Fed up with up with political slander, not for the last time

The Coffee Shop
1

I’m sure we’ve all gone off the deep end at some point on how politics and all the “stuff” revolving around it can be so over the top, reactionary and stupendously stupid at some point. I think this is the 5th time it has happened to me.

If the debates were about the validity, applicability and value of comments made on topics political I’d be a happy man, but they aren’t. The whole game these days is about discrediting whoever is saying something that doesn’t agree with you.

A great example is the John Bolton stuff. If someone says the guy was a dick of a boss then they are only doing it to get back at him, there can’t possibly be any value to the fact that he might of been trying to hide dissenting opinions within the Intelligence Community (IC). Maybe he was, maybe he wasn’t, but let’s examine the statements for validity, applicability and value. What this will result in (especially if he doesn’t get approved) is that you’ll never ever be allowed to get nominated for a position if someone you were in charge of within the past 30 years thought you were mean. Guess what, bosses don’t have to be nice. They can’t be mean and vindictive, but no one has to be nice. Then a woman claims that Bolton attacked her in Russia over some comments she made. She’s a hack because she’s against him, again, let’s try and objectively examine her claims. The best part, her credibility is getting attacked because when she was 21 she plagiarized a story for her college newspaper. And clearly Colin Powell should now be public enemy number one for expressing dissenting opinion on Bolton. And Bolton can’t possibly be a candidate because he questioned the sanctity of the UN, though yes, sending a guy to represent us to a body he said was worthless is quite ironic.

(Full disclosure: I think the guy would be decent at the job, the people in the world who don’t like us won’t give us hugs if we send anyone else to the UN, so if it turns out Bolton wasn’t hiding intell then he should at least get voted on)

Yes, figuring out why people are saying things is important. And making sure they aren’t hacks is also important, but maybe, just MAYBE, can’t people express dissenting opinion on a topic or person without them being a partisan hack? Both sides are equally at fault in my eyes, I can’t deal anymore with the “Well you guys did it when you were in the White House”, “Well you did it when you controlled Congress” bullsh!t that goes back and forth. Accept it, both sides are pulling all the same old tricks right now

2

To what do you attribute Colin Powell’s reticence w/ John Bolton?

3

Dude, I’d buy your arguements here, but after your earlier and now discredited posts, I can just can’t believe you. You clearly have an agenda, and have been swallowing the party Kool-Aid.

KIDDING!!!

4

The issues with Bolton are many; being a jerk is one, since he’s nominated to be an Ambassador, which requires diplomacy, patience, tact, and decent interpersonal skills. His past problems with subordinates (and indeed with those not in his employ) is that he appears to have gone after those whose opinions differed from his own.

Anytime a defense is made that appears to be an ad hominem attack, it’s done because the defense doesn’t have the facts on its side.

5

I like Friedman’s take on this:

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/dropcap/m.gify biggest problem with nominating John Bolton as U.N. ambassador boils down to one simple fact: he’s not the best person for the job - not even close. If President George W. Bush wants a die-hard Republican at the U.N., one who has a conservative pedigree he can trust, who is close to the president, who can really build coalitions, who knows the U.N. building and bureaucracy inside out, who can work well with the State Department and who has the respect of America’s friends and foes alike, the choice is obvious, and it’s not John Bolton.

It’s George H. W. Bush, a k a 41. No one would make a better U.N. ambassador for Bush 43 than Bush 41.

Look, John Quincy Adams went back to Congress after he served as president. Why shouldn’t George H. W. Bush take another spin around the diplomatic dance floor he loved so much and where he left his biggest mark? He’s already demonstrated with his parachute jumps that he has the stamina for the job, and his performance as a tsunami relief ambassador was a great success.

But there is actually an even better reason to prefer 41 over Mr. Bolton. The White House claims it needs the pugnacious Mr. Bolton at the U.N. to whip it into shape and oversee real reform there. I have only one thing to say in response to that pablum: Give me a break. We do not need a U.N. ambassador to “reform” the U.N. That is not what America needs or wants from the U.N. You want to reform the U.N.? You want to analyze its budgets and overhaul its bureaucratic processes, well, then hire McKinsey & Co. - not John Bolton. (Everyone knows he prefers to torch the place.)

“Reforming the U.N.” is without question one of the most tired, vacuous conservative mantras ever invented. It is right up there with squeezing “waste, fraud and abuse” out of the Pentagon’s budget. If the White House is concerned about waste, fraud and abuse, let’s start with Tom DeLay and our own House.

Sorry, but we don’t need a management consultant as our U.N. ambassador. What we need is someone who can get the most out of what the U.N. does offer to America. There is no secret about the U.N. - at its worst it is a talking shop, where a lot of people don’t speak English and where they occasionally do ridiculous things, like appoint Libya to oversee human rights, and even mendacious things, like declaring Zionism to be racism.

