Useless Nations

I rented Hotel Rwanda last week. Great movie, that did a decent job of discussing the Rwandan genocide within the context of one man's story. This week also marked the 10th Anniversary of the Serbian overrun of Srebrenica and subsequent massacre of approx. 8,000 Muslim men & boys. These meld together in the fact that in both cases the United Nations (and for that matter, the world's communities too) completely failed to protect innocent citizens from slaughter. Unfortunately, the cycle continues in Sudan, Congo and other places.

If one the UN's missions is to help the less fortunate populations of the world, stepping in to halt government supported ethnic violence should be taken seriously. The UN has used armed forces under their command to combat aggression before, but it's been quite selective.

UN forces wouldn't even have to undertake offensive operations to be effective. Placing enough troops and equipment to in UN safehavens with competent commanders permitted to defend these zones would save lives. Dealing with Serbian forces was more difficult since they were fairly well equipped, but it could have been done earlier. Defending against some dipshit militias whose most advanced weapon system is a heavy machine gun mounted on a pickup is another matter. These pinheads wouldn't fare well against well-prepared professional troops. Somalia resonates with people, but the worst happened there when we went in light the middle of the bad guys. If the bad guys have to go through professional forces to get to civilians I think it will bea different story.

None of this matters though if the larger nations do not step up to press for intervention. So, good people of Africa, I hope to hell you find some export we can't live without because people aren't apparently a good enough reason