…even if AP is spinning it otherwise.
Here’s exactly why Bolton should be confirmed, because he gets in people’s faces.
Especially UN people.
Especially incompetent UN people, if that is not an oxymoron.
John R. Bolton flew to Europe in 2002 to confront the head of a global arms-control agency and demand he resign, then orchestrated the firing of the unwilling diplomat in a move a U.N. tribunal has since judged unlawful, according to officials involved.
The United Nations’ highest administrative tribunal later condemned the action as an “unacceptable violation” of principles protecting international civil servants. The OPCW session’s Swiss chairman now calls it an “unfortunate precedent” and Bustani a “man with merit.”
Jose Bustani served up to the standard of Hans Blix. Almost.
…Ralph Earle, a veteran U.S. arms negotiator, told AP that he and others in Bolton’s arms-control bureau grew unhappy with what they considered Bustani’s mismanagement. The agency chief also “had a big ego. He did things on his own,” and wasn’t responsive to U.S. and other countries’ positions, said Earle, now retired.
Both Earle and career diplomat Avis Bohlen, who retired in June 2002 as a top Bolton deputy, said the idea to remove Bustani did not originate with the undersecretary. But Bolton “leaped on it enthusiastically,” Bohlen recalled. “He was very much in charge of the whole campaign,” she said, and Bustani’s initiative on Iraq seemed the “coup de grace.”
Bustani, a Brazilian paper pusher, was undermining United States foreign policy using the imprimature of the UN; a body even more obviously corrupt now than it was when George Bush was placating Colin Powell by playing nice with the Security Council.
Bolton stopped Bustani from a new series of non-Security Council approved “UN initiatives” in Iraq. The AP can barely conceal its displeasure; sympathy for the UN being a given and antipathy toward the US being business as usual.
Even with the AP slant, we can detect John Bolton effectively defending US interests, against UN mandarins. We could ask no more of any UN ambassador. A toast to Jean Kirkpatrick and Patrick Moynihan (perhaps the last honest Liberal).
Any story that presents a character judgment made by a UN tribunal in a positive way – while Kofi Annan stills “serves” – and Annan’s son and Benon Sevan are not in prison is, frankly, a joke. And not a very good one.
John Bolton may have bypassed UN protocol, he may have figured out how to finesse UN rules. Who cares? The bottom line is he got what the United States needed.
This is what the Democrats, along with George “No Show” Voinovich and John “Ingrate” Thune are willing to prevent – an effective UN Ambassador.
Vote him up or vote him down, but shut up and vote.