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Bolton: Pit bull on a ruling-class leash

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.