Taunted and jeered, Bolton bolted
Michael Carmichael
"John Bolton is the kind of man with whom I
would
want to stand at Armageddon, if it should be my lot to be on hand for
what is forecast to be the final battle between good and evil in this
world."
Senator Jesse Helms (Republican, North
Carolina, retired)
Facing an increasingly hostile group of law
students in an Oxford seminar
that had somehow gone dreadfully wrong, beads of sweat began to pop out
on John Bolton’s furrowed brow. Amidst a rising chorus of taunts,
jeers, hisses and outright denunciations, Bolton was swiftly surrounded
by his entourage of three American security agents and whisked out the
door of the seminar room at Oriel College on Friday, the 9th
of June.
Pursued by vocal recriminations from angry and
frustrated American students who led the incisive questioning and the
equally incisive jeering -- with taunts like, “You should be doing a
better job!” Bolton
bolted. He turned sharply on his heel and took flight out the door and
then fled down the mediaeval passageway and into the relative safety
and calm of his bullet-proof diplomatic limousine, Bolton
swiftly headed out of Oxford, rudely foregoing the well-established
tradition of lingering to talk with interested members of the audience.
Bolton’s swift exit contrasted sharply
with
Oxford appearances by two other American politicians earlier this
term. Both John Podesta and Richard Perle enjoyed lingering for
discussions with Oxford audiences after their talks. John Bolton would
have none of it, and the reason was obvious. Throughout the
questioning, the audience became increasingly hostile and combative
towards his neoconservative agenda.
Numbering over one hundred and consisting of a
large
contingent of Americans intermingled with British and international
students, the audience was eager to hold Bolton accountable for the
neoconservative arguments
he put forward in his talk. The keen attitude of the audience infused
Bolton with a noticeable reticence to remain and exchange viewpoints
even though it is a time-honoured Oxford tradition. Bolton’s
performance was tantamount to arriving late for dinner, wolfing one’s
food and then leaving abruptly before the cigars and Amontillado.
Bolton had been invited to Oxford for a
one-hour
seminar organised by The Law Society. His talk would be followed by the
routine question and answer session.
Upon his arrival, Bolton announced that his
talk
would not be a free and open discussion but strictly limited to his few
selected topics: UN reform, scandal and the next Secretary
General. Predictably, Bolton launched into his standard speech --
little more than a right-wing denigration of the UN as riddled with
corruption in the form of the Oil for Food scandal.
Bolton began his broadside with an examination
of
the principle of ‘sovereign equality,’ whereby every nation has exactly
the same voting rights as every other member of the General
Assembly. He adopted an unsophisticated book-keeper’s perspective,
stating that the contributions made by the USA dwarfed those of many
other nations. He argued unconvincingly that even those forty-seven
members who paid the bare minimum had the same voting power in the
General Assembly as America. This observation failed to impress the
audience who were more than well aware of America’s financial and
economic superiority to the debt-ridden nations in the third world – a
superiority accumulated through trade negotiations designed to extract
capital from the poorest nations and transfer it to the wealthiest.
Bolton’s panacea for the bureaucratic
inefficiency was simple. At its core, he implied that a group of
sharp-eyed book-keepers backed by accountants, auditors and a
hardened core of dues-collectors should run the United Nations
along strict financial guidelines
as if it were a private club with a dining room and golf course rather
than the world’s premiere organization mandated to prevent armed
conflict between sovereign nations, foster economic development,
enhance social equality and cultivate international law. If Bolton is
aware of the principles defining the mission of the United Nations, he
made no mention of them whatsoever. His sole focus was a totally
transparent harangue on the disparity of dues, a tissue of an
argument that would not have convinced a fifteen year old – much less
Oxford law students.
Turning to his case for corruption, Bolton
launched
into a literal diatribe about the Oil for Food programme that he
described as a substantial scandal. The background to this is
important: led by Bolton, neoconservative critics of the UN attempted
unsuccessfully to make a criminal case against Kofi Annan and members
of his family through the Oil for Food investigation, but their efforts
largely were wasted. The investigation did discover some relatively
minor official corruption involving a paltry $150,000 paid to one
individual. The largest amount of corruption appears to have come in
the form of kickbacks and bribes to the government of Iraq by oil
companies seeking cheap oil. Of the kickbacks paid to the government of
Iraq, 52% came from the US in the form of bribes for cheap oil, a
figure that is more than the rest of the planet of 190 nations
combined. While a partisan Republican Senator, Norm Coleman of
Minnesota, made allegations against one high profile figure, George
Galloway a British MP, they have been refuted. The investigation is
ongoing, but of 54 internal audits only one has been made
public. Bolton did not mention any of these details, nor did he provide
any substantive evidence for his charge of serious levels of official
corruption at the UN.
