Kofi Annan is a once and future has-been.

It's not Mr. Annan that's necessarily the problem. Until the UN gets teeth and the cojones to use them, the UN can be ignored at will by anybody and everybody.

Any SecGen of the UN is going to be impotent unless the rest of the world gives them the authority to act (or they carve out their own authority). There hasn't been a good one since Dag Hammerskold way back when...

Kofi tries his best I think but at the end of the day he's a US appointee.

IMHO if the UN isn't working as it should, it's not a reflection on the UN, it's a reflection on the world which makes up the UN...

When Kofi Annan pronounces the words "illegal Israeli occupation" he becomes worse than irrelevant.

The U.N. is becoming increasingly irrelevant. I believe we should just leave this useless organization save ourselves billions is dues and tell these self-important bigwigs to move to Europe. They obviously want to sacrifice their hard earned sovereignty to international governments.
Kevin Brehmer

Unfortunatley, if we left the U.N., the world would immediately be divided between two competing military forces:

The United States, and the U.N. Security Council.

It's a scary idea. The U.N. may be a joke, but we cannot afford to simply walk out.

HA! I laugh.

Seriously, Dean, calling the Security Council a "competing military force" is pretty funny.

I mean, they did so well in the Balkans that they turned to the U.S. to do all the dirty work of bombing everyone into submission and all...

The only way for the UN to develop some muscle is if the EU decided to offer its' services.

To show you how much I rate that "threat", I'll spot you the EU, while I get the US, Russia, and India.

Are there any other questions? Heh heh heh...

I'm less concerned about what it would be like this year, or next year. But ten, twenty years after the U.S. left, the long-term effects of a U.S. pullout could be bad--if the U.N. didn't immediately collapse, that is. If it did, fine, but if it didn't, you would still have nuclear powers like Russia, China, and others all unified, and wondering what the hell the U.S. was going to do next. They would often jockey together against us, just for the sake of doing it.

I think we've got a tiger by the tail. The notion that we should give up our seat on the security council, and the veto status that being a permanent member of that body gives us, is a little frightening to me. Maybe not for what it would mean today, but for what it might mean over ten years, fifty years, a hundred years, and so on.

Oh by the way, did you see the Wall Street Journal this morning?

This was their proposal for a single UN resolution:

"THE SECURITY COUNCIL,

"RECALLING that Iraq is already in breach of 16 Council resolutions, and has been for many years (insert list here);

"REQUIRES that Iraq must comply totally with all elements of these resolutions within 30 days;

"DECLARES that if Iraq fails to so comply with all parts of all of these resolutions, the Council authorizes all necessary means to enforce them."

Discuss this amongst yourselves...I'll be back later.

I seriously doubt we would ever be at war with the world if we resigned from the UN. Remember, the League of Nations failed because the United States did not join. We completely rejected the Treaty Versailles in 1919 due to the wise, hard work of Senators Henry Cabot Lodge and Charles Lindbergh, Sr.

The UN is increasingly irrelevant anyway. It is increasingly more so every time it cannot solve international crises. It has not prevented any of the 730 wars that occurred since its creation in 1945. The UN cannot and will not prevent any wars in the future; war is simply a natural state of the human condition.

International Law works only when countries agree to be bound by it. It is enforced using economic sanctions or war. i.e., international politics. We do not need a United Nations to do either of those things. It all comes down to international politics as I see it. So why do we need a UN anyway?

I doubt the world would conspire against us if we left the United Nations. We are not a threat to any other peaceful nation. We have no territorial designs on another country. We are not natural enemies with either Russia or China. I believe we can quite adequately negotiate treaties and balance of power arrangements with any other nation in the world to ensure our safety and markets for our commercial products.

Giving up our veto on the Security Council would go down the drain along with our dues; any compromising of our sovereignty to the new International Court; and all the tin-horn dictators who visit our shores to speak at the UN. I do not see a down side to this.

Anybody who wants to see a UN with some teeth only has to wait for the new International Criminal court to begin trying political figures. You had better be careful what you ask for. You may get just that.

Remember the racism conference last September 2001 in Johannesburg? They sure gave us much loud-mouthed propaganda about Israel and the United States. One week later terrorists attacked NYC on September 11. I am still waiting for them to say something about that. All they do is take our money. All they give us is loud-mouthed propaganda and grief. I think they can give us all the grief they want on someone else’s dime. I would rather keep mine.

When the Secretary General of the United Nations publicly uses prejudicial words like "illegal Israeli occupation" he is no longer of use to the international community and he damages the United Nations' value to the whole of the world community, except the Arab countries.

The prejudicial statements and attitudes he has made about the middle east since taking the post betray Kofi Annan's obsession with harmony at all costs; the price to be payed being Israel's ability to live in peace.

The Islamic terrorists from Palestine and their Arab countries supporters who refuse to allow Israel to live in peace NEVER are named, NO resolutions are EVER proposed or passed condemning such inhuman behavior.