The Auschwitz Imperative

[drdon326]

The mass slaughter of Germany's Jews, 1.5 million at Auschwitz alone, was not incidental to Hitler's war aims, but their purest expression. This has long been an accepted historical truth, except in the strange world of the United Nations. This hole in history gave extra significance to a special General Assembly session Monday in which Secretary-General Kofi Annan broke with decades of disgraceful U.N. silence, enforced by anti- Semitic Arab states, about the murder of the Jews: "The United Nations must never forget that it was created as a response to the evil of Nazism, or that the horror of the Holocaust helped to shape its mission." Those words are true and overdue.

Today, a ceremony marking the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by the Red Army will be attended by numerous world leaders, including Vice President Dick Cheney, French President Jacques Chirac and Russia's Vladimir V. Putin, demonstrating a determination that the memory of the Holocaust not be effaced.

It was not always so. In the immediate aftermath of World War II, the Holocaust did not figure prominently enough at the Nuremberg war crimes trials or elsewhere. Israel was eager to look forward to a bright socialist future, not to linger on the gruesome past. Only a few scholarly books about the Nazi attempt to exterminate an entire people appeared. What's more, Stalin's Soviet Union was itself anti-Semitic, and it also set up puppet regimes in Eastern Europe and murdered tens of millions in the Gulag.

snip

The Holocaust remains unique in modern human history, but the memory of it has been insufficient to stop other genocides. The U.N., as Annan acknowledged Monday, has failed to stop slaughters in Cambodia, Bosnia and Rwanda. What he didn't say was that the U.N. has also served as a diplomatic fig leaf, allowing Western powers to justify doing nothing on their own. That is something the assembled statesmen might contemplate as they meet at Auschwitz today.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-auschwitz27jan27,1,6260780.story?coll=la-news-comment-editorials&ctrack=2&cset=true

[Jack Rabbit]

1. Unfortunately, very little has changed

The world (read: Kofi Annan) remains too diplomatic to even mention the crimes of the Bush administration, the greatest purpetrator of crimes against humanity in the world today. Torture and lies about wars of aggression are tolerated and rewarded.

Political leadership, now as then, is a colossal failure in the face of evil. It may well be up to the common people of the world to demonstrate what real leadership is.

If we can do that, we may yet usher in a golden age. In that way, the victims of the past will be best honored.

[drdon326]

3. You're very diplomatic as well......

Darfur,Bosnia and Rhowanda ALL occured under Kofis "leadership".

Why is he still there?....even with the added oil-for-food scandal swirling around him and his son?...

When does the buck stop with him?

[Englander]

4. Meanwhile,back in reality...

"Milosevic charged with Bosnia genocide

The UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague has formally charged former Yugoslav President
Slobodan Milosevic with genocide in connection with the 1992-1995 Bosnian war."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/1672414.stm


"Rwanda: How the genocide happened

Between April and June 1994, an estimated 800,000 Rwandans were killed in the space of 100 days."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/1288230.stm


Boutros Boutros-Ghali,UN Secretary General;
December 1991-December 1996;

http://www.un.org/Overview/SG/sg6bio.html

Kofi Annan,UN Secretary General;
January 1997-

Kofi Annan of Ghana is the seventh Secretary-General of the United Nations. The first Secretary-General to be elected from the ranks of United Nations staff, he began his first term on 1 January 1997. On 29 June 2001, acting on a recommendation by the Security Council, the General Assembly appointed him by acclamation to a second term of office, beginning on 1 January 2002 and ending on 31 December 2006.

http://www.un.org/News/ossg/sg/pages/sg_biography.html


Also,where the fuck is "Rhowanda"?

[drdon326]

5. I stand corrected.

on 2/3...the bottom line is that the UN has become a paper tiger and

alot of people feel KA's leadership has been abysmal.

[eyl]

8. So what's you're point?

That problem is in the UN as a whole? I agree; but regarding the specifics you raised:

1) Milosevic was charged almost 4 years ago, and is still being tried. The way things are going, I wouldn't be too surprised if he's let off. I not, like in the tribunals judging the perpatrators of the Rwandan genocide, he's likely to die of old age before the court finishes its job.

2) Regarding Rwanda, you're right that Annan was not the SG at the time. He was, however, the head of the UN's peacekeeping department at the time, and he's been accused of ignoring requests from the UN forces in the area for permission to operate actively at the beginning of the incidents, which may have prevented them from turning into a full-blown genocide.

[QueerJustice]

11. `` Meanwhile,back in reality...``

The post was not reality??

[drdon326]

12. Reality....what a concept.

U.N. Report Says Darfur Violence Is Not Genocide

A U.N. commission on Sudan has concluded that systematic, government-backed violence in the western region of Darfur was not genocide, but that there was evidence of crimes against humanity with an ethnic dimension.

The report documents violations of international human rights law, incidents of war crimes by militias and the rebels fighting them, and names individuals who may have acted with a "genocidal intention." But there was not sufficient evidence to indicate that Khartoum had a state policy intended to exterminate a particular racial or ethnic group, said diplomats familiar with the report.

