"The Uselessness of the UN"

Civil libertarian Nat Hentoff is whipped up into a frenzy over an op-ed penned by a Sudannese Ambassador assuring the world that all was well and good in Darfur. Hentoff rips Sudan for continued human rights violations and does a number on the UN to at the end:

But Sudan's chief of mission in Washington, Khidir Haroun Ahmed, heralding Sudan's "optimistic future," charges that "some observers fail or refuse to see things as they are." Things as terrifying as they are in Darfur have once more exposed the uselessness of the United Nations in ongoing genocide and the absence of a new coalition of willing democratic nations, including the United States, to support the African Union more substantively because the AU cannot stop the killing without such help.

My only quibble with the otherwise fine piece is that I don't think that the AU has asked for assistance yet.