UNHuman Rights Council Seat

Pretty much the One is going after a seat on a council controlled and manned by a bunch of countries with no reason to change the standing policies of their countries. No doubt the US will get harshly criticized by saying one thing and then actually fighting back when terrorists started to kill our citizens. Makes you wonder what the critic's countries would have done? [That was rhetorical since we all know that most would have been far worse and all would have done at least the same thing.]

UNITED NATIONS, March 31 -- The Obama administration has decided to seek a seat on the U.N. Human Rights Council, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced Tuesday, reversing a decision by the Bush administration to shun the U.N.'s premier rights body to protest the repressive states among its membership.

The United States announced it would stand as a candidate in elections May 15 to decide three seats on the 47-member council, joining Belgium and Norway on a slate of Western candidates. New Zealand, which had planned to run as well, offered to step aside to allow the United States to run unchallenged.

Clinton and Susan E. Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said the decision was part of a broader push for "a new era of engagement" in U.S. foreign policy.

"Human rights are an essential element of American global foreign policy," Clinton said in a statement. "With others, we will engage in the work of improving the U.N. human rights system to advance the vision of the U.N. Declaration on Human Rights."

The decision was criticized by U.S. conservatives, who regard the council as fatally flawed.

"This is like getting on board the Titanic after it's hit the iceberg," said John R. Bolton, ambassador to the United Nations in 2005 and 2006 under President George W. Bush. "It legitimizes something that doesn't deserve legitimacy."

The UN itself doesn't deserve this level of legitimacy, never mind the Human Rights Council.

The Obama administration and rights advocates concede that the council has failed to emerge as a powerful champion of human rights and has devoted excessive attention to alleged abuses by Israel and too little to abuses in places such as Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe and Sudan's Darfur region.

And with the US joining we'll get nothing in change except for more Clinton era style police actions where US troops are under the command of UN designated generals who prefer to hide in their compounds and get massacred when they take action. [Recall Blackhawk down incident?]

More change that isn't.