Britain's Daily Telegraph had an intriguing headline the other day: ''U.S. police force to recruit capuchin monkey for 'intelligence' work.'' Maybe when the Mesa, Ariz., SWAT team is through with the monkey in question, we could get him made chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He'd have his work cut out doing a worse job than Dick Lugar, the Republican senator who spent the last week getting walloped by a freak show alliance comprising (a) an opposition party whose foreign policy the electorate decided it was unable to take seriously and (b) jelly-spined GOP ''moderates'' who insist on taking it seriously. And so it was that John Bolton's nomination to the U.N. was derailed by this guy Voinovich.
As Shakespeare didn't quite say, who is Voinovich? What is he? Well, he's a fellow called George, and he's apparently a senator from Ohio who's on this Foreign Relations Committee. He was, alas, unable to interrupt his hectic schedule to attend either of the committee's hearings for John Bolton's U.N. nomination, but nevertheless decided last week he could not bring himself to support Bolton's nomination. ''My conscience got me,'' he said. Maybe one day his conscience will get him to attend the hearings he's paid to attend, but, for the moment, his conscience is more troubled by the story brought up by the senior Democratic obstructionist Joe Biden. As Sen. Biden put it, ''The USAID worker in Kyrgyzstan alleges that she was harassed -- not sexually harassed -- harassed by Mr. Bolton.''
This was a decade ago, in some hotel. John Bolton allegedly chased this woman down a corridor in a non-sexual manner. It's not clear from Biden whether he would have approved had she been chased down the corridor in a sexual manner, as the 42nd president was wont to do. But the non-sexual harassment was instead about policy matters relating to Kyrgyzstan. Maybe Bolton was in a foul mood or maybe he was in a vowel mood and, this being Kyrgyzstan, they didn't have any. But this is what the pitiful constitutional travesty of the Senate's ''advise and consent'' role has now dwindled down to: a sex scandal with no sex. All talk and no action. Only in America, folks. Or, to be more precise, only in the U.S. Senate.
I'll bet Pope Benedict XVI is glad that his conclave doesn't include either Cardinal Biden or Cardinal Voinovich, or his church would be pontiff-less indefinitely while they ''investigated'' last-minute rumors that he'd been off-hand to some guy in seminary 55 years ago. I had no strong views about the new pope one way or another, but I'd have voted for him just for the pleasure of seeing him drive the U.S. media bananas. Apparently, the New York Times was stunned that their short list of Cardinal Gloria Steinem, Cardinal Rupert Everett and Cardinal Rosie O'Donnell were defeated at the last moment by some guy who came out of left field and isn't even gay or female but instead belongs to the discredited ''Catholic'' faction of the Catholic Church.
Unlike the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the conclave of cardinals takes its job seriously. They understand the demands of the New York Times: women priests, gay sex, condoms for all. But, as befits an ancient institution, they take the long view: They think that radical secularism is weak and that the consequences of its weakness will prove dangerous and possibly fatal for the Western world. Therefore, there's no point accommodating it -- and, after all, those churches that do (the Episcopalians, for example) are already in steep decline. You can disagree with this, particularly if you're as shrill and parochial as Pope Benedict's American critics. But the conclave at least addressed the big issues.
By contrast, at a time of great geopolitical turbulence, all the senior foreign relations figures in the upper house of the national legislature of the most powerful nation on the face of the Earth can do is retail lame smears from the early '90s and late '80s. Last week, Newt Gingrich visited New Hampshire -- strictly for the beautiful defoliated trees and meandering washed-out washboard roads of scenic late-April Mud Season, you understand; nothing to do with putative presidential campaigns or anything like that. Anyway, a surprisingly large number of hitherto quiescent Granite State Republicans demanded to know what's the deal with the inept and unreliable GOP senators. Newt gave pretty much the standard reply: Well, you must understand the party's still not used to being in charge of Congress. If they'd taken the first poll of the 2008 primary right there and then, he'd have dropped off the graph.
Newt's answer was just about plausible in 1995. But after a decade in charge? The Iraqi people are expected to get the hang of this self-government thing in 20 minutes, but the Republican Party requires another decade or three? The Democrats lost in 2004 for two reasons: their lack of credibility on national security issues, and their descent into mindless obstructionism. Remember Tom Daschle? Me neither. But if you go to the local library and dig up all the yellowing clippings, you'll find he used to be in the papers pretty much every day until the second week of November.
