Posted on 03/08/2005 8:39:02 AM PST by TigerLikesRooster
Bush makes a foxy pick
By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON - In a breathtaking victory for right-wing hawks, US President George W Bush has nominated Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton to become his next ambassador to the United Nations.
Bolton, widely considered the most unilateralist and least diplomatic of senior US officials during Bush's first term, will have to be confirmed by the US Senate, where some Democrats, a few of whom were said to be stunned by the nomination, are expected to put up a fight.
One aide called the nomination "incredible", particularly in light of recent indications, including Bush's talks with European leaders at the end of last month, that he and his new secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, intended to pursue a more multilateralist policy in his second term and was determined to smooth the rougher diplomatic edges of his foreign-policy team.
That notion had been bolstered by Rice's choice of trade representative Robert Zoellick, a long-time pragmatist and "realist", as her deputy, despite Bolton's efforts, backed by Vice President Dick Cheney, to take the job.
The fact that Bolton failed in his quest was taken as a clear sign that Rice was indeed moving toward a more multilateralist policy, in defiance even of Cheney, the undisputed leader of the coalition of aggressive nationalists, neo-conservatives and Christian Right activists that dominated foreign policy from the September 11, 2001 attacks until after the Iraq invasion.
Rice's acquiescence, if not agreement, for Bolton to serve as her representative at the UN, however, will require foreign-policy analysts in Washington to reassess that judgment.
"This is like putting the fox in charge of the henhouse," said Heather Hamilton, vice president of programs for Citizens for Global Solutions, formerly the World Federalist Association (WFA), who called Bolton the "Armageddon nominee".
The Armageddon allusion was to Bolton's long-time loyalty to former ultra-right Senator Jesse Helms who, on retiring from public life, described Bolton as "the kind of man with whom I would want to stand at Armageddon, if it should be my lot to be on hand for what is forecast to be the final battle between good and evil in this world".
"His nomination sends exactly the wrong message to the world about the Bush administration's willingness to work with other countries and in multilateral institutions. There's no one who has a greater track record of offending other countries, including our closest allies," Hamilton said.
Despite a round, bespectacled face, ruddy cheeks and a thick, drooping blonde moustache that give him an avuncular appearance, Bolton is known to be confrontational, combative and humorless.
He began excoriating evil in the Ronald Reagan administration when, despite a lack of experience in developing countries, he held a series of posts in the US Agency for International Development (USAID) before winding up as one of attorney general Edwin Meese's top aides.
In that capacity, he resisted all efforts by Congress to investigate the Justice Department's role in the Iran-Contra affair, as well as efforts by Senator John Kerry to investigate drug and gun-running by the Nicaraguan Contras in the mid-1980s.
His effectiveness gained him a promotion under president H W Bush to the position of assistant secretary of state for international organizations, a post he held until 1993 when he joined first the right-wing Manhattan Institute and then the neo-conservative-dominated American Enterprise Institute (AEI), home to such prominent hawks as former UN ambassador Jeanne Kirkpatrick, former Defense Policy Board chairman Richard Perle, and Cheney's spouse, Lynne Cheney.
At a 1994 WFA panel discussion, Bolton asserted that "if the UN [secretariat] building in New York lost 10 stories, it wouldn't make a bit of difference".
By the time former secretary of state James Baker tapped him to serve as a senior member of the George W Bush legal team in Florida after the 2000 election, Bolton had become senior vice president at AEI, a position he used during the latter half of the 1990s to speak out strongly in favor of fully normalizing ties with Taiwan, from which he had received money at the time, according to the Washington Post.
He also advocated withdrawing from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and railed against "nation-building", international arms-control agreements and threats supposedly posed to US sovereignty by the UN and its Secretary General Kofi Annan. At one point, Bolton suggested the US simply halt payments to the world body.
Bolton is also a long-time activist in the Federalist Society, an association of right-wing, nationalistic lawyers who have been particularly opposed to the application of international or foreign law in their decisions, a practice that they say threatens US sovereignty.
The society is also strongly opposed to non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that seek the adoption of international law and standards in the US. Along with the AEI, the society sponsors "NGOWatch", which seeks to expose such efforts, as well as the funding sources of NGOs that take such positions.
Given his history of far right positions, former secretary of state Colin Powell was reported to have been deeply skeptical of Bolton when Cheney suggested him for the under secretary position. Cheney, however, insisted.
But within just a few months, it became clear that Bolton was far more in tune with the neo-conservative hawks around Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Pentagon hawks than with Powell's relatively moderate positions and demeanor.
