More juxtaposin’:

1) Earlier, from the usefullest ijits at Ceasefire.ca:

Petition: Make Canada a UN Peacekeeper again

Fri, Mar 26, 2010

Afghanistan, Petitions

Make Canada a Proud Peacekeeper Once Again

Once the world’s top contributor of troops for UN Peacekeeping, Canada has fallen far down the list as the military has turned away from the UN.

Urge Prime Minister Harper, the political party leaders and your Member of Parliament to end Canada’s war in Afghanistan, and to make Canada a proud UN Peacekeeeper once again.

25 March 2010

916 letters have been sent so far

You can edit this letter. Your personal comments, especially in the first fparagraphs, will give the message much greater impact…

2) Now:

Matt Gurney: Hapless UN fails another test in Congo

Indian soldiers from UN mission in Democratic Republic of Congo
AFP PHOTO / GWENN DUBOURTHOUMIEU
[We could furnish blue turbans too, a Good Thing in our forces.]

The 20,000-strong UN force, tasked with protecting the locals while enforcing calm on the country while the Congolese government gradually exerts its influence, has a tough job. They’re trying to monitor the territory of a land mass larger than Greenland or almost all of Western Europe, where the bad guys know the terrain and can easily slip away. Even so, incidents such as these cannot possibly be excused:

Rwandan and Congolese rebels gang-raped nearly 200 women and some baby boys over four days within miles of a U.N. peacekeepers’ base in an eastern Congo mining district, an American aid worker and a Congolese doctor said Monday.

The full coverage makes for grim reading, not only because of the scale and nature of the atrocities meted out — infants sodomized, women gang-raped in front of their children — but because the local United Nations troops were so close by that the attacking force had to occasionally run into the woods and hide as patrols moved through the area, without noticing a thing. The attacks went on for four days before the militiamen, believed to be mostly exiles from Rwanda who fled after taking part in the genocide there 16 years ago, apparently slaked their lust and grew bored. Even after they left, it still took the peacekeepers several weeks to realize that something had even happened in their area.

This peacekeeping army, as impotent as it clearly is, is destined to get weaker still…

More here on the almost insatiable lust for peacekeeping amongst many Canadians. At least this government had the good sense eventually to shoot down the balloon that was floated this spring about having a Canadian general and staff (and how many troops?) take command of the UN Congo mission. Adrian had his doubts about that idea:

…A perfect place to station our troops where they can be least effective…

Plus from the ijits and their, er, impish spirit-in-chief:

Petition: Stop the Attack on Kandahar

More on Ceasefire.ca and St. Steve Staples of the Rideau Institute at the end of this post.

Mr Staples and his ilk, in their calls for Canada to do more militarily with the UN, always conveniently ignore the fact that NATO ISAF–as part of which the Canadian Forces serve in Afstan–has been repeatedly authorized by the UN Security Council (most Canadians still do not realize that).  The Afghan operation is hence a full UN mission; just not one organized and run by the UN itself, thank goodness.   Congo itself is certainly not the traditional UN peacekeeping with which Canadians were smitten.  Yet St. Steve et al. still howl for Canada to be involved in such missions.

Mark
Ottawa