The LA Times is the greatest bulwark against knowledge

On December 2, 2008 the LA Times editorial had this to say:
“Warts and all, [the UN] is the world's only meaningful bulwark against nuclear proliferation, human-rights violations, genocide and wars of conquest.”
Let’s look at each...

Nuclear Proliferation

Which nation seeking nuclear weapons has the UN been a “bulwark” against? Was it a bulwark against Saddam’s well documented seek for nuclear WMDs in the 80’s and 90’s? Yeah, the UN sent the inspectors in…but only after the US fought a war and forced Saddam to let them in! Then there were “the dark years” from 1998 to 2002 when the UN was impotent. Did the UN stem the spread of nukes to North Korea? To Pakistan? I am not an expert on which countries in the past have sought and then failed to acquire nuclear weapons, but I am guessing (in light of what I do know) that never has the UN been a meaningful “bulwark” in stopping any of them. Currently the belligerent nation seeking nukes is Iran. If anyone is on the forefront of stopping Iran, it is Israel, the country the UN continues to make resolution after resolution against (six last week). It isn’t just that the UN is not a bulwark against nuclear proliferation, but the UN seems to be opposed to the nation (albeit for other reasons) which is most interested in trying to stop Iran’s nuclear program.

Human Rights Violations

Which major human rights violations has the UN helped stop? North Korean concentration camps? Darfur’s ethnic cleansing? Oh, wait, Sudan is on the UN commission on human rights. “[In 2004] the United States ambassador Sichan Siv walked out of the Commission following the uncontested election of Sudan to the commission, calling it an “absurdity” in light of Sudan’s ethnic cleansing in the Darfur region.” That was from from Wikipedia, whose source is the following: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4898975/
So…Sudan was elected without protest or even contest to the commission of human rights at the same time it was committing genocide? How is it possible for someone to keep a straight face in declaring that the UN is “the world’s only meaningful bulwark against human rights violations” ? Ridiculous. And let me tell you, the UN is wonderful at helping the poor Chinese who are secretly killed, oppressed for their religions, or who simply happen to live in Tibet and are gunned down or imprisoned by the Chinese government. Yes, the UN is great at being a bulwark for the millions upon millions in China. How about the Somalian hell hole? Yes, I’m glad we have such a powerful and meaningful force as the UN to help those people too. I am not an expert in the DPKO’s effect on human trafficking or other current issues they are dealing with, but I sincerely hope that they are doing a better job with that than helping the people in Sudan, China, Somalia, or for that matter, in Iraq before 2003 where human rights violations were omnipresent.

Genocide

Which genocide has the UN been a bulwark against? Rwanda? Sudan? The Cultural Revolution? The Khmer Rouge’s massacres in Cambodia? Mengistu’s genocide in the late 70’s in Ethiopia? How about Saddam Hussein’s killings of the Kurds? Which one? Any of them? None. In this world any dictator, despot, military junta or even president can murder millions if he has enough manpower to do so. Now, the UN is composed of 192 (virtually all) nations. There are 3 generally recognized sovereign nations who are not members of the UN (which includes the Vatican). Genocide is therefore virtually always committed by one of these 192 nations. Does anyone ever ask how (as with human rights violations) the UN can be a bulwark against something its own members engage in? Ok, but in all seriousness, the UN includes the most poweful and richest nations. So why can’t it stop any of the genocides listed above? Could it possibly be because the UN is not the world’s only meaningful bulwark against genocide??? The UN isn’t even a meaningless bulwark against genocide. It simply isn’t a bulwark at all against genocide anywhere. In fact, there is a potential genocide that is uttered by the mouths of Iranian leaders, Fatah leaders in the West Bank, certainly by Hamas leaders in Gaza, and a slough of other radical Islamists in various Moslem nations in the mideast. They use terms like “wipe Israel off the map” and do not hide their intent. Last week in Mumbai Jews were targeted for no conceivable reason (it was not strategic to their stated goals of protest about Kashmir). This is not new for the Jews, but is merely another example of how real such a genocide could become (it’s not like genocides are rare in our world!) I hope the UN will look into that potential genocide. After all, the term “bulwark” implies a defensive or protection before the onslaught. So, it should be a bulwark particularly against potential genocide, right? I wonder what the UN is doing as a bulwark for Israel…

Wars of Conquest

Which war of conquest has the UN been a bulwark against? Saddam’s invasion of Iran in 1980? How about his invasion of Kuwait in 1991? Should we call that a UN and not a US intervention? That would be revising history drastically in less than twenty years! How about the recent Russian invasion of Georgia? The UN was a wonderful bulwark there, right?

So who is a bulwark against any of these things?

The most recent attempt by any nation anywhere to dynamically stop human rights violations, genocide and nuclear proliferation was the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 (even if the nuke-seeking happened to be currently inert). Baathist Iraq had been committing horrific violations against many rights of many humans, including the torture of many women, political imprisonment and the murdering hundreds of thousands of its own people and had been training over 2,000 international terrorists (from many countries) per year to commit acts of murder and terrorism. What has the UN ever done that is comparable to the most recent action taken by the US? The UN is not a bulwark against these four evils. It is impotent. The US is the bulwark. And guess what? The US is the fighting power of the UN. So if they ever did anything real, it would be the US anyway.
How could the editor of the LA Times, the largest paper of the second largest city in America be so naïve? I guess he (or she) is living in a dream world. I wish I were a part of that world, but alas, it’s not real. In the real world most newspapers (such as LA times) consider the invasion of Iraq in 2003 a bad and very wrong idea and consider the president who initiated it a bad president. I guess they aren't just naive. They're backwards. They oppose the actions which help eliminate actual problems of human rights violations and genocide. And yes it turns out that it’s really hard to fundamentally stop these things from occurring in a nation. But why is it wrong to stop them?