Where the World's Views of America Come into Focus
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Where the World's Views of America Come into Focus
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Apr. 14, 2005
By Washington correspondent Philippe Gelie
After two days of hearings before Congress,
the mystery remains intact: Why did George W. Bush, who so carefully courted
the international community at the beginning of his second term, name a man
with such a fierce contempt for the international community as ambassador to the
United Nations? And, more disconcerting still: Why would John R. Bolton want
the job?
During his confirmation hearings Democratic members
of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee put the question to him on several occasions.
The interested party [Bolton] took a pass on those questions. The Republicans
gave him credit for wanting to reform an organization mired in several scandals
and little appreciated by American public opinion. With a majority of 10 votes
against 8 in committee and of 55 against 45 in the full Senate, the Republicans
are almost certain to ratify Mr. Bush’s nomination of Bolton. Only one, Lincoln
Chafee, the moderate Republican of Rhode Island, has expressed reservations.
So John Bolton, 56-years-old, at present the
under secretary of state
for arms control and international security, should soon find himself in the 38-floor
United Nations headquarters building in New York, an edifice he once referred
to in a now famous tirade by saying, “If you lost
10 stories today, it wouldn't make a bit of difference.”
"I am bewildered by this nomination … you
have nothing but disdain for the United Nations," accused Barbara Boxer,
the Democratic senator of California, before she showed a video in which John Bolton expressed his vision of the international
organization in 1994. "There is no United Nations,” explained the candidate
then. "There is an international community which occasionally can be led
by the only real power left in the world, namely the United States -- when it
suits our interests and when we can get others to go along."
During nine hours Monday, and again yesterday
morning, the applicant answered the Senators’ question. During his hearings,
Colin Powell maintained a careful aloofness, and Condoleezza Rice had not wanted
to look too eager. Bolton, however, a close adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney,
cuts a very hard figure, even among neoconservatives in the court of this White
House.
But the battle mounted by the Democrats is
mostly about principle: a Republican majority in both houses of Congress
ensures that the president can do what he wants, not depriving himself of
anything. If yesterday’s hearings for John Negroponte, former ambassador to the
U.N. and Iraq and named as the new national intelligence director, did not pose
much of a problem, two other nominations are likely to trigger a war in the
trenches.
Stephen Johnson, nominated as director of the
Environmental Protection Agency, refuses to cancel a program baptized
"Cheers,” (if it is with yours!) which involved paying families to allow
scientists to study the impact of pesticides in their children.
Lester Crawford, named to head the Food &
Drug Administration, refuses to put on the market the "day after tomorrow
pill," in spite of the recommendation of two committees of scientists.
But these battles are only a prelude to the
real confrontation: the appointment of Federal judges. George W. Bush has re-submitted
his list of ten candidates, all of whom were already blocked once by the Democratic
minority for their extremist positions. In the event of a new round of Democratic
filibustering, the Republicans are threatening to change centuries-old Senate rules.
The name of this Republican plan summarizes it all: "The nuclear option."
