There can no longer be middle-ground in international relations. Making idle threats and idle promises as we have in the past (recall Camp David) leads to what we now have, international contempt toward the United States.

If Colonel Gadaffi is deemed unfit by the US (or the West as a whole) to chair the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, what makes you think it’s right to allow him to dictate to his people how they should live? The only moral solution to keeping him from the UN seat is to unseat him from any office that mediates over any human life, including his own dictatorship.

Merely “heading off” his acquirement of the office his was legally elected to will result in global animosity toward the US (because we always instigate negativity of the West toward the East) and her citizens -- overseas, as well as at home.

The UN is losing credibility, and I don’t think it will be long before it:

a. opts for better commercials (Trekkies really dig the United Federation of Planets)
b. contract with Disney and rename the organization “Big Blue Marble”
c. starts sponsoring G-movies and kiddy-theme parks to improve its PR
d. falls to disuse
e. stagnates and dies
f. is completely rebuilt
g. I’m sure there are many other directions the organization could take

... a Foreign Office spokeswoman said: "Our policy is to engage constructively with Libya, rather than isolate them ...", because that would be bad, and people might stop liking us.

And as for the Israel/Palestine crap, the only moral answer would be to jerk Israel completely out of the picture. It should be obvious by now that an overly bigoted Israel is not wanted in the equally bigoted neighborhood of Palestine, and the Middle East in general.

Dan