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My personal musings about anything that gets on my radar screen--heavily dominated by politics.

2006-12-03

Media HitPieces and Miss-Representations

In a tiny square at the bottom of the front page of today's Rocky Mountain News is this tease:

Surivor of Darfur finds hearts ache to help.

Darfur, eh? What's the problem in Darfur?

According to United Nations estimates, more than 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million have been displaced to refugee camps along the border of Sudan and Chad.

Of course, those of us who pay attention to the news at all know this already. Here's the laughable part of the story, though--and in the very next sentence:

As with the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, news of this genocide has been slow to travel to the U.S.

Slow to travel? Yeah, you might say that. But I thought it was the job of the media to . . .oh, never mind.

Completely left out of the story is the complete fecklessness and uselessness of the world body which is most responsible for both highlighting such tragedies and for attempting to end them: the United Nations. Of course, there's this:

Britain and the United States have been pushing for the United Nations to take over the peacekeeping mission, and the African Union says it would be happy to stand aside. Sudan, however, will not allow a U.N. force on its territory.

In the meantime, the UN has plenty of time to highlight all the abuses--both perceived and misreported--of Israel. Israel, which acted with great restraint during the War with Hezbollah, gets called out for taking action to defend itself, but the government of the Sudan--Sudan!-- has a veto on UN action to stop a genocide.

That said, American inability or unwillingness to step in and do anything about this, and the similar slaughter in Rwanda in the 90s, constitute two of the greatest failures of the "world's only superpower." I'm not an expansionist, and I don't think we have to be the world's police force, but . . .

genocide is a different thing, and the acceptance of genocide anywhere, through inaction, makes the same such slaughter of anyone--say, the Kurds--a matter of debatable intervention. That is to say, if we won't step in and put an end to the slaughter by the Janjaweed, then it should not be a surprise to us when our desire to stop the slaughter by Saddam is not universally accepted.

And, sure, that was nowhere near the only reason for overthrowing Saddam, but it has been a huge humanitarian success story--and has gone completely unreported.

Not to mention that U.S. standing in the world as "moral arbiter" is an important role that America plays. And when we sit on the sidelines during something like Darfur, we lose an awful lot of credibility for action or influence elsewhere.

Why do I not similarly assail the U.N.'s credibility? Because they have none to begin with.

Here's a thought: if the Democratic Senate refuses to confirm John Bolton to the job of U.N Ambassador--him being the only meaningful reformer in Turtle Bay--then we should cancel the real estate deals with them, and tell them to move to Geneva. And further, we should then withhold at least--AT LEAST--half of our dues to that body so that we can fund the efforts we're making around the globe that the U.N. is unable to [of course, all assuming that these are, at least in part, responsibilities of the Executive Branch].

It does nothing for our credibility to be the host nation to such a useless organization. It's like if Mike Shanahan were to offer part of Dove Valley (the Broncos' training facility) to the Arizona Cardinals, with the hope that the Cards would play our games for us.
Posted by: Michael / 12/03/2006 01:43:00 AM

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