In the space of a week, the Bush Administration has brought four dismal decisions down upon the American people. All four involve our relationships with the rest of the world.
One involves Chaney’s attack dog, John Bolton, being named as our permanent ambassador to the United Nations. The second is the appointment of Bush’s female alter ego, Karen Hughes, as Under Secretary of State in an attempt to change the Islamic perception about the United States. The third was Bush’s petulant withdrawal from the International Court of Justice which is also known as the World Court. And the fourth is nominating Paul Wolfowitz to head the World Bank.
Let’s take them one at a time. When Colin Powell was Secretary of State, the third or fourth ranking member of the State hierarchy was John Bolton. Powell wanted nothing to do with Bolton, but he was installed at the insistence of Chaney and Donald Rumsfeld. Bolton dealt with arms control issues. To give you an idea of how foreigners felt about him, the North Koreans regularly referred to Bolton as the “scum of the earth.” More polite administrations may have also felt that Bolton was scummy, but they suppressed their desire to say so.
When Powell was let go by Bush, Bolton mounted a vigorous campaign to become Deputy Secretary to the new Secretary of State, Madame Rice. Accounts are that Madame Rice simply and defiantly refused to name Bolton as her deputy, the number two job in State. When Douglas Feith announced his desire to resign his Under Secretary job in the Department of Defense, Bolton made a great effort to fill the vacancy. Even with the backing of Chaney, Rumsfeld, a former Bolton supporter, said “No way.”
When it comes to being pushed around, Madame Rice has always been there to succumb to Chaney’s advances. When John Danforth resigned his job at the United Nations, Ms. Rice took a dive and named Bolton to be permanent representative to the United Nations.
When Rice made the announcement about Bolton’s appointment, it was apparent she had to steel herself to conceal her real emotions. Bolton had been forced upon her by Chaney and Bush. Her only recourse to letting the Bolton appointment go forward was to resign. Of course, she had no intention of doing that. She comforted herself with the thought that Bolton would be in New York away from the policy makers in Washington. That is a myth, as Bolton will find a way to barge in and become involved with policy.
Ms. Rice knows what everyone else knows about John Bolton. He is a flame thrower. There is no compromise with him. Bolton wants his opponents – domestic or foreign – to admit they were totally wrong and to at least, resign.
Bush and Rice have proclaimed that 2005 is the time for diplomacy. The trademark of the United Nations is diplomacy. Some you win and some you lose, and in many cases, there is no decision. Sending Bolton to the UN is much like sending an arsonist to a paper mache factory.
Simply put, Bolton’s stock in trade is hatred. For as long as can be remembered, Bolton has hated the UN with a special venom. Bush likes these kinds of people. He mistakenly confuses hatred with courage.
So Bush and Chaney have sent Bolton to the UN in an era of diplomacy. Clearly, Bolton views his appointment as his authorization to “Straighten things out at the UN.” When the United States trusts its fortunes to a flame thrower whose main purpose in life is hatred, this country must be prepared to pay a price. Naming Bolton to the UN job is nothing less than the U.S. sticking its fingers in the eyes of every nation that wishes us well or ill.
Bolton has said, “I don’t do carrots” as in a stick and a carrot. He boasts of “taking a big bottle of WITE-OUT” to erase Bill Clinton’s signature on the statute calling for the International Criminal Court. Nation-building is a “fantasy.” He called for the U.S. to give full diplomatic recognition to Taiwan in defiance of China. He recently suggested shrinking the Security Council of the United Nations to one member: the United States.
Bolton is the kind of man who walks into your living room after spreading manure without changing his boots. His appointment constitutes thumbing our nose at every other member of the UN. When he says, “I don’t do carrots,” the rest of the world is entitled to consider him the scum of the earth as he was called by the North Koreans.
We came now to the ugly appointment of Karen Hughes to serve as Under Secretary of State Public Diplomacy. Her charge is to change Islamic perceptions about America.
Ms. Hughes knows absolutely nothing about relations with Islamic and Arab countries. Her entire public career has been to “fashion a story, regardless of its accuracy” on behalf of George Bush. The foregoing quote is from the Newark Star Ledger. Her career has been to cover the droppings of George Bush. She was there to cover for Bush when he draft dodged into the Texas Air National Guard. Bush’s invading a sovereign government in Iraq was called a matter of liberating by Hughes. On top of her ugly demeanor, Ms. Hughes, for better or worse, is a woman who reports to Ms. Rice, another woman. In the Islamic culture, sending a woman to represent the United States is an insult. It makes no difference what we think of relations between the sexes; the point is what do the Arabs and other people of the Islamic culture think of it. For them, it is an insult.
Karen Hughes is singularly unsuited for a job of changing Islamic perceptions about this country. The overwhelming fact is that our actions are the sole determining factor. Invading Iraq was a disaster in Islamic eyes. No public relations person can change that perception.
Some time back, Bush brought in Charlotte Beers, a New Yorker who headed an advertising agency, for the purpose of making the world feel better about our intentions. After a few months, Ms. Beers, a communications professional, said it couldn’t be done as long as Bush was sticking his fingers in the eyes of nearly every other nation. She quit.
