Is John Bolton on staff at the Washington Post?
August 06, 2009 12:44 pm ET by Jamison Foser
Over at UN Dispatch, Mark Goldberg notices that John Bolton has been getting an awful lot of ink lately:
If you feel like you have been reading a lot of John Bolton recently, it's because you have. A Nexis search reveals that over the past 12 weeks, John Bolton has been published on the op-ed page of a major American publication nine times. That's three times in the Washington Post, once in the New York Times, once in The Los Angeles Times, twice in the Wall Street Journal and three in the Washington Times. This is an average of just under one op-ed a week, per week, for the last three months.
That means the Washington Post has been running a Bolton op-ed once a month. Way to give your readers a diversity of viewpoints...
Palin's book and Obama's bow: a media week to forget
Media Matters: The Palin chronicles
The Friday Rush: A series of conflicts
I'm surprised we haven't seen the march of, "Our government HAD to give up something to North Korea in order to get those women back..." from the conservatives today, although they did plenty of it last night.
Clinton was not there as an emissary from our government. He was in no position to offer North Korea, well, anything.
John Bolton, in my opinion, needs to go under his rock. Like now.
As a private citizen (and even if he had been in some official office, I doubt Obama would have treated this any differently) Clinton was not in a position to offer anything of importance.
What does Kim Jong-Il get? Propaganda? Hmmm... I don't think he gets any propaganda OUTSIDE of his country, since every country of importance already knows everything they need to about him. Inside his country? That's a tad more complicated. If the same thing happened in Iran, at this time (meaning given the state of unrest), and was handled the same way, THEN I could see it as a dumb move that could bolster the regime. But that's not North Korea. They aren't showing any signs of an uprising at all. And how much more could Kim Jong-Il propagandize the people who only know him as "Dear Leader"? What further harm could he possibly do to them?
So... what do we get, in return for basically nothing?
A) Our two citizens back.
B) A diplomatic triumph, showing that we can still resolve situations peacefully, without showing weakness.
C) Perhaps most importantly: SOME VERY VERY VALUABLE INTELLIGENCE!!!
North Korea is one of the most secretive regimes in the world. We have very little reliable intelligence from that country. The state of Kim Jong-Il's health, and the question it raises with regard to succession within the regime, is one of the most desired pieces of information in the intelligence community. It's very important.
So we have a private citizen given the chance to openly engage with the "Dear Leader", face to face. Not through channels, and not in a secretive capacity. Furthermore, that man is Bill Clinton. I think that even a rabid conservative like Vannity or Boortz would agree that Clinton is very good at reading people. Now Clinton can come home and brief our intelligence agencies about everything he noticed (lucid and sober, or stuttering and disoriented? facial tics that might have resulted from a stroke? etc. etc. etc.)
They just can't give credit where credit is due, EVER. They really need to shut their mouths on this one. They are just looking to find an asbestos lining in every cloud.
Bolton was on The Daily Show I think last week; I love Jon Stewart but I'm not sure why he feels numbnuts like Bolton and Bill Kristol don't have enough opportunities to make themselves heard.
Anyway, Bolton said his goal was for one and only one country - ours - to possess nuclear weapons. I'm astonist by, what would you call it, the jingoist naivete that leads him to believe such a set of circumstances is possible, desirable, or stable for any length of time.
Look, like it or not, he was our former acting Ambassador to the UN. Whatever you think of that, that does give him the right to voice his opinion on the issue.
But THIS much? Especially with THIS tone?
His rise to that post was widely criticized, including by some prominent Republicans, given his complete and utter lack of diplomatic skills and utter (but not complete) lack of diplomatic knowledge. And once in the post, he accomplished... NOTHING. ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.
So let the man speak his piece. Then let him fade back off into the fog.