Posted on 08/11/2003 6:48:14 AM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
Fifty years ago today, the life work of Alger Hiss came to fruition. Hiss, a US State Department official, served the United Nations as its acting Secretary General during its founding conference in the spring of 1945. On October 24, 1945 the United Nations Charter became effective as a majority of the countries that had signed it ratified their signatures. Several years later, Hiss went to a federal penitentiary for committing perjury when testifying that he was not a Soviet agent. His personal career was over, but his most important work, the United Nations, lived on.
Globalists everywhere are today citing the "accomplishments" of the United Nations during its 50-year life. One of the feats accredited to the UN was the reunification of the Belgian Congo by a UN "peacekeeping" force. Since most of the people I talk to have never heard of this piece of history, it seems appropriate to review it on this anniversary.
The tragedy of Katanga started on June 30, 1960 when Belgium granted independence to its former province of the Congo. Leadership of the new nation fell to Moscow-sponsored terrorist Patrice Lumumba. Lumumba was so highly regarded by Soviet dictator Khrushchev that he renamed the Moscow "Peoples Friendship University" the "Patrice Lumumba Friendship University" upon Lumumba's death. In a directive to the heads of the Congolese provinces, Lumumba wrote that they should use "terrorism, essential to subdue the population." His directive was carried out enthusiastically.
In order to avoid the nightmare that attended Communist rule in the Congo, the province of Katanga declared its independence. Its president, the Christian, pro-American Moise Tshombe, announced that "we are seceding from chaos." Tshombe asked Belgium to send military officers to recruit and train a Katangese army to restore order in Katanga. Lumumba and his successor, Cyrille Adoula, asked for and got the aid of United Nations "peacekeepers" to force Katanga back under Congolese rule. It took two years of UN warmaking to accomplish this goal.
The troops transported to Katanga using US Air Force aircraft came from Ireland, Sweden, Italy, Ethiopia, and India. According to numerous eyewitness accounts, the troops of the UN's Operation Morthor carried on one of the most brutal military campaigns of our century. In their 1962 report, 46 Angry Men, the 46 civilian doctors of Elizabethville, Katanga denounced the atrocities carried out by UN troops.
According to the doctors, the UN consistently bombed, machine-gunned, and looted civilian targets: hospitals, ambulances, churches, schools, homes, cars. "Over ninety percent of the buildings bombed and shelled by the United Nations were strictly civilian structures with no military value," said the doctors' report. After protesting the UN attacks on ambulances, Mr. Georges Olivet of the Swiss Red Cross was murdered by UN troops as he traveled in a Red Cross ambulance.
Worse yet, if possible, was the behavior of Congolese troops supplied and transported by the UN to invade Katanga from the north. Reports of cannibalism, massacre of missionaries and other civilians, and other atrocities were rife. The passage of these UN allies left in its wake complete anarchy in place of the peace and prosperity that had formerly prevailed in that region.
Before and during the two-year UN war against Katanga, the UN insisted that its troops had orders not to interfere with the internal affairs of the Congo or Katanga. Globalists in the Kennedy administration cooperated fully with this propaganda. The whole operation was sold to the American people as necessary to prevent the Congo from "going Communist."
With such a legacy, the UN-boosters in and out of government ought to lie low on this fiftieth United Nations Day. They ought to be hoping that we would forget that we have been inflicted with fifty years of the UN. Instead, they are celebrating the UN's birthday from sea to shining sea. They are openly talking about increasing the ability of the United Nations to conduct "peacekeeping" operations. There is even serious talk among them of giving the UN some powers of taxation. When will we begin to learn from history?
Jesse Jackson - "We are turning our backs on Liberia. Liberia remains a killing field on the back burner."
Al Sharpton - "The carnage must stop."
Maxine Waters - "We expect him to do what is necessary, make the decision, do what is necessary to stop this carnage and not sit back and wait, and hope that perhaps [the United States] will never have to go in. But it is stalling at this point."
Kofi Annan - "I believe that we need to pay urgent attention to the situation in Liberia, because Liberia today is poised between hope and disaster"
French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin - "France took up its responsibilities in the Ivory Coast, the United Kingdom in Sierra Leone, and the United States has a special tradition in Liberia."
Howard Dean - "I believe that the US must do its share."
Conversely, Who has reservations about intervention?
Michael Ledeen - "I've been in favor of doing something in Liberia for years — but I don't think it should be with American troops"
Mona Charen - Liberia is a mess that will be difficult to fix, and we're full up with other messes -- namely Afghanistan and Iraq -- to clean up just now.
Senators Mitch McConnell, Pat Roberts, and John Warner
Generals Richard B. Myers and Peter Pace, chairman and vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Donald Rumsfeld
The left supports intervention in Liberia because the U.S. has no national interest there and they want U.S. forces spread around as thinly as possible. They want our troops to serve as potential targets in UN peacekeeping missions.
