BUSH UN APPOINTMENTS: Danforth versus Bolton, and why Bolton is the RIGHT MAN for the job

I think we should all look at the recent historical context of the Bolton nomination: After Negroponte, Bush appointed John Danforth to the UN Ambassadorship. Bolton was nominated to replace Danforth. The men could NOT be more different in their styles.

WHY WOULD BUSH DO THIS? Here's what I surmise...

Danforth is an extremely TEMPORATE man with a lot of GRAVITAS. Danforth's first Ambassadorship was to the Sudan - as a Special Presidential Envoy to the Sudan, an appointment made BEFORE 9/11 and before the Sudan was on the radar-screen of the world.

Danforth didn't last long as UN Ambassador, and he left in large measure because he felt the body was hopelessly bogged down in corruption and bureaucratic BS and utterly failing to meet its own mission. He said so in a speech. Here's an excerpt -from PBS/NEWSHOUR:

According to The Washington Post, Danforth had recently expressed frustration over the effectiveness of the United Nations, particularly the U.N. Security Council, in dealing with world problems. "While the U.N. is an important part of multilateralism, which is essential to U.S. foreign policy, it's very difficult to get strong resolutions passed," Danforth told the Post in a recent interview. "It's built for compromise, and it's built for wordsmithing. It's difficult to create real policies because of the ornate structure of multilateralism, at least the U.N.'s version of it."

The New York Times reported that Danforth had publicly expressed impatience with the U.N. General Assembly in late November after a resolution to denounce human rights violations in Sudan was blocked.

"One wonders about the utility of the General Assembly on days like this," Danforth said. "One wonders if there can't be a clear and direct statement on matters of basic principle, why have this building? What is it all about?"

Danforth OBVIOUSLY did not have the stomach to lead the effort reform the UN; he resigned. So what did Bush do? He took his time - many months - and then nominated a person who WOULD HAVE THE STOMACH FOR THE JOB: JOHN BOLTON.

The Senate MUST confirm Bush's nominee and then Bush and Rice and Bolton must bear the onus - or fruits of their efforts. We'll all be watching.

UPDATE: Maybe I shoulda titled this post "BOLTON'S STOMACH"??? In lieu of the shabby treatment he's gotten at the hands of many disgruntled State bureaucrats and by the obstructionist Dems, and also because AFTER HE IS CONFIRMED, he'll need an iron-plated stomach to work at the UN!

UPDATE #2: Welcome BETSY'S PAGE readers! Please check out a few other posts while you're here --- THEY'RE STILL WARM!

FRIEDMAN WRONG AGAIN: THE WORLD AIN'T FLAT - OR EVEN GETTING FLATTER!

From the book - THE WORLD IS FLAT:

Columbus reported to his king and queen that the world was round, and he went down in history as the man who first made this discovery. I returned home and shared my discovery only with my wife, and only in a whisper. “Honey,” I confided, “I think the world is flat.”

Tommy Friedman has written another bestseller - THE WORLD IS FLAT. The title is clever - BUT IS DIAMETRICALLY OPPOSED TO THE THEME OF THE BOOK!

In addition, the theme is hardly new, at all; in fact it is old, quite trite, even banal: that there's no more "there" anymore, that everywhere is "here" is a truism that's more than two decades old; we live in a global village which has SHRUNK (in aprt due to technology) in the forty-three (43) years since McLuhan coined that phrase.

1 - THE MISTAKEN METAPHOR:

Historically a "flat world" is one in which "YOU CANNOT GET THERE FROM HERE!" Everyone told Columbus that he was going to fall off the edge of the Earth if he sailed west to get to the east because they BELIEVED that the Earth was flat. Columbus proved them wrong; he proved that the Earth was NOT FLAT, but a GLOBE --- he was the first GLOBALIST, and his discovery CREATED GLOBALISM, and ended the false "flat-world" myth. And need I remind you that GLOBES are all ROUND!

The GLOBE has gotten SMALLER - NOT FLATTER. If the world was flatter - as Friedman suggest - then it would have become less easy to ignore location as a factor in trade. In a flat-world, getting form the place on the left of the map to the place on the rioght of the map means you have to cross the entire middle of the map - as if, in a map with Great Britian on the left-edge and the east coast of the USA on the right-edge you'd have to transverse all of Europe and Asia and the Pacific and the USA to go from London to NY. This was DISPROVED by Columbus, and it's also why a flat-world metaphor is entirely wrong for Freidman's book. (It is "catchy" though. I guess that is valued more than truth and aptness by the MSM.)

UPDATE: the FLAT world metaphor Friedman uses is a perversion of the LEVEL-PLAYING FIELD metaphor. Friedman was told that techonology and education has made the playing field more level (a Chinese genius has just as good a chance as a genius from anywhere else because technology and education and free trade). Friedamn conflates FLATNESS with LEVELNESS - a stupid mistake.

