Is generally ineffective unless it is chastising a G20 country.

That's just my perception though.

I view them as sitting on their hands on everything, it's a lot of pomp and circumstance, and the only time anyone in the world has really paid attention to anything coming out of that body the past few years - was when former Iranian President Ahmadinejad would go there to deny the holocaust in a formal speech.

Now, I'm loving the new Foreign Minister of Iran - Mohammad Javad Zarif. What a difference one man's words can make. I don't think we will be hearing anymore holocaust denying wingnuttery crazy talk out of Iran's representatives at the UN anymore.

But even if we did - they would just get up and throw their hissy fit of 'leaving the room' as opposed to someone telling them the Iran representative to "shut the fuck up and sit down - you aren't helping the world."

Yeah - good idea back in the day . . . but pretty worthless in the post Cold War era. . . In the virtual age - there's no reason they can't do teleconferencing and save every single member country a lot of money for them to do Absolutely Nothing.

Most recently, it voted 10-0 (with 5 abstentions) to authorize military force in Libya. It also authorized military force for the first Gulf war, as well as many, many peacekeeping missions. It is true that General Assembly meetings often are more spectacle than serious interaction.

In this case, I would feel much better about any US action in Syria if it were accompanied by a supportive Security Council vote. Obviously Russia will veto any use of force, but if a sizable majority of the Security Council agreed, it would make the operation a lot more legitimate internationally.

That's a good point about Libya - but even right here in the US it used by Democrats paint President Obama as an evil murdering despot.

I would like to see the UN security council vote for it - but the US stand down completely from armed interevention. We should take humanitarian aid duty - and extend that to Lebanon which has absorbed millions of Syrian's fleeing this nightmare.

... because it had support from the Arab League and the UN.

I agree with you-- humanitarian aid would earn far more goodwill than anything else we could do.

Or what he stands for.

The UN has dropped the ball countless times when it comes to aggressive, war-oriented humanitarian crisis. They have done a pretty good job of dealing with refugees and getting aid to the appropriate places when needed. But they often do not do their job when it comes to enforcing the Geneva conventions and dealing with war criminals.

we were all waiting for to blot out the worldwide effects of Bush's cowboy act? Well at least now I know where our ambassador got her attitude towards the U.N.