For VC readers who don't follow comment threads, I thought I would post up front my response to David Kopel's post below arguing that "the United Nations has a well-established record of collaboration with Hezbollah in the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers." In my view, David's argument doesn't work.

  As I understand David's post, four Indian soldiers that were part of a UN peace-keeping force were bribed by Hezbollah; they helped Hezbollah get close to a kidnapping spot and find Israeli soldiers, and then the Hezbollah members kidnapped the Israeli soldiers and later killed them. Other UN forces watched the kidnapping happen and didn't try to stop it. The UN then tried to cover up what happened.

  This is really horrible stuff, obviously. It certainly helps show -- to those who need proof -- that if you're in a foxhole you probably don't want a UN soldier there with you. At the same time, I don't understand how it supports the claim that "the United Nations has a well-established record of collaboration with Hezbollah in the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers."

  First of all, collaboration and accomplice liability both imply and require intent to further the act, not merely conduct that furthers or fails to impede the act. Thus the claim would have to be that the United Nations didn't just help the kidnapping occur, or didn't just sit idly by while it happened, but it actually intended its actions to further the kidnapping. I don't know if there is evidence that the four Indian soldiers actually had that intent, or that anyone else associated with the UN had that intent, but none is provided in David's post.

  Second, to the extent that there was real collaboration between Hezbollah and the four Indian soldiers, I'm not sure how we jump from four Indian soldiers doing something to the entire United Nations doing it. I recognize that there are difficult questions involved in tagging an institution with the acts of its members. But I gather from David's post that the bribed soldiers were rogue soldiers who were not following orders, rather than loyal soldiers following orders. Surely we should be reluctant to ignore the difference. To use a provocative example, consider press reports involving individual acts by U.S. soldiers in Iraq including rapes, murders, and cover-ups of those crimes. Surely it would be unacceptable to go from those stories to the broad claim that "the United States had a well-established record of raping and killing women and children."

  To be clear, I'm not saying that the UN is the greatest, or that UN involvement is the (or an) answer to the current Middle East crisis. But I don't think it helps us to paint with the broadest possible brush.