"Inept"? No. "Ignored"? Yes.

And it's a sad state of affairs when two G8 countries will ignore the democratic principles of the UN (and in one case refuse to pay their fees to it). It's a bad precedent to set - if the US doesn't have to follow what the UN says, why should North Korea or Iran care?

Although it's quite simple - imperial nations are only democratic *internally*. Externally, it's always been "might is right". Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, Spain and Portugal did that when they had empires, and the US is just following the same example. Sadly the US is doing this 50+ years later, after a series of wars which you'd really have hoped would have got the message across that.

Graham.