Following is a list of the 10 of the most ill-conceived, pointless, or just
plain bad resolutions that have been adopted by the 15-nation security club. Some of these resolutions are perfectly fine, but contain flaws that have come
back to haunt their authors. Others are good for some countries, but disastrous
for others. And still others have simply outlived their expiration dates. In
any case, they all highlight the fallibility of what dignitaries here like to
call "this august body."
The Somalia Swan Song Resolution: 1863
Four days before Barack Obama was inaugurated as president of the United States, George W. Bush's administration pressed through a Security Council resolution calling for the establishment of a U.N. peacekeeping mission in Somalia, which was on the verge of losing its Ethiopian occupiers and being overrun by Islamist militants. The move had been strenuously opposed by the U.N. secretariat, which argued that there was no peace to keep in Somalia and no countries willing to send troops.
"Some view U.N. Security Council resolution 1863 as simply an empty gesture -- a call for a U.N. peace enforcement operation in Somalia by an outgoing Bush administration which knew the force would never be deployed," said Kenneth Menkhaus, a scholar at Davidson College. "But others argue this resolution was actively harmful. It handed the jihadist group al-Shabab a perfect mobilization tool against the U.S. and the U.N. precisely at the moment when an Ethiopian troop withdrawal from Somalia and a change of government in Somalia had put the Shabab on the defensive. The resolution only served to stir up a hornet's nest in Somalia."
Susan Rice, the new U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, was also cool to the idea. "I am skeptical, too, about the wisdom of a United Nations peacekeeping force in Somalia at this time," Rice said at her confirmation hearing.

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