Marc said:

""Burmese security forces continued to round up dissident monks even as UN Special Envoy Ibraham Gambari was pleading with the regime to exercise restraint, UN officials reported today."

while the world may hate the US for our stong handed ideals, when even lowly Burma thumbs their nose at the UN, it pretty much tells you everything you need to know about what the world thinks about that irrelevant outfit. Hey maybe we could all get together and write a strongly worded letter. Yeah, that's the ticket.

I think a little show of force might work a little better to stop this insanity."

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I don't see much difference between the Burmese repression and that in Darfur or some of the killings done by the Taliban.  Or those by Saddam Hussein's government.  So to play Devil's Advocate, why so many liberal calls to rectify situations in Burma or Sudan by force and yet recoil from the war in Iraq?  Could it be more related to the politics of who conducted the war?  Remember the Repubicans arguing AGAINST intervention in Kosovo?

If the United Nations can't be reformed to allow for more ready internationally authorized use of force when the situation requires, then these other wars will continue to occur.  Had the US gone on to take out Saddam immediately after the Kuwait invasion, we wouldn't have the current rounds of hand-wringing seen today, although I doubt the reality on the ground in Iraq would be much different. 

Samantha Power has an excellent book arguing for international interventions on humanitarian grounds.  It's worth a read.  Plus, a friend of mine literally carved her name into his arm with a knife during a drunken moment in college, so I've always been sympathetic toward her.