I have to say I find myself agreeing with Bill Kristol, who made the compelling case on Fox News Sunday this morning that not only is the U.N. irrelevant, in the past decade it has increased the toll of human death and suffering.

He pointed to Rwanda and Bosnia as prime examples. In both cases, the U.N. passed resolutions, but did nothing. While they endlessly debated about what to maybe do or possibly not do, in both countries genocide was occuring.

And now, with multiple international crises looming, is the world really relying on the U.N. to solve them?

Kristol asks:

Will the U.N. deal with North Korea? With Iran? Will they finally broker peace between Israel and the Palestinians?

And as he notes, the answers are: No. No. No.

Where is Kofi Annan's leadership? What exactly is he doing to broker peace in the Middle East, or to insure that war does not erupt on the Korean peninsula?

Dialogue is important, and so is debate. But at the end of the day, in any governing body, decisions must be made. Our Congress discusses and debates, but in the end, they pass laws, and our nation's law and enforcement agencies try to enforce them. If Congress just showed up a few months a year to talk, issue a bunch of meaningless suggestions about the way things ought to be, and went home, we'd rightly call it all a masturbatory farce.

And unfortunately, that's what the U.N. has become.