Peacekeeping and humanitarian missions are not normally evaluated as military missions, since they are seen as an operation other than war. The fundamental assumption is that everyone can see that the intervening power is neutral and therefore will not attack his armed forces and further, that no one would dare harm those forces. Therefore, the normal calibration of forces required to carry out the mission does not take place. The force is either measured in terms of the humanitarian mission, or is seen as a symbolic presence whose safety is guaranteed by the inherent unwillingness of warring parties to provoke the United States.In a certain real sense, therefore, peacekeeping forces are there as hostages. The implicit threat is that whichever side violates the peace must pass over the bodies of the peacekeepers. - SOURCE
Jesse, Liberia and Blood Diamonds
What Do We Owe Liberia? - The latest reparations case
Foreign Policy and Self-Interest: Liberia Campaign Would Be a Moral Crime
The cruelty of what we supported and basically financed in Katanga--indeed, provided the logistics for--has to be revisted and studied to be fully comprehended. (Incidentally, I am not being mean spirited in attributing the policy to Dean Rusk personally. After extensive correspondence to his Office, which was ignored, my then Congressman, who was one of the most Conservatvie in Washington at the time, got into the act and finally got me a specific answer, as to who was responsible for our Katanga policy. The answer was unequivocal, Dean Rusk.)
William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site
Belgian UN troops admit to 'roasting' Somali boy By Robert Fox and AFP
Tuesday 24 June 1997
Issue 760http://www.telegraph.co.uk
TWO Belgian paratroopers who were photographed "roasting" a Somali boy over a flaming brazier are expected to be jailed for only a month and fined #200 after admitting the atrocity in a military court in Brussels yesterday.
Privates Claude Baert and Kurt Coelus faced a maximum of a year in jail but the prosecutor demanded only a month. Sentence will be passed on Monday. The case against a third soldier accused of atrocities during the United Nations "Restore Hope" mission three years ago was adjourned until September.
Sgt Dirk Nassel is accused of forcing a young Somali to eat pork, drink salt water, and then eat his vomit. The three soldiers were charged with assault and threatening behaviour.
A fourth member of the 3rd battalion of the Parachute Regiment, based at Tielen in Flanders, is also due to go on trial in September. Sergeant Major Rudy Derkinderen is suspected of having murdered a Somali whom he was photographed urinating on.
The circumstances surrounding the death of another child at the paratroopers' base near Kismayo in southern Somalia are also under investigation. According to the testimony of two former paratroopers, the boy, who had been caught trying to steal food, died after being locked in a container for 48 hours.
The Defence Minister, Jean-Pol Poncelet, has promised that any of the paratroopers found guilty of criminal acts in Somalia will be dishonourably discharged. Baert has already left the army but Coelus is now in the navy and Nassel has remained at Tielen.
Mr Poncelet has also ordered an inquiry to establish whether the incidents were part of a broader pattern of abuse of the local population. If it is, he has promised to disband the 3rd battalion.
Fifteen members of the regiment were investigated in 1995 for "acts of sadism and torture" against Somalian civilians.
One paratrooper has been sentenced to five years, following the murder of a Somalian youth, who allegedly had uncovered illegal arms trading by the paratroopers. Belgium is the third country involved in the "Restore Hope" mission to charge its soldiers for serious misdemeanours against Somalian civilians, including rape, torture and murder. In 1995 a group of Canadian paratroopers were investigated for torturing a Somali to death and killing three others.
The charges of indiscipline, racism, and the rituals for new members of the unit led to the Canadian Airborne Regiment being disbanded last year. Earlier this month gruesome photographs were published in a Milan magazine of Italian soldiers torturing a young Somali youth, and abusing and raping a young Somali girl. Two Italian generals involved in "Restore Hope" have subsequently resigned to clear the way for a major investigation of the unit involved, the Folgore (Lightning) Division currently deployed on peacekeeping duties in Albania.
The Italian parliament has set up a major investigation and boards of inquiry of the Italian army are at work. Paratroopers of the Folgore claim that they were specifically trained in methods of torture to aid interrogation. According to one witness Italian soldiers tied a young Somali girl to the front of an armoured carrier and raped her while officers looked on.
The witness told investigators: "When the officers wanted to have fun, everybody went along with it."
Over the weekend an interpreter with the Italian force in Somalia accused a Folgore battalion commander of sexually abusing a 13-year-old Somali youth. The "Restore Hope" mission has become the most controversial of all recent peacekeeping operations undertaken under the UN banner. It was mandated in 1992 to provide medical aid and food after civil order in Somalia collapsed following the overthrow of the Marxist dictator Maj Gen Muhammad Siad Barri, after a 17-year civil war.
The operation was directed by an American admiral, and spearheaded by American Marines. After the murder of 20 Pakistani soldiers in an ambush and the killing and dragging of two American Marines through the streets of Mogadishu, the American command moved from peacekeeping to offensive operations against the warlords running the main Somali cities, principally Mogadishu and Kismayo.
Though they used helicopter gunships and area bombardment, the Americans failed to defeat the leading warlord, Gen Muhammad Farrah Aidid, and eventually the UN forces were ordered to withdraw. A common thread through the accusations against the Belgian, Italian and Canadian forces, is the racism of elite units, particularly airborne units, and their inability to adapt to low-intensity peacekeeping operations.
Last week an Italian paratrooper said: "What's the big deal? They are just niggers anyway."
The head of the UN's peacekeeping department, Under Secretary General Bernard Miyet, said: "The image of the United Nations has been tarnished."
bttt
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