Here is a measure of how shameless some nations have become:

The Dutch government plans to give a citation to troops who served as peacekeepers in Srebrenica but failed to stop the massacre of Bosnian Muslims 11 years ago in what was supposed to be a UN-protected safe haven. The plan to award a unique insignia for duty at Srebrenica outraged survivors and victims' families Wednesday, who called it an insult to those who died.

The award was meant to heal a painful wound in the military, which felt unfairly blamed for the massacre and its reputation unjustly tarnished.

Even in the face of massive failures, all of which were corroborated by a parliamentary inquest that sparked the resignation of a government, there are those who find ways for some macabre self-congratulation. If you want to get a flavor of the Dutchbats accomplishments in Srebrenica take a look at this sobering article by Guido Snel. Key excerpts:

The Dutch, in fact, felt as endangered as the local population, which in the given circumstances, to put it mildly, made no sense. Rules, instructions and poor communication would later supply the desired justification.

[ ... ]

‘My case is one of the most terrible in terms of the international community’s role. The Dutch major Robert Franken told me to explain to my father that he can remain on the base. My father asks what will happen to his younger son and my mother. Franken tells me: "Hasan, tell your father that if he does not want to stay, he can go too. And there’ll be no further discussion." My father had three seconds to decide whether he wants to stay on the base, to go on living with his elder son, or go and die with his younger son and his wife. He chose to leave. A month ago, at the court in The Hague, Major Franken coolly states that he gave him a choice. What sort of choice?’

Conrad Black is putting the time he’s out on bail to good use with regular columns in the National Post, last Saturday’s (behind a subscriber wall) highlighted a theme that has made a compelling comeback over the past few weeks:

“ This is war-making, but it is executed crisply, that is often the only method of peacekeeping ”

Of course, his reflection refers to the Israel-Hezbollah war and Victor Davis Hanson was kind enough to – not for the first time – explore why old fashioned peacekeeping hasn’t helped in resolving that particular conflict:

Syria and Iran have never been more isolated; neither was isolated when Bill Clinton praised the “democracy” in Tehran or when an American secretary of State sat on the tarmac in Damascus for hours to pay homage to Syria ’s gangsters. Israel is at last being given an opportunity to unload on jihadists; that was impossible during the Arafat fraud that grew out of the Oslo debacle.

Only a decisive war can create the conditions for the establishment of a lasting peace and only the destruction of the radical zealots who initiated this war in the first place can bring this about. That is, if a viable democratic and open society can be nurtured on the rubble that decades of jihadist deceit and western acquiescence have created.

What is interesting to me is how for instance in Europe deep misconceptions continue to exist by separating warmaking and peacekeeping and how these two are considered to be very different approaches to a problem. Of course, this separation has in no small part contributed to the rather absurd overreaction to Israel’s actions by some European leaders and notably by a number of UN officials. Past missions by both - the former Yugoslavia being a case in point - indicate that reliance on peace and reconstruction doesn’t necessarily end a conflict or war.

Thankfully there is always a live example to illustrate the point and some of you may remember the deep rift in Dutch politics over the deployment of Dutch troops in Afghanistan earlier this year. The mission got a parliamentary go ahead only on the government accepting the condition that it was to be a peacekeeping and reconstruction exercise only, fighting terrorists it was felt was best delegated to American troops in the region. Well, in order to start that reconstruction effort the Dutch had to wage a bit of war last week on locally active Taliban groups:

Dutch commandos killed 18 enemy fighters who set up positions in rugged hills overlooking a Dutch camp in southern Afghanistan, the country's military chief said Friday. There were no Dutch casualties during a 10-day mission.

Hopefully this experience will help redefine the traditional interpretation of peacekeeping and merge it with warmaking, giving the peace effort that what it has always lacked: teeth.

UPDATE: Some good comments from Michael Barone.

An excellent and succinct obituary by Christopher Hitchens. Read it all.

