Does everyone remember why we face the North Korean issue today? We face it because nearing fifty years ago the United Nations accepted a cease-fire that has never resulted in a ceasation of war. We have a truce, but still exist under a state of war for all intents and purposes.
Did the United Nations seek to resolve this issue? It's been 47 years. What deadlines were set along the way? What ultimatums were delivered?
Today the United Nations is as silent as a church mouse on the subject of North Korea posessing nuclear weapons.
I mention this because this is the legacy of the United Nations in a nutshell. They damn our allies, coddle our enemies and inceasantly involve us in quagmires that are assured to keep our troops involved for decades if not centuries.
North Korea, Cyprus, Bosnia, Kosovo, Lebanon... the list goes on. Can anyone name a war, skirmish or peace process the United Nations involved the United States in that has been resolved, all troops disbursed back to their home nation? If you can think of one instance, you're doing better than I can.
The initial mandate of the UN was to prevent wars through providing a means of debate and resolution of differences by peaceful means. This mandate has seldom been met. Where it has a bandaid has been placed on the problem, which once removed will result in us being right back where we were, one two six twenty or fifty years before. Nothing is resolved. The issues still remain. War is still imminent even up to half a century later.
Instead of fighting the fight to an end and obtaininga just surrender that everyone can live with, we now expend vast sums of money on expeditionary forces in perpetuity.
Unless we kick North Korea's ass, it's going to be on the verge of war 2000 years from now. That's the sad truth.
Soviet Russia, North Korea, China... the list goes on. These pariah nations seldom if ever receive criticism from the UN. Our allies, specificly Israel are singled out over and over again for special condemnation from the UN. Noticibly free from criticism accept in an offhanded manner are Yasser Arafat, Hesballah and the other rogues of war.
The UN is worthless. It is less than worthless. It is a net negative. It sucks our funds and then just plain sucks in return.
Kofi Annan could do the world a favor. He could disolve the organization. Course we could withdraw under a momentary period of clarity and sanity, but neither will happen. We'll coddle the North. We let them develop their nukes. We'll let those nukes be proliferated to the middle east and terrorist cells. We'll huff and we'll puff and we'll absolve our national security agencies when the unthinkable happens. Then we'll explain how unimaginable it all was and put every citizen of the US in shackles to keep it from happening again.
Yakov Smirnov had it right. What a country!
Just to set the record straight, the "just surrender" to which you refer would have had to have come from the Chinese, and by extension the Soviet Union, and not the North Koreans (whom we destroyed in 1950).
Once you add in that inconvenient fact, your comment loses much of its force.