Neither did Bolton call
attention to the fact that the Oil for Food case pales into
insignificance when compared to the massive scandals engulfing American
operations in Iraq involving tens and possibly hundreds of billions of
dollars or the Abramoff millions and the Enron scandal soaring into
billions of dollars. Weak, prejudiced and hostile in its intent,
Bolton’s case against the UN failed to impress his keen academic
audience of law students. Bolton failed to get an indictment from this
grand jury.
The final part of Bolton’s talk dealt with the
next
Secretary General of the UN who will take office later this year. He
criticized the obligatory rotation of the office, arguing for a review
of the rules governing selection of the Secretary General. Although
making comments about the need for balance and fairness, Bolton
observed that the next Secretary General should come not from Asia but
from the ranks of Eastern Europe – a favourite region for Bolton who
champions the increasing integration of Eastern European nations and
leaders into the American sphere of influence. Bolton left the
impression that he is deeply involved in the selection process for the
next Secretary General. From his remarks, it is clear that he is making
every effort to influence this selection by anointing an Eastern
European functionary loyal to the neoconservative agenda of George
Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld.
Perhaps most dramatically, Bolton
presented a stark message to his Oxford audience: the UN exists to institutionalize inequalities of power,
wealth and national security. In
his view, the UN should be a club for powerful nations to manage their
relations with poor nations by denying them any real power. As an agent
of corporate wealth and institutional power, in his Oxford remarks
Bolton focused exclusively on justice for capital and
repudiated the notion of a democratic basis for the UN. Bolton demanded
that the UN should remain a gated community devoid of power-sharing
with its small clique of five Security Council members wielding veto
power over the remaining 190 members.
During the question period, Bolton recognized
a law
student who politely asked him to justify the application of a double
standard in the Middle East that favors Israel over Syria or other
Muslim nations. Detecting the student’s accent,
Bolton pointedly asked, “Where are you from?” The student was
Syrian. On that note, Bolton refused to answer the question, and
instead he criticized Syria for what he deemed to be its unwarranted
interference in the Middle East and Lebanon even though they withdrew
their final 15,000 troops last year. From a historical
perspective, it is ironic that Bolton would have cited this case, for
Syria was invited to provide security operations in Lebanon by the
Maronite Christians with the tacit approval of the United Nations and
the support of the Arab League. The hypocrisy at the heart of his own
case - since he represents a hegemonic power with more than one hundred
and thirty thousand uninvited troops on the ground in Iraq, thousands
more uninvited troops in Afghanistan and which now threatens to launch
a new war against Iran - was lost on Bolton. But, Bolton’s hypocrisy
was not lost on his perceptive audience who now zeroed in on him with a
barrage of pointed questions.
The next question to Bolton was why should the
UN be
based on dues paid and the wealth and power of its members i.e one
nation, one vote -- instead of population, which would mean -- one man,
one vote. Detecting another foreign accent, Bolton asked, “Where are
you from?” The student was from India. Bolton said that any alteration
in the current articles of the UN charter to reform on a demographic
basis would change the nature of the institution, and he indicated that
principle, i.e. democracy and one man, one vote
– ramained totally unacceptable to the United States as a basis for the
United Nations. Quite.
In what was rapidly becoming his
interrogation, a
woman from America questioned Bolton about the need for a balanced
approach where America would represent the best interests of the world
at large rather than its own particular regional self-interest. At that
point, Bolton fumbled. In a clumsy and misguided attempt to turn the
tables on his adroit and incisive challengers, Bolton threw out a
question of his own. He called for a show of
hands of those in the audience who were British. Bolton then asked how
many of them wanted the British Ambassador at the UN to represent the
interests of Britain. Only one or two hands were raised. Then he asked
to see a show of hands of those British subjects who wanted the British
Ambassador at the UN to represent not only the interests of Britain but
also the collective interests of the other members as well. At least a
dozen hands went up into the air. Stunned, Bolton was dumbfounded
and said rather witlessly, “I would have gotten a different result in
America.”