As a child and teenager I spent a number of holidays in Yugoslavia which used to have a justified reputation for being one of the friendliest places on the planet, seriously. As such I advertised it to Irene when we embarked on our first holiday together in 1988 which took us by train through most of the Yugoslav nation on our way to Greece. What both of us remember from this part of our trip was the decidedly aggressive atmosphere, ranging from an increased military presence to testosterone-high aggressive youngsters on the trains to appalling scenes of poverty in the Kosovo region. The reason I bring this up is that Hitchens’ piece points to 1987 as the year of Milosevic’s ascendancy and the moment in time in which the train of gruesome hatred and destruction was set in motion. What we witnessed a year later were its first expressions, the initial manifestations of something that had been successfully repressed during decades of communist rule but which Slobodan Milosevic had somehow managed to unleash. I’ve never visited any of the resulting republics again, but I would like to believe that the evil winds have not destroyed the spirit of hospitality by which I got to know the heart of the Balkans.

More than once do I get the question what has prompted my bleak outlook for Europe, and while it is easy to rattle off the standard list of issues and contrast them with North America, there is one that stands out above all the others. Not only because it symbolizes the powerlessness of the continent’s institutional arrangements, but also because it reveals the strong potential for ethnic strife and bloodshed that is residing somewhere deep in Europe’s wounded soul.

The violent disintegration of Yugoslavia and the sheer incompetence of the European Union (and subsequently the UN) to do anything about it stand as the pivotal case study of why any crisis of magnitude simply can not be expected to be resolved by Europe itself. And, it was the first such test following the collapse of the Soviet Union at a time when the spirit of European co-operation and integration was at peak levels. The incompetence and inaction was covered up by ineffective interventions and some bizarre forms of symbolism, I distinctly remember former French President Francois Mitterand’s walk through the ravaged streets of Sarajevo, an empty gesture indeed:

After President Mitterand of France visited Sarajevo most Bosnians and Herzegovinians, including President of Bosnia & Herzegovina Alija Izetbegović, believed that the West would not allow this horror to continue. They were mistaken. Instead of any action designed to stop the slaughter of innocent civilians, the French President recommended that a large United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR) be sent to Bosnia & Herzegovina. They were sent to “keep peace” with no peace to keep. Over, 7,000 people were eventually massacred at Srebrenica in 1995, under the “protection” of UN forces. In Omarska, Trnopolje, Manjača and other concentration camps in Serb-held territory, through which over a million civilians were processed as part of a systematic plan of ethnic cleansing, UNPROFOR simply never arrived.

Approximately 10,000 civilians, including 1,500 children, were killed in Sarajevo alone, while it was under UN protection.

Of course I bring this up to as the Balkan-crisis of the 1990s was accelerated by the man who died this weekend in a prison cell in The Hague, Slobodan Milosevic. The conditions of his relatively early departure are highly symbolic. The international body that wasn’t able to restrain him when he set out on his journey of hate, destruction and genocide proved to be as incompetent when they finally had him in their prison cell. Not only was the International Court of Justice the wrong venue to hold Milosevic to account – that should have been in Belgrade, in a Serb court – it had over a period of some four years accomplished very little with only an occasional pyrrhic victory by the weakened defendant reaching the international headlines. And the real butchers, especially Bosnian Serb leaders Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, are still on the loose.

The other part of deeper significance is that he died on Dutch soil. As much as the EU and UN would like to forget their shameful role in the former Yugoslavia, it is especially the Dutch who are more than a little willing to forget the dreadful performance of its tarnished Dutchbat defending the "safe haven" of Srebrenica. To describe it as a botched defense would be too generous a treatment of history: not a single shot was fired to prevent the subsequent mass murder by Mladic’s thugs.

So in death, the erstwhile butcher of the Balkans has been able to serve up a few painful reminders to those who would be more than willing to forget. And to me and many others struggling with Europe’s difficult journey, another reminder of Europe’s inherent weaknesses.

I really thought that all the excitement over United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour was about her comments on torture and John Bolton's swift response. However, it also turns out Ms. Arbour is no fan of free speech and that in particular should create some serious doubt over her ability to continue in her present role.

