16 Comments

1. yama-arashi:

My hope had been that Bush or better yet Powell would have taken this opportunity for a “sister souljah” moment and continued with the core group (U.S., Austalia, India, Japan). Give France what it wants–a multi-polar world. But the first step is to sidestep the UN. If in the mood for benefitting those devastated by the tsunami, which is doubtful, France can team up with China and whoever else it can find and the U.S., Australia, India, and Japan (and others who want to join) can continue their work together and let Indonesia and Sri Lanka decide who they want helping them and how. A little multi-polar competition would be much better than this U.N. charade. I have never been able to understand why so-called multi-lateralist bow to the monolithic world-view of the U.N. elites. It seems a contradiction. If I were smarter I could figure out if it really is or not.

Jan 7, 2005 - 11:23 am 2. BigFire:

My current view on UN is this: I expect the worse from, and won’t be at all surprised when they regularly exceeds my worse expectation.

Jan 7, 2005 - 11:23 am 3. John Moore ( Useful Fools ):

This is all completely predictable.

The primary function of the UN is to allow its bureaucrats to live in luxury unheard of in most of their miserable countries, and travel with the same luxury to interesting places. It has a number of bureaucracies for that purpose (stated purposes are otherwise), and holds interminable meetings in the appropriate luxurious settings. Another purpose is to serve as a shining beacon for one-worldist useful fools. A third is to be the highest moral authority on the planet (except for France and Libya, of course), in order to justify siphoning as much money as possible from the successful and giving it to the corrupt. The real magic is how it is able to do all of these functions at the same time (look behind the curtain and you find the MSM).

In spite of all this, I am sure there are good people in the middle of that mess. Suckers who would probably be better utilized in an NGO, or Don Quixotes trying to fix the unfixable mess.

I would be interested in seeing unbiased reports on how all the various NGO’s behave. Which ones are effective and which are emulating the UN.

Jan 7, 2005 - 12:42 pm 4. Charlie (Colorado):

An “atmosphere”, eh?

Nicely done, sir.

Jan 7, 2005 - 2:48 pm 5. TedN:

A good post, but the title will let those inclined to dismiss it do so and is unfortunate.

Jan 7, 2005 - 4:48 pm 6. Dr Bob:

Diplomads post have painted a pretty bleak picture of the UN in the tsunami relief, which is no great surprise (what earthly function DOES the UN serve, other than scamming money and sexually abusing third world victims?).

However, being the Devil’s advocate – and interested in the blogsphere’s self-correcting / self-verifying abilities – how do we know Diplomad doesn’t have an axe to grind, and that these posts are an accurate picture of the UN’s actual activities there?

Jan 7, 2005 - 6:18 pm 7. Morgan:

Dr Bob:

My assumption is that Diplomad does have an axe to grind. I would be very surprised if he said “up until December 25, 2004, I had a very favorable opinion of the UN” – I’d have a lot of trouble believing it.

The self-correcting nature of the blogosphere is incomplete – it depends on the availability of multiple sources of information. In this case, we have multiple sources – reports from troops, from Diplomad, from representatives of NGOs, from US officials, and from the UN itself – which yesterday was finally attempting to arrange for some helicopters in Banda Aceh, and complaining that the US helicopters (which have been busy delivering emergency relief supplies for days) are not under the control of the UN.

If the UN were doing a great job, we’d hear about it. But there is no question that they were slow to respond, and now that they are in the area, they can only accomplish anything by appropriating material from those who have already responded.

We’ll see what they do over the next few days. It is (theoretically) a good idea to have a central agency coordinating relief efforts, and I imagine that many would object to the US military doing the job. Besides, that’s not what the military does.

I’m not particularly hopeful that the UN will do a good job – it’s lousy at almost everything. But we’ll see.

Jan 7, 2005 - 9:10 pm 8. Yehudit:

“how do we know Diplomad doesn’t have an axe to grind, and that these posts are an accurate picture of the UN’s actual activities there?”

I’m concerned that Diplomad are who they say they are. In general their view of the UN is corroborated elsewhere, but we don’t have too much in hard facts about the UN in tsunami relief besides this blog. We all “know” how the UN is and so happy to have some pro-Bush types in the State Dept, so we are uncritical of Diplomad.

I hope like all of you that they are the real deal, but so far we don’t know.

Jan 8, 2005 - 12:46 am 9. PeterUK:

The UN has no resources of its own except for its bureaucrats,all it can offer is to organise other peoples asset.

Since those owning the assets are expert in their use and the UN is not what is the UN selling? Itself.It is selling its so called expertise,it is in effect a middleman between donor and recipient.

Because the UN has no resources it consumes resources to enable itself,how much did it cost to enable Kofi Annan to stare uncomprehendingly at the devastation?

“Where have all the people gone” will go down in history with “Let them eat cake” as an all time assinine remark.

