You gotta love Mark Steyn. Well, you don’t have to, but I do. Not sure if you’ve been following the Bolton Senate hearings in re his nomination to the UN Ambassadorship. Here is Steyn on it:

Britain’s Daily Telegraph had an intriguing headline the other day: “U.S. police force to recruit capuchin monkey for ‘intelligence’ work.” Maybe when the Mesa, Ariz., SWAT team is through with the monkey in question, we could get him made chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He’d have his work cut out doing a worse job than Dick Lugar, the Republican senator who spent the last week getting walloped by a freak show alliance comprising (a) an opposition party whose foreign policy the electorate decided it was unable to take seriously and (b) jelly-spined GOP “moderates” who insist on taking it seriously. And so it was that John Bolton’s nomination to the U.N. was derailed by this guy Voinovich.

As Shakespeare didn’t quite say, who is Voinovich? What is he? Well, he’s a fellow called George, and he’s apparently a senator from Ohio who’s on this Foreign Relations Committee. He was, alas, unable to interrupt his hectic schedule to attend either of the committee’s hearings for John Bolton’s U.N. nomination, but nevertheless decided last week he could not bring himself to support Bolton’s nomination. “My conscience got me,” he said. Maybe one day his conscience will get him to attend the hearings he’s paid to attend, but, for the moment, his conscience is more troubled by the story brought up by the senior Democratic obstructionist Joe Biden. As Sen. Biden put it, “The USAID worker in Kyrgyzstan alleges that she was harassed — not sexually harassed — harassed by Mr. Bolton.”

This was a decade ago, in some hotel. John Bolton allegedly chased this woman down a corridor in a non-sexual manner. It’s not clear from Biden whether he would have approved had she been chased down the corridor in a sexual manner, as the 42nd president was wont to do. But the non-sexual harassment was instead about policy matters relating to Kyrgyzstan. Maybe Bolton was in a foul mood or maybe he was in a vowel mood and, this being Kyrgyzstan, they didn’t have any. But this is what the pitiful constitutional travesty of the Senate’s “advise and consent” role has now dwindled down to: a sex scandal with no sex. All talk and no action. Only in America, folks. Or, to be more precise, only in the U.S. Senate.

First off, I will say that this woman is ardently anti-Bush. A member of mother’s against Bush or some such organization. But putting that aside–let’s say she is telling the truth irrespective of the fact that there are no witnesses. This was ten years ago. Maybe–just maybe–they guy is mildly better inter-personally.

But that is really not the issue. We have the UN–and organization rotten from the inside out–and frankly, we need an ass-kicker in there. Someone who is clear, unapologetic, who will make that house of cards tumble if the corruption and cronyism continues. Bolton is that guy. Oh yes–and someone on the side of –*gasp*– the US, the Country he is representing in the World Body.

April 24th, 2005 | Politics, UN Corruption

You must be logged in to post a comment.