The weak bromides touted by the Dems in lieu of a policy -- a legalistic approach to the war on terror, greater deference to the U.N. and America's ''friends'' -- were defeated at the polls. Since then, they've been further discredited: The failure of terrorist prosecutions in Europe underlines how disastrous John Kerry's serve-'em-with-subpoenas approach would be; the sewer of the Oil-for-Food scandal and the attempts by Kofi Annan to castrate the investigation into it demonstrate yet again that there is no problem in the world today that can't be made worse by letting the U.N. have a hand in solving it; and America's ''friends'' -- by which Kerry meant not allies like Britain and Australia but the likes of France and Canada -- turn out to be some of the countries most implicated in the corruption of U.N. ''humanitarianism.''
Republican voters understand this. Why don't Republican senators? The rap against John Bolton is that he gets annoyed with do-nothing bureaucrats. If that's enough to disqualify you from government service, then 70 percent of citizens who've visited the DMV in John Kerry's Massachusetts are ineligible. Sinking Bolton means handing a huge psychological victory to a federal bureaucracy that so spectacularly failed America on 9/11 and to a U.N. bureaucracy eager for any distraction from its own mess. The Democrats' interest in derailing Bush foreign policy is crude but understandable. But why would even the wimpiest Republican ''moderate'' want to help them out? Who needs capuchin monkeys in the Senate when GOP squishes are so eager to tap-dance for Democrat organ grinders? Steyn. Heh.
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But why would even the wimpiest Republican ââmoderateââ want to help them out?
Because they enjoy their balls being sucked by the MSM, the rent-seekers, signeurs and other Georgetown parasites dependent on Washington largesse. It's the Sally Field Syndrome - 'They like me - they really, really like me!'
Prediction - Chaffee joins Vainovich; Bolton's nomination chances flatline. Sad, really, this complete lack of party discipline...
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I am absolutely livid over this fuckup, along with the ongoing fuckup over Bush's judicial appointments. I threw some serious money into political campaigns last year and indulged in some serious gloating when that shithead Daschle was defeated with, in some small part, my help.
But now I'm wondering, what the hell for? What good did it do?????? With this bunch of idiots in the Senate, I'm beginning to fear the answer is, "none".
Posted by: Dave D. ||
04/24/2005 15:46 Comments ||
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Dave D.---Check out my posting in the opinions section. I made a letter to my Senator. We need to hold their feet to the fire. I would like to clean house, except for a few Congressmen. Limit terms, retirement, money. Oops, boiler pressure going up again.....
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
04/24/2005 18:15 Comments ||
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That's one fine letter, Paul. Let us know if she writes back. You may even wish to fax it to her office. The next hearing isn't until May 12.
Op-Ed from Lawrence Eagleburger, SecState 92-93.
President Bush's nomination of John Bolton as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations has generated a bad case of dyspepsia among a number of senators, who keep putting off a confirmation vote. That hesitation is now portrayed as a consequence of Bolton's purported "mistreatment" of several State Department intelligence analysts. But this is a smoke screen. The real reasons Bolton's opponents want to derail his nomination are his oft-repeated criticism of the United Nations and other international organizations, his rejection of the arguments of those who ignore or excuse the inexcusable (i.e., the election of Sudan to the U.N. Human Rights Commission) and his willingness to express himself with the bark off.
As to the charge that Bolton has been tough on subordinates, I can say only that in more than a decade of association with him in the State Department I never saw or heard anything to support such a charge. Nor do I see anything wrong with challenging intelligence analysts on their findings. They can, as recent history demonstrates, make mistakes. And they must be prepared to defend their findings under intense questioning. If John pushed too hard or dressed down subordinates, he deserves criticism, but it hardly merits a vote against confirmation when balanced against his many accomplishments.
On Dec. 16, 1991, I spoke to the U.N. General Assembly on behalf of the United States, calling on the member states to repeal the odious Resolution 3379, which equated Zionism with racism. As I said then, the resolution "labeled as racist the national aspirations of the one people more victimized by racism than any other." That we were successful in obtaining repeal was largely due to John Bolton, who was then assistant secretary of state for international organizations. His moral outrage was clearly evident as he brilliantly led and managed the successful U.S. campaign to obtain sufficient votes for repeal. The final vote, 111 to 25, speaks volumes for the success of his "direct" style.
