As much as I like Misha (he is much tamer in person), I simply can’t share these sentiments and find them distasteful:
I heard this on the news this morning and had almost popped the cork off of a bottle of sparkly when I heard that it was the U.N. HQ in Baghdad.
Oh well, it’s a start, I suppose.
I dislike the incompetence and the disgusting nonsense that goes on in the UN, but I simply don’t find anything worth celebrating in this case. Innocent people were killed by assholes- no matter what the UN has or has not done, these people did not deserve this. Their deaths are every bit as tragic as the lives lost on 9/11, and there is nothing positive that comes from the actions of murderous Islamo-fascists.
I also think it is important to note that while a lot of bile comes out of the UN, I don’t think anyone doubts that the goals of the organization, in most cases, are rather admirable. My main opposition is that the organization has showed itself incapable and unwilling to make the necessary decisions and engage in the necessary actions to reach those goals.
Matthew
The attack on the UN is something right-wingers should actually be saddened by. Sergio Vieira de Mello, the UN chief killed in the bombing, was a well-regarded international moderate who replaced that dreadful witch Mary Robinson. He became special envoy to Iraq because of the fact that he was trusted by America and the British. His work in Iraq was a trial run to see whether or not he’d make a good SecGen. We’ll never know, now.
RHJunior
Kiddo, unless you’ve been asleep for the past twenty years, it should be clear to you that the stated goals of the U.N. have little or nothing to do with its actual activities, any more than the “liberation” in “Palestinian Liberation Organization” has to do with the actual goals and activities of the Palestinians.
Unless they’ve changed the UN charter to include “Blame America,” “Undermine liberty,” “kiss ass with despots,” “Condemn Israel,” and “cost millions of innocent lives with political bullshit.”
It’s nothing more than a coffeeklatch for the representatives of virulently anti-american and anti-semitic world cesspits– a coffeeklatch infested with avaricious fantasies of becoming a World Government.
Save your pity for those who suffer at their hands.
John Cole
RHJunior- Certainly some of the Ambassadors to the UN from some nations have been hideous people, but the majority of UN employees were and are decent people, and I find your remarks just as inappropriate and offensive as Misha’s.
And stop calling me kiddo.
JKC
John-
No point in arguing with people like Misha or RHJr. They’re only a far-right mirror image of people like Chomsky or Ramsey Clark.
Emperor Misha I
“but the majority of UN employees were and are decent people”
They sure are, John. Just look at how they’ve beaten down the price of a child prostitute in Bosnia with their business acumen. Kiddy diddling never was this cheap until the UN saints got their hands in the game.
Emperor Misha I
Oh, and I saw the video too and no, they didn’t deserve to be blown up, not in the least bit. I’d be quite content if they’d just hand in their resignations, close the UN and get the hell off the planet.
But there are people far more deserving of my tears and wails than the Toyota Taliban.
JKC
Misha, you might try engaging your brain before running your mouth off. These guys (a good ol’ American company) were the ones implicated in the Bosnian child prostitution, not the UN.
Now go hide back under the trash barrel so those black helicopters don’t find you.
Dean
JKC:
But UN forces HAVE done the same thing elsewhere.
“An internal U.N. report cited the “tendency on the part of some personnel to treat all women as though they were prostitutes. This includes grabbing at women on the street, making inappropriate gestures and remarks, and physically following or chasing women traveling in public.” Many Cambodian women-professional, peasant, or otherwise- complained about this kind of behavior. The U.N. report concluded that arrogance, misbehavior, and the many traffic injuries caused by U.N. personnel-as many as 10 to 20 per day-were causing ill will.
“The behavior and abuses of certain personnel and the relative lack of corrective action by the UNTAC authorities have undermined the credibility of UNTAC and made the task of the United Nations in Cambodia all the more difficult,” another U.N. report said. Bulgarian troops were among the worst offenders. When UNTAC once released figures on peacekeepers being sent home for crimes or misconduct, 14 of the 17 were Bulgarian. Previously, prostitution in Cambodia had been limited to the cities, but Bulgarian civilian police brought it to rural areas for the first time, buying Vietnamese “wives” in the capital, taking them to rural districts and causing a scandal in the local community.”
From http://www.thebulletin.org/issues/1995/ma95/ma95.prasso.html
Last time I checked, btw, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists is not exactly a conservative, anti-UN rag.
Similar report from UN peacekeepers in Eritrea:
http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/peacekpg/general/2002/1223peace.htm
And even in Bosnia, it was hardly ONLY DynCorps employees who were involved. Not unless they employed the deputy comissioner of the International Police Task Force there.
http://www.sundayherald.com/25914
John Cole
Misha- You are providing an excuse for terrorism. There simply is no excuse for it- regardless of how twisted you think the UN is.
Emperor Misha I
No, John, I’m not excusing the terrorists. They’re vile, subhuman filth that should be summarily executed for their crimes and yes, blowing up the UN IS a crime.
