Like an upset child who hasn’t gotten her way, the United States has packed up its toys and left the United Nations conference on racism Monday, citing efforts on the part of other nations to condemn Israel as a racist state in the meeting’s proposed declaration.

It doesn’t matter if our delegates agreed with the path the discussions were taking, simply boycotting the conference accomplishes nothing.

Before it even began there were concerns that the strife between Palestinian and Israeli representatives would carry over into the in South African conference - and take away from the myriad of other issues the conference was intended to address. Among the concerned was Mary Robinson, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights and secretary-general for the conference, who admonished, “This conference cannot solve the Middle East problem.”

Yet, the Middle East is precisely where the conference focused. The draft which prompted the walkout by the United States and Israel frequently declared Zionism, the movement which founded the Jewish nation, as “based on racial superiority” and the nation of Israel as similar to apartheid era South Africa.

Amid accusations that the United States pulled out of the conference to avoid facing the responsibilities stemming from slavery and the injustice done to Native Americans, U.S. representatives maintained their position was solely to reject the anti-Israel language in the draft and that the direction the talks took was shameful.

It was almost expected this conference would turn to the Middle East conflict, and perhaps that’s why the United States and Canada declined to send top-level officials. It certainly would have been a powerful statement to see Secretary of State Colin Powell walk out of this conference rather than a set of bottom-shelf delegates.

Even still, by walking out the United States wasted an opportunity to try and hammer out a better document with all parties involved. We could have set a precedent and made a strong show of decorum and growth in lasting out a conference when we boycotted similar meetings in 1978 and 1983.

It was a wasteful, childish move that could have been handled better. But this is simply another “could have.” Hopefully the White House will learn from this and previous conferences to better handle meetings in the future.