Heavy lifting with the UN

A year or so ago, in the wake of the devastating Asian Tsunami Sim and I were treated to more than one long-winded treatise about how the UN was doing,and would continue to do the heavy-lifting in relief efforts. As you might recall, initial government aid from America was small in comparison to amounts sent from other countries early-on in the relief effort.

As a result many dog-piled on the Bush administration for being "stingy" and simultaneously down-played the huge amounts of dollars given privately by Americans wishing to help. Meanwhile, the declaration that the UN would be doing the heavy lifting in the months following the tsunami was something that both Sim and I--loudly and often--resisted.

Well, here we are nearly a year later and I'm reminded of this from a very odd place indeed. Robert Kaplan, author of Imperial Grunts: The American Military on the Ground in an interview with Hugh Hewitt today made a passing reference to the UN that caught my attention:

RK: Yes, one of the things that I think really kind of unnerved the elite, is that while there are all these conferences and discussions in Washington and elsewhere about should we support Afghan warlords or not, should we create an Afghan national army or not, what should our foreign policy be in Yemen or Colombia or in Iraq. I discovered a world of basically working-class people, who were operationally far more sophisticated and knowledgeable about all these issues, who spoke languages, who had personalities that didn't fit into any one neat division. They were evangelical, but they spoke two exotic languages. People like that who...so while all these discussions are taking place, foreign policy is being enacted on the ground by majors and sergeants and lieutenants, who are utterly oblivious to most of these discussions. And you know what? They're doing these things very, very well.

HH: And they're very clear-eyed. In Yemen, a U.N. retired special forces officer, working for the U.N. now, described his mission as doing favors for everyone until the day came he had to get his people out, and he would collect. That's very clear-eyed.

RK: Yes, and who is this U.N. officer? He's a retired American army special forces lieutenant colonel, and this is proof that I've seen this around the world, that when the U.N. has a real important tactical mission to do, it hires Americans, Australians and Brits to do it. And then the U.N. takes the credit.

Heavy lifting indeed.

P.S. After reading the interview American Grunts is now on the reading list.