2006 Winter Olympics: A Champion To Be Proud Of
The United States may not be on track to do as well as hoped in the Winter Games, but we already have a champion who has done his nation proud. Joey Cheek, fresh off his gold medal performance in the 500m Speed Skating event, has indicated he will donate his $25,000 performance check from the USOC to the children of Darfur, and that’s a human interest story I can get behind:
“For me, the Olympics has been the greatest blessing,” said Cheek, 26, who also won bronze in the 1,000 at the 2002 Salt Lake City Games. “If I retired yesterday, I’d have gotten everything in the world from speedskating and from competing in the Olympics. So for me, to walk away today with the gold medal is just amazing. And the best way I can say thanks that I can think of is to try and help somebody else.”
President Bush and Kofi Annan appear to be edging closer to a large troop commitment for the region:
President Bush and U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan agreed on the need for a bigger, more mobile peacekeeping force in Sudan’s troubled Darfur region during a White House meeting yesterday, but Annan made no specific requests for U.S. military help.
Speaking to reporters after the Oval Office session, Annan said it is premature to ask for more than a general commitment from the United States until the United Nations determines what it needs for the planned peacekeeping force in Darfur.
“Once we’ve defined the requirements, then we will approach the governments to see specifically what each of them will do in terms of troops, in terms of equipment,” Annan said.
The United Nations is making plans to send as many as 20,000 troops to help stabilize the huge Darfur region, where about 7,000 peacekeepers from the African Union have been struggling to end the bloodshed being inflicted on civilians by government-backed militias. Annan has said the African Union troops have been hamstrung by a lack of air transport capabilities and modern communications as they have attempted to keep the peace in the region, which is the size of France.
That’s well and good, but too slow for my tastes; all of these decisions should have been made months ago…
Much too slow – and what will we get from the U.N. if and when they do decide to act?
I don’t know the historical accuracy of the film “Hotel Rwanda”, but it clearly showed the U.N. as impotent bureaucratic functionaries, which fits my conception of the organization quite nicely.
It was quite accurate, by all accounts – and the best portrayal was the Canadian Colonel, played by Nick Nolte. The real Colonel is alive and well, living I believe near Toronto. He’s spoken quite a bit regarding the fecklessness of the UN these days, as well as the utter inability of the Canadian armed forces to do much of anything at present, due to their almost nonexistent troops and outdated equipment.