UN Talks it Up

Today the UN "slammed" the clearing of slums in Zimbabwe that has left over 700,000 people homeless. This has been going on for over two weeks, and decried across the globe, but the UN needed to do a 14 day 'fact checking' mission before they could declare these actions a "disastrous venture." Between Iraq, Iran, Darfur, and now Zimbabwe, the UN has proven that it is an organization that is great at talking, albeit more slowly than everyone else, and rarely ever acts. In this report the UN envoy used "unusually harsh language" and "said the destruction should be stopped immediately." I'm sure it will be, in fact they probably hurt Mugabe's feelings too much with their harsh language. In another daring step the UN joined most of the rest of the world, although a bit timidly, by "suggest[ing] the operation clearly violates international law." I don't know about you, but if I were Mugabe I wouldn't be too worried about international law. We're still trying to deal with war criminals from WWII, by the time they get around to prosecuting Mugabe (I am under no illusion that they actually will) he will be long dead. Besides, most of the African dictators are war criminals, and so far they're doing pretty well. Unless the UN decides its actually going to enforce some of its rules, 'international law' means nothing. Well, it means that if you break it people at the UN might get nasty and use "unusually harsh language" when they talk about you. For awhile anyway. Then they'll probably give you more money so you can "feed your starving people" (wink, wink). As it is right now I think the UN probably does more harm than good. Their programs like Oil for Food are easily corrupted and used to fund dictatorships rather than weaken them. When they speak out against someone they rarely follow their words with actions. And, most Western countries look to the UN for permission before embarking on any number of international ventures. So we give them money and power and in turn they help the dictators and hold back the democracies. Beautiful. Its not that I don't think the idea of the UN is good, it's just the way it's playing out right now that bothers me. I think the UN either needs to prove that it's actually doing some good, or the US needs to pull funding and give it to someone who won't let bureaucracy, corruption, and politics siphon it off before it gets to the people who need it.