He says his country is attacking legitimate Hezbollah military targets and she should be careful with her language.
"I completely reject Louise Arbour's warning. Israel doesn't target civilian concentrations, and I think that by merely giving such a warning she's jumping to conclusions and as a judge she should know better," he says. CBC news 21 July 06
A representative of the UN yapping off politically with no balanced appraisal of the situation? I simply can't believe it! Oh wait, maybe I can. I don't agree with everything our American allies do, but I can say I can see where they were coming from when they didn't want to pay their UN dues.
The UN is approaching the uselessness of the old League of Nations unless you count endless hot air as a useful output. Those parts of the UN that do some good work could be spun off as more NGOs (not that I think we need more of those) and the assembly just plain dissolved. The Security Council would persist in some fashion even without the UN proper, but I can't see France and Britain maintaining anything like a veto unless allied with one of the current superpowers. Hell, France had no place there in 1945; I seem to remember them as losing that war and being liberated by the rest of us...
The world is just plain buggered, but I have enough history to know it's always been like that. The fact that people can't get along doesn't surprise me at all, but the muddle-headedness about how to manage it (notice I didn't say "fix") is unsettling. There are a load of people who need to read (and UNDERSTAND) their Machiavelli and Sun-tsu, then take a fresh look around them at what's going on, and then maybe open their mouths again.
In the fight against trans-national Islamic terrorism, it's US vs THEM and nobody who has an interest in progress, relative personal liberty and any kind of human rights must realize that. However, I certainly won't say that nobody can criticize how things get done, because I have a lot of opinions myself about short-sighted foreign policy and the like.
For example, I actually think the Americans have run into more trouble from not being ruthless enough than from blowing up the odd mosque. If they dropped a 2000lb bomb on EVERY mosque that militants were using to stage attacks or store weapons, I think it would get the point across very effectively. Again I can turn to Kipling who understood the concept.
Of course you can't always break heads to deal with things (I'm not a sociopath, just a frustrated realist) but when "jaw-jaw" doesn't do the job, it's time for "war-war", with my apologies to the late Sir Winston Churchill for stepping on his lines.
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