At that point, the crowd was warming to the
battle
unfolding before them and led so capably by the incensed Americans in
the audience. With their voices rising in taunts and jeers and
more than a dozen hands demanding to be recognized to put more
questions to him, Bolton’s attention turned to his phalanx of security
agents who surrounded him drawing the question and answer session to an
abrupt close. In retrospect, Bolton’s was a disgraceful performance,
one committed to an ancien regime of property, monetary wealth
and military power in diametrical opposition to the democratic rights
of humanity. John Bolton showed himself to be a behemoth of corporate
greed and corrupt political influence in world diplomacy. My view is
that his appointment to the Ambassadorship of the United Nations was
tantamount to appointing Vito Corleone to head the FBI.
The primary purpose of Bolton’s visit to
Britain was
not made public, but it was clear nevertheless from his public
remarks. With a history of trips to Europe to demand the sackings of
officials for whom he has a personal dislike, Bolton’s visit to Britain
was obviously to demand the sacking of the Deputy Secretary of the UN,
a British subject, Mark Malloch Brown. Bolton appeared on the
influential BBC4 Today programme, where he was interviewed by
Jim Naughtie. Deputy Secretary of the UN Brown was his first
target. Brown’s speech critical of US policy vis a vis the UN
had clearly irritated Bolton. Brown had criticized the US for using the
UN to take care of many foreign policy problems while US officials
hypocritically attacked it back home in red state America. By pointing
this out, Brown touched a sensitive nerve in Bolton’s neoconservative
brain. Then Bolton falsely accused Brown of criticizing the American
people – a sheer fabrication. Then, Bolton lashed out at Brown for
making remarks that would injure the UN. Coming from Bolton, this
appraisal sounded more like a threat than serious criticism. In
explaining the US position on the UN, he stated, “I think that the
administration has told the truth about the UN – the good, the bad and
the ugly,” a strange choice of metaphors for a man with as
controversial a reputation as Bolton.
Naughtie turned to the Iran crisis, and Bolton
reiterated the official White House line: the situation remains under
negotiation but volatile. Either Iran will acquiesce to the demands
placed upon it, or it will face dire consequences including military
intervention. Leaving no doubt that Bush and Bolton propose unilateral
action, Bolton confirmed that Iran would be a test case to determine
whether the UN Security Council could be effective in the war against
terrorism.
When interviewed on the same day by the Financial
Times,
Bolton rejected the concept that the Bush administration was holding
out the possibility of a “grand bargain” with Iran. In Bolton’s mind,
the terms of the negotiations are focused exclusively on the Iranian
nuclear programme and do not encompass diplomatic recognition or the
normalization of relations. Far from detente, Bolton’s
definition of the process is simple: the US is threatening Iran with
war unless they submit to terms which Iran finds unattractive – the
cessation of what they state is peaceful research into nuclear energy.
Given his very public actions as exemplified
by his
statements in the UK and the US, Bolton should now be considered to be
functioning as the US Secretary of State. It would not be surprising to
see him elevated to that post in the event of Condoleezza Rice leaving
the State Department or upon the election of a new Republican
administration in 2008.
John Bolton has a fascinating back-story. A
Lutheran
from Baltimore, Bolton studied law at Yale. The extreme right-wing
presidential campaign of Barry Goldwater politicized him, and in the
late 1970s, he emerged as a top legal advisor to the extreme racist
Republican, Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina. A description of
Bolton’s political extremism records, “A veteran of Southern electoral
campaigns, Bolton has long appealed to racist voters.” (John Bolton,
Right Web)
During the 2000 Florida vote fiasco, Bolton played a high profile
partisan role. Working under Jim Baker, Bolton led the so-called “white
collar riot” that brought a halt to the counting of ballots in Florida.
Throughout the 1980s, Bolton was a leader of
Republican Party efforts to undermine voting rights for
minorities. Forming an alliance with James Baker, Bolton served in both
the Reagan and Bush 41 administrations. During the Clinton years,
Bolton served as an assistant to Baker when he worked as Kofi Annan’s
envoy in the Western Sahara. It is somewhat ironic that Bolton is now
the principal critic of Annan. Additionally, Bolton spent time at the
usual right-wing and neoconservative institutions including: the
American Enterprise Institute; Project for the New American Century;
Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs and the Committee for
Peace and Security in the Gulf. Before his appointment as US Ambassador
to the United Nations, Bolton served as Undersecretary of State for
Arms Control.
