Bolton: An Unforgivable Choice as UN Ambassador

<snip> Pathetically enough, the chair that Adlai Stevenson once sat in is now scheduled to be filled by John Bolton, which must be considered a cruel piece of humor on the part of the White House. While the Bush administration ostensibly has set out on a campaign to reform the United Nations, astonishingly enough, it just has nominated Bolton to be the U.S. ambassador to the international body. Akin to calling in the clowns, those familiar with his record believe that there is no one in U.S. public life today more ill-suited for that position than Bolton. His nomination reflects nothing less than an affront to the American people, the diplomatic community and people of goodwill everywhere. It is not a matter that he is too conservative; rather, it reflects the concern generated by his stint as Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security in the first Bush administration where he was demonstrably its most extremist member.

By selecting an individual who has spent the last decade repudiating basic norms of international cooperation and civility, his appointment is tantamount to an absolute rejection of multilateral cooperation and U.S. accountability. Throughout his outrageous career in public life, no one has been more notorious for their right-wing ideology and no one has more consistently disgraced this country’s good name than Bolton, with his rants, inventions, outright lies and bumptious formulations. As a result, he has been a repeated embarrassment to this nation’s international reputation. The fact that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice signed off on his nomination indicates the lamentable lack of standards that her tenure will likely take and that she will figure to be an illiberal factor in international diplomacy. Inevitably, his appointment will trigger an uproar in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and in other venues where foreign policy issues are a matter of serious concern.

As a senior State Department official during Bush’s first term, Bolton mocked the fundamental value of the UN as well as the broader international community by successfully leading the push for this country to reject U.S. support of the International Criminal Court (ICC), as well as seeking the exclusion of social policy efforts from international development aid. Within the Bush administration, he was quickly embraced by the rest of the clutch of ferocious hawks that eventually came to include Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy National Security Advisor Elliot Abrams and Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte. This group has given U.S. foreign policy an extremely right-wing tilt where it has emphasized unilateralism, the continuation of the U.S. saber rattling and the rejection of relativism along with accountability for various U.S. overseas initiatives. <snip>

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO0503/S00185.htm