have to agree with what you have said!!




PS.........you may want to save this.....it may never happen again!!

Spader

First.

Check out the headline of this topic...you claim im not responding to it....................

Second:

Impression?

Well you have members here using the names of SS officers expressing antijewish ideas,denial of the Holocaust etc etc etc...without anyone raising an eyebrow or without any of it being edited out ...so i dont worry too much about impression.I say what i think without insulting people personally and i have a long way to go before i measure with any of them.

Attitude? Yeah i hope i have attitude.

Spader

kp59583

I didn't say anything about dismantling the UN. I put the article here because it shows that the UN needs do more than its doing. Everytime the UN commits troops is like after most of the killings has been done. I know it probably because a lot of member nations don't want to see any of there men killed but when there already in place in a country then they should try to prevent massacres from happening. To tell the Canadians to stand down and do nothing sends a very clear message to the types of people who commit these acts; and that is go ahead and do them the UN want stop you.

Spader

I agree with you that the UN should do more.If that is to happen then the super powers will have to do more.That is why they have special seats in the security council that the majority of other nations dont have.

The Canadians were most likeley told to standback in order not to loose lives which they probably would have if trying to stop the butchering with only 2500 men.

If that is morally justified or not is something im not gonna make myself judge of but it would have been morally justified if the membernations of the security council had proposed a resolution about sendnig more troops.

Why didnt they?

Well that is something to think about when asking why the UN does not work as intended.

Spader

raid517

I think this whole thing about 2500 Canadian troops is very over played. In a country the size of Rwanda, how much use do you think 2500 lightly armed Canadians would be? They were undoubtedly stood down because they were inadequate for the task that confronted them - and because they too faced the risk of being slaughtered.

Which is the whole point really. I mean why do you think there was only 2500 Canadian troops in Rwanda? Well there was so little exactly for the reasons I stated above - which is because member states simply were not willing to give them any teeth. (Don't think you can take the US out of this equation either - since the US also did nothing). It isn't just the US that isn't keen to surrender very much of it's national interests to some extra national authority - lots - indeed I would say most countries feel the same way. So clearly the reason why the UN has no teeth is because the member states are not willing to provide the resources - or the level of cooperation that is necessary in order to give it any. Is that really such a surprise?

As I said in my view, you are completely over stating what the role of the UN is. If you want to look at it in it's best context you have to just view it as something more akin to a charity, something that is tasked to go about the world distributing aid and doing good works - but which ultimately like most charities - if it is confronted by violence or intimidation, has very limited powers to respond. (Again you also have to understand that even if the UN did somehow have a huge army of it's own, there is still a thing called 'national sovereignty' which basically means that you need to get international approval before you can go directly interfering in an independent countries internal national affairs. So you see it isn't always as easy just to 'act' as you might think). It's other useful function is as I have said, as simply a forum where other members can talk and try to resolve their differences and to avoid brewing up new conflicts that might arise due to some misunderstanding or other. Something that can all too easily happen - particularly if people have no neutral ground they can meet on in order to resolve their differences.

Ultimately rather than blame the UN for everything - I think for a change we should blame our governments - because this is where the blame really lies. Anything less is just a case of political slight of hand - and cynical deception. Rather than dismiss the UN, the most constructive way forward is simply to accept the UN for what it is, with all of it's shortcomings and limitations intact.

For the UN to be anything more than it currently is, it would require the whole world to set aside its differences and agree to get along and to contribute resources and man power in order to work for the betterment of man kind. Unfortunately, as noble as an ideal as that is, it isn't something that is very likely to happen any time soon.

GJ

Spader

I fully agree with that.

Spader

kp59583

I think 2500 Canadians would have put up a real good fight against 8000 extremist Hutus.

The Tutsis became victims of Hutu massacres throughout the past four decades, but the worst slaughter occurred in spring 1994: most of the killings, which took place during a 100-day period were carried out by a well-organized force of 8,000 extremist Hutus.

Falstaff

while the U.N. looked on.....heavy sigh

raid517

Well that's what you think. It's a bit of a pointless argument really. A bit like arguing if a lion and a bear had a fight, which do you think would win?

They might have put up a 'good fight', but without air, artillery and other forms of tactical support - regardless if they were well trained, there is no guarantee at all that they would win.

