By TIM KILLEEN
Yesterday, Victoria Matus wrote this piece of poor logic on the Weekly Standard website. Ms. Matus recounts the horrors of the Serbo-Croat War, especially the massacre at Srebrenica. She opens and closes the piece by intimating that UN inaction either directly caused, or at least, tacitly permitted the genocidal actions that took place.
Assuming from her affiliation with the Weekly Standard (and correct me if I'm wrong), Ms. Matus is, likely, politically conservative. Generally speaking, conservative Americans are fairly anti-anything the UN does (and even anti-US involvement with the organization). This line of thought sees international bodies like the UN as a threat to American sovereignty, a way to force us into progressive policies and an overall socialist "world order." All of these contentions, within reason, admittedly have some merit- though I ultimately disagree. In an attempt to combat such catastrophic results, conservatives push as hard as possible to limit the reach and scope of international institutions like the UN, going so far as to block US involvement in the International Criminal Court after we worked to set it up.
If Ms. Matus is in line with this thinking- and it seems likely, considering her aim at laying genocide at the feet of the blue helmets- it seems contradictory to blame the UN for inaction. Certainly, I agree that the UN should have done more to protect the 8,000 some Muslims killed at Srebrenica; but I understand that their inability to hold back Mladic's forces was due to their limited charter and manpower. What Ms. Matus (and others) attempt to do is to limit organizations like the UN to as little action as possible and then point out their inability to fix problems as proof of poor performance. Logically, however, you can only have it one way or the other: either we need to beef up UN peacekeeping (and peacemaking) forces and expand their ability to engage enemies or we need to excuse their failure to keep atrocities from happening. Doing both is simply disingenuous.
Yesterday, Victoria Matus wrote this piece of poor logic on the Weekly Standard website. Ms. Matus recounts the horrors of the Serbo-Croat War, especially the massacre at Srebrenica. She opens and closes the piece by intimating that UN inaction either directly caused, or at least, tacitly permitted the genocidal actions that took place.
Assuming from her affiliation with the Weekly Standard (and correct me if I'm wrong), Ms. Matus is, likely, politically conservative. Generally speaking, conservative Americans are fairly anti-anything the UN does (and even anti-US involvement with the organization). This line of thought sees international bodies like the UN as a threat to American sovereignty, a way to force us into progressive policies and an overall socialist "world order." All of these contentions, within reason, admittedly have some merit- though I ultimately disagree. In an attempt to combat such catastrophic results, conservatives push as hard as possible to limit the reach and scope of international institutions like the UN, going so far as to block US involvement in the International Criminal Court after we worked to set it up.
If Ms. Matus is in line with this thinking- and it seems likely, considering her aim at laying genocide at the feet of the blue helmets- it seems contradictory to blame the UN for inaction. Certainly, I agree that the UN should have done more to protect the 8,000 some Muslims killed at Srebrenica; but I understand that their inability to hold back Mladic's forces was due to their limited charter and manpower. What Ms. Matus (and others) attempt to do is to limit organizations like the UN to as little action as possible and then point out their inability to fix problems as proof of poor performance. Logically, however, you can only have it one way or the other: either we need to beef up UN peacekeeping (and peacemaking) forces and expand their ability to engage enemies or we need to excuse their failure to keep atrocities from happening. Doing both is simply disingenuous.
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