U.N. peacekeeping is a bad joke

Richard Fernandez is one of my favorite analysts.  Here's one of his latest posts (I've edited slightly):

There's a movie called Beyond the Gates, about the failure of the UN mission in Rwanda. In the U.K. it's called “Shooting Dogs,” from the fact that the UN troops were not allowed to fire their weapons to save the victims, but were ordered to shoot starving dogs gnawing at the resulting corpses--in the name of preserving human dignity.

Probably they meant to say “preserving appearances.”  Appearances, you see,  are very important to bureaucrats.

The movie depicted a tragic irony:  Rwandans who sought shelter with the UN wound up getting slaughtered. (As did the Kosovars who sought shelter in the “safe zones” in the Balkans.) Maybe it is better to trust no one than to trust in Judas. The UN is like fake Hope and Change, attractive to the unwary but ultimately incapable of keeping any promises, merely dispenser of snake oil by the gallon.

That is the charitable view. The uncharitable one is that they’re part of the set-up.

The U.N. bureaucrat in charge of the failed mission in Rwanda was Kofi Annan.

A friend once told me “there is no better way of ruining a noble cause than by getting rogues to represent it.”  This is what's happened to peacekeeping, environmentalism and even the campaign for racial equality. These causes, which are otherwise noble, will take decades to recover from the grifters who have made a fortune in their name. How on earth did peacekeeping get put in the care of Kofi Annan? Why was a guy like Al Sharpton allowed to assume the role of the racial conscience of America? How come Al Gore gets to pronounce on science?

The Narrative, probably. Always the Narrative.