Besides which the notion that appears to have singularly escaped you is that it is not possible for UN forces just to storm all over a country 'gung ho' style. This is because there is such a thing as the international rule of law. This means that before you can go just Willy nilly interfering in the affairs of a sovereign country, you have to be certain that you have the appropriate legal authority to do so. To intervene in anything of this nature you need a mandate. Getting a mandate is not on the whole an optional thing - in strict terms it is possible to act without one. If a country feels that their own direct national interest was threatened. Or you could do as you appear to be suggesting which is just say 'screw the UN' lets act whether anyone says it's legal or not.'

The problem with both of these options is that you have to take into account just exactly who your friends are and who's toes you might step on by just storming off and doing things without thinking - or bothering to ask how other people might feel about it.

A good example of this is that, say for example several small African countries objected to anyone acting. Perhaps they might choose to do so because they have traditional/tribal links with the Hutu militants (the ones responsible for the vast majority of the killings), or perhaps they just have some economic interest in seeing one side defeat the other.... It seems that your natural instinct might be to say 'stuff these tin pot little countries, who cares what they think!' However you have to remember that America views herself as currently being engaged in a Global war on terror. A large number of of these so called 'little tin pot countries' (several of which are indeed in no way little at all) have had problems with extremist Islamic militants, several others of which, being close neighbors of these countries have opted to declare themselves to be allies of America. So you may well find a situation in which the US needs to make sure that those countries that have declared themselves allies remain complaint - and allow US forces to do what's needed to fight terrorism in these regions. If it so happens that one of these countries just so happens to be an ally - or to have direct tribal ties to the Hutus in Rwanda, then you are faced with a dilemma. Do you act in a purely humanitarian basis to save lives, or do you act in your own national interest, which is to keep your allies sweet so that you can continue to pursue your own war against terrorism?

Which in these circumstances I wonder do you feel is right? Which is the greater good - and which is the lesser evil? It is to put it mildly, a very tough call to make. (I'm not saying that's how it did happen, but it is an example of how complex these issues can sometimes be).

The point here anyway is that someone in the UN objected. This does not mean that some specific person in the UN made this decision - as all the UN is is a body of bureaucrats who are tasked with implementing the collective decisions reached by member states - so there is no one person, no 'President of the UN' for you to blame. (There is the general sectary, but he is just a bureaucrat like all the rest. (Basically he is just the boss of all the other bureaucrats)). In this regard it is important to remember that bureaucrats don't make decisions, it is politicians who make decisions - and bureaucrats who implement them. So you have to ask who objected, who in the UN refused to approve any kind of intervention by Canadian forces? Was it America? Possibly... Was it Russia... Possibly, Was it France? Who knows... Was it some oil rich African nation? Again everything is possible.

It may not even have been anyone who actually came out and said that they objected. From what I can tell no one in the UN did or said very much at all - and that includes America.

Why didn't they say anything? Well again clearly it may have been in the selfish national interests of various countries to simply say - and do nothing.

So the Canadians didn't act - not because they were insufficient or too ill equipped - but because they had been neutered by various governments who refused to grant them the legal mandate to intervene. Without such a mandate, clearly any action they undertook would have been highly illegal - and it may well have cause irreparable harm to the vital national interests of a large variety of countries.

So like I said before, if you want to look for someone to blame, then don't blame the UN, blame our governments for refusing to do anything - because ultimately without their support, the UN is powerless to do anything.

Now I know you may think that all this sucks and that the law is an ass - but as sick as it is, it is often as much benefit to our own selfish/national interests as it is to the interests of others.

Maybe you know of some better way. If so it would be nice if you would share it with us, rather than just shouting about wanting to pull everything down. However some very bright people indeed have pondered on these issues - and what we have currently is the best solution that they have been able to find. So I think you will struggle to come up with anything that would stand any better a chance of working.

You either have law, or no law. You either have a place where people can discuss their differences - or you exist in a world filled with paranoia and ignorance. You either acknowledge that sometimes it is just not possible to solve all the world's problems, or you live in some fairy tale land, you can either have a limited kind of order based on the coperation of nations with competing interests - or you can have utter chaos. You tell me which you find preferable?

