Vicente Díaz de Villegas

There is an interesting report coming out of the DRC on Vicente Díaz de Villegas, who was named Commander in Chief of the MONUC forces on October 4th, 2008 and who resigned only three weeks later, just a few days before the now "under arrest" Nkunda's CNDP moved towards Goma on October 29th.(1) Apparently his resignation, which appears to be detrimental to his career, was a principled one and interestingly enough he cites MONUC as being ineffective in protecting civilian lives much in the same way as the UN troops at Srebenica were.(2)
Nkunda is apparently out of the picture, the indicted war criminal, Bosco Ntaganda, is still at large, Rwandan troops are in the DRC, Joseph Kony is still on the rampage and the reality behind the rhetoric and the facade of an ineffectual UN intervention that helps "Uncle Sam" and the rest of the motley crew tell the world that they are doing something when what they in fact are doing, while facilitating the rape, murder and massacres, is continuing the real big "rape" of the area.
The principled Vicente Díaz de Villegas has lost one of the stars on his uniform and he has been transferred to the reserve for his stand. However, his message is, at least, trickling out. It is, of course, too much to expect the international community to pick up on it and in the meantime the civilian population of the area are left to the "crazies" who the West could all so easily stop, if the will were there. However, with the "crazies" also sitting in Paris, London and Washington that is hardly likely to happen.
1 http://stopthewarinnorthkivu.wordpress.com/2009/02/08/diaz-villegas-resigns/
2 ibid
The picture shows Diaz being welcomed in post by UN Sec Gen Ban Ki-Moon.