However, it has been that way my entire life (41 years and counting). Anyone who doesn’t already realize what you have so clearly laid out will not be convinced.

There is a vast cultural divide in the US: Those who believe in words and those who believe in action. Both groups go astray, but at least the latter tries.

By all means, word people, keep trying. “Hope”, “Change”, “Unity” back-to-the-1890s-future. Yawn.

Better to throw money at a problem that doesn’t concern us than lives – let’s save them for strategically relevant things (such as children and the Middle East).

(Not that I wouldn’t prefer saving the money, too, but as a sop to the delicate, it’s a rather small price to pay.)

I want to speak directly to your explanation, because it is anchored to the very contradictions that make the UN as an institution so very odious. And by this I mean that the congnitive dissonance between what we mean when we say “the UN”, (as a discrete insititution), and what it actually IS (which is an institution allegedly representing the common intent of member nations to “do good”).

When you say “How can you blame the UN for this? The UN has no authority to employ force on its own – countries have to contribute troops, or authorize hiring private guards. So if you’re upset about this waste of food and money, invest in security!”, you are revealing on of the the most important and yet least addressed (deliberately) criticisms of the UN, wherein the UN leadership is able to leverage the arbitrage between percpetion in reality.

To begin with, you are absolutely right! THe “UN” (a discrete entity) has no mandate to “use force” (as a discrete entity), when clearly force is often the only way that good intentions can be realized. This is a huge dilemma for those nations that want to fob off the very issues that they claim to be addressing by throwing money at the “UN” (and then shaking their heads sadly at the sad state of affairs) since these nations can then also take an odious and unsupportable position of feigned moral superiority by stating that they dont want to engage in armed conflict. (But they support the UN in the issue “stenuously”.)

This illusion opens up a huge doorway for corruption of any process at all (particularly those involving bad guys along the lines of the Janjaweed), since almost every effort is a giant excercise in futility.

We then have to endure the endless posturing and fretting that comes around creating false equivalencies between the Janjaweed and those they are annihilating, and play diplomatic pretend games around the legitimacy of the Sudanese government as a fair player (an absolute travesty) and prepare for the inevitable continuation of the surreal hell on earth, but now new and improved (for the bad guys) with “UN engagement”.

Are you seeing my point? The true value of the UN under its ACTUAL context, is less than zero. But its value as a vehicle for feigned moral superiority and the gross ability to sweep true human suffering under the rug with insidious legalisms, is massive. The net reult is that it’s a boon to the worst of us all, and an excuse for the loudest sophists to prance loudly about doing nothing.

Even military support becomes an absurd exercise in multiculturalism wrapped in moral relativism. A hodgepodge collection of forces that are “culturally intimate” with “the affected peoples” are “authorized” … and then they are given a mandate that establishes no real enemy, no real victim and no meaningful mission. (Sean’s point on the abuses that have been rather all too common even in the UN operations on the ground at the scene is sadly, not hyperbole and is in fact, par for the course.)

It is moral grey goo but it feeds the high falutin agencies and puffed up international offices (which predictably attract the most corrupt and clever of of poseurs… witness the Oil for Food scandal and then rest the case), with a money sucking mission which they quickly propose ends with them needing more money.

Yet if one speaks out against the UN in this way (which is the only meaningful criticism in truth), then one must be against peace and international cooperation.

Madness.

Yes… I think it is quite reasonable to criticise the “UN”, as well as the member states who use it to their advantage (mostly the worst regimes) and those who use it as salve for doing nothing (I almost laughed and/or cried at the postmodern construction of the EUs statement on Darfur last year where incredibly “nuanced” language that acknolwedged the pain on “all sides” spewed forth but fastidiously the use of the word “genocide”, lest there be a legal implication.)

What would fix this?

Well, a brigade of Marines with a mandate of securing the area and putting down all armed resistance to moving aid, coupled with a CREDIBLE threat of devastating air strikes on military and strategic targets in Sudan unless the government took action to stop the madness.

Indeed… all it might take is the latter.

And here’s the kicker Sam: Such a development would be FAR MORE LIKELY, if there were no UN morass as it really exists. An ad-hoc meeting of concerned nations, responding to the reports from independent international agencies with a mandate specific to material aid and comfort, actually would be far more likely to be forced by clarity to take such a position… and then act on it.

The UN… makes such an outcome, indeed almost ANY good outcome, far less likely… becasue it raises to a level of absurd legitimacy, the odious aspirations of the very worst of regimes, while simultaneously endorsing the idea that there is no standard upon which we can actually judge, bad regimes at all. The relativist fog descends, and predictably… very very bad things are done by very very bad people in the welcome mist. We in the west… can turn our backs on such things and cover our ears to the screams because we are presumably beyond “good” and “evil”… and anyway, we paid off the PR guys (UN puffery).

Again… madness.

So your technical criticism is factually right, and sheds a little ray of light if you continue the discussion, on how truly poisonous and vile the UN as it exists, really is. This makes its PR position as though it is some sort of moral beacon of peaceful hope… all the more dangerous and destructive.

Indeed, this last point actually results not only in the failure to prevent additional horror and bloodshed, but in fact encourages it.

The UN as it exists, will I hope, in the fullness of time when there has been the cleansing and fire (that historically, must inevitably result when so much evil fog has descended on the collective perception) be rightly seen as perhaps the most horrendous and morally inverted institution ever devised my man.

But I think the difference is that if the US wanted, they could control the UN and turn it to good. The world won’t accept more US invasions. But they might accept US-led UN missions.

Face it guys, the UN is around for good. Might as well co-opt it!

Yes, absolutely. There is no such thing as a “UN Police” or “UN Armed Forces.” The only way to provide security for UN missions is for individual countries to contribute soldiers. The UN cannot force anyone to contribute troops.

I think your comment demonstrates exactly the problem. States will say “Yeah, food to Darfur, great idea!” And they will donate millions of dollars. Then the UN will say, “Ok, now we need security.” And states, like the US, will say “Oh, sorry, remember Somalia? No can do. Just take my money.”

It’s a catch-22. If the US is willing to give away millions of dollars in food, but not also the soldiers to protect it, then it is the US that is being wasteful, not the UN.

The thing to realize, Sam, is that if the USA retreats into the isolationism the Dems want and refuses to act in the world most of the world will soon come to look like Darfur. It’s plain there: the US has not made significant interventions in Africa (and ran out in Somalia) and the place is racked by violence. If you want more decent places in the world support US actions. If you want more hellholes support UN actions, and oppose the USA, it’s as simple as that.