Bolton's impressive skills were also demonstrated at the time of the Persian Gulf War, when he steered a critical series of resolutions supporting our liberation of Kuwait through the U.N. Security Council. During this period we negotiated some 15 resolutions up to and through the removal of Saddam Hussein's forces from Kuwait. Adoption of the key Security Council document, Resolution 678, was not a foregone conclusion and faced the possibility of a Chinese veto until the final vote. While our diplomacy to obtain this and other council votes was conducted on a global scale, Bolton was deeply engaged in managing this worldwide effort.
These are but two examples of why I believe Bolton possesses the substantial qualifications necessary to be our ambassador to the United Nations. By now it should be obvious to all that the halcyon days when our advice was sought and our leadership welcomed because the security of others depended on the protection we gave are no more. I recognize that John's willingness to speak bluntly has raised questions. Perhaps there was a time when those concerns had merit -- but not now. Given what we all know about the current state of the United Nations, it's time we were represented by someone with the guts to demand reform and to see that whatever changes result are more than window dressing.
It is clear that the future of the United Nations and the U.S. role within that organization are uncertain. Who better to demonstrate to the member states that the United States is serious about reform? Who better to speak for all Americans who are dedicated to a healthy United Nations that will fulfill the dreams of its founders? I've always felt comfortable with Eagleburger - that he was a truth-teller and realtively blunt for a State guy - a straight-shooter. Now an endangered species.
But don't forget the rules of this strange conflict!
If we look back at the war that started on September 11, there have emerged some general rules that should guide us in the next treacherous round of the struggle against Islamic fascism, the autocracies that aid and abet it, and the method of terror that characterizes it.
1. Political promises must be kept. Had the United States postponed the scheduled January elections in Iraq — once the hue and cry of Washington insiders — the insurrection would have waxed rather than waned. Only the combination of U.S. arms, the training of indigenous forces, and real Iraqi sovereignty can eliminate the vestiges of hard-core jihadists and Saddamites.
Given our previous record — allowing Saddam to survive in1991, restoring the Kuwaiti royals after the Gulf War, subsidies for the Mubbarak autocracy, and a moral pass given the Saudi royals — we must bank carefully any good will that we accrue if support for democracy is going to be a credible alternative to the old realpolitik. Reformers with no power in Egypt or the Gulf, who oppose such "moderate" autocracies, must, despite all the danger that such a policy entails, be seen in the same positive light as those dissidents in far more peril in Lebanon, Syria, and Iran. Consistency and principle are the keys, and they will be worth more than a division or an air wing in bringing this war to a close.
2. Any warnings to use force — much less unfortunate unguarded braggadocio — should be credible and followed through. The efforts of the terrorists are aimed at the psychological humiliation and loss of face of American power, not its actual military defeat. Appearance is as often important as reality, especially for those who live in the eighth rather than the 21st century.
After the horrific butchery of Americans in Fallujah in late March 2004, we promised to hunt down the perpetrators, only to pull back in April and May, and allow the city a subsequent half-year of Islamic terror, before retaking it in November. The initial hesitation almost derailed the slated elections; the subsequent siege ensured their success. Nothing has been more deleterious in this war than the promise of hard force to come, followed by temporization. Either silence about our intent or bold military action is required, though a combination of both is preferable.
3. Diplomatic solutions follow, not precede, military reality. Had we failed in Afghanistan, Musharraf would be an Islamic nationalist today, for the sake of his own survival. Withdrawing from Iraq in defeat would have meant no progress in Lebanon. Some hope followed in the Middle East only because the Intifada was crushed and Arafat is in paradise. The Muslims scholars of Iraq talk differently now than a year ago because thousands of their sympathetic terrorists have been killed in the Sunni Triangle. The would-be Great Mahdi Moqtada Sadr is more buffoon than Khomeini reborn since his militia was crushed last year.
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A dupe post, but still classic solid VDH analysis worthy of everyone's time to read and digest. Another pass today won't hurt, in case anyone missed it.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
