UN haters wil love this American Prospect piece on John Bolton at the UN:
The European way of doing things, in the weeks preceding the mid-September 2005 United Nations World Summit, could not be stretched to include the 35-hour workweek. For days, frantic negotiations on the substance of far-ranging UN reforms dragged on from 8 a.m. to 1 a.m. But the one UN ambassador who generally arrived earliest and stayed latest always looked more upbeat than his bleary-eyed counterparts. “All night — all right!” quipped John Bolton to a press stakeout.
***The rumor mill at the Vienna Café has suggested that Bolton must have bypassed Rice and received support for holding the UN budget hostage from the president himself — a view widely held as the truth among UN diplomats. Regardless of the accuracy of this rumor, Bolton’s move is paradigmatic of his self-defeating approach to the UN: Instead of banding together with powerful allies, he alienates them. And in doing so he empowers adversaries like Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, and other spoilers content with a UN that is tied in knots. Critics feared that Bolton’s tenure would be problematic for American interests. The evidence suggests it’s been even worse.
***After listening to a tirade from Bolton against inefficiency, corruption, and supposed anti-Americanism at the UN during a private dinner, a Sunday Telegraph reporter in the audience asked him what he enjoyed most about the UN, to which Bolton replied, “It’s a target-rich environment.”
Two quick thoughts:
1.) It appears maybe I was wrong about Bolton not being a problem- after all, as I mused, the UN survived Jeanne Kirkpatrick.
2.) A Machiavellian might note that having the international governing body tied in knots might be EXACTLY what this administration wants. Or at least what they think they want.
Mr Furious
I’ll need to refresh myself on what you said at the time, but this was hardly difficult to predict, john.
John Cole
Oh- I thought he would be a problem, but I thought he would get swallowed whole by the UN. I had more faith in the power of institutional inertia than I did in Bolton.
Alan
As if the UN had any teeth to begin with? Give me a break.
jg
No way. If any administration is for competent efficient governing bodies its this one.
Steve S
That’s not a bad thing, honestly. The less they do, the more efficient they will be.
It’s what Democrats should be doing in Congress. The best government is one which is doing nothing.
Pb
Somehow, I’m entirely not surprised. Kudos to those in the Senate who saw this coming a mile away.
Darrell
Why is tying up a thoroughly corrupt and incompetent organization such as the UN a bad thing?
Mike S
You’re right. It’s time to tie up the corrupt and incompatant GOP led congress. We should tie up the White House while we’re at it.
Eural
There’s a lot of talk about “tying up” people going on here – sounds like many of you need to spend a weekend at Plato’s Retreat and work of some of your tension. I suspect Mr. Bolton could help you out there. (Holy shit – that’s his goal for the UN!!!???)
Pb
Darrell,
I don’t think that Bolton’s goal is not to tie up the UN per se, but rather to direct its alleged corrupt incompetency in directions favored by the corrupt and incompetent administration he serves (the “UN reform” stuff they’ve been pushing–hilarious coming from them). Failing that, I guess tying it up would work too, not that we don’t do that already.
Darrell
Touche. But as corrupt as our congress may be, at least they are not responsible for child rape rings like UN workers in the Congo and in the Balkans have been guilty of. Were they ever punished for that? A slap on the wrist perhaps and forgoe Christmas bonus? And Congress is not complicit in the theft of medicine and food for children as in the UN oil for food scam
What I love about Eurotrash, is what hypocritical scum they are. They scream about the US liberating Iraqis from an oppressive dictator, yet they are Iran’s #1 trading partner and they do big business with Sudan. According to German businessmen, the genocide of blacks in Sudan are “political disturbances”.
Welcome to the UN!
Darrell
yes, because like the UN, the Bush admin has been complicit in child rape rings and in stealing medicine from sick children.. oh, wait
Darrell
I love how you kooks draw moral equivalencies between the Bush admin and the UN, kind of like how you so often draw moral equivalencies between our troops and Saddam. It’s who you are
Steve S
Is the UN responsible for that? I would think it would be the individuals involved.
You know. A few bad apples.
Interesting the hypocrisy of the right.
Darrell
It was an entire network of UN workers. I like how you draw moral equivalencies with torturing murderous terrorists to raping children. It says a lot about you and those who think like you
Darrell
The Congo child rape ring came 3 full years after a UN investigation found “widespread” evidence of sexual abuse of west africans by UN workers
Pb
Darrell,
Abu gharib and the health care system. Cheers.
The only one to mention that is you–cheers rescinded, fuck you.
