Andrew Sullivan sums it up perfectly:

But those resolutions - specifically Resolution 1441, demanding immediate Iraqi compliance with disarmament - have been revealed as meaningless, in as much as those countries that signed on to them have no intention whatsoever of enforcing them. The notion that inspections are working is simply ludicrous on its face. The fact that that position was warmly applauded at the Security Council today is a signal that it has decided to engage in unreality.

I don't want to accept that the U.N. is a broken, defunct joke, but I'm afraid Sullivan is right:

The body is now a joke of immense proportions. If it cannot enforce a resolution it passed only a couple of months ago, it cannot enforce anything. If it cannot read the plain meaning of its own words, it is an absurdist theater piece, not a genuine international body. It isn't in danger of becoming the League of Nations. It now is the League of Nations.

It's getting more and more difficult to justify the U.N. as a viable international body, especially in light of the election of Libya as the chairman of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, which is nothing more than a sick joke.

Victor Davis Hanson notes the following in the National Review:

The Security Council is a funny place. I watched the Chinese ambassador grimace at Mr. Powell's speech — and thought of the entire country and hallowed culture of Tibet, now swallowed by his government. Not far away was a functionary from Syria, which has simply absorbed Lebanon. The Russian ambassador voiced pacifist objections too — whose country recently flattened Muslim Grozny. The French dignitary was waving his arms about preventing precipitous unilateral action… Well, you get the picture.

Yes, one certainly does. A picture of grotesque hypocrisy heightened to a fever pitch with the issue of Iraq.

Hanson asks an interesting question:

Why should a U.N. diplomat be allowed to demand from foreigners the very privileges that his government denies to its own people?

It's a damned good question.

He suggests that only those countries that practice democracy in their home country should be allowed to wield a democratic voice in the U.N., and I tend to agree.

Look, I don't want to U.N. to topple and fade, but it is obvious that as a body for international diplomacy, trying to forge increased peace and protection for all nations, it has been an abysmal failure.

Has the U.N. done anything substantive with regard to the Israel/Palestine problem? Of course not. The U.S. is always invoked as the only means of forging a solution. The U.N.'s handling of Bosnia was a hideous joke. And now they pass endless resolutions with regard to Iraq that are essentially meaningless.

Somebody please justify the existence of the U.N. to me, because I'm finding it difficult to understand right now.