The UN is feeble as the world’s cop, grotesque as its conscience.

So now the UN Human Rights Council is after Vladimir Putin and Bashar Assad. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Unlike, say, the Russian president, who is undoubtedly shaking … with laughter. What can these people do to him?

It is a relief to see any UN body take time out from its sinister Israel fixation. And it matters to document atrocities even when everybody knows they’re happening. The rule of law does not work by “everybody knows” even when everyone currently does. And as with Yad Vashem’s Names Recovery Project, the dignity of the victims requires an effort to record what was done to them as individuals. Reducing them to a blurry mass is what the villains hope to accomplish.

Nevertheless, the entire venture has an air of dangerous fatuity about it. The problem isn’t squeamishness about naming the perpetrators directly before the investigation. If this were a real legal proceeding, it would be appropriate to preserve the presumption of innocence even when everybody does know. The problem is confusing empty words with effective deeds, a kind of habitual fantasy bred in domestic politics with lethal consequences when applied internationally.

Reuters says “Zeid Ra’ad al- Hussein, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, had earlier called for major powers to put aside their differences and refer the situation in eastern Aleppo to the International Criminal Court.” But don’t you see, you silly pompous man, that a key “difference” between the major powers here is that the Russian government wants to commit these atrocities and the others wish they’d stop?

A British resolution to investigate Aleppo was adopted 24-7, with Russia and dependably villainous China against, and 16 abstentions, which gives you some idea what the UN is worth as the world’s conscience. As for Britain’s “junior Foreign Office minister” telling journalists the Russian air campaign on behalf of the murderous Syrian tyrant “is shameful and it is not the action or leadership that we expect from a P5 (permanent member of the UN Security Council) nation” I can only quote Professor Plum from the movie Clue, “You don’t know what kind of people they have at the UN.” Putin occupies Stalin’s P5 seat, for goodness sake.

If the UN looks grotesque as the world’s conscience, it is utterly feeble as its policeman. For the other crucial “difference” is that Moscow is prepared to bring the massive power of its modern military establishment to bear in Syria, while the West has dithered until intervention risks great power confrontation and the UN has no army with which to “arrest” those who violate “international law.”

I am not indifferent to atrocities or aggression. But I have a realistic sense of what can be done about them. I very much wish U. S. President Barack Obama had acted on his “red line” in Syria five years ago instead of preening, equivocating and golfing. But he didn’t and now it’s too late. And you need to be able to tell the time and know the score in such matters.

There are choices here. You can take a grimly realistic view of the world in which atrocities are routinely committed by people too powerful to be stopped or punished, and take what you can get in this ghastly geopolitical jungle. Or you can take a militantly idealistic view and seek to impose justice globally though the heavens fall … on you, an approach frequently described as Wilsonian, though Woodrow Wilson actually shared the regrettably common habit of combining what Teddy Roosevelt called “the unready hand with the unbridled tongue.”

Roosevelt called such people “prize jackasses.” Even more to the point, and pointedly, he said: “A milk-and-water righteousness unbacked by force is to the full as wicked as and even more mischievous than force divorced from righteousness.”

It is wicked to pride oneself on self- satisfied posturing from a safe distance. And it is mischievous because it exposes the do- gooders’ impotence. A Human Rights Watch spokesman said this “decisive action … sent a clear message that illegal attacks on civilians must end and that those responsible will be held to account.” But they won’t. When Russia sends warplanes and we send messages, the pen is not mightier than the sword.

Does anyone seriously see Putin in the dock, having piously laid aside his nuclear arsenal? Yet the deputy U. S. ambassador to the UN also said of the “shocking acts in Aleppo” that “those who commit them must be held accountable.” By who? What does Putin care for the UNHRC?

As Roosevelt’s secretary of state Elihu Root put it, you do not “shake your fist at a man and then shake your finger at him,” or he will laugh off your threats and your reproaches.

The victims i n Aleppo deserve better than sanctimonious make- believe. So does the security of the West.

IF THE UN LOOKS GROTESQUE AS THE WORLD’S CONSCIENCE, IT IS UTTERLY FEEBLE AS ITS POLICEMAN.