Darrell
Are you so whacked in the head that you actually draw equivalencies between stealing medicine from Iraqi children and the US health system? Please elaborate so everyone can see how so twisted so many on the left truly are
Mike S
I don’t think anyone is saying that reform is not needed at the UN. There are some sick mofo’s there. But Bolton is even derailing reforms that were designed specifically by us.
Has our government or press been any better than them? I have seen very little difference betwen the rhetoric at our press briefings than I saw with the dispicable briefings Dee Dee Myers gave during the Rhwanda genocide. You quote a buisnessman but I’m talking about our own government. And don’t forget the outrage Andrea Mitchell showed about the Sudan. Of course she was outraged about her own treatment, not the mass murder.
Darrell
We refuse to do business with Sudan and Iran. The Europeans and Chinese don’t hesitate to do business with both Sudan and Iran, defending their cold blooded calculations with BS moral platitudes. So yes, on that score, the US is most definitely better than them.
We’ve got lots of culpability on Rwanda, granted, but not nearly as much as the French who armed and protected the genocidal Hutus, or the UN peacekeepers who did nothing to protect the Tsutsis getting slaughtered.
See the pattern with the UN? the genocide in Rwanda, the incredible f*ckup in Srebrenica, UN soldiers stepping aside and allowing the 1967 attack on Israel, and on and on. Have UN peacekeepers EVER held the peace when threatened? Ever? Not only are they not worth a sh*t at ensuring security of innocents who depended on them, they willfully try to stop the US (and Israel) from ensuring our own security. They legitimize unelected murderous dictators and despots, giving them a platform and a voice to use the UN to denounce the US. Time to flush that cesspool down the East River. At least we wouldn’t have to host the vermin which come here on diplomatic immunity
Bob In Pacifica
Darrell, I think it was Bush Senior who was tied up in child rape rings, not the current President.
Mike S
But we, both Dem and Rep, have traded with plenty of despots including Saddam and some pretty horrific Afracan dictators. Our hands are nowhere near clean in this sort of thing. We choose who we want to deal with with the full knowledge of just how dispicable they are, just as every other country and world body does.
Darrell
I really don’t mean to gloss over past wrongs of the US, but our trade with Saddam was miniscule compared with so many others. Virtually all of our trade with despots in the past have been in the context of opposing the Soviets in the Cold war, a regime responsible for murdering 10’s of millions. What excuse do the Europeans and chinese have for trading with and supporting the butchers in Sudan and Iranian mullahs now?
Mike S
I don’t think you are. And I am in no way defending the UN or other countries/world bodies. I’m just pointing out that there are no clean hands when it comes to this.
Darrell
But why not just denounce the Europeans and Chinese who are trading and supporting Sudan and Iran, rather than pointing fingers at the US for past wrongs?? By doing so, you seem to be trying to undercut US moral authority in attempts to alert people as to what complete scumbags the Europeans and Chinese are for their actions. Because our past is not perfect should not stop us from doing what is right now.
Mike S
Because I hold my country to a higher standard than I do them. Not to mention the fact that I’m not so sure these things are in the past. We didn’t stop working with Uzbechistan, they kicked us out last I heard.
Do I undercut moral authority or do our actions do so? And you are sounding quite isolationist with that comment. Exactly which allies will be left if we start bashing European countries as “scumbags” for doing things we have done and continue to do?
I have traveled the world extencively and found that the complaints that we have toward other countries is echoed almost word for word against us. I always defend my country where merited. But salient points are made by them as well.
My father in law is a French man who fought against the Nazis. He worked with the 82nd AB and helped them catch Nazi spies. He came to America right after the war and lived here for over 40 years. He’s been back in France now for more than 15 so he has a solid perspective on which to compare the two.
Our countries are not much different. We both have nationalistc streaks, we both think we are the best country in the world and we have both had major impacts on where the world is now.
But neither of us wants to address the major ways we have fucked up. We want to believe that the rest of the world has screwed up and are “scumbags.” But that is just not the case. And if we refuse to address our past mastakes we are doomed to relive them.
Sojourner
Wow, I will sleep so much better tonight knowing that we’re not as bad as X. Choose the X of your choice.
Funny, I thought the Repubs were the party of morality. Whoops… another lie. Imagine that.
Ram
Mike S:
The major ways the various liberal democracies on the planet have screwed up in the past doesn’t enter into it. The current United Nations is a nearly worthless corrupt money sink. The organization should be disbanded as soon as possible.
Get out the history books… Remember the old european League of Nations? Remember why it died? “Because the US wasn’t a member” isn’t the answer. The League died because of the folks who WERE members. The “Bad Guys” were inside the tent gumming up the works whenever the League tried to do the right thing. That ‘society of equals’ wasn’t able to punish a member country for chewing on a neighbor, for instance.
