Samantha Power, the Obama administration’s nominee to be the U.S.’s next ambassador to the United Nations, was asked during her Senate hearings to describe the U.N.’s stance regarding the Syrian conflict. She was not kind:

Samantha Power, the Obama administration’s nominee for U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, told a Senate panel Wednesday that the world body’s failure to halt mass killing in Syria is a “disgrace that history will judge harshly.” But Power voiced little optimism that China and Russia, key U.N. Security Council powers, can be persuaded to support decisive action on Syria. And she registered caution about the limits of U.S. power to respond to the world’s most tragic crises.

Some 100,000 people have been killed in the violence, which now threatens to escalate into a sectarian conflict stretching from the eastern Mediterranean into the middle of Iraq.

The U.N.’s inaction on Syria has been contrasted by critics with the body’s vociferous and institutionalized criticism of Israel, a topic that similarly emerged during Power’s hearing. She emphasized that as ambassador to the U.N. she would leverage U.S. diplomatic resources to prevent disproportionate attacks against the U.S. ally:

“The United States has no greater friend in the world than the state of Israel,” she said. “I will stand up for Israel and work tirelessly to defend it.”… Power said the United States’ defense of freedom would require “contesting the crackdown on civil society being carried out in countries like Cuba, Iran, Russia and Venezuela.”

[Photo: Duesentrieb / Wiki Commons]