Current mood:

tired, but content

CSMUN Charleston 2006
Wow, just wow.

I want to start of saying that I had no personal hard feelings against the delegation from Iraq, and I do feel somewhat sorry for what we put him through.

I also want to state that I have been using all my resourses to be gramatically correct and extremely diplomatic, therefore, this entry with be void of either.

Ok, we Wednesday was the first day of the trip. We had an hour and a half meeting before we left, which almost no-one showed up to... cause it's mandatory and all. Andy, our tresurer, decided that he would rather stay and make sure his classes were in line then go compete with us... droping a very important spot, Argentina on the Security Council. Not to mention, another member doesn't show up... so we're down two members already.

We divide up who's gonna go to which car and stay in which room, then we get on the road. I'm traveling with David (who later get's Andy's spot), and it's a pretty long trip. We left at about 8:30, only a half hour later than expected, a new record. Rt. 17, the only way to get to Charleston from the south, or atleast the only major "highway," so I understand, and it's a bit back-road-ish... and there was a ton of fog... we went by a railroad crossing which was down and flashing. I could look across to the other side and it was flashing on that site as well. I had David turn town the radio, and I could hear a train, but not see it at all... the next crossing, 300 yards down, it was the same thing. I could see light reflecting off the track, kinda, and see the lights flashing on the other side of the crossing, but I could clearly hear a train clanking over the tracks. Freaky.... We got into the hotel at 2am, had a brief team meeting at 2:45, then went to sleep.

Thursday - We got up around 9, had a team meeting at 11 in Freddie (the team president)'s room. Then, it was to opening cerimonies. Boring people talked. A gavel banged. The Conference was open. Levi (Palestine), Az (Syrian Arab Republic), and myself (Saudi Arabia) went to the meeting room where the League of Arab States would meet. In our first session, we arived and there were 6 people there. Just six in a committee suppoded to be made up of 22 (21 because the Chair and Director forgot Egypt... I mean, the League of Arab States just meets in Cairo, Egypt, so nothing big...) I think this would be a decent time to mention that the Director is in charge of related information in the committee, and the Chair is incharge of all things procedural... oh, and the Director is from Embry-Riddle, and our Club President, but he in no way, showed the three of us any leaniance. We started of setting the topic as I wanted (I made the motion) of talking about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, then Nuclear Proliferation in the Middle East. Then, the last of the members who would show, did. The complete list of countries that were in attendace is as follows: Bahrain, Iraq, Martainia, Morocco, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and United Arab Emerates. Because half the deligages didn't know their country's possitions on how seriously concerned over the Palestine, they moved to change the topic on us, to our second topic, Nuclear Proliferation in the Middle East. We got nowhere on either subject by the end of the night, but found out that Iraq was very experienced, and an extremly good deligate. He had infact, been to 22 conferences, and staff for a few as well. He was a big target for the Best Deligate award. Everyone was tired after the second session ended at 10:30 that night, however, Levi and myself stayed up late plotting out what we were gonna do the next day.

Friday - We got up and went to breakfast by 8, to make it to the conference room early enough to do some caucusing before it began, however, when 9:00 rolled around, there was but 5 people there, the absolute bare minimum to start being 9. So we sat around waiting to start till almost 9:45. Over the night, Levi and myself, and the deligate from Iraq created 2 seperate working papers. (As a note, a working paper is what comes before Draft Resolution, which is a Resolution before it's voted in.) We debated some minor things in both till just after lunch, neither side really giving in on the other, Iraq all behind Iran being the major enemy, myself and Levi all behind Israel being the main reason for concern. Just after lunch, Levi exposed Iraq's big mistake. In the middle of May, the Iraqi Prime Minister visited Tehran and said that Iraq was in full support of Iran's civil nuclear program. He was quite shakey and tried his hardest to recover. We got a short break (we vote to have these, usually to write resolutions and debate topics informally and the likes) and he and Levi stepped outside. He basically told Levi that his hands were now tied, there was nothing he could do, and Levi now had his balls in his hands, so they decided to work together to come to a resolution on this topic. In the end, our two working papers were combined, mostly made up of points from the one Levi and I created. We spent the next session and a half dealing with grammatical and syntax errors, and trouble with Autoformat on MS Word, which we could in no way find out how to disable. Not to mention the chair and director were very, extremely, overly strict about grammer and syntax. So we really spent over 4 hours working this minute stuff out, and getting no real debate. At the end of the night, we still had nothing done, but we were clear we were almost there, expecting to go strait to voting in the morning. That evening, Levi and I again spent some time working on what we were gonna do in the morning, and I had to play DD to drive so some people could get more beer... but better than them driving themselves.