When Bush sends John Bolton to the UN, that action speaks in unmistakable tones. We are going our own way and to hell with the other countries. All the public relations by Ms. Hughes or by anyone else will be for naught as long as our actions fail to match our words.
Karen Hughes is the wrong person in the wrong place. Could it be that Bush, Ms. Hughes only sponsor, has sent her to Foggy Bottom to keep Madame Rice in line? Think about that while we consider another potentially disastrous appointment.
No one around Bush will tell him that he is actively despised by citizens of foreign countries. Their loathing is also attached to his appointees. To top off that loathing, Bush now proposes that the leading neo-con be sent to head the World Bank. In the eyes of the world, Paul Wolfowitz is the epitome of evil. It was Wolfowitz who clamored for invading Iraq even when Bill Clinton was president.
At the World Bank, Wolfowitz will be required to work with every other nation to strengthen their economies and to stamp out hunger. Ordinary observers would say the presidency of the World Bank is a job for a compassionate person. That’s not the way George Bush works. Bush views himself as the chief finger sticker in the eyes of our fellow citizens on this globe. The Newark Star Ledger had it about right when it said, “This is a president with little interest in how the rest of the world views his decisions.” It’s our way or the highway.
To complete this disastrous review of the Bush decisions of the past week, we have a case involving the World Court where W thumbed his nose at every civilized country.
The facts look like this. Jose Ernesto Medillin, a citizen of Mexico, found himself on death row in this country. When he was tried, he was assigned a lawyer who had been suspended from practice due to an ethics violation. The judge did not know of the suspension of the lawyer. The lawyer called not a single witness during the trial and only one in the penalty phase of the proceeding. Medillin was sentenced to death.
After three years on death row, Mexico’s consular representatives finally were told of Medillin’s death sentence. They argued that if they had known of his arrest, he could have been represented by competent counsel. In sum, no one bothered to tell the Mexican authorities.
The Medillin case was referred to the International Court of Justice, the United Nation’s top court for resolving disputes between countries. In a case brought by Mexico, the court said Mr. Medillin and 50 other Mexicans on death row in the U.S. were never given access to Mexican consular officials, as required by the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations. We have been a signatory to this agreement for many years.
At this point, it would be instructive to read four paragraphs from an Editorial in the New York Times of March 14, 2005.
The administration surprised everyone at first by accepting the court’s judgment and supporting Mr. Medellín’s right to review. It said, in what seemed like a promising change of heart, that “consular assistance is a vital safeguard for Americans abroad” and that if America did not comply with the court ruling, “its ability to secure such assistance could be adversely affected.”
That was good reasoning. It applied in 1963 when the United States itself designed the optional protocol, the part of the Vienna Convention that allows the World Court to hear disputes over consular access. It applied in 1979 when America became the first country to use the protocol by successfully suing Iran for taking American hostages. Now, in a climate of global hostility toward Americans, the right to consular help is all the more important.
But this administration is not always given to sound reasoning when it comes to institutions like the World Court – especially on red-meat issues like the death penalty. Last week, just days after accepting the court’s judgment, the administration revealed its hand: it said it had withdrawn from the optional protocol. Apparently forgetting its concern about citizens arrested abroad, the State Department said it wanted to end the court’s meddling in the American judicial system.
In other words, ideology triumphed over sound judgment and Americans abroad are all less secure as a result.
Remember, more than 50 Mexican nationals had been condemned to death by the American justice system without the right to seek consular assistance from the Mexican government. This is the epitome of shameful conduct.
So the court found against us. We picked up our marbles and left the game in a huff.
By withdrawing our signatures on the agreement, American travelers accused in foreign countries will have no right to seek help from American authorities. The Times labeled the editorial in question “A Travel Advisory.” That’s what it is. Our withdrawal is beyond being stupid.
Well there you have four recent actions that cast the Bush administration as thumbing its nose at the rest of the world. This can’t go on because there will be consequences. And some of them may be dire. When we send Bolton to the UN, and make Karen Hughes an Undersecretary of State and nominate Wolfowitz to the World Bank and withdraw from the World Court, the rest of the world is entitled to believe that we are unable to act in a civilized fashion. And they are right.
Going it alone in defiance of the feelings and beliefs of other citizens of the world will sooner or later carry a heavy price tag. All of us are dependent upon others. Mary McAleese, the former President of Ireland, cites an Irish proverb to support this thought. It is:
“Ar scáth a chélle a mhaireann na daoine.”
The English translation is:
“We all live in each other’s shadow.”
Bush went to Yale and Harvard, two of Americas best universities. It is a crime that he has learned nothing of the interdependence of mankind.
E. E. CARR
March 26, 2005
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These Bush-era essays have been lifting my spirits lately. If the country could survive eight years of someone like Bush doing his damnedest to screw up the country, it can hopefully take four years of Trump doing the same. Hopefully the latter won’t start any new wars, but I’m not holding my breath.
Re: Hughes, I think there are a great number of legitimate reasons that she shouldn’t have been charged with that job, but her gender wasn’t one of them. Just because she’s dealing with people who don’t value women doesn’t mean that we should stoop to that level when making decisions for our country. The same logic could extend to not wanting to elect a female president for fear of retribution from Muslim countries. Fuck em. It’s time to join the 21st century, where their attitudes are going to (ideally) feel increasingly archaic. No need to pander to that.