United Nations

A Desire for Context from the Knowledgeable

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So, we’re having coffee after lunch and tune in C-span. The speaker , General Michael Rose, is at Columbia’s Saltzman’s Institute of War and Peace Studies making the argument of his new book, Washington’s War: The American War of Independence to the Iraqi Insurgency. I thought the analogy had some rather major weaknesses and found his position a bit irritating. Still, it is somewhat bracing to hear a British military man discuss our earlier conflicts. His very British point of view defines his values and positioning; they of course differ somewhat from a Midwesterner’s vision. He admires Petraeus, although the book was clearly written and argument solidified before the Petraeus strategy had developed. He remains sure, however, that we are losing, that the government there is accomplishing nothing, and that we should declare it a lost war, leave, and move on. His analogy encourages later, perhaps more cheerful, parallels as well – in the aftermath for Iraq (America’s Constitution) and for America (Britain’s great Victorian age). He repeatedly argues decisions should not be made in terms of the worst scenario – though we should have foreseen the worst scenarios when entering Iraq. Considering a blood bath might follow an early retreat is not reasonable, since bad seldom (not as much as 1 out of 10 he says) follows such conflicts.

He is a fifth generation military man. C-Span gives some biographical context: “Gen. Michael Rose (ret.) commanded the 22nd Special Air Service Regiment from 1979 to 1982. He was later commander of the UN forces in Bosnia (1994-1995). ” He strongly defends in the C-span interview as well as in his interview with Charlie Rose, the UN’s actions in Bosnia and criticizes NATO. The force in both interviews of this discussion indicates it contains points he wants to make. (I thought of Hanson’s argument that Lew Wallace did book tours for Ben Hur as much to defend his Civil War record as to sell books.) Also, he believes Tony Blair should have been impeached.

So, I turn to Chicagoboyz and ask for information, intelligence and a sense of proportion. (I did do a search of him on our site, but may have entered the search poorly. If, as seems to be happening lately, my mind is wandering and someone has talked of him, please let me know.)

Some Thoughts on Kosovo

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The former Yugoslavia is a mess. It has been so since before the Ottomans ruled that part of the world, and judging from recent events, it will continue to be so long into the future. My blog partner CW is fond on quoting from Dame West’s “Black Lamb and Grey Falcon”, because the pre-war Balkan region she describes in that book is remarkably similar to the situation today.

In “What Went Wrong”, Bernard Lewis noted the stark cultural difference between Turkey and the rest of the Muslim world in the period from roughly 1880 to 1922. When confronted with the reality of European dominance and success, the Turks asked themselves “What did we do wrong?”. The Arabs asked themselves: “What did they just do to us?” Turkey flourished, relatively speaking, and the Middle East today would be right where it was in 1922 if it were not for oil. In fact, it is pretty much where it was in 1922, just with more automobiles and guns.

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Al Gore’s Defining Moment

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Generally, I avoid commenting on primarily political stories but this one merits an exception.

Former Vice-President Al Gore was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace, in conjunction with UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Regardless of what one thinks about Mr. Gore as a politician or of his heavily propagandistic but Oscar award winning film, the Nobel Prize represents the capstone of one of the most remarkable political comebacks in American politics since Richard Nixon.

It is true that Al Gore did not self-destruct after his razor-thin defeat in 2000 (yes, give it up, he lost) quite the way Nixon did when he lost the California Governorship in 1962 back to back with the presidency in 1960 but neither did “the New Nixon” of 1968 reach such illustrious heights. Americans with Nobels are rare; Americans with Peace Prizes are the most exclusive circle of all. Many conservatives are quite upset at this development and are venting, some of their complaints have my sympathy but their sense of timing does not. They are spitting into the wind right now and to the extent that anyone outside the movement conservative choir is paying any attention, bitter anti-Gore jeremiads only serve to alienate moderates.

For once, I can say the Bush administration struck the right political note with a simple gesture of congratulation to a former adversary enjoying a moment in the sun, without getting too excited about it. If anything, given recent decisions by the Nobel Committee to honor Communist frauds and terrorist kleptocrats, we should be relieved that the Peace Prize this year went to Al Gore and not, say, Kim Jong Il or Robert Mugabe. I’m the first not to confuse Mr. Gore with Andrei Sakharov or Aung San Suu Kyi but even I must concede he is a qualitative moral improvement over Yasser Arafat by many orders of magnitude.

Much speculation (i.e. wishful thinking) exists as to whether Gore will now jump into the race for the Democratic nomination for president. That would be fun to watch but I doubt that will happen as it would require that Gore extricate himself from around $100 million dollars of VC enterprises that he is deeply involved in, so as to compete at a complete organizational and financial disadvantage with Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Why accept those headaches and fritter away his newfound political capital when as the Democratic Party’s star elder statesman and counterweight to the Clintons, Gore is a ” must-have” insider for a new Democratic administration? That’s a lot of clout to throw away on a last-minute vanity campaign.

Mr. Gore is enjoying his moment but in all probability, this episode represents his peak.

Cross-posted at Zenpundit

International Gun Prohibition

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Via Instapundit and Outdoor Life comes this AP article about a new UN scheme to restrict trade in weapons. It is the same old nonsense.

But in the U.S., the NRA says it sees a creeping attempt to limit civilian gun ownership within nations — even though the focus now is on setting standards for arms exports and imports.
 
The international issues “necessarily will come to involve at some point domestic laws and policies regarding firearms,” said former congressman Bob Barr, a leading NRA voice on the subject.
 
“That’s not what we’re looking at here,” countered Greg Puley, of the Control Arms coalition of pro-treaty advocacy groups. “The point is to control trade in weapons that contribute to conflict and atrocities.”

Contra Mr. Puley, US domestic restriction of private gun purchases is exactly the expected outcome here. How could it be otherwise?

Just as domestic restrictions on guns serve to keep weapons from law-abiding citizens without affecting the ability of criminals to obtain them, so international restrictions only make it more difficult for oppressed populations to defend themselves from “conflict and atrocities” perpetrated by their own governments. State supported Sudanese Islamist militias will not be impeded in the least while the defenseless people they kill in Darfur will be blockaded.

Of course the dictators’ club at the UN will support any effort to disarm free individuals. That’s how dictatorships behave. But why should democracies like the UK, Australia and Japan support such efforts? Bravo to the NRA for standing up to the dictators and foolish democrats.

Minor Aggregation – 3

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Belmont Club & Samizdata are having a little fun with the appointment of Zimbabwe, now head of the Commission on Sustainable Development at the United Nations. Samizdat quotes an American spokesman: “We don’t think that Zimbabwe would be a particularly effective leader of this body”. Belmont observes “The UN can do little harm as long as it is universally understood that it operates according to the principles of magical realism.” On the other hand, the first comment at Samizdat makes a sensible observation: “In terms of taking the world back to a bleak, pre-industrial existence (which is what many people in favour of “sustainable development” seemingly want) the government of Zimababwe is doing a good job of leading by example.” Of course, this wryness would be a good deal funnier if there weren’t real people with real needs ill served by a government that now is in a position to suggest others follow its disastrous policies.