Awarded today to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and its head, El-Baradei. Roger has a compelling suggestion.

REACTIONS:

Charles Johnson: "An an Orwellian move, the idiots in Norway have awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to the fools at the United Nations, and to one toothless nuclear watchdog in particular: IAEA, ElBaradei win peace prize. This completes the transformation of the Nobel Peace Prize into a politically-motivated sideshow, with no connection whatsoever to reality"

Jay Tea: "Charged with enforcing the Non-Proliferation Treaty and shepherding research and development of nuclear power into peaceful paths, they have a stellar record of accomplishments" Unfortunately, that stellar record is of failures.

Neil Boortz: "The Nobel Appeasement Price"

James Joyner: "In recent years especially, the Nobel committee has awarded the Peace Prize on rather dubious grounds, often to make a political statement rather than to recognize general achievement"

And so it goes on. Remember this day when you see some mushroom clouds generated by Iran, North-Korea, Pakistan or whatever polity that managed to escape the watchful eye of IAEA.

My source informs that Pearson College has taken some action against the students who felt it necessary to initiate their debate with Israeli Consul-General Brosh by painting some swastikas on the college’s pavement. The college has asked the culprits to write a apology letter to Brosh, it has informed the police, it has informed parents, it plans to design a special course for the students in conjunction with the Canadian Jewish Congress and “in turn, the students would like to participate in some form of educational program that will bring the lessons learnt from this training and from the incident itself back to our community”.

Fine, but somehow one gets the feeling that this is what the Dutch would call “mustard after the meal”, ie. wasn’t the original curriculum maybe lacking a fair and balanced approach to history? My reader sums it up in a priceless way:

The college decided not to expel the students, as it believes expelling them might encourage more bad behavior and it is better to have discussions and to encourage them to apologize etc. He did read me an apology letter from one of the students and it did sound pretty heartfelt. Still, I don't see me singing Kumbaya with these rascals anytime soon. I asked him if these were Palestinian students and he said no. I got out of him that two were from Latin America (probably Venezuela) and one was named Mohammad from the Maldives (he's the one who wrote the lovely apology letter) and I don't know where the fourth culprit is from. The dean did admit that his students, including the three Israeli ones, are very pro-Palestinian and left-leaning. He even said that all of his American students hate Bush.

Then he said an interesting thing. He said that he wished that there were more diverse views on campus. He brought Brosh in to stimulate discussion and bring another viewpoint forward. So, even a lefty is bored with all the lefty rhetoric. He didn't blame Brosh for what happened, but he did allude to the fact that Brosh was perhaps too abrasive in answering the student’s questions. He said that the students were armed with so many insightful questions after doing much research and quoted numerous UN resolutions to which Mr. Brosh got exasperated. I can't say that I blame Mr. Brosh for being short tempered, as it must be fairly annoying to be lectured to by pimple faced high school kids armed with Chomsky quotes.

Indeed. As I said it sounds like the program at Pearson is a bit one sided. At least the Brosh visit has got the college’s management thinking, but I am doubtful that a UN-sponsored school will amend its ways very quickly.

UPDATE I: Check out this site, Students for Academic Freedom. Real freedom.

UPDATE II: A reader has done some research and found this factoid, Pearson College students:

"I honestly don't believe peace and democracy can be achieved through war."

No, of course not, they can only be achieved through UN-resolutions, a point no doubt corroborated by for instance the citizens of Srebrenica.

Not just the Rainbow Warrior. Today it will be ten years ago that the UN (by way of Dutch and French incompetence) walked away from Srebrenica and enabled the slaughter of thousands of Bosnian men and boys.