2 - THE MISPLACED EMPHASIS ON TECHNOLOGY:

From Zakaria's review of the book int The NYTIMES -

The metaphor of a flat world, used by Friedman to describe the next phase of globalization, is ingenious. It came to him after hearing an Indian software executive explain how the world's economic playing field was being leveled. For a variety of reasons, what economists call ''barriers to entry'' are being destroyed; today an individual or company anywhere can collaborate or compete globally. Bill Gates explains the meaning of this transformation best. Thirty years ago, he tells Friedman, if you had to choose between being born a genius in Mumbai or Shanghai and an average person in Poughkeepsie, you would have chosen Poughkeepsie because your chances of living a prosperous and fulfilled life were much greater there. ''Now,'' Gates says, ''I would rather be a genius born in China than an average guy born in Poughkeepsie.''

The reason why China and India are better places NOW than BEFORE is because of free markets and GLOBALISM, and NOT BECAUSE OF TECHNOLOGY. Technology is merely a facilitator, a tool, an exploitable product or service. Technology may crank-up opportunities, but it is FREEDOM - free people doing what they want - which CREATES THEM. The true ENGINE OF OPPORTUNITY AND GROWTH AND POTENTIAL IS FREEDOM - AND FREE MARKETS - not silicon chips or computer programming or teleconferencing. Can anyone deny that if China were still under "pre-Deng Xiao Peng Maoism" that they'd be just as poor now as 1949-1980?! That imaginary genius wouldn't have a chance under Maoism; he has a chance now because of free markets and free trade, not IBM or APPLE.

The MSM's failure to see the inaptness of Friedman's title and his incorrect emphasis on technology reveals their bias, and their proneness to see NO FLAWS in their "little darlings" and imaginary flaws in their enemies: To them, Friedman is a genius who coins new phrases and enlightgens us with new insights; and Bush is a theocratic, war-monerging, dumbass unilateralist.

NOT!

BUSH, YALTA AND THE LEFT - or - THE LEFT : BUSH :: FRANCE : AMERICA

JYB has a GREAT post on YALTA and TPM. IT'S A MUST READ (hat-tip PEJ).

JYB catches JMM of TPM in a BLATANTLY SHAMELESS HYPOCRITICAL ATTACK ON BUSH:

Two years ago Marshall believed [and blogged that... (reliapundit)] that the US decision to leave eastern Europe in the USSR's hands was a "great betrayal," and that it was "shameful." "Inevitable," yes, but still a great betrayal.

Today he calls President Bush's remarks on Yalta--remarks that more or less agree with Marshall's own line from two years ago--"cheap posturing or folly."

There is indeed some cheap posturing and folly going on. You'll find it every day at Talking Points Memo. Oh, there is one point of consistency to Marshall's remarks from two years ago and now: He uses all events available in space and time to smear Republicans, or President Bush, or both.

OUCH! Actually, this sorta HIGHpocrisy is reflexive for the Left. Here's another recent example: They used be for INDEXING of Social Security payments, but now that "BUSHitler" is for it… they’re agin it!

Why are they like this? The Left are partisans/comrades first and ideologues second. That their ideology has been PROVEN to be an ABSOLUTE FAILURE matters not one whit to the Left; (YES: P-R-O-V-E-N - just look at the Korean peninsula or Cuba versus P.R., or China and India pre’n post market-reform). How did they become this way?! SInce the collapse of the USSR, Leftism has devolved into an AD HOC, morally relativistic Oppositionism - the Left exists only to obstruct reform, and they seem only to support that which is anti-West, anti-traditional, anti-bourgeois. Which means anti-GOP and anti-Bush.

The Left is to Bush what France is to America.

UPDATE: a compendium of more "Leftie Yalta hypocrisy" from Matt Welch (hat-tip Glenn) HERE.

OUR "IFFY" ALLY PAKISTAN IS AIDING CHINESE HEGEMONY

WASHTIMES/UPI (hat-tip FJORDMAN):

To the dismay of the U.S. Bush administration, Pakistan and China have agreed to co-produce a new JF-17 fighter aircraft.

This is a destabilizing and aggressive move: it hurts Taiwan and Japan - our two BEST allies in the region (along with South Korea). As I have blogged many times before (HERE and HERE and HERE), this China-Pakistani ARMS DEAL emphasizes that we NEED to get MUCH closer to INDIA - to counter-balance China and Pakistan.

Without Musharraf would Pakistan be an ally at all!? Even WITH Musharraf, they're an ally only as good as Saudi Arabia is: a necessary ally for the time being - but one who (in a more perfect world - one free of neojihadism) we could jettison.

