The UN needs a BILLION dollars to renovate? WTF!

[KevinTheOmnivore]

Originally Posted by GAsux

Kev,
I'm a little disappointed that you are under the impression that I am so naive that I needed to have the fact that the U.N. is a large, multi-faceted body explained to me.

Sorry, but you seem to have the same naive arguments to make against the UN that everyone else does. International diplomacy and peacekeeping isn't supposed to be an easy job, and the UN will never be perfect (nor should it be, IMO). But criticizing it as ineffective simply because it doesn't serve "our" purposes, that's just lame.

I didn't dismiss the U.N. because some nations disapproved of "our" war. I said nothing of the kind. I'm simply stating that if obvious self interest is grounds for banishment from the U.N., then there is a lot of house cleaning to do.

Right, I forgot, we were riding Spain's coat tails into the Middle East.

Anyway, I never said self-interest was grounds for banishment. What I did in fact say was that every nation is out for thir own interests. But when a country begins to whine and cry about the procedures and policies of the UN, simply because they don't get their way, is ridiculous. Now the world can afford it when a lesser country takes this childish stance, but when the most powerful nation in the world does it, it becomes dangerous.

If the ENTIRE organization and ALL of it's members truly believed in working together to create peace, I don't think we'd be arguing about places like Sierra Leone and Liberia. Those places struggle because they DON'T provide any benefit to other member nations. It's not just the U.S. That's what I was getting at.

Right, and again, I never said that every other nation was ready to hold hands and make peace. My point was that reverting to the "he did it first" argument solves nothing, and as the world's super power, it just might be our duty to do more than blow things up really well.