clap clap blog: we have moved


Thursday, August 21, 2003
Matt Y points us to a NRO article about the UN-in-Iraq bombing that's pretty good. Matt also points out just how illogical (and self-serving) it is for conservatives to be bringing up Rwanda as a prime example of UN-weenieness:

Based on these rightwing retellings of what went down in Rwanda, you would think that the UN has some kind of massive military at its disposal that it cowardly refused to deploy. In fact, of course, the actual UN personnel in Rwanda were all for an intervention, but no intervention happened because the US wouldn't stand for it. We feared that even if no US troops were involved initially, that something might go wrong and we would wind up in a situation where we had to intervene in order to assist our allies. It was American reluctance to use force, not some conspiracy of UN-weenies, that prevented intervention.

It's especially odd, I think, that conservatives get this history wrong, because the US government was under the leadership of one William Jefferson Clinton at the time. The right is not known for its kindness toward his memory and, frankly, the truth of this episode does not reflect well on him. The explanation, I suppose, is that Bush specifically stated during the 2000 campaign that he agreed with Clinton's 1994-issue Rwanda policy. Nevertheless, even this is a bit strange since
even Clinton eventually disavowed his own costly error in a speech that wound up getting roundly mocked by the American right.

Yeah...um...well...Clinton sucks, anyway!