EVEN LBJ DIDN'T TRUST THE STATE DEPARTMENT

I just read the NYTIMES BOOK REVIEW of book analyzing LBJ'S tapes.

Here's something from the review that I thought was VERY interesting:

In some ways, Johnson's preoccupations as revealed on these tapes seem remarkably up-to-date. Johnson, like his successors, was obsessed with stopping leaks to the press. The State Department ''leaks everything they got,'' Johnson complained to his assistant Ralph Dungan. ''I've got about as much confidence in them as I have in a Soviet spy.''

LBJ said this in the late 1960's - which, if you THINK about it, was only 20 years after Yalta -- that's JUST ONE GENERATION. We are FORTY YEARS -- or TWO GENERATIONS from LBJ.

And at Yalta - with the help of one Soviet agent/sympathizer: ALGER HISS - Unlce Joe Stalin got the USA to give him half of Europe for commie slavery. Twenty-years later, LBJ still didn't trust the State Department - WITH GOOD REASON.

Do you think that the State Department is spy/mole free? I don't. I KNOW that if the USSR could successfully infiltrate the FBI and CIA - (remember Hannsen and Ames?) - then they, and other ENEMIES of the USA, could EASILY get to and buy a few key SYMAPTHETIC lifetime bureaucrats at State.

I think this is IMPORTANT now for two reasons: (1) the Bolton nomination is being attacked by left-wingers in the Democrat Party and by a few BUREAUCRATS in the State Department. Bureaucrats who are - like the military - are SUPPOSED to serve the ELECTED DECISION-MAKERS, AND NOT FOLLOW THEIR OWN AGENDAS. And (2), in the "GWOT" State has NOT always acted in synch' with our elected Commander in Chief; Powell never cleaned house; I hope Rice will. And a longtime "home" of MANY of the States Department's WORST, most LEFTIST bureaucrats has ALWAYS been.... the UN. This is another reason why Bolton is PERFECT for the job: he will clean up the UN; he will NOT suffer the UN's malfeasance lightly.

THERE'S A SIMPLE AND PROPER WAY FOR THE DEMOCRATS TO CONTROL WHO GETS ON THE FEDERAL BENCH:

If the Dems want to BLOCK Bush's picks, then they can do so CONSTITUTIONALLY: all they need to do is get a MAJORITY in the Senate.

If the Dems want to SELECT NOMINEES that's easy too: all they need to do is WIN THE WHITE HOUSE.

Every other gimmick they've used has been unconstitutional and dishonorable; the Dems behave like sore-sports.

ELECTIONS MATTER.

LEFTIES LIE ABOUT BLAIR'S VICTORY

The Left is trying to spin Blair's HISTORIC victory into a defeat for him and the Iraq War.

IT'S PURE BULL!

Blair won 36% of the vote this time; last time he won 40% of the vote. So Blair ONLY lost 4% of the general vote, and his party only polled 10% less this time than last time.

The voters Blair lost went to the Liberal-Democrats - who are in may ways TO THE LEFT of Blair - especially on the Iraq War.

Blair's party won 367 seats. the next nearest party was the Conservative Party which won 197 seats. The Lib-Dems won 62 seats. Other parties won a total of 30 seats. If the Consevatives and the Lib-Dems formed a coaliton then they would fail to overturn any labor policy or a loss of a confidence vote in Parliament. It is EXTREMELY UNLIKEY that the Conservatives and the Lib-Dems would ever be able to unite on anything, anyway, or to unite with the 30 MP's from any of the other parties. Blair's lead over the Conservatives is 170 - THAT'S ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY SEATS! And Blair's lead over the next biggest party is a WHOPPING 305 - THAT'S THREE-HUNDRED AND EFFING-FIVE!

Therefore, Blair's Labor Party still enjoys a HUGE real advantage over each of his opposing parties, and it is HIGHLY UNLIKELY that either the Conservatives or the Lib-Dems will be able to unseat the Labor Party - EVEN AT THE NEXT ELECTION!

As to the effect of the Iraq War... it had NO MEANINGFUL EFFECT. NONE. The Lib-Dems rans an anti-Iraq War dove and got 62 seats - not enough to be meaningful threat to Labor. And the Conservative Party supported the War. Therefore, if the Labor Party were to be led by a dove next time, they'd probably LOSE to a Conservative Party leader. History shows that the Labor Paryt did not (and couldn't've) become "NEW Labor" until AFTER they had convinced the broad center of the electorate that they could be trusted on the economy and on defense. If they backslide on either then they IN EFFECT revert to OLD Labor, and they'd probably get the commensurate electoral results: LOSE, LOSE, LOSE.

SO... when the Lefties tell you that Blair's support of Bush and the Iraq War hurt him, say: "okay, a little, but NOT in any significant way.