Here's some background on the Dutch role which led to a parliamentary investigation and the fall of Wim Kok's second coalition cabinet in the spring of 2002. It's one of these issues that awoke Dutch politics and society from its comfortable 1990s slumber of unprecedented growth and budget surplus after budget surplus. The idea that war and evil would come calling this close to home left many perplexed and that attitude played a significant part in the cluelessness of the Dutchbat forces on the ground and of the politicians back home who worked hard to put a palatable veneer on the entire episode. Guilt was of course never apportioned, but that hasn't stopped some surviving family members to sue the Dutch state, I translate:

Two Bosnian families of Srebrenica victims will start legal action against the Dutch state. They argue The Netherlands is complicit in the murder of their family members after the muslim enclave fell in 1995. Their Dutch lawyer reported this.

One electrician was sent off from the UN-base without protection. The family argues that Dutchbat took the risk that he would be murdered.

Witness interviews in The Hague took place over the past two months. During those interviews it became clear that Dutchbat failed to do everything possible to save human lives.

Since Dutchbat operated under the UN umbrella I would think that legal action against that institution would yield better results, but I am no expert on this to be frank. The Dutch government is taking no chances however and refuses to make any apologies and restricts its actions today to meet with some survivors and to express its sympathy. Again, another sad anniversary.

NOTE: In the meantime the Dutch Left knows exactly who is guilty, from the blog of the Dutch member of parliament for the Socialist Party Jan Marijnissen we learn that the failure was that of the US and Britain who unduly influenced UN operations. Of course.

A few weeks back Ginna Dowler and I discussed Romeo Dallaire the Canadian general whose unfortunate claim to fame is having had the responsibility to carry out the underfunded, understaffed UN mission to Rwanda, with a fairly disastrous outcome. While I had some time for the traumatized Dallaire, Ginna did not.

Well, the tormented general is back in the news. It seems his judgment is beginning to fail him, especially when it comes to applying some of the Rwanda lessons to Darfur. In short, the embattled Paul Martin spotted an opportunity to secure a critical vote in getting his controversial budget approved by throwing in some Darfur peacekeeping. Of course, when structured in such a random fashion these missions are doomed to fail as they can never meet the requirements on the ground, but as it happened Martin had a useful ally in Dallaire who could help pitch the plan. Since the latter was recently appointed to a Liberal senate seat by Martin it was time to return that favor by backing up Martin's budget numbers and thus the meager Canadian troop commitment that will be part of an African Union solution.

To the dismay of many, Dallaire obliged by supporting the numbers and the Martin budget passed, however without the support of David Kilgour, the man who initiated the Darfur contribution in the first place:

Mr. Kilgour thinks the government's decision to focus solely on an African Union-led solution to the Darfur crisis was made recently. "It's Mr. Dallaire's view, and it's Mr. Hillier's view, and I'm sure it's Mobina Jaffer's view. The problem is, unless the African Union is significantly augmented, it won't succeed. How come people keep saying 'regional solutions for Africa?' The African Union is brand-new, how can it be expected to come up with a force alone, when NATO has been working in Bosnia and other places, and has decades of experience?

Kilgour supported action in Darfur because he felt something could and needed to be done. Dallaire did exactly what he was so vocal about in the past: he played politics with Africa's misery.

The UN criticizes one of its best friends.

The day after my post about Romeo Dallaire the National Post ran a long piece criticizing Dallaire and I wasn't sure what to make of it, it failed to convince me although I did see what the writers had in mind. It just didn't work for me. It did for Ginna Dowler and after failing to find a link she excerpted a few pieces on her blog and argues that Dallaire failed the test. Her argumentation is sound and I had exactly the same reaction when the Dutch UN contingent in Srebrenica did nothing, and I mean nothing, to prevent the massacre of thousands of assembled refugees in the 'UN safe haven' in 1995:

"The Dutch commander in Srebrenica, Colonel Karremans, then read a statement. The attack on the enclave was an 'excellently planned military operation,' he said. Bosnian Serb. military commander General Ratko Mladic was strategically very clever. 'But he was a commander, not a gentleman. There are no gentlemen in this war.' Karremans added: 'We learned that the parties in Bosnia cannot be divided into "the good guys" and "the bad guys",' apparently referring to Srebrenica's corrupt leaders.