It recommends referring the cases to the International Criminal Court, but leaves other options open. The United States, which opposes the court, has proposed a war crimes tribunal in Tanzania to prosecute atrocities committed in Darfur.

The report was submitted Thursday to United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan by a five-member independent commission he assigned in October to investigate violations of human rights in Darfur, determine whether acts of genocide occurred and identify the perpetrators. It is not expected to be made public until Sudan has a chance to review the assessment, and until it has been presented to the Security Council, expected next week.

The commission, headed by Antonio Cassese, an Italian judge, had to reconvene after the report was completed because of disagreements over whether to identify implicated government officials who may be in charge of implementing Sudan's new peace plan with its southern rebels, said diplomats familiar with the discussions. Sudan's ambassador to Washington, Khidir Haroun Ahmed, said he understood that the names would not be disclosed until a court had concluded that there was evidence for prosecution.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-sudan29jan29,1,3124281,print.story?coll=la-headlines-world&ctrack=3&cset=true

..................................................................

well, if the UN says the UN if off the hook, then the UN must be right.

[Darranar]

13. I doubt the victims care much whether it's officially "genocide" or not...

They are still being murdered, still being displaced, still being raped and abused.

But, typically, the world's governments don't care much, and as a result the UN does not.

[drdon326]

14. ERRRRRR....Wrong !!

the UN has been spineless because of the usual sucking up to voting blocks.

Not to worry though.....there will be a UN resolution condemning Israel over this..... somehow....... and everyone will feel better.

[Darranar]

15. So what nations in the UN would push for real action? n/t

[drdon326]

16. oh....none now.....

but that was LEADERSHIP is all about.....something kofi hasn't shown much of.

[Darranar]

17. National leaders are not sheep. Annan cannot lead leaders who do not...

want to be led.

That is not to say he has any interest in trying, merely that he would likely fail if he did.

[QueerJustice]

20. either Kofi should lead,follow....

or get out of the way.....

[Scurrilous]

9. 70 Nobel Prize winners laud beleaguered UN chief

http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=533243&contrassID=1&subContrassID=8&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y

<snip>

"Seventy Nobel Prize laureates, including former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, on Thursday endorsed the leadership of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in the face of questions about his role in the tainted Iraq oil-for-food program.

"He has never failed to take a critical look at the UN to examine its weaknesses and recommend improvements," the prizewinners said in a statement released by the nonprofit New York-based Better World Campaign.
"We commend Secretary-General Kofi Annan for effectively leveraging his moral authority, independence, and wisdom to elevate the United Nations to meet its highest principles," the letter said."

<snip>

"Annan, who shared the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize with the United Nations, was this week questioned for a third time by a commission he appointed to investigate mismanagement of the $67 billion U.N. oil-for-food program.

Some conservative U.S. lawmakers have demanded his resignation and the head of the commission, former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, was expected to issue his first findings in the inquiry next week."

[gottaB]

6. Annan has mentioned the crimes of the Bush administration

In rather diplomatic terms, of course, but he has mentioned them. Not only that, he's made an issue of them.

Sometimes I think world followership isn't all its cracked up to be.

[Jack Rabbit]

7. Annan called the war "illegal"

And indeed, it was and the continued occupation is illegal. There was no immediate threat and there was no enabling resolution from the UN Security Council to give Bush permission to enforce allegedly violated UN resolutions.

So what is he going to do about it? Nothing, apparently.

It's time for the rest of the world to take action to put a stop to Bush and his colonial piracy. There's no reason to be diplomatic. Bush and his aides are the most dangerous group of war criminals assembled in sixty years. Before they invade the next country on a false pretext and before Bush commissions another torture chamber for his offshore gulag network, we need to take action. The boycotts and divestment campaigns against Bush contributors and war profiteers must be organized now. Whenever Bush or Cheney go to visit, mass demonstrations must take place. It would be nice to see Bush travel a thousand miles for a phony photo op only to discover that the people will not allow his helicopter to land.

The Nazis were defeated at a great cost. Today, another group of sadistic anti-democratic ideologues bent on world domination are on the loose; thus far, they have met no effective challenge. It's long past time they did. We cannot wait any longer for the UN to stop acting helpless in front of these monsters.

[gottaB]

10. His "rule of law" address singled out US treatment of detainees

There are reasons for the Secretary General to be diplomatic. I don't quite understand the call for Annan to "do" something. His job is to oversee an institution that is supposed to be about promoting peace and defending human rights. He does his job, but it's like herding cats. And it's more like herding cats than it's like say pushing a rock uphill and having it roll back down on you in perpetuity, though it's equally thankless.

Boycots, divestment campaigns and demonstrations I understand.

[Djinn]

2. of course it didn't prevent Rwanda et al

just like the many prior massacres, slaughters and attempts at genocide didn't stop the Holocaust.

man's indifference to his fellow man has been a feature of humanity for aeons, not changing anytime soon either

[King Mongo]

18. excuses to harm Palestinians

Sounds like one is seeking justifications to harm Palestinians

[drdon326]

19. Are you serious or joking??

harming palestinians??


oh....you mean like this
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=124x85934