Why I say "no" to Byers

The puerile professor writes this in a piece about why he, self-righteously, will have no truck with the panel, headed by former Liberal cabinet minister John Manley, that is considering the future of Canada's mission in Afghanistan:

And little room has been allowed for serious consideration of whether NATO troops should be replaced with UN peacekeepers.

This is what the NY Times reports about the UN-run mission in the Congo:

Frustration at the United Nations peacekeeping force and the dozens of aid organizations working in North Kivu Province, in eastern Congo, is rising as violence increases, the number of displaced people here creeps toward one million, and the pace of assistance lags, especially to those fleeing the fighting in the past few weeks.

Many Congolese want the United Nations peacekeepers to intervene more forcefully and fight beside the Congolese Army against the rebel forces of Laurent Nkunda, a renegade general who refuses to merge his troops into the national armed forces.

The fight against General Nkunda has pushed Congo to the brink of a new civil war, a year after the first elected government in four decades took office and four years after fighting officially ended. Congo’s army has proved unable to beat back the rebels, and the fighting in the past year has displaced 425,000 people.

The United Nations force has a strong mandate in Congo to use force to protect civilians, and it has pledged to defend Goma and the camps around it from being overrun by rebels. It is also required to work with the Congolese Army to establish security, which has led to the expectation in a population weary from more than a decade of conflict that the United Nations force here, known by its acronym, Monuc, would help defeat the rebels.

“Why is Monuc here, if not to fight these people who make us suffer?” said Mwenge Biroto, who fled the town of Sake on Tuesday. “Why don’t they help us get peace?”..

Prof. Byers has already revealed his ignorance about the Congo; it is clear he simply will say anything to discredit the NATO (and Canadian) mission in Afghanistan--including raising a straw-person call for a UN military mission there to replace NATO. The bad professor does not think it fit to mention that the NATO mission has been repeatedly authorized by, gasp, the UN Security Council and thus is a UN mission. Just not run by the UN which, with MONUC in mind, is probably a Good Thing.

Update: the letter I wish I'd written:

Low standards

The Ottawa Citizen
Published: Monday, December 17, 2007

Re: Why I said no to Manley, Dec. 13.

Wow. That was close. John Manley and his colleagues on the Independent Panel on Canada's Future Role in Afghanistan must have breathed a sigh of relief when Michael Byers declined their invitation to brief them on his views. I certainly would have found it hard to spend a half hour listening to the views of such a smug academic.

I was aware that Mr. Byers had low standards of argumentation, but I was unaware that they needed to be road-tested in so public a way as to slander five of Canada's leading citizens. I can understand why he might not want to share his tender regard for Canada's sensitivities with such solidly credentialed and experienced public servants. There is no way they would have been able to appreciate the workings of so subtle and fine a mind.

Michael Hart, Ottawa

Simon Reisman chair in trade policy
Norman Paterson School of International Affairs
Carleton University

Upperdate: Elinor Sloan, who teaches international security studies at Carleton University and is a fellow with the Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute, also takes on Prof. Byers in a letter to the Ottawa Citizen. And I wonder if the professor will notice this:

U.N. Finds Fraud, Mismanagement in Peacekeeping
Task Force Says 'Multiple Instances' of Corruption Have a Cost of $610 Million