"THE BOOMERANG EFFECT" - another idiotic Left-wing fantasy

The Left-wing commonly accuses Bush and his adminsitration of exacerbating the GWOT - and tensions between the USA and Iran and the USA and North Korea - by going on the offensive, and by BEING offensive (at least using inflammatory/offensive speech).

Famous among these charges is the constant refrain from the Left that Bush's "AXIS OF EVIL" speech has a BOOMERANG EFFECT because they claim it incited Iran and North Korea to BECOME INCREASINGLY enemical to the USA and to start and speed-up their ILLEGAL and surreptitious nuclear weapons programs. The Left also charges that Bush's "IRAQ/OIL WAR" has had a BOOMERANG EFFECT and has increased terror and decreased stability.

This attack by the Left on Bush reveals a few SALIENT things about the Left: (1) they prize stability over any tumult even if the tumult may be the only weay to get positive change; (2) they would use appeasement to avoid any tumult or temporary instability; (3) they believe our self-confessed enemies (like the neojihadists and Iran and North Korea) have agendas and strategies which are only REACTIVE, and that these self-avowed enemies have no PROACTIVE agenda or strategy to use terror, force, and "nuclear blackmail," (etc.) in order to advance their aims.

I think that reality proves that these Left-wing assumptions or presuppositions are flatly wrong:

(A) North Korea was cheating on "Clinton watch" (byu enriching uranium) in order to make bombs. This cheating occurred BEFORE the "Axis of Evil" speech. (B) Iran has LONG been a state sponsor of international neojihadist terrorists - who have attacked the USA repeatedly, INCLUDING DURING THE REAGAN ADMINSTRATION. (C) And Saddam OPENLY sponsored neojihadist terror by neojihadist Arabs against Israel; now that Saddam is in jail - (awaiting trial for GENOCIDE, among other things) - Iraq sponsors NO TERRORISM and has instead becoma a battlegorund which itself ATTRACTS neojihadists (MOST of whom are murdering fellow Muslims); since the LAW OF PHYSICS says that a person cannot be in two places at the same time, EVERYONE of the neojihadist terrorists in Iraq is one fewer neojihadist terrorist that can attack the West in Israel, Europe or the USA. And (D), though the tumultuous transition to democracy in Iraq is deadly, it is still a lesser target of neojihadist terror than India and Kashmir - where neojihadists are killing Hindus and other Muslims who have nothing to do with either Bush or Israel or the Likud or Neoconservatism or Oil or Skull & Bones!

The forward-leaning/assertive/aggressive/militaristic startegy of the Bush Administration is an abrupt change from the preceding policy - of appeasement and containment (vis avis the USSR and neojihadism). This abrupt changes was necessitated by 9/11; this is something that Bush fully and openly explicated in numerous speaches and addresses including at West Point, in his "SOTU's" and Congressional addresses since 9/22/2001 and at the UN in 2001, 2002, 2003. (GOOGLE'EM YOUSELF IF YOU DOUBT ME!)

And Bush has reiterated - this week in Latvia - that the USA will NOT REPEAT THE MISTAKES OF THE PAST: as when we gave away eastern Europe to 50 years of Stalinist tyranny. That was appeasement; that was a cop-out; that was morally wrong; that was a HUGE strategic error.

Evil should be confronted - and fought - everywhere. Our enemies should be attacked, and counter-attacked - EVERYWHERE. And complaining that we are less safe now because we are COUNTER-ATTACKING as repellant to VERYONE now as it would have been in 1944 if someone complainied that "US casualties were higher in 1944 than 1943 and higher then than in 1942 and that this was higher than in 1941 - SO we shouldn't have gone to war against the Axis."

Our safety ultimately depends on our VICTORY becuase our enemies have motivations which are independent of us and our counter-measures. Making our enemies less numerous and less threratening over tinme REQUIRES that we kill or capture and bring to justice as many of them as we can WHEREVER they are, and that OVER TIME we reduce theior ability to recruit by dealiong with the UNDELYING ISSUES: lack of democracy in the Muslim world. Promiting democracy in the Muslim world will take years - if not decades and generations, therefore - since there are thosuands of neojihadists who want to kill us and blackmail us and make us subservient to them NOW, we must counter-attack with FORCE.

The "BOOMERANG EFFECT" argument fails to take into account the fact that the neojiahdists (and Kim Jiong Il) have self-interests and aims which are independent of ANY ACTIONS we take.

IN FACT, if we followed the Left-wing lunacy of appeasement and gave into the neojiadists and Iran and North Korea "peacefully" and buy short-term "peace" it would only reward there terror and illegal attemopts to gainm nuclear weapons with which to blackmail us - and therefore incite more neojiahdist terror. IN OTHER WORDS: the Left's policies - the failed polcies of the past, and not Bush's policies - would be the ones that would REALLY cause a BOOMERANG EFFECT.