Actually, there are quite a few in Iran. And the mullahs are up to their eyeballs in protection rackets.

But the world needs a World Cop.

The USA, plus the UK and Japan, and (second most important) INDIA, should form a new organization.

The Human Rights Enforcement Group, whose primary purpose is to enforce two human rights, free speech, and free religion, and to stop mass murder by the gov’t (genocide or otherwise). It should ONLY be democracies.

Enforcement actions would require coalitions, but only of the willing, and only if the HReg org declared a country’s gov’t in gross violation of Human Rights.

Leaving Libya and Sudan behind but inviting France? How about Russia and China, with whom we have extensive and important economic relations?

Even close allies like Great Britain and Israel have their own ways and their own interests, not always our own.

The original UN was an organic outgrowth of the separate and interlocking alliances of the Second World War. We weren’t all friends, but we had one overarching interest in common, and that vanished on VE Day and VJ Day.

Romantic adherence to wartime propaganda led us to invite every other nation into the club, instead of restructuring it into a western alliance more like NATO, with the power to negotiate effectively with our enemies, instead of pretending they were becoming just like us.

“If we don’t offend Hitler, he will leave us alone” – Europe 1938

“during this performance from a scruffy little man in a sports jacket”

What does his physical stature have to do with anything?? You make it sound as though being short is part of the problem, as if being short makes one contemptible.

Replace the word “little” with “gay” or “jew” or “black” and this board would be lit up with comments attacking you rather than the subject of your post. The fact that we don’t see any such comments is bothersome as well … it means it is quite acceptable to malign short men with impunity.

Look, Im not some short guy who’s “offended” by such things. But your striking use of one’s physical stature in an obviously degrading way should raise red flags immediately, and it doesn’t here. I know Amadinajad inflames passions, but lets not run roughshod over others in order to get our indignation on the record … at the very least.

My sentiments exactly.

Too bad we can’t get rid of the UN entirely: it lets dwarf countries punch out of their weight and allows their leaders to get undue attention from the chattering classes.

That said, I don’t see how we can get out of it — we need to be in so we can throw a spanner in the works occasionally and prevent it from doing anything too stupid. But in general, too bad the thing can’t collapse of its own weight – it’s as bad or worse an idea and institution than the League of Nations.