“Blue helmets” to protect heritage sites from ISIS
AFP reports that the United Nations have voted to deploy peacekeeping forces known as Blue Helmets to defend world heritage sites from attacks by ISIS terrorists.
“[United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)] has said yes to the Cultural Blue Helmets,” Culture Minister Dario Franceschini said in a statement, adding that 53 countries voted in favour after the destruction of sites including Palmyra in Syria by the Islamic State group.
“Faced with IS terrorist attacks and the terrible images of Palmyra, the international community cannot stand back and watch,” he said, adding that the permanent members of the security council had supported the idea.
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The idea is aimed at “important sites at risk from terrorist attacks, or in war zones, or zones hit by natural disasters, where the international community will be able to send Cultural Blue Helmets to protect them or defend them before they can be destroyed”.
I’m sure they’ll have no problem finding volunteers. Those blue helmets make them easy targets for any terrorist who wants to make a name for himself. Remember last year when Syrian rebels kidnapped some Fijian and Filipino peacekeepers in the Golan Heights? The UN told them to surrender instead of fighting back. Luckily they all made it back alive…but they weren’t held by ISIS. ISIS likes to make beheading videos. The UN has a habit of deploying Peacekeepers without any plan to support them when they get caught in the shit.
Category: United Nations
Well, sadly; you KNOW who they’ll call when they get in trouble. Question is: Will put leadership pick up the phone?
RIght because Blue Helmets are something that the turds in a fundamentalist Islam shithole will most certainly respect. At what point will they learn about the people they are confronting in the ME? At what point will the US actually take the time to understand this is not a western civilization with respect for life regardless of how much bullshit these turds spread to the contrary? There is on thing they respect, and maybe they don’t even respect it but they understand it and that’s overwhelming unyielding violent force. Instant violent death for failure to comply is something they understand, killing their women, their children, their elderly is something they understand and they have no qualms about killing the women, children, and elderly of their perceived enemies. These people are a cult of death and destruction, we need to deal them an unending stream of death to them physically to their finances and their communications, or we need to remove ourselves from their AO until they kill enough of each other to believe that they’ve sorted their own problems out and then we go back and kill who’s left. Any other solution is a half or quarter measure at best and a simple waste of resources. Blow up more hospital, schools, mosques and use firebombing techniques, stop fucking around with “surgical” strikes to get one guy….we are spending more to kill HVTs than we do to educate our young people and we are getting far less return on investment. Use stupid bombs instead of smart bombs and kill everything that walks, crawls or flies inside a major city….that message won’t be lost on the jihadis. Our surgical strikes should be reserved for killing family members of our jihadist enemies, that message won’t be lost on the jihadis or their families either…when your entire extended family is killed in a series of drone strikes your efforts on behalf of Allah will truly be paid in full with your blood and the blood of your entire family. They understand that. At some point we need to let these people know we are… Read more »
Yeah.
Will they have any power or actually engage?
We will see.
Yup.
Dresden. That is all.
I hear Tokyo was worse. But thats what you get when you build a city out of kindling.
Blue Helmet…yeah that’ll keep ISIS out like gun free zones stop criminals.
^^^WORD^^^
WTF are said “Blue Helmets” going to have in the way of armament, support and ROE’s? Given the extreme incompetence of the United Nothing, I’m sure that if they deploy them they would be little more than a speed bump for the ISIS fleabags on their latest “BLEHLEHLEHLEH” before they go butt-bonk each other that night.
Wait a second. ISIS is obliterating monuments of a kind in order to erase physical evidence of something it thinks abhorrent? Golly, that sounds familiar, strangely familiar. I’ll come up with it. Just give me time…
Shoot! I nearly had it. It was right on the tip of my tongue, then–gone. It will come to me.
Some cultures don’t need to be preserved…
ISIS agrees with you.
A great many folks seem to feel that way about us, as well.
I would almost agree, VOV.
However, I would offer this caveat: those cultures should be preserved in history records only, as a warning to others.
Well, then, let’s take some snaps and let ISIS do what it will with whatever it will. What they dislike, they destroy. And that is the inevitable result of denying history, shunning history, revising and reviling history, and applying today’s fleeting likes and dislikes to yesteryear. It’s good that some are willing to stuff a few things in a museum, rather than destroy those things, I suppose. But it’s really just a difference in degree. So, get those shutters a’ clickin!
I meant it as something that should be done to ISIL/ISIS/ISGF.
Oh. I thought that you thought that I thought that…screw it.