Jan 8, 2005 - 8:43 am 10. Bran:

Dr Bob & Co :

We agree that the “atmospherics” of the Diplomad’s post to which Roger linked are off-putting and seem to undermine his credibility. But the half dozen Diplomad posts BEFORE that post are pure gold.

As for the self-correcting or validating function of the blogosphere, far be it from a semi-retired blogger to suggest that you look to Roger’s home town manifestation of the MSM:

In the January 7, 2005 Los Angeles Times, “U.N. Gets Leading Role in Tsunami Aid Effort”, Paul Richter and Don Lee tell us

“JAKARTA, Indonesia _ The United Nations’ role in the massive Asian tsunami relief effort was broadened Thursday at an international conference where world leaders also announced a new round of aid pledges….

“Secretary of State Colin L. Powell conceded the coordination role to the U.N. but also warned that the international agency must act quickly to prove effective.

“Describing a one-on-one meeting with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, Powell said, ‘We talked about the need for the U.N. agencies, if they’re going to play that coordinating role, to get on the ground and start playing it.’…”

Not quite as atmospheric as Diplomad, but pretty blunt for Powell.

“Although the world body has been eager to take charge, U.S. officials have had reservations in part because of concern about the U.N.’s ability to move quickly.”

What would the other part of the U.S. official’s reservations be based on?

“Some U.N. and U.S. aid workers in Indonesia have also begun to quibble about coordination, with the Americans complaining that the U.N. is taking the credit for U.S. and Australian action, and the U.N. staffers saying that the U.S. military is not sharing information effectively…. ”

It does not sound like Diplomad is alone in his concerns about the UN.

Jan 8, 2005 - 10:11 am 11. Bran:

The URL for the LA Times article did not make into that last comment:

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-quake7jan07,1,5276585.story?coll=la-headlines-world

Jan 8, 2005 - 10:13 am 12. Skookumchuk:

Well, I don’t know if Diplomad is who he or she says they are, but having worked overseas in both government and private development pr4ojects, I know what Diplomad is talking about.

US personnel – even the leftiest touchy-feely types – tend to get exasperated with the UN, its inefficiency and slowness, the obsession with process, the whole bit. After being in the field for months, even a dyed in the wool Barbara Boxer fan starts sounding (intermittently and only in private of course) pretty antibureaucratic. Republican, almost. Once in a while, anyway. But enough to make the Diplomad’s post ring true. And believe me, it doesn’t take a tsunami to feel that way.

The Eurocrats are naturally much less vocal in their criticism, even though many are just as exasperated.

The great thing about working on a private development study, a mine or a port, particularly in Asia, is that is might actually get built. Ten years down the pike you can point to something where you helped to get it off the ground. Within the context of the UN, there is a much lower chance of doing the same.

Jan 8, 2005 - 12:24 pm 13. CRW:

The UN has its uses – at least in theory, no matter how badly it is run. The UN can do simple things that the major powers want done but don’t want to do themselves, e.g., mediate between Andorra and Luxembourg on Pacific Ocean fishing rights. Sometimes it does these things effectively. We should ignore them when it suits us and use them when they are useful. This may mean letting them “coordinate” in public as long as they don’t interfere with what needs to be done. So you may have to hire some intelligent-sounding people to sit in meetings with them and take notes to free up people like Diplomad to do some work.

The other side to dealing with the UN is to unilaterally cut our payments to them by about 75%. And of course, we should insist that Kofi Annan resign as a condition for their getting their next dime from the American people.

Jan 8, 2005 - 4:33 pm 14. Diplomad:

To those who wonder, we are indeed who we say we are. We are Foreign Service Officers with many, mny years of experience in many, many parts of the world — including working with the UN in Vienna, Geneva, and NY. We DO have an axe to grind re the UN; if you check our pre-tsunami postings, you will see that we have had quite few critical of the UN and its agencies. The current crisis has validated in a brutal way all of our prior criticisms of the UN Gas Factory.

We’re sorry if some people were put off by one of our postings; that’s life; you can’t make everybody happy. Let us just say that we’re put off by the devastation and death we see from the tsunami, and how UN agencies, created precisely to deal with this sort of event, are venal, corrupt, and cynical, and don’t give a damn about real people dying real deaths and instead worry about getting credit and issuing press releases.

Thanks for reading the Diplomad and thanks to Roger Simon for an excellent blog which we read every day.

Jan 9, 2005 - 7:25 pm 15. Skookumchuk:

And thanks to you for all your work.

Jan 9, 2005 - 7:34 pm 16. Charlie (Colorado):

Diplomads — as to the people who don’t believe you’re really FSO’s, screw’em. Pretty much the same people believe the tsunami was caused by the Navy so Halliburton could get the oil.

You keep it up — Diplomad is a daily read out here too.

Jan 10, 2005 - 8:30 am

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