The world doesn't work like that. It never has and it never will.

GJ

Falstaff

chaos seems to be prevalent

raid517

Well that's a matter of perspective. From my perspective we have a semblance of order. It may not be complete - it may not be as wholesome/idealistic and all encompassing as some might like, sometimes it may even be quite cynical, but it is better than having nothing. No form of communication, no arbitration, no cooperation, no consultation at all - which is essentially what all you anti-UN people are promoting. That my friend is real chaos - and is something I want no part in.

That is the problem with all these one world theorists and right wingers who whinge that the UN is becoming an extra national government - because clearly they have no concept of the way the UN works. The UN isn't a decision making body, it's a 'decision implementing' body - all it does is implement decisions reached by member states.

We don't live in this idealistic world that they seem to imagine of brotherly cooperation, where we all strive towards a common purpose, like some unrealistic ideal of the betterment of man.

We live in a world of competing selfish interests, where each country really only cares about its own affairs and where cooperation and agreement are often horribly difficult things to achieve. (Though not always impossible).

We either recognize this and try to deal with it, try to work through our differences and provide a platform where we can try to avoid conflict - or we throw all that away and simply draw out the long knives, and plot secretly to stab each other in the back.

One world governments would never work because people from different countries simply can't get along for long enough to allow it to happen.

However the biggest danger we face is that perhaps one day we may all stop talking. I support the UN on the basis that it IS a talking shop - it was never meant to be much more than that - anything else anyone tells you is just a clever case of political deflection, where you find someone else to blame in order to justify your actions. I think it's particularly important that we talk, because in this dangerous world that we now live in, the minute we all stop talking is when disaster will undoubtedly strike us all.

Is that really a risk that you are willing to take?

Best regards,

GJ

Falstaff

The UN is an executive body populated by other governments. As for a talking shop, it cant hurt to have an open forum for the administration of those affairs that the UN deems their domain, but they failed to act in Iraq and will ultimately fail being decisive with the new IRAQ government. I turn a glazed eye towards the UN and ask this question? "where were you in 2002?" George Bush and Tony Blair had to take action to stop a despot and a tyrant based on the intelligience they had, however flawed, but the UN wont take action with good information, I think that is very ironic.

raid517

Sigh... you just don't get it Jeff do you? Did you even read what I wrote?

The UN is not an 'executive body' at all - as this would mean that it has decision making powers that are independent of individual member states. This is simply not true.

The UN is a non executive 'decision implementing body' populated by a variety of what is known as NGO's (or non governmental offices) who's task is to implement the collective decisions reached by individual member states.

The designation 'NGO' is by no means an accident - as essentially this means that none of these offices have any kind of executive decision making powers of their own. They are NOT a government, they are simple humble bureaucrats who's task is to implement the decisions reached by individual governments.

So you can turn your head towards the UN and shake it all you want, but you are shaking your head at a misconception.

It wasn't the UN who decided not to support the war in Iraq, it was a bunch of individual member states. Blaming a bunch of powerless bureaucrats to my eyes seems like a pretty pointless thing to do.

And anyway, from a lot of people's perspectives, technically the UN did give it's support to the action in Iraq. So where your problem is with it is something of a mystery.

A few individual member states did disagree - but as I have explained, what do you expect? Total agreement every time on every aspect of world affairs? Like I said above that just is simply NEVER going to happen.

Or do you think that there should be agreement all the time whenever it comes to what the US views as it's own national interests? In other words, do you believe that the UN should just be some kind of rubber stamping body for whatever the US feels it wants to do? Again that is just NEVER going to happen! Nor I think should it.

Disagreement is a fact of life - and the sooner you anti-UN folks can accept that the sooner everyone can move on. If you imagine that in a world filled with a multitude of competing interests we are always going to get everyone to agree all the time, then you are simply DREAMING!

Disagreement is a vital facet of any civilized culture, it is what the democracies of this world are based on. You either acknowledge this - or you take the stance that democracy on the whole is a bad idea.

So some countries dared to disagree with America... So what!?!? Thank god we live in a world where disagreement is still possible.

Without it, we would stand the chance of living life in the shadow of a pseudo dictatorship - where only Americans were granted the right to deliberate upon the fate of the world. And that is something I want no part in at all.

GJ