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Rabbi David Aaron: How to make every second of your life come first
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Nov. 19, 2009
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Nov. 18, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: What Judaism has to say about the secret of the Mona Lisa's smile
JWisdom.com: The (Jewish) Dating Game with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (8 minutes)
Nov. 17, 2009
Steven Emerson: How Does the 4th Amendment Impact Terror Finance Investigations?
JWisdom.com: If Frank Sinatra married Edith Piaf with Rabbi Y.Y. Rubinstein (2 minutes) Life lessons from what would be regarded as the most inappropriate lyrics ever sung
Nov. 16, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : When borrowing is stealing
JWisdom.com: Deconstructing faith with Rabbi Warren Goldstein (9 minutes)
Nov. 13, 2009
JWisdom.com Sarah's subjective reality with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 6 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick: Obama's failure, Netanyahu's opportunity
Nov. 12, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet By Marialisa Calta : A sweet sweet potato treat
JWisdom.com Does God get tired? with Rabbi Harvey Belovski ( 5 minutes)
Nov. 11, 2009
Rabbi Avi Shafran: Jews and money: When anti-Semitism isn't
JWisdom.com Marriages are not made in Heaven with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (VERY fast 15 minutes)
Nov. 10, 2009
Michael Doyle: Author of book exposing CAIR ordered to remove supporting documents from Web
JWisdom.com If the creation so loudly shouts the existence of the Creator, why aren't more people believers? with Rabbi Naftali Brawer (9 minutes)
Nov. 9, 2009
Mark Steyn: Shooter exposes hole in U.S. terror strategy
JWisdom.com It's never too late to have a happy childhood with Sarah Chana Radcliffe (5 minutes)
Nov. 6, 2009
Rabbi Berel Wein: Choosing to hear
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick The mullahs' big week
Suzanne Fields A Fallen Wall for Fallen Man
Nov. 5, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet: Three scrumptious -- but simple -- butternut squash dishes
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger: Should prayers be covered?
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review April 28, 2005 / 19 Nissan, 5765

Bolton's not nice — but he's good

By Max Boot


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Nomination battles are known for introducing new standards for officeholders. John Tower's failed bid to be Defense secretary in 1989 meant that public drunkenness was now a disqualification. The near-failure of Clarence Thomas' nomination to the Supreme Court in 1991 added sexual harassment to the list. The withdrawal of Zoe Baird's name for attorney general in 1993 made failure to pay nanny taxes a no-no. (I'm tempted to add that Robert Bork's rejection for the Supreme Court in 1987 ruled out nominees with scraggly facial hair.)


Now, John Bolton's nomination to be United Nations ambassador is in serious jeopardy, according to the senators who oppose him, because he's not nice enough.


But do we really want to add nastiness to the list of disqualifications? If we did, America's most effective diplomatists would have been kicked out of office. Dean Acheson, Henry Kissinger, Jeane Kirkpatrick, James Baker III and Richard Holbrooke, among others, were all tough customers. Those are exactly the qualities you need in dealing with the hard cases who rule much of the world. No milquetoast need apply for the post of U.N. ambassador, or any other demanding diplomatic job.


Bolton has been an effective diplomat and bureaucratic operator precisely because he has not tried to win any popularity contests. He has fought for his beliefs, and usually prevailed. In 1991, for instance, he helped push for repeal of the U.N.'s infamous "Zionism is racism" resolution. More recently, he has marshaled an impressive coalition behind the Proliferation Security Initiative designed to stop the spread of nukes. And he did it not by being polite but by being forceful and persuasive.


I don't see eye to eye with Bolton on everything. His animus toward the International Criminal Court — which led him to antagonize valuable allies because of his insistence that they sign treaties pledging never to refer U.S. soldiers for prosecutions — seems excessive to me. And he has never been known as a fan of nation-building or humanitarian interventions, which I believe are necessary in the post-9/11 world. But he seems like a good choice to help drain the U.N. cesspool of corrupt bureaucrats and self-serving tyrants, and nothing in his confirmation hearings has led me to think otherwise.


I'm not impressed by unverified allegations made by an anti-Bush partisan that, as a private citizen, Bolton pounded on her hotel room door in 1994. Same with claims that he yelled at a co-worker in the early 1980s. Even if true, so what?


More serious is the charge that he misused intelligence. But these accusations break down upon close examination. In both of the instances cited, which concern Bolton speeches about the dangers posed by Cuba and Syria, he did push initially for tougher language than the intelligence community was comfortable with. But when the CIA told him to tone down his remarks, he complied. His unwillingness to blindly accept initial CIA judgments should be applauded, not reviled, in light of numerous commission findings that our spooks are often clueless.


Bolton is also accused of intimidating analysts who disagreed with him. He purportedly threatened to fire Christian Westermann, a State Department analyst who disagreed about whether Cuba is developing weapons of mass destruction. What critics neglect to mention is that Westermann sent Bolton's draft speech for review to the CIA with a cover letter falsely claiming that State's Bureau of Intelligence and Research disagreed with its conclusions. In fact, no official determination had been made. Westermann was then said to have denied what he did. Westermann's own boss apologized to Bolton for his "entirely inappropriate" conduct. No wonder Bolton got steamed.


If you doubt that these are reasonable grounds for rejecting Bolton's nomination, you would be right. All the harrumphing about how Bolton is no Mr. Nice Guy is only a pretext. The real issue is that liberal Democrats, Republican squishes and their allies inside the State Department are mad at Bolton because he has been a committed champion of President Bush's "unilateralist" foreign policy. But as a "top Senate Democrat" told Time magazine: "We can't argue that this guy is unfit just because he's said mean things about the U.N. Don't forget, most Americans agree with him." So instead of debating the real issues, they're making his personality the issue. That's, umm, not very nice.

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The book was selected as one of the best books of 2002 by The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times and The Christian Science Monitor. It also won the 2003 General Wallace M. Greene Jr. Award, given annually by the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation for the best nonfiction book pertaining to Marine Corps history. Sales help fund JWR.



Max Boot is Olin Senior Fellow in National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. He is also a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard and a weekly columnist for the Los Angeles Times. To comment, please click here.


04/22/05: What Garbage Workers and Make-Believe Iraqis Taught Our Military
04/15/05: What Do We Do About Darfur?
04/08/05: The friend we betrayed
04/01/05: The Iraq War's Outsourcing Snafu
03/25/05: Why neither party is serious about solving the growing gas crisis

© 2005, Los Angeles Times. Distributed by Los Angeles Times Syndicate

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