MovieChat Forums > Shake Hands with the Devil (2007) Discussion > More evidence that the UN is a costly wa...

More evidence that the UN is a costly wasted effort.


I'm not really sure what purpose the UN really does serve except employ a whole lot of the people who caused the killings in this film. Basically they sat back and watched a genocide unfold ... as they always do. They're doing it presently in Somalia. The problem is that people have lost interest in basic values and cannot understand the difference between right and wrong.

The film also points out the extreme cowardice of the French, the Belgians and the Americans as well as the complicity of the French with the murderers. Charming!






Reason is not automatic. Those who deny it cannot be conquered by it. Leave them alone. Ayn Rand

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You should watch the movie again or better read Dallaire's book. The transfers alone saved thousands of lives. I don't see how they caused the killings. Rwandan extremists caused the killings.

Could the UN have done more? Of course but only if the will of the membership, especially a few key states such as the ones you mention, had wanted to. As it was they did a lot.

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In one scene at Miller Collines Hotel, Dallaire told a member of the Interhamwe that the hotel and its visitors were under protection of the UN. The Interhamwe bastard smirks at him like it's a joke. It pretty much was.

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The UN is as effective as states want it to be.

I disagree that Americans, and Belgians (maybe the french) were any more cowards than the rest of the International community. It was a collective failure, but is framed as an individual one because it is easier, and the collective blames the UN (of which is the actual representation of the collective) because the connotations thus are removed from other states.
The sorry fact is that even if the security council had acted sooner, the deployment-time of UN-forces is to low, and states to un-willing (no pun intended) to contribute to the missions, because it poses no gain to them.


People still have basic values, but when in charge of a nation, these values are not intrinsic to the job-description. What we could blame the US for is being inconsistent. The framing of humanitarian intervention as a solely moral porpuse would impose them to act against self-interest, which evidently only was done in Somalia. We all know how that operation went, and both the Somali and the rawandeese people suffered for it.

The UN should not be seen as an independent organization which fails. But an ideal organization working for a better world, a vision made possible by the grace of state-policy.

"I'm givin you pearls here"

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