In the summer of 2001, he shocked foreign delegations and NGOs at the a UN conference on the illicit trade in small arms and light weapons when he announced that Washington would oppose any attempt to regulate the trade in firearms or non-military rifles, or any other effort that would "abrogat[e] the constitutional right to bear arms".
He played a similar role several months later when, amid the public shock that followed September 11, and an anthrax scare, Bolton single-handedly sabotaged a UN meeting to forge an international verification protocol designed to put teeth into a treaty on bio-weapons.
When he had finished, he reportedly told his colleagues, "It's dead, dead, dead, and I don't want it coming back from the dead." Within the State Department, Bolton led the drive to renounce the US signature on the 1998 Rome Statute that created the new International Criminal Court, the first permanent tribunal with jurisdiction over war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.
When Bush decided to withdraw the US signature to the treaty, Bolton prevailed on Powell to permit him to sign the formal notification to Annan, an act he later described to the Wall Street Journal as "the happiest moment of my government service".
At the same time, Bolton was also engaged in a lengthy row with US intelligence agencies over his public charge that Cuba had an offensive biological warfare program. His assertion became an embarrassment after anonymous intelligence officials and retired senior military officers, including the former head of the US Southern Command, told the media that no such evidence existed and charged that Bolton was politicizing intelligence.
In July 2003, Bolton was poised to testify to Congress that Syria's alleged programs to develop weapons of mass destruction had developed to such an extent that they threatened regional stability, an assertion which reportedly provoked a "revolt" by US intelligence analysts, who insisted that the evidence did not warrant such a conclusion.
Powell frequently complained to his closest aides that Bolton was undercutting him and appeared to be taking orders from Cheney and the Pentagon, rather than from his State Department superiors.
In a speech in Seoul that same month, for example, just as Pyongyang agreed to enter multilateral talks on its nuclear program as the administration had demanded, Bolton described life in North Korea as a "hellish nightmare", and accused its leader, Kim Jong-il, of being a "dictator" or "tyrant" running a "dictatorship" or "tyranny" no less than a dozen times.
Some US and Asian analysts said the speech appeared designed to provoke Kim to boycott the meeting. Indeed, the North Korean media described Bolton as "rude human scum" and a "bloodthirsty vampire" and demanded that he be withdrawn from the delegation that was to take part in the talks. Bolton did not show up.
But, if Bush now gets his way, he will soon find himself at the heart of all US multilateral diplomacy.
Many appeaseniks over the world were so happy to see him leave Foggy Bottom. They thought this particular nightmare is gone. Now he is back in the limelight of international politics. Their premature celebration literally turned into a 'hellish nightmare.' This is good.
Indomitable 'human scum' ping!
"have to be confirmed by the US Senate, where some Democrats, a few of whom were said to be stunned by the nomination, are expected to put up a fight."
Another brilliant move by the president. The democrats will fight against Bolton in support of a blatantly corrupt UN.
i bet the RATS woke up maddy halfbright to start squawkin about this..LOL...this is going to be fun
Just when everyone thought the Yanks would start getting permission slips to defend themselves.
Bloodthirsty Vampire Bump.
Au contraire, I think it sends the RIGHT message. I love it.
Sounds like our kind of guy. Rudy Guiliani without the humor. Let him go to the U.N. and clean house, or else send the U.N. scumbags packing. Makes no difference.
Absolutely. I can't wait for the sound bytes. Democrats have to give up this Star Ship Enterprise Federation view of the UN. Someone needs to expose the corruption and shovel out the manure.
By the tone and volume of the Left, me thinks this guy is just what we need in the UN.
I can just picture him saying to the EU delagtaes, after some silly demand, "Bite Me."
He forgot "animal abusers."
Not a bad idea, since the hens have been robbing us blind.
It's going to draw a lot of unwanted attention to the democrats and the UN.
ChimpusKhan is smarter than the average monkey king. LOL
Yes he sounds like the PERFECT man for the job. You go W, just keep doing what's right for the US and screw what the Eurotrash and the demo/socialists think. We've got your back!
THis appointment sends exactly the right message. Bush may be more multilateral, but will work with other nations directly. This appointment sends the message that Bush rightly believes that a strong personality needs to be projected in the U.N. to keep the vast majority of members, who are quasi-civillized thugs, from cr@pping over everything.
Whats not to like?
I wish somebody would put this article to music, so I could listen to it all day on my headphones.
"Kofi is mine"
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