Bolton: Pit bull on a ruling-class leash
By
Fred Goldstein
Published Aug 4, 2005 9:51 PM
It is a commentary on how reactionary John
Bolton is that President George W. Bush, in order to make him the U.S.
ambassador to the United Nations, had to resort to a so-called “recess
appointment” and make an end run around one of the most reactionary
political bodies in the imperialist world—the millionaires’ club of
the U.S. Senate.
Bolton is the candidate of the most reactionary, die-hard
elements in the Bush administration, who are reacting to the present crisis
facing Washington and the Pentagon in Iraq and Afghanistan by further stoking
world tensions.
Bush’s new ambassador to the UN is on record with
such quotes as:
“There’s no such thing as the United
Nations.”
“There is an international community that
occasionally can be led by the only real power left in the world and that is the
United States, when it suits our interest and when we can get others to go
along.”
“If the UN secretary [sic] building in New York lost
10 stories, it wouldn’t make a bit of difference.”
In an
interview five years ago on National Public Radio, Bolton told Juan Williams,
“If I were redoing the Security Council today, I’d have one
permanent member because that’s the real reflection of the distribution of
power in the world.” When Williams asked him which member, he answered,
“The United States.” (New York Times, March 9, 2005)
Why
they did it
Bush and Karl Rove want to feed the racist, chauvinist
appetites of their right-wing base, which has a visceral hatred of the UN and
always wants to cut it down, if not destroy it altogether. Their hatred arises
from resistance to any force or institution that could put any restraint upon
U.S. imperialism.
They hated the Security Council during the Cold War
because it gave the Soviet Union, and later People’s China, a say in world
affairs. After the collapse of the USSR, they hated it because it gave their
imperialist rivals a veto over Washington’s affairs.
And they
despise the General Assembly, which they regard with racist, colonialist,
“great power” contempt, because it gives governments of oppressed
countries a forum to criticize U.S. imperialism and imperialism in
general.
In addition to domestic considerations, the Bolton appointment is
a way for Bush to keep the aggressive right-wing atmosphere alive in foreign
policy, to compensate for the deepening quagmire in Iraq.
The UN cannot
put up the armed resistance that the Iraqi people are doing. There will be no
casualties coming home and no hundreds of billions in treasure spent by letting
Bolton loose in the UN to carry out Bush’s
“reforms”—such as doing away with the Human Rights Commission,
which has recently criticized Washington.
What the foreign policy
implications are remain to be seen. But it is ominous that Bolton is coming to
office just as the imperialists are forcing a crisis with Iran over its attempt
to acquire nuclear power. It is also a moment when Washington is attempting to
use the six-party talks to disarm socialist North Korea.
Washington has
threatened to bring both these issues to the UN Security Coun cil or the
International Atomic Energy Agency to set the stage for sanctions and further
aggression against these two countries.
Bolton is considered by large
sections of the ruling class to be a great liability. In the second Bush
administration he was pushed out of an important policy position as secretary of
international affairs and disarmament. He was moved to the UN and denied the
powerful post of deputy secretary of state.
Bolton called Kim Jong Il, the
leader of North Korea, a “tyrant” in the midst of sensitive
negotiations. He has bullied and spied upon government officials in order to
spin the intelligence on Iraq’s so-called weapons of mass
destruction.
He threatened Iran. He charged Syria with working on weapons
of mass destruction. He branded Cuba as a “terrorist state” making
biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction. All false
accusations.
Bolton has escalated the threats from Washington in every
direction, all the while disregarding the fact that the Pentagon was rapidly
losing the capability to control even Baghdad. There is a great fear among many
government strategists that he will increase the isolation of U.S.
imperialism.
A Bush-Cheney loyalist in 2000
But Bolton has a
secret weapon. He was part of Jim Baker’s legal team during the 2000
election struggle. He is not only a long-time figure in the right-wing
establishment, a member of the American Enterprise Institute and the Project for
the American Century. He is also a Bush-Cheney loyalist.
Known nowadays as
Cheney’s pit bull, Bolton shined in 2000. According to the www.
stopbolton.org website, he was “a veteran of Southern electoral
campaigns” and he “appealed to the racism of white voters”
during the 2000 election campaign. He got his experience in the 1980s during a
Republican Party campaign to “beat back the voter registration campaigns
organized by labor and black organizations.”
“Bolton put his
hard-ball approach to partisan politics to work” during the racist
campaign to exclude Black voters in 2000, says the stopbolton website. It quotes
from a July 2002 Wall Street Journal article that said Bolton’s
“most memorable moment came after the U.S. Supreme Court ordered a halt to
the recount” and Bolton “strode into a Tallahassee library, where
the count was still going on, and declared: ‘I’m with the
Bush-Cheney team, and I’m here to stop the vote.’”
The
Journal said that “after thanking Bolton for his services,” Cheney
was asked what job Bolton would get in the new administration.” Cheney is
said to have replied, “My answer is, anything he wants.”
The
Bush administration, the Demo crats and the capitalist media have all made this
outrageous appointment seem as though it were impossible to stop, because of the
alleged right of the president to make appointments when the Senate is not in
session.
This so-called “explanation” shows what a fraud
capitalist politics is. In the first place, Bolton is accused of offenses such
as perjury and intimidation, among others that are punishable under the Senate
rules. If the Democratic Party and the capitalist opposition in the media were
serious about putting up a fight, they would point this out and refuse to accept
the appointment until the matters were adjudicated.
But even more
fundamentally, the entire argument about this being a “recess
appointment” allowed under the Consti tution is false.
A
violation of the Constitution
Article II, Section 2 of the
Constitution states that “The President shall have Power to fill up all
Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting
Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session.”
In
fact, the vacancy in the UN ambassadorship did NOT arise during the recess of
the Senate. It arose when the Senate was in session. It arose when the former
ambassador resigned.
This is not an emergency appointment caused by a
sudden death or illness or resignation. This appointment was dragged out for
months while the Senate was in session so that the capitalist politicians there
could all get themselves off the hook and not take responsibility in the event
that Bolton becomes a liability.
The clear intent of this clause is to
fill a gap in the appointment process arising from an unexpected circumstance.
Where are the “strict constructionists” on this? Where are all the
lawyers among the Senate Democrats, who are avoiding this obvious opening to
challenge Bolton’s appointment? The truth is that they have all simply
resigned themselves to the triumph of the Bush reaction.
But as repugnant
and reactionary a pit bull as Bolton is, it is Bush and Cheney who hold the
leash. And, of course, behind them stand Big Oil, the military-industrial
complex and the big banks. Having been removed from a central policy position,
Bolton will be as reactionary as the Bush-Cheney group and their ruling class
masters want him to be.
Many predict that the appointment will backfire,
saying Bolton is so discredited that he will have to be reined in. But if the
Bush administration has shown any consistency, it is in its tendency to deepen
every crisis and to miscalculate its own strength and ability to shape
events.
This has the danger of new aggression. The anti-war movement and
the working class movement must be vigilant and mobilized in the wake of the
arrogant appointment of this war-mongering imperialist.
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