What I AM doing is refusing to feel sorry for the UN scumbags. They’re collectivist creeps and therefore the enemy, all of them.
JKC
Yeah, Misha… those SOB’s in UNICEF and the WHO.. real Trotskyites, all of ’em.
Quick! Hide! Them choppers is comin’ ta git ya.
*Sigh* John, I should take some comfort in the fact that the Right seems to have it’s fair share of loons just like the Left. Too bad I don’t.
grumpyfurriner
I come from a military family – my 3 brothers, my father, my ex-husband and 6 (yep, six!) uncles are/were all army. My sons probably will be too. If we were american they’d be feted by the likes of “Mischa” because they’re good, reliable, brave, capable guys doing a tough job. In my country, however, we don’t fight wars so they serve/d peacekeeping in Congo, East Timor, South Lebanon, Sinai, and beyond. They’re all still with us, thank god, but they have a few near death experiences between them. The UN folks are the equivalent of the american kids in iraq right now, just with different accents, but get treated as anything from expendable to outright scum by the likes of “Mischa” for just carrying out orders. It’s not right.
JKC
Dean-
Sorry to take a while to reply.
I don’t doubt that some UN staff are a bit less than angelic. There are certainly UN policies that some Americans find reprehensible. But to suggest, as mouth-breathers like Misha do, that this means the UN staff in Iraq deserved to be blown to bits by terrorists, is like saying that the 3000 Americans killed on 9/11 deserved to die because Osama bin Laden disliked the actions of the American government.
John is 100% correct in calling this argument for the morally bankrupt outrage that it is.
Emperor Misha I
“but get treated as anything from expendable to outright scum by the likes of “Mischa” for just carrying out orders.”
Same treatment that the SS got after the war. They were also “just carryink out orderz”.
Cry me a river.
Emperor Misha I
“But to suggest, as mouth-breathers like Misha do, that this means the UN staff in Iraq deserved to be blown to bits by terrorists,”
How many times do I have to explain the the reading impaired fucktards such as yourself that I nowhere, ever, even in my dreams thought that they “deserved” to be blown up, you irredeemably ignorant heap of goat’s droppings?
I just don’t feel like wasting my tears on a bunch of corrupt fuckweasels who set themselves up for failure by standing in an alligator pond covered in raw steaks, refusing to let anybody help them with security because they, being UN saints, were surely immune from the diseased Islamic psychopaths.
Got it now?
“Mouthbreather”, how original. Did you learn that in Kindergarten? You can ask when you go back tomorrow, you dumb fucknozzle.
JKC
My last post on this matter:
John, I want you to know that I do not take the rantings of people like Misha as representative of conservative thinking in general. Good luck articulating your point of view above all the noise.
Dean
JKC:
You seem to have missed the point. The issue is not whether the UN has policies that AMERICANS find reprehensible.
The question is whether the UN has policies that the people they are ostensibly HELPING find reprehensible. And the answer there is clearly “YES.”
And while it’s very nice to say that there are SOME UN people who are “less than angelic,” it would seem that either you hold American policies and people to the same standard (less than angelic individuals, but good in the main) or you be more straightforward in stating your biases (UN violations are somehow different from US violations).
And it bears repeating: While DynCorp was responsible for SOME of the sex biz in Bosnia, SO WERE SENIOR UN OFFICIALS. You don’t get to blame this one on American privatization, certainly not entirely.
JKC
Dean-
I never meant to imply that DynCorps was solely responsible for the sex trade in Bosnia. Nor do I subscribe to the belief that the entire UN can be judged by the actions of a few.
And I do hold my country to the same standard- a good bunch of folks with a few bad apples. Pretty much like any other group of human beings.
Kimmitt
How many times do I have to explain the the reading impaired fucktards such as yourself that I nowhere, ever, even in my dreams thought that they “deserved” to be blown up, you irredeemably ignorant heap of goat’s droppings?
Until you stop offering moral support to folks who do it and celebrating the deaths of innocents, you fascist prick.
Eric Sivula
I imagine Misha will stop offering ‘moral support’ to the terrorists when people like Kimmitt stop offering ‘moral support’ to the UN.
Kimmitt and JKC see the deaths of 20, maybe more, UN workers as a tragedy. Do they not see the deaths of tens of thousands at the hands of dictators the UN helped prop up as tragedies?
JKC
Please, Eric. American foreign policy has propped up foreign dictators with blood on their hads, too. So did the Soviets.
Some of us see all senseless deaths as tragedy, Eric. I mourn the murder of the UN staff in Baghdad as I mourn the innocents killed in Jerusalem on Tuesday as I mourn the death of innocent Iraqi civilians.
And frankly, I’m getting tired of moral relativists on the Right like you who give conservatives a bad name. Think you can do a better job in the world? Wipe the Cheetos off your pimply face, turn off the computer, and go out into the world. Your local military recruiter would be a good place to start. I hear they’re a bit short handed these days.