Bolton's the One

Weekly Standard ^ | April 18, 2005 | William Kristol

[West Coast Conservative]

FULL DISCLOSURE (okay, partial disclosure--let's not get carried away with media ethics breast-beating): John Bolton has been an occasional contributor to this magazine. He served in the late 1990s as a director of the Project for the New American Century, which I chair. And he is a friend.

More than all that, though, he is an exceptional choice to serve as our next U.N. ambassador. He should be confirmed quickly and easily by the Senate. He has, after all, been confirmed for high government positions four times before. He has served in those posts with distinction during three administrations, untainted by a hint of scandal or a murmur of corner-cutting. He has been an exemplary public servant.

He also, as it happens, supports President Bush's policies, and as undersecretary of state worked hard to advance them in the first term. So the Democratic party, led by George Soros and the New York Times, thinks he shouldn't be permitted to continue to serve President Bush.

Despite Soros's millions and the Times's resources, the assault on Bolton has been pathetic. What does it amount to? He's a longtime U.N. skeptic--appropriate, one would think, given the U.N.'s "Zionism is Racism" history during the Cold War, and its ineffectiveness (to be kind) in Rwanda in the '90s and in Sudan in this decade. But he's worse than a skeptic, the critics say: He has been disrespectful of the august body in which he will represent us. Why, he once joked, "The Secretariat Building in New York has 38 stories. If it lost 10 stories, it wouldn't make a bit of difference." Well, truer words were never spoken.

But there's more. During George W. Bush's first term, Bolton occasionally tangled with colleagues and overruled subordinates.

[SkyPilot]

The Bush administration should put senior spokesmen on TV every night to engage in an argument over whose foreign policy is preferable for the country--George Bush's or George Soros's.

We already know the media side with the bitter Atheist (Soros). Kristol is correct that the "case" against Bolton is silly and weak, but the UN (along with an uncontrolled judiciary) is one of the Left's last vestige of unchecked power.

They will not give it up easily.

[T. Buzzard Trueblood]

Republicans should welcome a discussion of whether the U.N. is just fine as it is, or requires tough-minded reform. In stimulating such a debate, Bolton would be doing yet another service to this country.

And then he can go to New York as ambassador to the United Nations and get to work chopping 10 stories off the Secretariat building.

Amen to that.