Quote Originally Posted by Elke View Post
Rwanda desmonstrated quite well why the process is flawed: almost a million people died in the course of one single month, and the UN gave strict instructions to the UNIMAR not to intervene in a military fashion, in other words: not to stop the killings. It's mind boggling that there were international armed forces present in order to help the population and they weren't allowed to save anyone. Tribunals after the fact are too little, too late, and often handled very poorly with hardly any respect for local traditions or any efforts toward reconcilliation.
Note: It's especially sad if you consider that international support for the gorilla population was better organized and more effective than anything drummed up to help the people out.

And if the mechanisms in place to protect the Geneva convention work so well, then why is there still a genocide going on in East-Congo?

I'm not a big fan van Captain America, but I'm also not a big fan of 'let the UN handle it' because the UN has an increasingly poor track record in protecting human rights.
And by human rights, I mean: human lives.
Of course it's flawed. It's geopolitical politics. There is no perfect answer.

This isn't about "human lives." If it was, where the fuck were you when everyone was getting gunned down? This is about the use of gas... aka WMDs. That's why we only care now. That's why it's what Obama is talking about. That's why we aren't planning on doing anything but a quick attack. We aren't going in there to save lives, we are wanting to punish the use of Sarin gas.

I'm not a fan of the UN but we've decided to be part of it. Obama asks what message it sends to let sarin gas use go unpunished. Well, what message does it send to circumvent the UN? Syria is no threat to the US. We have no business fucking with them on our own without the rest of the world standing behind us. Are you really so arrogant to claim the rest of the world doesn't care and won't even agree with involvement? That's some vigilante shit.

Then there is the part where there isn't anything productive the US could do...