U.N. Buffoons

The article starts off by stating:
"The U.N. Security Council unanimously passed a tough new anti-terrorism resolution yesterday aimed at stemming attacks against civilians..."
Since I just fell off the turnip truck, I'd like the definition of tough. Tough; like the tough resolutions the U.N. passed against the Iraqi WMD? That happened quite a few times as I recall. And what did that result in? The U.S. taking the U.N. at its word, and then being accused by the titular head of the U.N., Kofi Annan, of conducting an illegal war. I'm still pondering that.

Now the U.N. Security Council has decided that it's bad to blow up civilian establishments and kill innocent bystanders to promote a point of view. Well, I agree with that. And it's good to see that they didn't rush into a decision as important as this. Terrorist groups, whose name I dare not mention for fear that I'd be accused of some sort of racism, must have just started actions like these against civilian groups. Otherwise an astute, freedom loving organization such as the U.N. would have noticed such things long before now.

So now, the "tough" part. Once these dire terrorist crimes have been committed, what would be the consequence? I've searched the article though and through, and I've found... that apparently there is no consequence that hadn't existed before. Unless possibly, in Egypt, it wasn't already illegal to blow up resort hotels.

I'm confused. Well, back up on the turnip truck, I hope someday, I hope somehow I might stumble upon a clarification as to how this "tough" resolution could ever be considered tough.

O.K. That was the jist of the basic letter. Of course I don't expect it will ever be published in the Washington Times. So now, for those who read this occasional rant, I'll expand on that, just a little.

It's really worth it to read the article. It's well written and has a real point to make. The article is written by Betsy Pisik, and who knows what qualifications she has. For all I know, she may have just fallen off the turnip truck too. So I'm leaving her pretty much alone on this. However the Washington Times staff should really read these articles before they publish them. Don't get me wrong. I like the Washington Times. I read the Editorial/Op-Ed page almost every day on the net. But it really looks to me that they dropped the ball on this one. Yes, I know it was a news article and not an editorial. But what if the U.N., in all its glory, had said that this resolution was "wimpy". Would a reporter of a news article wonder what the U.N. meant by that? Of course. But the U.N. never passes resolutions that it calls "wimpy". A "tough" resolution is something that the U.N. is always passing, so obviously there would be no need to question what "tough" meant. That's the real problem. The U.N. has conditioned newspapers (actually, more than just newspapers) as to what to expect, and the reality is to not expect much. We see over and over resolutions in "the strongest possible language" that mean absolutely nothing. The Washington Times is really a great newspaper. However, in their news articles about the U.N., they might want to be just a little bit more careful about calling any U.N. policy "tough".