About thirty years ago my junior high classmates and I attended a grandiose extracurricular activity called Model U.N., in which hundreds of students from the metro area convened to attempt international peacemaking. Some of the older kids seemed to understand power, representing the permanent Security Council members China and Soviet Union. A few wiseacres fomented trouble, representing hot-spots in the Middle East. A cacophonous day ensued, during which many points of order were called, hostilities loomed, and many resolutions were tabled or ignominiously defeated by the mischievous teens.
At the end of the day a few of us, the naifs, were flummoxed. So little had been accomplished. Nonplussed by the whole affair, I recall our teacher's final admonition: "Now you know why the U.N. never gets anything done." My idealistic adolescent mind was deflowered. I considered the U.N. the savior of the poor and downtrodden, the peacemaker, the occupant of high moral ground, the beacon of hope above the fray. Instead, I went home sullen with my extracurricular credit, wishing I were old enough to drink.
Today activist actors George Clooney, Angelina Jolie, and Bette Midler remind me, in earnest pleas on TV and websites, the U.N is ill-equipped to handle the sheer volume of carnage meted out in our brutal world. Since 2003 at least 200,000 have been killed in Sudan, and 2 million displaced by a war pitting the Arab Muslim government in Khartoum against the African Muslim rebels in Darfur. The Sudanese government claims they do not control the irregular militias known eerily as the Janjaweed, whose marauding tactics of murder, rape, and poisoning wells in this arid region have emptied out entire towns, creating huge refugee camps in Darfur and neighboring Chad.
The African Union (AU) is the pan-African organization enlisted to keep the peace in lieu of a UN force; their deployment of 7,000 troops is woefully inadequate in the Texas-sized Darfur region. Last Friday U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick compelled Khartoum and one rebel group to sign a cease-fire agreement. On Monday Jan Egeland, the United Nations chief humanitarian official, visited the Kalma refugee camp; a riot ensued, forcing the UN and AU Officials to flee. An AU official translator was hacked to death by rebels who claimed he was a member of the Sudanese government, and thus the Janjaweed. Surprising chants of "Welcome, welcome, U.S.A." and "Yes, yes, international force" were heard Monday from the desperate refugees in the Kalma camp.
Many non-governmental organizations have rallied around the cause to save Darfur from impending genocide. Jewish, Christian, and secular humanitarian groups have issued numerous heartfelt pleas to government officials and broadcast press releases around the world. The conflict in Darfur, like Rwanda, is exactly the sort of brutality the United Nations was created to prevent; the current UN plan projects a peacekeeping force sometime in September. Why has it taken over three years and 200,000 lives to force action?
United Nations scriveners punctiliously record credentials, resolutions, press releases, speeches and awards -- while innocents die. The UN World Food Program recently cut food aid to Darfur in half, citing lack of funds. It is not the United States' job to feed the world, police the world and stop wars, but no one else will step up to the plate.
Consistently reviled by Hollywood do-gooders as a unilateralist cowboy, President Bush rides in on his white horse. Still busy freeing 50 million people in Iraq and Afghanistan, on Monday the President authorized $225 million in emergency aid to Darfur, dispatched 5 ships loaded with food, and ordered 44,000 tons of emergency food purchases. Over the last year 85% of aid to Darfur has come from the United States Government.
Sophomoric speeches, naive petitions, website donations, and dewy-eyed TV interviews accomplish very little -- it takes a stalwart nation with humanitarian leadership to save lives and repair the world.
