The Diplomad: More UNreality . . . But the Dutch Get It

Sooooo..... Remember that earlier comment by that U.N. potentate suggesting the U.S. should raise taxes to give more money to the U.N. so they can help people? Here's a commentary from a career Foreign Service Office in the U.S. Department of State:

The Diplomad: More UNreality . . . But the Dutch Get It: "Well, dear friends, we're now into the tenth day of the tsunami crisis and in this battered corner of Asia, the UN is nowhere to be seen -- unless you count at meetings, in five-star hotels, and holding press conferences.

Aussies and Yanks continue to carry the overwhelming bulk of the burden, but some other fine folks also have jumped in: e.g., the New Zealanders have provided C-130 lift and an excellent and much-needed potable water distribution system; the Singaporeans have provided great helo support; the Indians have a hospital ship taking position off Sumatra. Spain and Netherlands have sent aircraft with supplies.

The UN continues to send its best product, bureaucrats. Just today the city's Embassies got a letter from the local UN representative requesting a meeting for 'Ms. Margareeta Wahlstrom, United Nations Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator and the Secretary-General's Special Coordinator for Humanitarian Assistance in Tsunami-afected countries.' Wow! Put that on a business card! And she must be really, really special because she has the word 'coordinator' twice in her title!

The letter, in typically modest UN style, goes on to explain that 'Ms. Wahlstrom's main task will be to provide leadership and support to the international relief effort. She will undertake high-level consultations with the concerned governments in order to facilitate the delivery of international assistance.' Oh, and she'll be visiting from January 4-5.

Once, again, a hearty Diplomadic 'WOW!' She's going to do all that in two days! The Australians and we have been feeding and otherwise helping tens-of-thousands of people stay alive for the past ten days, and still have a long, long way to go, but she's going to wrap the whole thing up in a couple of days of meetings. Thank goodness she's here to provide the poor lost Aussies and Yanks with leadership. The Diplomad bows in awe to such power and wisdom. The letter is signed, by the way, by the same UN official who suggested a couple of days back that the Australian and US air traffic controllers in Aceh should don UN blue (see our post of January 2.)

Ok, enough with the UN; you get the picture. Now to the EU. The EU could copy the Australian-American model of acting quickly and effectively to save lives, or they could copy the UN model of meeting at a leisurely pace to plan for the possibility of setting up a coordination center that will consider making a plan for the possibility of an operations center to consider beginning to request support for the tsunami's victims. Ah, my wise friends, guess which model of "action" the EU chose? No need to emulate those "cowboys" from Australia and the USA with their airplanes and loading crews working round-the-clock; oh, no, much too tacky, sweaty and dirty. No need to feed into the system those goofy Aussiyankeebushowardian New World Anglo-Saxons already have created. No, they'll follow the much more elegant Kofi Annan model. A couple of EU planners have shown up to begin making arrangements for an assessment team to arrive, etc., etc., you know the rest. Meanwhile, people die.
"