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How Bad Does the U.N. Have to Get?

That’s a good question. Mull that while reading Daniel Hannan in the UK Telegraph on the challenge to Kumbayah-singing UN fans posed by the news that the UN may be encouraging elephant poaching in the Congo. I dunno, if you can stomach the mass graves and child rape …

Here’s a nice dilemma for Lefties. What if UN peacekeepers in the Congo turn out to have been encouraging elephant poaching? Would they continue to give the organisation their unconditional support?

The UN gets away with an extraordinary amount. Because it is thought to embody a lofty ideal, many liberal-minded people are prepared to overlook what it actually does. Never mind that it betrayed the Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica. Never mind that its officials were illicitly running oil-for-food scams with Saddam. Never mind that it ordered its local commander not to seize the arms caches that were about to be used for the Rwandan genocide. Never mind that its officials have now been accused of selling arms to the Congolese militias. At least it means well.

I’ve argued before that, for many Lefties, intentions seem to matter more than outcomes. But how bad do the outcomes have to be before intentions are no longer an excuse? What has to happen before people face up to the real UN (or EU or IOC or whatever) instead of fantasising about some abstract one?

Appropriately enough, the kind of people who are most unthinkingly pro-UN tend also to be the ones most opposed to the ivory trade. Intentions over outcomes, you see. In truth, the ban on ivory sales has been calamitous, both for Africans and elephants. Experience shows that it is far more effective to declare elephants the property of the people who own the land they roam, thus giving locals an incentive to treat them as a renewable resource. But, once again, Lefties are less interested in concrete results than in showing what nice people they are: hence the calamitous CITES ban.

What happens, though, when the two positions collide? When idealistic support for the UN (however harmful it is in practice) clashes with idealistic support for not hunting elephants (ditto)? I’d be interested to hear from all the idealists out there. The comment thread is yours.

OK, queston posed. How bad does it have to get?  UN whale-hunting operations? Excessive UN carbon footprint? The former would be dismissed after a two-day newscycle as yet another aberration. As for the latter, if you’ve seen what kind of vehicles the U.N. runs around in when it is being useless, you know they already have one of those.* Maybe UN child sex-slave operations … nope, they’re already ahead of that curve.

What Hannan neglects to mention is that while individual unpleasantries or criminal acts committed by, say, American soldiers are viewed as an indictment of the entire United States military/government/nation, top-to-bottom criminal acts at the United Nations are seen in isolation. It’s not simply the good intentions, because the United States is full of those and is actually willing to act definitively on them, taking risks and taking losses, and from World War II to the present, actually has a pretty good track record of ending tyrannies, building democracies and promoting free enterprise.

It’s the inherent uselessness of U.N. intentions that is applauded, specifically the notion that you might achieve positive results without actually doing anything but burning up a lot of money while appearing to look busy. The UN’s running a virtual road-to-hell paving operation of good intentions. Wildly popular with dictators as well as lefty handwringers everywhere, as a result, because while rhetoric is applauded, the messiness of taking definitive action is frowned upon. The amorality also helps, because the last thing a murderous dictator, rogue militia or state sponsor of terrorism wants is to be condemned, and the last thing a lefty wants to do is condemn anyone. Unless it is the United States or Israel, of course.

*If they’re going to be useless, surely they could do it in Priuses.

Topics: UN

  Posted by Jules Crittenden at 9:00 am on Monday, May 5, 2008

5 Responses to “How Bad Does the U.N. Have to Get?”

1. The_Real_JeffS Says:
   May 5th, 2008 at 9:31 am

   Too bad we can’t push a button, and poof! goes the UN. But we can’t.

   Until lefties get over their obsession with the so-called United Nations, tragedies and crimes will continue to committed in their name.

2. The Thunder Run Says:
   May 5th, 2008 at 11:13 am

   Web Reconnaissance for 05/05/2008

   A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention, updated throughout the day…so check back often.

3. Fatty Bolger Says:
   May 5th, 2008 at 2:31 pm

   The road to hell is paved with FREE TIBET stickers.

4. RebeccaH Says:
   May 5th, 2008 at 5:44 pm

   If they’re going to be useless, surely they could do it elsewhere than on our shores.

5. Vanguard of the Commentariat Says:
   May 5th, 2008 at 5:49 pm

   Heck, normally anti-gun types had no problem with that syphilitic buggering creep Arafat showing up at the UN wearing a side arm, so why would any left winger care what they did to a few elephants. Their signature issues are only things to beat capitalism over the head with, not to actually care about or insist their own institutions live up to.

   Free Tibet Fatty? Heck if Gates told the Marines to saddle up and go free Tibet, every grey pony tail in this country would have a complete blubbering, mascara running, panty hose bunching meltdown. And that’s just the guys!

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