"He said nothing about the treatment of the enclave's civilians and failed to mention the beatings, one execution or nine bodies his soldiers had seen in Potocari. [Lieutenant Vincent] Egbers and thirteen other Dutch peacekeepers had told their superiors of gunshots coming from the Nova Kasaba soccer field on the night of July 13, but Karremans somehow failed to mention it. ...

If you google Karremans you will find lots more, but I think you get it: the Dutch commander not only failed to do anything to safe Bosnian Muslim lives, he couldn't even bring himself to make a moral distinction between the warring parties. Of all people, Robert Fisk has a good summary with this sobering observation:

The Dutch published their own miserable, chilling account of Srebrenica. But Karremans was packed off to become Dutch military attaché in Washington, under orders not to talk. And silent he was, to the great relief of the Dutch.

We can't accuse Dallaire of failing to see the difference between right and wrong, or, for remaining quiet. His book and the documentary of his return to Rwanda are getting ample attention and rightly so. Cynics may argue that Dallaire learned from the Karremans experience and went on a media blitz to defend his record, but having studied the man and the mandate he had, the Canadian commander comes out far cleaner than some of his critics now argue. Sure, he made mistakes and there may be braver people who would have been willing to die to take a stand against the terror in front of them. We can even entertain the notion that the post-war military of left-liberal nations like Canada and Holland has failed to produce the battle-hardened moral men that we like to see when we think of war, or when we watch an epic Hollywood rendition of some historic struggle. Heroes like that are in short supply, reality is different.

So, compared to the disastrous performance of Karremans, Dallaire comes out much better. The real question is how both men would have performed had they been given the physical resources and political support to carry out their respective mandates. And that leads again to an assessment of viability of the UN as an institution to enforce and maintain peace. When comparing Dallaire and Karremans it seems that the former has a far better track record and moral compass to at least contribute to reform and an overhaul of a failed international institution.

If you ever want to see a searing indictment of the UN, go out and get the documentary Shake Hands with the Devil, depicting the return to Rwanda by former Canadian UN Commander Romeo Dallaire last year. We saw it last weekend and together with the book of the same title (and of course the impressive Hotel Rwanda) it provided a crash-course to bring those that were not paying attention in 1994 - and that is probably the entire world, me included – up to speed with the Rwandan genocide.

The role Dallaire played can probably best be described by one of the interviewed who argued that “he arrived in Rwanda and responded intelligently, but the UN did not take him seriously”. As a result, the frustrated and traumatized Dallaire refuses to mince his words and in the film he trashes the UN, berates former colonial power Belgium and moves on to blast the Clinton administration for deliberately lying about the extent of its knowledge of the massacre of some 800,000 Rwandans. The former president repeated that feat during a brief 1998 visit to Rwanda - featured in the documentary - when he addressed a crowd of genocide surviors and claiming that he did not appreciate the full extent of the genocide, which is vintage Clintonese for shifting responsibility away from yourself. Yes, these were the 1990s, it seems like a lifetime ago.

But it would be too easy to put it all on Bill Clinton, it was a time when the world still believed in the UN and the now embattled institution failed hopelessly in executing its mandate in Rwanda. That brings us back to Dallaire, a brave and moral man who stood no chance in the face of chaos and terror with absolutely no resources or support at his disposal. His moral qualities are revealed as he personally assumes blame for the genocide, collapsing mentally which eventually results in a bout with alcoholism on his return home to Canada. But both the book and the film have apparently served as a redemption for him and an education for us all, the documentary by itself is a must-see.

The best part of the film comes when Dallaire attempts to pay a visit to the current UN headquarters in Rwanda and is refused admittance on security grounds, which prompts him to walk back, shaking his head and saying that this is so typical and represents "the institution in a microcosm ..." Candidates for reforming the UN, Roger Simon, Claudia Rosett? My vote goes to Romeo Dallaire.

NOTE: Yes, there's a new category now, it could no longer be avoided: UN.