Bolton's Task
New York Sun Staff Editorial
August 2, 2005
In using his constitutional power yesterday to appoint John Bolton as America's ambassador at the United Nations, President Bush spoke of the goals of the United Nations Charter, to advance peace and liberty and human rights. He reminded Americans that we are at war. This post is too important to leave vacant any longer, especially during a war, Mr. Bush said.
The U.N. Charter speaks of promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms for all. Yet today's United Nations is filled with, and many key committees dominated by, totalitarian states that openly violate these fundamental human rights. The Human Rights Commission, for example, is stacked with some of the world's worst offenders - Sudan, Libya, and Cuba have all been members.
Also on the list of notable U.N. failures have been the oil-for-food scandal, sex crimes committed by U.N. peacekeepers, and the ongoing campaign to delegitimize the state of Israel. The Middle East's leading democracy can still not even join a regional group. And the list continues. Mr. Bolton has an uphill battle, but he has in the past shown ability in tackling the U.N.'s failings. In 1991, as assistant secretary of state, he was pivotal in pushing through the repeal of the infamous 1975 General Assembly resolution equating Zionism with racism.
Some opponents of Mr. Bolton are criticizing Mr. Bush for making a recess appointment, avoiding a Senate vote. Mr. Bush was forced to do this because a minority of senators had been preventing a vote. Democrats reacted with horror yesterday to this. John Bolton has been rejected twice by the Senate to serve as our ambassador to the United Nations. This is not the way to fill our most important diplomatic jobs, Senator Kerry caviled. Mr. Kerry's colleague, the senior senator who represents Chappaquiddick along with the rest of the Bay State, went even further, calling the recess appointment shameful and irresponsible, an abuse of power, and a devious maneuver that evades the constitutional requirement of Senate consent.
Well. President Clinton made 140 recess appointments, including Bill Lann Lee as assistant attorney general for civil rights, and somehow we don't recall a lot of yammering at the time from Senator Kennedy about how it was a devious abuse of power.
Democrats have complained that Mr. Bolton has an undiplomatic personality. But some of the nation's greatest and most effective representatives at the United Nations, Jeane Kirkpatrick and Daniel Patrick Moynihan, were outspoken in the John Bolton mold.
Iran's incoming president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, plans to address the U.N. General Assembly in September. Mr. Bolton could lead a walkout in protest of the theocracy's continued imprisonment of the Iranian Havel, Akbar Ganji, and other political prisoners, as well as its continuing support of terrorism. Or he could stand and turn his back - sending a message about just how obscene it is for the world body to offer a podium to the leader of a terrorist state in the middle of a global war on Islamist terror.
We've been skeptical of the idea that the United Nations can be reformed so long as it continues to include dictatorships and terror-sponsoring states. Mr. Bolton will be doing the president who picked him the greatest service if he doesn't shy away from conflict, but instead goes to Turtle Bay with an eye toward underscoring its absurdity and hypocrisy. That would be the best way to lay the groundwork for a more logical international organization that would be able to pursue with some actual credibility the U.N. Charter's goals of advancing liberty and human rights.