In the mid-1990s, Bolton was involved in a
political money-laundering scandal that opened a channel for funds from
Taiwan to Republican candidates. (ibid.) Prior to his
appointment as UN Ambassador, Bolton was deeply involved in the Bush
administration’s overt campaign to undermine international law. Bolton
masterminded the systematic abrogation of several key international
treaties including: the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention; the
Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty; the Rome Statute that established the
International Criminal Court and the Comprehensive Test Ban
Treaty. During his work for the Reagan administration, Bolton supported
the Nicaraguan contras and sought to deny federal investigators access
to key evidence in the Iran Contra scandal. (John Bolton,
Officialssay)
Personal scandals have also tarnished John
Bolton. A
woman accused him of hostile intimidation that led to a case of sexual
discrimination. Larry Flynt published evidence that Bolton’s first
marriage had collapsed after he forced his wife to have group sex at
Plato’s Retreat during the Reagan administration. (Rawstory)
When Bush nominated him for the UN
Ambassadorship,
Bolton suffered intense scrutiny. He failed to get the endorsement of
the Foreign Relations committee, and a ranking Republican, George
Voinovich of Ohio, openly opposed him. When the nomination came to the
floor of the Senate, the Democrats launched a filibuster. When a small
group of Republicans attempted to invoke cloture to stop the debate,
the motion failed for lack of support. During a congressional recess,
Bush was forced to appoint Bolton in what is called a “recess
appointment.” This weakens Bolton’s stature, and the law demands that
his appointment must be renewed early next year by the Senate in spite
of how embarrassing it will be for him.
An embarrassing incident occurred last
month that confirms the suspicions of Bolton’s polite Syrian
questioner at Oxford. In remarks to B’nei Brith International, the Israeli ambassador to the UN identified Bolton as “a
secret member of Israel's own team at the United Nations,”
underlining his confidence in Bolton by stating, “Today the secret is
out. We really are not just five diplomats. We are at least six
including John Bolton." (Haaretz)
During his Oxford harangue, Bolton said that
America
is a democracy where people vote for change and the policies they
admire. His own role in the racist politics of the South, the cessation
of vote counting in 2000 and the obstruction of the Iran Contra
investigation transforms every word he ever says claiming America as a
model of democracy into the ne plus ultra of political
hypocrisy. George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Perle,
Condoleezza Rice and John Bolton are a comfortable clutch of
hypocritical politicians, and their approval ratings now demonstrate
that they are not the agents of democracy. Quite the opposite, the
democratic disconnection – the increasing disparity between popular
opinion and government policy - in Bush and Bolton’s America is a
scandal of global proportions that could well be driving the United
States over the precipice and into the abyss of failed and failing
states.
On a hot day in a crowded seminar fuelled by
intense questioning, Bolton perspired heavily.
Michael Carmichael became a professional
public
affairs consultant, author and broadcaster in 1968. He worked in five
American presidential campaigns for progressive candidates from RFK to
Clinton. In 2003, he founded The Planetary Movement, a nonprofit public
affairs organization based in the United Kingdom. He has appeared as a
public affairs expert on the BBC's Today, Hardtalk, and PM, as well as
numerous appearances on ITN, NPR and European broadcasts examining
politics and culture. He can be reached through his website: www.planetarymovement.org
References
Bolton rejects ‘grand bargain’ with Iran
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/3016bd02-f7e9-11da-9481-0000779e2340.html
Woman accuses Bolton of harassment
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-04-20-whitehouse-bolton_x.htm
Bolton Delay Offensive to
Jewish Community, Says JINSA
http://releases.usnewswire.com/GetRelease.asp?id=49090
Israel's UN ambassador slams Qatar, praises
U.S. envoy Bolton
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/718679.html
Israel's UN ambassador slams Qatar, praises U.S. envoy Bolton
Larry Flynt: Bush UN nominee won't answer
questions about troubled marriage
http://rawstory.com/exclusives/byrne/larry_flynt_bolton_511.htm
John R. Bolton
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=John_R._Bolton
Who Is John Bolton?
http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=252671
John Bolton – Profile –
rightweb
http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/972
Rice's Iran Gambit
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/06/05/rices_iran_gambit.php
John Bolton - officialssay
http://home.earthlink.net/~platter/neo-conservatism/bolton.html