Op-ed: John Bolton: Straight from Rough-and-Ready Creek

My girlfriend and I recently made our annual sojourn to Northern California’s Lost Coast to attend a 3-day reggae festival. The drive requires a short jaunt through the sweltering Illinois River Valley in southwestern Oregon. As we passed the dried-up remnants of Rough-and-Ready Creek, I noted that a few earnest homeowners had taken it upon themselves to let all passers-by know their true feelings about the UN. Their comments can be summarized in two statements: 1) The US should get out of the UN because it undermines US sovereignty, and 2) UN payments are a global tax and taxes should be avoided at all costs. All messages were painted in red and blue on large white backdrops.

I don’t know if John Bolton has ever visited the area around Rough-and-Ready Creek, but his latest end-run at the U.N. proposal on humanitarian relief, genocide, and terrorism indicates that he more than sympathizes with the residents. The White House and Bolton are conducting an all-out blitz on the empowerment initiatives in the U.N. These proposals are meant to strengthen international resolve on fundamental issues such as genocide and terrorism. Instead of picking and choosing where to act based on geopolitical significance, these new measures would require wealthier nations to stand and act together against the maladies of our time.

Yet let’s be honest. John Bolton wasn’t chosen by the Bush family to cooperate with Kofi Annan’s plans or provide insightful leadership in revising the U.N. charter. Instead, Bolton denounces plans for increased aid to poorer countries as a global tax and insists that any definition of terrorism cannot apply to state-sanctioned forces.. Bolton is essentially a walking monkey wrench, meant to undermine the current negotiations and disrupt any policy that the administration deems a threat to US unilateralism.

So take heart citizens of the Rough-and-Ready. Your voice has been heard in the highest offices of the country, and your views are being carried forth with rabid ferocity.