As for Annan’s role, I think that our ways of viewing people are generally different. What’s food for thought for me is that someone who was fundamentally involved – Roméo Dallaire – is much less critical of Annan than many who weren’t involved. And Dallaire – that’s important, I believe – was in no need for people he could lay blame on, to deflect blame which would have laid on him otherwise. Asked what responsibility [for the genocide] Annan had, Roméo said that
-

[...] it is my belief that the Department of Peacekeeping Operations was overwhelmed. It was overwhelmed, it was tired, and it was playing by the rules because the whole Western world was gun-shy and it was standing there with nobody wanting to play. And so it reacted under the influence of the Secretary-General, which in itself is another story of the time, and the Security Council, and the permanent five, and in particular UK, France, and the US.

-

I’m not suggesting that Annan should have become UN Secretary-General after that failure. Both Roméo, and – under very different circumstances – David Richards, in Sierra Leone – did much better than what he did. My point is that I’m not condemning Annan. And I’m afraid that David Richard’s success helped to shape a view within the British political class that would later apply the experience of the Sierra Leone success to situations where it didn’t work – to put it mildly.

As for my displeasure with our political class in Germany, I know a lot of fellow Germans who are just as annoyed (and resigned?) about our political class, as you are about yours. I’m rarely watching television, and what I get on German radio – especially public radio, which is practically owned by the political parties -, leads me to the conclusion that our political class wants to educate us, rather than governing efficiently and responsibly.

But I’ll never lose hope, and I’ll never give up on my own – modest – efforts to make things better. If we can’t do that in a democracy, it can’t be done anywhere. I’m aware that you are doing that, too, in an ecological context.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not criticizing your conclusions. We may be in very different places, and I’m sure we have very different tempers. That’s what makes a discussion matter. But that also seems to mean that we should accept the fact that we are different, and start every debate from there.

Your arrow about that welsh peasant gillard totally misses its mark. So here is the official and unofficial policy in tubbyland.

I regard the political class of whatever persuasion or level of govt here in ozland as pure vermin of the first order, and should be treated as such. To avoid contamination, I never watch tv except for sbs international news, read domestic newspapers or listen to ozland radio. I also have been paying fines for refusing to vote in every election since 1999, and am a paid up member of the Guy Fawkes party, the only person to ever enter parliament with honest intentions.

Fortunately, I have lots of on and offline interests to replace this domestic political vacuum.

I have read sufficient books on the Rwandan genocide, so will be standing by my very negative assessment of Annan who is still personna non grata in Kigali..

Re Syria. Totally agree with your remark about major outside stakeholders and their respective national interests. (Syria has turned into every-bodies armed playground. One could exemplify this point by mentioning Turkey with its concern to see that a rump Kurdish homeland is not established in any Syrian vacuum).

My simple point was that, with or without outside interference, Syrians or members of any other Arabic country don’t need any outside incitement to cut each others throats over religious differences. If you listened to BBC last night, the Shia in Saudi Arabia are now thinking about a bit of Sunni throat cutting.

And lets not ascribe the present day situation in the Arabic world to Gertrude Bell, the Sykes -Picot Agreement, Lawrence of Arabia or any other colonial moment. Communal throat cutting is an Islamic characteristic. Members of the Bahia faith were tortured and murdered as were the Assryrian christians and all the minority jewish communities in their predominately Islamic communities. I could extend this list and also provide a bibliography.

Finally, my simple point was that if anyone thinks the blood letting in Syria has reached its statistical high point, they are fools. Forget about well meaning global intentions. This is an inter-communal fight to the finish, and the winner will take all ie pogrom the vanquished communities.

Lets return to this point in 12 months and see if my assessment is correct.

In fact, the Libyans look downright civilised in contrast as they rejected an Islamicist govt. In brief, they made the point that they were plain sick and tired of being lectured about how to think and behave, whether by Gadaffi or a bunch of clerics with beards.

Kofi Annan‘s tactic of polite diplomacy against a backdrop of mass murder may indeed be a familiar story, as the Guardian‘s diplomatic editor wrote in May. But one can put the accusations exactly the other way round, too: because diplomacy (and partly sanctions) were the only approach allowed by the security council, they chose the diplomat, not a crusher, as a special envoy. I believe that Annan deserves credit for having taken the job – senior diplomats were hardly queueing for the task.

It should also be pointed out that Annan’s “nice” approach worked fairly well on Kenya – and that during his tenure as UN secretary general, the concept of “R2P” wasn’t nearly as elaborate as it is now.

Personally, I believe that an approach that combines respect for human lives and state sovereignty could have worked, if the major stakeholders had put Syria, rather than their respective national interests, first. China and Russia were too interested in protecting the “status quo”, and America, the Arab League and Europe were too interested in making this a case for the demise of the Assad regime.

It’s an understandable approach to blame people, rather than organizations and circumstances, and obviously, an official’s record needs to be permanently scrutinized. But the press hasn’t done a good job at that when it comes to Syria, and when it’s about the UN, the org has so many enemies (and not just critics – mind the “world-government” theorists) that I find it hard to read a convincing record of Annan’s years at the helm from it.

What worries me more than the Rwanda genocide and the failure of the six-points plan for Syria is that rather than trying to learn from the tragedies, incriminations keep flying. It takes me aback to see how many people – not politicians or diplomats, just people like you and me – who are no Syrians, and don’t even have family or friends in the country, act as lobbyists for the many different parties in the conflict.

Not that I’m letting Belgium and France off the hook. The former is a pedophile playground and global arms bizarre, and I’m not even going to comment on French foreign policy.

That aside, Syria has turned into every-bodies armed playground, and the really serious bloodletting has yet to begin. Clan-based islamic societies have no place in the modern world.