Part two on how to lose friends and influence people to hate you.

Since it's founding after World War II, the UN has yet to really live up to it's promise. Partially that is because the national representatives are always asking what does this mean for me/us/my country, and partially that's because the "big five" can veto any action in the security council that they think might interfere with their national interests.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/18/drone-strikes-us-violate-law-un

For some time, many of us have pointed out that the secrecy of these drone strikes, coupled with the poor oversight, will result in negative international opinions. We were told that we were seeing shadows where there were none, borrowing trouble, or often just trying to harm President Obama.

If I offer you my best advice, my most carefully considered advice, and you choose not to take it, that is fine. But when the predictable results come around, you aren't allowed to bemoan those results. Especially if you were warned that they would come about. I have every reason to believe that someone at the State Department pointed out that the other nations in the world would eventually object. If I had that kind of time, I would sort through those emails released by Manning and find proof of someone advising higher ups that it was a bad idea.

But absent that email proof, anyone with a modicum of intelligence knows that would be the result. We invade the airspace of a sovereign nation, with armed attack aircraft, and fire missiles at people we have identified through some other shadowy means, or just some random dolt on the street, and we wonder why our image in the world is suffering. Wait, we know from our national experience how the world reacts, because we found out when we bombed Cambodia and Laos during the Viet-Nam war.

When I was a boy, I was taught to do unto others as I would have them do unto me. The old Golden Rule. Imagine how we would react if England flew a drone over Boston, and fired missiles at some Irish American who was sending money to the IRA. We would be livid, we would be demanding explanations, and informing Britain that any such action in the future will result in the most severe response. We would be outraged, and rightly so. In that scenario, they committed several acts of war. They flew an armed aircraft over our nation without clearing it with our air traffic control systems. They conducted a military strike on a civilian target in sovereign national lands. They did not seek extradition through appropriate legal means.

But for some reason, we feel justified doing it to anyone we want, and many here, and in the community of Democrats, and in the population as a whole act surprised when someone else gets upset when we do it to them. I won't say I can conceive of no instance when such action would be appropriate. However I have a hard time conceiving of more than 300 times it would be appropriate.

So the UN is going to let us know they are seriously displeased with us. We can't blame this on Bush, sure he started it, but WE had the power to stop it, and we didn't. We had the power to say no, and instead let the program go on with little or no consideration of the consequences.