Angry in the Great White North

An excellent point concerning the death of a Canadian soldier acting in the capacity of a UN observer in Lebanon:

Why was this soldier, unarmed soldier allowed to remain in a war zone, without sufficient means to defend himself in a military unit that allowed itself, for all intensive purposes, to become human shields for terrorists?? Mr. Harper & every other conservative knows Kofi Annan's record in this area. He [Annan] was the head of UN peacekeeping ops during the Rwanda tragedy. His actions, or lack of, contributed to the genocide of 100,000 innocents. He has brought the same mentality to this crisis & as such, innocent & unarmed soldiers are sitting ducks, caught in the middle of a war. Kofi Annan has the blood of the fallen soldiers on his hands.

However, the PM should have acted proactively & gotten Maj. Hess-Von grudner out of the war zone once hostilities broke out.

I have to agree. Prime Minister Stephen Harper should take himself to Turtle Bay and draw a line in the sand. Canada has a long tradition of support for the UN, but the UN in 1957 when Lester Pearson started peacekeeping is not the UN of today. In 1957, the UN was under the leadership of Dag Hammarskjöld of Sweden. His predecessors were Trygve Halvdan Lie of Norway and Sir Gladwyn Jebb of Great Britain.

Today Kofi Annan of Ghana presides over an institution rife with corruption. His predecessors were Boutros Boutros-Gali of Egypt and Javier Perez de Cuellar of Peru.

Here's another way to look at it. Consider this list of the Secretaries General, the countries from which they've come, and that country's corruption index:

Remember, the UN's top bureaucrat learns his standards towards bureaucratic honesty in his home country. Since 1982, we've had an unbroken string of Secretaries General from countries that are considered very corrupt. Kurt Waldheim turned out to be a Nazi (though never found guilty of actual war crimes), so even his tenure is a question mark in terms of the level of honesty displayed at the top of the organization. In fact, not since Dag Hammarskjöld complete his term in 1961 did we have a Secretary General that could unequivocably be called honest.

Stephen Harper came to power in no small part because of widespread disgust over Liberal corruption. But to tolerate corruption at the UN by continuing to support that institution is to undermine that trust people have in Stephen Harper to set things right. And now a Canadian soldier has died under the command of a UN operation.

Maybe it's time for Canada to say enough is enough. Maybe it's well past time.

How many Canadians would really be upset if Stephen Harper said Canadian soldiers would serve only under Canadian command, or with her allies in NATO? How many would be so offended that Canadian soldiers would no longer be pawns in the power games of third world bureaucrats drunk with UN power?

I think some of the internationalists in the Liberal Party and the NDP would be surprised at just how many Canadians would be happy to see Canadian foreign policy dictated by Canadians for Canadians.

Time to deliver that surprise. Past time.