A little appreciation once in a while would be nice.

For years, the U.N.'s full-time job seems to have been crapping on the United States, with anything left over thrown in the direction of Israel. This, while we support more of their budget than any other nation. I only wish it was actually accomplishing the function of allowing smaller nations a voice in world affairs.

This has been mostly in relation to international security. Just one uncomfortable fact nobody wants to deal with is that even if the war in Iraq had been enthusiastically approved by the U.N., that America would still have ended up providing most of the wealth and the blood. We have twice the forces on the ground in Afghanistan as all the other nations involved combined.

In the meantime, for all the bullshit about "per capita" and "percent of GDP," most of the wealth and assistance going to needy nations has been coming from us. Never mind the technologies that might permit Third World nations to join the rest of us.

Speaking to the current situation, it's understandable that a lot of Americans got a bit pissed off when practically the first words out of the U.N. were how stingy we were. It's irritating to me that we even have to approach this in terms of who's the most effective or generous, but we didn't start it by a long shot.

I'm seeing a real undercurrent of thought that believes the U.N. might be better off based in the European Union than here. They'd fit right in in Brussels.