Send Kofi To The Hague

The (London) Sunday Times makes the case for Kofi Annan's UN as war criminal.

under the doctrine of command responsibility, the UN is guilty of war crimes. Broadly speaking, it has three principles: that a commander ordered atrocities to be carried out, that he failed to stop them, despite being able to, or failed to punish those responsible. The case rests on the second, that in Rwanda in 1994, in Srebrenica in 1995 and in Darfur since 2003, the UN knew war crimes were occurring or about to occur, but failed to stop them, despite having the means to do so.

I find this particularly disgusting because I just finished Left To Tell, in which a survivor of the Rwandan holocaust tells her story. Prior to reading the book I hadn't realized the extent of the body count: 1 million people killed in 3 months. She makes no effort to be political --the story is really about her spiritual journey-- and in fact she sees the UN as her liberator; nevertheless, it comes off very poorly in her tale. At one point, after spending 3 months holed up in a bathroom with 8 other women, she finally escapes to a French-run refugee camp. Which works well for awhile --except for the French soldier hitting on her. And eventually the French withdraw, leaving the refugees --including a lady in a wheelchair-- to walk more than a mile to a second camp --and this with Hutu thugs with machetes clearly visible.