The United Nations Is A Fraud
For the past week, the world’s attention has been focused on the simmering crisis centered around 15 British Navy seamen taken into custody by Iran for allegedly violating Iranian territorial waters.
Let’s leave aside the fact that all of the available evidence demonstrates conclusively that the sailors were in Iraqi territorial waters when they were seized and consider for a moment this fact —- under international law, even if the boat that these sailors were on was inside Iranian territory, what they should have done what warn the boat away. Taking the men and women on the boat into custody was, and is, a violation of international treaties and about as close to an act of war as you can get.
Rather than immediately declaring war on Iran, the United Kingdom first, and quite properly, took it’s concerns to the United Nations, the supposed arbiter of international disbutes. The result was, you might say, far from satisfactory:
Britain escalated international pressure Thursday in its week-old confrontation with Iran over the seizure of 15 naval personnel, winning from the U.N. Security Council a statement of “grave concern” over the capture.
But in five hours of intense debate at the council, Britain failed to get tough language it proposed that blamed Iran and demanded the immediate release of the 14 men and one woman. Russia balked at wording that the British had been seized in Iraqi waters while serving under a U.N. mandate. China, Qatar, Indonesia, Congo and South Africa also resisted blaming Iran, which contends the British trespassed into its waters, according to U.N. diplomats.
The softened version, which is nonbinding, instead appealed to Tehran to provide consular access to the sailors and marines, which has so far been denied, and an “early resolution of this problem.”
I haven’t been a fan of the United Nations for a long time. And this is one of the reasons why. Even in the face of pure evil, and a clear violation of international law, the United Nations, once again, proves itself impotent in the face of evil.
Update: Apparently, it’s not just the U.N. that’s dropping the ball on this one, Amnesty International hasn’t even spoken out against what is clearly an illegal seizure.