Fast forward to 2005 & read the current membership of the “United Nations High Commission on Human Rights”. A joke in poor taste. Who doubts that were it given the chance the General Assembly would vote to tax capitalism out of existence? The only vote they’d schedule before that would be the one to eliminate the member state of Israel. Moral Authority? I don’t think so. The ‘some are more equal than others’ Security Council has most of the same problems and is just insulting to boot.
Rubbish the UN & replace it with a League of Liberal Democracies with the membership requirements posted on the front door: consensual government, free markets, free press, independent judiciary, etc. France & the U.S. will still be rude to each other on occasion, but we’ve a lot more in common than either of us has with the Sudan. Tell the folks who don’t like the new rules that their country is their responsibility, not ours.
And I’d also like a pony.
Pax,
Ram
Steve S
Uh huh. The entire UN. They were all behind it and supported it.
No. I draw moral equivalences between raping children in the congo and raping children at Abu Ghraib.
Your argument is nonsensical moronic and juvenile. Come back when you’ve grown up, you piece of trash.
Steve S
Interesting logical fallacy.
How would they be able to enforce a ban on capitalism if they are unable to punish a member country for chewing on a neighbor?
See, this is the problem with wingnut argumentation… it only makes since if you’re high. No wonder we have a problem with drugs in this country.
Steve S
Ok. The Chinese have a shitty history and respect towards human rights. So do many of the European countries.
Hell, you should look into England’s past. It’s far worse than anything America has done in it’s past.
Now somehow in Darrel’s logic, that makes it ok for the US to have a very low bar towards human rights. That’s the difference between him and liberals.
Ram
Steve S:
Kofi has already spoken in favor of the UN taxing international airline flights, iirc. Given the membership of the General Assembly I suspect that a punitive tax on some variant of ‘rich countries’, ‘multinational corporations’, ‘evil capitalist exploiters of the working classes’, etc. would do quite well. Give them a short time to work out the mechanism & all will be well. Oh, is it OK if they run the Internet too? Pretty Please?
That “unable to punish a member country” bit was a reference to the old League of Nations. You know – the folks who were going to end war? Don’t worry, I get the UN & the LoN confused too.
Pax,
Ram
“Thank God we don’t get all the government we pay for.”
Milton Friedman
Mike S
Republican diplomacy at it’s core. Disband a place that creates dialogue with the entire world because it doesn’t fit their definition. Then form a club that we can decide exactly what happens and are the sole propriater of “the truth.”
The UN needs reform without a doubt. But you won’t get shit done with that attitude. Instead you will get far more isolationism and/or nationalism.
Ram
What does Zimbabwe’s Robert Mubabe have to say that we all should want to hear? Why should the current crew in charge of Burma have the same vote & voice in world affairs as, say, Germany, Japan, or the U.S.? Honestly, who needs Human Rights advice from China? Anyone? No sale.
Mike S – you’ve traveled. You’ve seen the inside of some dictatorships, yes? Would you agree that any moral equivalence between those countries and ours is simple & obvious fiction?
An organization that pretends the U.S. and Zimbabwe are equals is doomed by reality. The U.S. and the South Korea, fine. We and the South Koreans have good objective reasons to take each other seriously.
The good news is if Zimbabwe wants in on the club the rules are on the front door. Oh – and those are damn fine rules for how to run a country in any event. Immigration statistics make a good test for that last assertion, imho.
Pax,
Ram
Pb
Darrell,
Thanks to George W. Bush, the state of Texas has killed sick children. Now shut the fuck up about your ‘equivalences’. Baby killer.
Darrell
US says: “Europeans and Chinese are supporting Sudan and Iran which are in fact murderous, tyrannical, terrorist supporting govts. This is wrong and should be stopped”
Mike S and many, many other liberals: “But the US has supported tyrannical regimes in the past, so we now must STFU regarding support of Sudan and Iran today”
Analogous argument to Mike S reference to Uzbekistan: “The US supported Stalin during WWII to defeat Hitler, so we need to STFU regarding genocide in Sudan today.”
Do you see how whacked that thinking is? Is it not obvious to you that kind of thinking is completely and totally f*cked up?
Ram
Pb – just to let you know… When you say things like that you are only talking about yourself. Clearly you live in a comic book.
Hey, no worries – I like comic books! So tell us, which superhero will be defeating that nasty supervillain? About how issues will this story arc take? It seems like an awfully long running series as it is…
Oh – and just to keep this on topic: Everyone knows that Kofi Annan is just a secret identity. Haven’t figured out who he is yet.
Pax,
Ram
“Whenever A annoys or injures B on the pretense of improving or saving X, A is a scoundrel.”
– Mencken’s Law