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Will the REAL John Bolton Please Identify Yourself?
Share / Recommend - Comment - Print - Wednesday, Mar 30 2005, 5:47PM
While Senior Vice President at the American Enterprise Institute, John Bolton wrote this about the United Nations:
Here is an excerpt that appeared today at ThinkProgress.com:
This deep philosophical disjunction between the prevailing ethos of the United Nations and the fundamental American approach to governance is not something that will change in the foreseeable future.What, then, does the foregoing analysis mean for the United Nations, and for America's role within the organization? It means primarily that the rest of the world should have realistic expectations that the United Nations has a limited role to play in international affairs for the foreseeable future.
According to Bolton, the UN can't become more relevant or effective through reform. And the "philosophical disjunction" is "not something that will change."
It seems to me -- and this will please Move America Forward's "Get the U.S. Out of the U.N." crowd -- that John Bolton's disdain for international engagement and the United Nations has been remarkably consistent.
Why expect anything different from him on April 7th?
-- Steve Clemons
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“I believe that the United Nations can be a useful instrument in the conduct of American foreign policy.”
----John Bolton
How can this be happening? Steve Clemons and I have read the exact same article---and reached such radically different conclusions. Does one of us need to sign up for a course in reading comprehension? John Bolton has written an entirely reasonable and well balanced article concerning America’s frustrating relationship with the United Nations. He has written nothing even slightly extreme. I would dare say that most Americans, including Democrats, agree with him. Is this the best argument that Bolton’s enemies can present?
Is it possible that someone could precisely point out where John Bolton is off the deep end? Enough with these vague complaints. What in particular disturbs you?
Here is a link from Drudge showing the USSR was behind the 1981 assassination attempt on the Pope.
http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_1300033,00050003.htm
Throughout the Cold War many UN member states considered the USA and the USSR to be moral equals.
What in particular disturbs me, DT?
The fact that he's nominated for a post in the organization that he has worked his life to make a tool of the United States, when that is not that UN's purpose.
Or, more precisely, thinks useless because it isn't.
I'm curious what the "endless, repetitive unthinking abuse" heaped upon us by the UN was.
In any forum for nations to discuss problems and conflicts, often as a last resort before going to war, not nice things will be said.
Anyone with an ounce of objectivism will admit that the US did some unsavory things to win the Cold War. I'm not saying the we shouldn't have done them, but nations and people who were affected had every right to complain.
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