Dead Man Talking?
Today's Bush administration decision to nominate Bolton to the lame duck Senate answered my question, "What legal rabbit would they pull out of a hat to keep Bolton there?"
Senator Lincoln Chafee, still a man of integrity despite his defeat, promptly announced that he had not changed his mind about opposing Bolton. Senator Chris Dodd equally promptly threatened a filibuster.
So one cannot help wondering whether they know something we don't or are just afflicted with an Alamo complex.
In some ways the nomination is almost reassuring. After the White House shoehorned in their candidate in as head of the World Food Programme, I woke up in the middle of the night wondering whether there would be a move to twist the Secretary General's arm to appoint Bolton as Under Secretary General for Peacekeeping (now there's a contradiction!) or to replace previous presidential patronage appointee Chris Burnham as USG for Management.
It is surprising that like some hot gospelling preachers are so obsessed with sin that they can't tear themselves away with it, Bolton's obsession with the UN keeps him wanting to get close to it. So while he says that all Kofi Annan's appointees lose their mandates at the stroke of midnight, he, who never had an official mandate from the US government anyway, wants to eke one out after an election in which the American public overwhelmingly rejected the policies that he has represented so vociferously.
Maybe the UN Association of the USA should offer him a job to keep him out of harm's way while he indulges his fantasies.
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