You keep it up — Diplomad is a daily read out here too.

We’re sorry if some people were put off by one of our postings; that’s life; you can’t make everybody happy. Let us just say that we’re put off by the devastation and death we see from the tsunami, and how UN agencies, created precisely to deal with this sort of event, are venal, corrupt, and cynical, and don’t give a damn about real people dying real deaths and instead worry about getting credit and issuing press releases.

Thanks for reading the Diplomad and thanks to Roger Simon for an excellent blog which we read every day.

The other side to dealing with the UN is to unilaterally cut our payments to them by about 75%. And of course, we should insist that Kofi Annan resign as a condition for their getting their next dime from the American people.

US personnel – even the leftiest touchy-feely types – tend to get exasperated with the UN, its inefficiency and slowness, the obsession with process, the whole bit. After being in the field for months, even a dyed in the wool Barbara Boxer fan starts sounding (intermittently and only in private of course) pretty antibureaucratic. Republican, almost. Once in a while, anyway. But enough to make the Diplomad’s post ring true. And believe me, it doesn’t take a tsunami to feel that way.

The Eurocrats are naturally much less vocal in their criticism, even though many are just as exasperated.

The great thing about working on a private development study, a mine or a port, particularly in Asia, is that is might actually get built. Ten years down the pike you can point to something where you helped to get it off the ground. Within the context of the UN, there is a much lower chance of doing the same.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-quake7jan07,1,5276585.story?coll=la-headlines-world

We agree that the “atmospherics” of the Diplomad’s post to which Roger linked are off-putting and seem to undermine his credibility. But the half dozen Diplomad posts BEFORE that post are pure gold.

As for the self-correcting or validating function of the blogosphere, far be it from a semi-retired blogger to suggest that you look to Roger’s home town manifestation of the MSM:

In the January 7, 2005 Los Angeles Times, “U.N. Gets Leading Role in Tsunami Aid Effort”, Paul Richter and Don Lee tell us

“JAKARTA, Indonesia _ The United Nations’ role in the massive Asian tsunami relief effort was broadened Thursday at an international conference where world leaders also announced a new round of aid pledges….

“Secretary of State Colin L. Powell conceded the coordination role to the U.N. but also warned that the international agency must act quickly to prove effective.

“Describing a one-on-one meeting with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, Powell said, ‘We talked about the need for the U.N. agencies, if they’re going to play that coordinating role, to get on the ground and start playing it.’…”

Not quite as atmospheric as Diplomad, but pretty blunt for Powell.

“Although the world body has been eager to take charge, U.S. officials have had reservations in part because of concern about the U.N.’s ability to move quickly.”

What would the other part of the U.S. official’s reservations be based on?

“Some U.N. and U.S. aid workers in Indonesia have also begun to quibble about coordination, with the Americans complaining that the U.N. is taking the credit for U.S. and Australian action, and the U.N. staffers saying that the U.S. military is not sharing information effectively…. ”

It does not sound like Diplomad is alone in his concerns about the UN.

Since those owning the assets are expert in their use and the UN is not what is the UN selling? Itself.It is selling its so called expertise,it is in effect a middleman between donor and recipient.

Because the UN has no resources it consumes resources to enable itself,how much did it cost to enable Kofi Annan to stare uncomprehendingly at the devastation?

“Where have all the people gone” will go down in history with “Let them eat cake” as an all time assinine remark.

I’m concerned that Diplomad are who they say they are. In general their view of the UN is corroborated elsewhere, but we don’t have too much in hard facts about the UN in tsunami relief besides this blog. We all “know” how the UN is and so happy to have some pro-Bush types in the State Dept, so we are uncritical of Diplomad.

I hope like all of you that they are the real deal, but so far we don’t know.

My assumption is that Diplomad does have an axe to grind. I would be very surprised if he said “up until December 25, 2004, I had a very favorable opinion of the UN” – I’d have a lot of trouble believing it.

The self-correcting nature of the blogosphere is incomplete – it depends on the availability of multiple sources of information. In this case, we have multiple sources – reports from troops, from Diplomad, from representatives of NGOs, from US officials, and from the UN itself – which yesterday was finally attempting to arrange for some helicopters in Banda Aceh, and complaining that the US helicopters (which have been busy delivering emergency relief supplies for days) are not under the control of the UN.

If the UN were doing a great job, we’d hear about it. But there is no question that they were slow to respond, and now that they are in the area, they can only accomplish anything by appropriating material from those who have already responded.

We’ll see what they do over the next few days. It is (theoretically) a good idea to have a central agency coordinating relief efforts, and I imagine that many would object to the US military doing the job. Besides, that’s not what the military does.

I’m not particularly hopeful that the UN will do a good job – it’s lousy at almost everything. But we’ll see.