One of the things I find interesting in the war debates is that apparently only the US is motivated by national interest and/or greed. The French and Russians, for example, are simply moral powers who want to preserve the status quo, not arms merchants looking to cash in on $6 billion worth of Iraqi debt.
By the same token, the UN is above reproach, despite the fact that it’s peacekeepers have a miserable record of keeping the peace and are now involved in the sex slave trade in Bosnia and prostitution rings pretty much wherever they go.
Indeed, the only time peacekeepers seem to work is when the US (or the UK) runs the show. Even then, it’s a touch-and-go business.
In the West Bank, the UN-sponsored “refugee camps” are terrorist sanctuaries where bombs are made right under the noses of the supervisory personnel. The Israeli operating in Jenin (immediately dubbed a “massacre” without a shred of proof) revealed that the UN either had zero control over the area or was complicit in the arms factories located there.
Along the Lebanese frontier, UN forces passively videotaped the murder of Israeli soldiers, then refused to hand it over to Israel so that the responsible party could be punished.
Of course the most lucrative UN market is the oil market; to with the Iraqi oil for food program, with billions of dollars sitting in UN bank accounts. As long as Iraq refuses to comply with the sanctions regime, the money is held in escrow by the UN. Where is it? What is it doing? How much is there? No one seems to know.
Thus UN bureaucrats get to administer billions of dollars in (uncollectable and unverifiable) oil dollars up to and until Iraq’s regime is made to comply with the cease-fire terms. In essence they are growing rich on the starvation of the Iraqi people.
Now ask yourself, which is more moral: removing a brutal dictatorial regime run by a sociopath or passively creaming a portion off of his oil sales whilst he starves his people and builds weapons of mass murder?
by Alec Lloyd on September 26, 2002 at 9:56 AM