Every time this kind of UN behavior arises, I wonder why we don’t start taking aid money out of what we give to the UN? Need a few more million in Iraq? Sorry Kofi, got something productive to do with the funds. Tsunami? Oops, there went that money we pledged to the UN NYC parking ticket fund.

that was John@ in one of the comment threads here at Roger’s. Go look at the Toyota Taliban posting at WindsOfChange to find a link.

I just love how the US can managed to get criticized for being unilateral and too hesitant to step up to the bat all at the same time.

Truth is you need a military to get to these places when the roads and bridges are gone and the UN is more designed for dinner parties. Their idea of dangerous duty is overseeing elections. That sort of thing is easier for them and is more what they were intended to do.

It just was not designed to do anything else and it doesn’t.

It is time to put the UN out of its misery: Get the US out of the UN and kick the UN out of the US.

But the UN types come from an environment where first class travel is considered their birthright, and they don’t see it as padding the expense account. Also, the world leaders they deal with have the same worldview and would look down on them if they were to take the Greyhound and stay at Motel 6.

Very, VERY well put. I once had two mining transport consulting jobs going in the same year – one in Idaho and the other in Peru. Talk about your cultural whiplash. On the whole, I’d rather be in Boise.

More to our point is the fact that many if not most of these guys have zippo technical qualifications. And being in a feudal system, they can’t get their hands dirty. No trips to Home Depot for them. The disconnect between their world and the world of the little people who actually do things (and have the experience) is vast. And the little people who actually do things and know things never move up. Never.

Sooo, who would you rather have coordinating the movement of your disaster supplies? A Yank or Aussie Army major who worked his way through college driving an 18-wheeler and who rose to night foreman at his trucking company, or some upper class twit in his Mercedes?

Please tell me you’re kidding. The five star hotel is not the story. It may be a hook into the story, but in and of itself it is of no interest. Diplomad is stating that the UN is doing very little useful work during this disaster, rather they are flying about and conducting meeting after meeting and then holding press conferences in which they claim credit for the work of other organizations. That’s the story.

You might dismiss Diplomad’s blog as nothing but the rantings of a UN hater except for some curious facts. We have seen photos and videos of the relief operations, primarily being conducted by the US and Australians. The US has said, while making no mention of the UN at all, that it was coordinating its relief efforts with a coalition including the US, Australia, India, Singapore and Japan. Your reporter friend seems to support a minimal to non-existent UN involvement when he says he can find plenty of Aussies and Yanks, but virtually no UN Blue Helmets.

If you had gone to the UN site I mentioned and clicked around a bit you would have found — along with finding telephone numbers of phones with standing telephone poles — this curious claim, “Indonesia: The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is starting an airlift on Sunday of 400 tons of shelter and other emergency supplies for an initial 100,000 people in Aceh province, among the worst and most inaccessible disaster zones. A UN joint logistics centre will be set up at the central level and in Banda Aceh, the provincial capital and a FAO emergency coordinator and a fishery expert have been sent in.” (source).

The US is saying it is coordinating the airlift with its coalition while the UN claims it is coordinating the airlift. That’s the story. One or the other organizations is either taking credit for, or denying credit to, the work of the other. I’m guessing the ratio of Yanks/Aussies to Blue Helmets pretty much answers that question, but your reporter friend might want to look up phone numbers and give a call to both sides asking them to clarify the situation. By the way, if it turns out the UN has claimed rather more credit than they are due in the airlift, on their site they have a whole list of accomplishments they claim which might bear double-checking.

This seems a simple and common sense thing for a reporter to do when such a discrepancy is noted. Ask questions and let the chips fall where they may. Ask your reporter friend why those questions never occurred to him (or her), and if they did why he never asked and reported on the answers? It is the gyst of what bothers many of us about MSM reporting. That is, if he didn’t delve to deep because the UN are the “good” guys then he is doing advocacy reporting. I prefer reporters giving me the facts.