But at its best, the U.N. has been, and still can be, a useful amplifier of American power, helping us to accomplish important global tasks that we deem to be in our own interest.

The U.N. still represents the closest thing we have to a global Good Housekeeping seal of approval for any international action. Whenever the U.S. is able to enlist that U.N. seal on its side, America’s actions abroad have more legitimacy, more supporters and more paying partners.

If we had engineered more of a U.N. seal of approval before going into Iraq, we would have had more allies to share the $300 billion price tag, and more legitimacy, which translates into more time and space to accomplish our goals there. It’s not a disaster that we went into Iraq without the U.N., but life would probably have been a lot easier (and cheaper) had we been escorted by a real U.N. coalition.

In short, I don’t much care how the U.N. works as a bureaucracy; I care about how often it can be enlisted to support, endorse and amplify U.S. power. That is what serves our national interest. And because that is what I want most from the U.N., I want at the U.N. an ambassador who can be a real coalition builder, a superdiplomat who can more often than not persuade the U.N.'s member states to act in support of U.S. interests.

I can’t think of anyone better than George H. W. Bush, with his diplomatic Rolodex and instincts, or worse than John Bolton. Mr. Bolton’s tenure overseeing U.S. antiproliferation efforts at the State Department is a mixed bag: success with Libya, utter failure with North Korea and Iran. But no one can miss the teacher’s note at the bottom of his report card: “Does not play well with others who disagree with him.”

I have no problem with Mr. Bolton’s being given another job or being somehow retained in the job he already has. He’s been a faithful public servant. But why would you appoint him to be ambassador at an institution he has nothing but contempt for to do a job he has no apparent skills for?

President 43 only needs to call home to find the right man for the job in President 41. And if 41 isn’t available, well, then maybe he should try his sidekick, 42.

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Very simply (and quickly as I have to beat traffic or suffer) I think he has reservations. I think Powell is aware of some of the types of conduct that the allegations against Bolton raise, and so he was willing to say “Hey, this guy isn’t a slam dunk, there are issues, I’m not 100% on him, no one should be, so let’s take another look to be sure we want to do this.”

One side makes Bolton seem like he’d be the best thing for the UN since (I was going to say discount retriviral drugs, but that’s crass).

Another side makes Bolton out to be a flame throwing “kiss up, kick down” maniac.

Clearly it is somewhere in between, the question is: wherever that in-between is, does that make Bolton one of the top 5 best candidates? If he’s not even top 5 boot his butt out and get a better candidate. He’d have to be a super dynamo (which he may be) to be able to lead any substantive changes at the UN given how everyone will disdain every word he says. I suspect that’s part of the Bush/Rove strategy though.

PS: I say keep the guy in the press just so we can look at his mustache, that thing is impressive. We need more crazy facial hair people in politics. Bring back the handle-bar mustache!

7

Didn’t Tommy boy forgot to mention that George HW was ambassador to the UN in the 70’s.

Kinda sad when people get nostalgic for Nixon, eh?

Anyways, Bolton is the antithesis of an Ambassador.

8

Do I detect the fallacy of moderation?

Bolton’s the guy who’s gotten us closest to war in the Korean peninsula in recent memory, and president nincompoop wants him to be AMBASSADOR to the UN???

One side makes Bolton seem like he’d be the best thing for the UN since (I was going to say discount retriviral drugs, but that’s crass).

Another side makes Bolton out to be a flame throwing “kiss up, kick down” maniac.

Clearly it is somewhere in between,

9

I think it’s more than a few reservations.

Powell and Armitage were quite notably not neoconservatives in a time when government officials felt it was their right to exaggerate or flat out fabricate information if they felt it served some greater good, or bureaucratically enabled them to move chess pieces around the board. Powell and Armitage were categorically against this. Whether this was because they thought the guiding principle was shit or because that it would lead to unintended consequences, I don’t know.

But in any case, their reticence to go along with the party line cost them. The only influence they had was with the moderate public, but even then they had their legs cut out from under them, especially with that Niger yellowcake debacle. So this may very well be Powell’s revenge on the neocons - to not allow them to reward a crony with a job he is utterly unsuitable for, and for whom his past record of negotiating intelligence is miserable.

In addition, there appear to be indications that the intelligence intercepts that Bolton requested from the NSA on US OFFICIALS may have included Powell himself, in order to feed information to his neocon cronies about Powell’s backsliding.

So I think the story is a lot more complex, and has more than a few elements of payback. This is gravy on top of the established fact that the guy simply doesn’t deal with facts that don’t agree with his world-view. Not only does he not like the message, he tries to shoot the messenger(s) on multiple occasions. Not a guy who should be in a position of mediating the truth, no?