Jo: Our disconnect is that we’re approaching this from opposite directions. Of course US troops, like any other group of human beings, commit crimes. The fact that you have to use two isolated examples, one from 38.5 years ago, the other, while humiliating and distasteful, involving no deaths, serious injuries, or torture, both of which were not official policy and both of which were punished, is revealing. (As far as googling is concerned, well try, “jewish world control,” “black african subhuman,” etc for an idea of the reliability of that source.) Also, to point to recent events, there were convictions for rape and/or murder by a marine in the Philipines and a soldier in Iraq this past week — that is the difference between the UN and the US.

Evil committed by one person or group is irrelevant to that by another. The difference is the UN persists in its actions and justifies while the US condemns and tries to prevent its — as do most countries, democratic ones anyway. Even those that are not feel compelled to at least pretend to, such as in the Iranian PM’s letter to Americans last week.

The ultimate perniciousness is that the UN does not even deign to the Iranian PM’s hypocrisy (the homage vice pays to virtue, as La Rochefoucald famously put it) and instead subverts the idea of virtue altogether.