“Cultural Blue Helmets”??? I gotta ask; are these going to be actual military troops? Or are they going to hire a bunch of unemployed western history/anthropology professors and issue them Indiana Jones bush hats and blue armbands?
Occupy Wall Street will be given a chance to run this op….
I wish.
So maybe that job could also go to say, people with worthless degrees like I dunno, say a PhD in Chinese Politics? I’m all for letting the “Occupy” crowd go there, but that’s what they see as work, and they’re as allergic to that as they are to soap and water!
Dr Jones would shoot, punch, whip, and detonate some motherfuckers without giving a flying fuck about ROEs. He’d probably also run a few over with a truck, send some more off a cliff, a possibly purée at least one with an idling prop, with some motorcycle jousting thrown in somewhere for variety’s sake. Indy would actually be a great solution to the current problem!
UN Blue Helmets. .. I’d like to start a pool to see how long it will take for ISIS to pick up/be handed even MORE practically new weapons to its arsenal. That’s assuming that the UN will even allow the Blue Heads to even HAVE weapons in the first place.
Human Shields with Blue Helmets… Dash or isis or what ever they are calling them this week are going to love it…
Looking on the bright side: How effective this strategy is depends, in part, on which country(s) the UN soldiers come from. For example, if Nepalese are tasked with the mission, we might be able to wipe ISIS out with cholera. Fielding a team from Guinea might have a more dramatic outcome…
Nepalese? Turn the Gurkhas loose!
I’m sure they won’t need armor OR weapons, as they will be protected by an impenetrable shield of moral superiority.
Maybe they need to post a few “Gun Free Zone!” signs for extra moral shielding.
Oh yeah, they’re going to “protect” these cultural sites. Riiiiiiiiiight. Just like they “protected” civilians in Rwanda. Bunch of worthless pussies.
This is going to be like watching an elephant try to swat a hummingbird.
Okay, I’ll bite. Why would an elephant want to swat a hummingbird?
Blue helmets and shirts with “Kick me” stenciled on the back. This should be interesting…
UN personnel are going to protect “cultural heritage sites” from ISIS? Hmm.
Take a look at how well UN Peacekeepers worked out in Rwanda in 1993-1996. And those were trained military personnel, not academics.
Anyone who signs on to this (e.g., signs up to be one of these “cultural blue helmets”) IMO is terminally naive – literally – or has a death wish.
Those Blue helmets will come in handy when ISIS/ISIL needs to infiltrate enemy positions. Just paint UN on a few pickup trucks, don the blue hats and drive on in. I can see the headlines now, “UN attacks Refugee camp”
Kinda like when I was in A-stan and the Taliban was painting “UN”‘on some of their VBIEDS.
So now the women and children in those areas will not only have to fear being raped by ISIS, they’ll have to fear being raped by UN “Peacekeepers” as well.
Isn’t that what happened in Somalia?
about the only thing UN blue helmet forces will be good for is sending real time reports of what ISIS is doing”yes sir, they’re here at the site where we’re bivouaced. Yes sir, they’re destroying all the priceless artifacts. Yes, sir, we’re armed. Resisting and stopping them? Shhshshhshsh…. too much interference, out here.”
I think this plan will work, they just need to put up gun free zone signs around the sites and the blue tops will be safe.
Well, the blue helmets will make it easier to find their heads in the sand.
Word ^^^^^
Well, as I read it, they didn’t actually specify exactly where they will be deployed. So, for example, they can go protect “important sites at risk from terrorist attacks” in, say, New York City, or London. And hey, who wouldn’t want to have the Calgary Stampede preserved?
Hay, let’s gear up all the phony’s we can find put blue Helmets on them and they can earn some valor back. Just thinking out loud…
I do feel a bit sorry for the actual soldiers who will be deployed. If the helmet doesn’t make for sniper bait; the white vehicles with a big UN sure will. Nearly all the peacekeepers I’ve seen have been hapless and helpless. Some, like the Irish and Italians, actually wanted to do a job; but UN command had their hands and feet tied. Remember what happened not long ago in the Golan? And usually the troops are from somewhere that only graduated to modern small-arms last year…
I haven’t faced them myself since the 80s, but I think little has changed. Most UN troops would actually get in the way when we were chasing terrorists in south Lebanon. Some, like the Italians, actually tried to prevent terrorist attacks – but they were given no opportunity to properly engage; and so they were mostly symbolic in the end. UN peacekeeper must be just about the most vulnerable and thankless job out there.
To be fair blue helmets are actual military personnel, they have to come from a country’s military. Not sure how much good sending peacekeepers will do though. They realize that they attack their own country’s military and police daily, right?