The NY Times fawns over the new "get tough" UN peacekeeping tactics, with special emphasis on the confusing situation in the Congo:
U.N. Forces Using Tougher Tactics to Secure Peace
The United Nations, burdened by its inability to stave off the mass killings in Rwanda in 1994 and by failed missions in Bosnia and Somalia, is allowing its peacekeepers to mount some of the most aggressive operations in its history.
The change has been evolving over the last decade, as the Security Council has adopted the notion of "robust peacekeeping" and rejected the idea that the mere presence of blue-helmeted soldiers on the ground helps quell combat.
It is most obvious in Congo, which commands by far the largest deployment of United Nations troops in the world. Peacekeepers in armored personnel carriers, facing enemy sniper attacks as they lumber through rugged dirt paths in the eastern Ituri region, are returning fire. Attack helicopters swoop down over the trees in search of tribal fighters. And peacekeepers are surrounding villages in militia strongholds and searching hut by hut for guns.
As a timesaver, I will extract the negative coverage for you:
[Par. 9] But nowhere do war and peace seem as cloudy as in Congo, where peacekeepers received a beefed-up mandate from the Security Council in 2003 - and where at least one human rights group has complained of civilian casualties.
[Par. 23/24] United Nations peacekeepers in Congo were not always so gung-ho. For years, they were criticized for huddling in their camps as atrocities recurred in the countryside. Now, some critics condemn them for being too aggressive. And critics also denounce the sexual abuse of girls by some peacekeepers.
Justice Plus, a rights group based in Bunia, lamented that when the peacekeepers raided the market near Loga some civilians "paid with their life while the mandate of the United Nations was to protect them."
Somehow, the coverage of the US military seems to inspire a different mix of admiration and investigation. Possible explanations:
(1) The soft bigotry of low expectations - as the article explains, Western nations don't want to send their own troops into these places, so we send in third world armies and hope for the best.
(2) Any activity by the US military prompts the expression of the "why are they lying to us" gene implanted in the media during the Vietnam/Watergate era. However, the Times and its readers love the UN, and have not been raised to suspect bad behavior by the well-intentioned multilateralists in the blue helmets.
well, the Times had more coverage last year. Here is a BBC account.
MORE: Charles Johnson is similarly struck by the coverage.
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