Saturday - I kinda got up late, but I was still down for breakfast by 8:15... and the first person there (for about 10 minutes), which was odd since it started at 7, and it had been kinda packed when I had made it down Friday. The session started on time Saturday because everyone expected to be voting early... however, Syria had a problem one word in the itroduction, which can't be changed once the Working Paper is submitted as a Draft Resolution. So we spent a good portion of an hour in withdrawling it and re-submitting it. Then, we voted and it passed unanimously. Then, we moved back into the first topic, which I had begun writing a working paper on already. About a half hour before the morning session ended, Levi let loose again. (this time our club advisor, Dr. Dorn, was present) He opened a clear rift seperating Iraq from everyone else. I had been subtlly working into it, so people kinda knew what it was about, then the deligate from Bahrain, who was from the same school as Iraq, asked about the possibility of an arab peacekeeping force in Palestine after Israel withdrew. Levi then came back saying he didn't want an unstable shi'ite force in Palestine to bring that conflict there. Iraq then got hammered over and over about wanting to send armed forces into Palestine, and in a slip of tongue, Israel. It got very out of control until the end of the session where we had to break for lunch. Levi, Dorn, Az, and I walked to McDonnalds for lunch discussing the slaughter of Iraq in the last session. Dorn had been cracking up the whole time, and we really enjoyed laughing at it the whole time (we found out afterwards that Iraq was sitting across the street in Arby's saying "Damn Palestine, Damn Saudi Arabia. Damn it.") We went back into session after lunch and began finishing the last topic, however the room was very decently split now, only the US backed countries were working with Iraq. Both resolutions passes, seeing as they were both very benificial to Palestine, however, Iraq abstaned from voting on mine, oh well. After that, Iraq led to stop us from ending the meeting, saying we had time to talk about one more topic for about 15 minutes, and the group kinda followed. He tried setting the topic at "Recovering and Re-building Iraq." We voted that down, and I suggested "The Removal of Iraq from the League of Arab States." During the short debate, I was able to write up a short resolution expulling Iraq, which passed in a vote of 8 for, 1 against, and 1 abstained. He flipped us off as the chair asked him to leave.

Then came the awards cerimony. We walked away with less awards than we deserved (and was told so after it was over...). We didn't have anyone in the International Law Commission, we got 2 distinguished delegate awards in the League of Arab States (Levi and myself), in NATO, we got an Outstanding Deligate (even better than distinguished) and a best deligate, not to mention the Research award in that committee went to our Outstanding delegate there. In the Security Council, we got a distinguished Delegate award. Also, France (Made up of 2 of ours deligates) won the distinguised delegation award, meaning that France in NATO got 3 awards. As a note, Iraq got Outstanding Deligate in the LAS. He deserved it after taking what would have made any less of a man break down in tears. Also, one distinguished delegate award from each of NATO and the Security Council were taken away because we had too many already.

That night, we got went out to this really good restraunt. I had Poterhouse Pork Chop, and it was friggin awesome. Then, we came back and I kinda passed out while other people partied. I was just too exausted.

We got back in today at like 4:00 after another long trip. I'm tired now. But that's it.