In our haste to cover why Bolton is a terrible UN pick, many here (myself included) seemed to overlook the obvious complementary question...
...why the hell DID Bush pick Bolton out of a country full of anti-UN proselytizers, John Birch Society sypathizers and Stanford pseudo-realists (not that the nominee fits any/all of these)?
Well, let's take a peek at the Man Who Would Be King of a 28-Story United Nations Building:
Brooke Lierman at the Center for American Progress did a hell of a good job providing a rundown of Bolton's history prior to Bush II's reign, and Bolton's glaring, damn near criminal incompetence at State. I can't beat the Wiz:
http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=252671
And, lest we forget, wasn't there a little something about Bolton being a jackass to subordinates?
So we know that Bolton's an incompetent hardass (trolling Republicans: "incompetent" and "strong" are two very different concepts, so please stop linking them).
But that still doesn't explain WHY he's got the nomination. Someone like Stephen Krasner or Lee Hamilton seems like a more natural fit for a job like UN Ambassador. Hell, Zell Miller seems like a more natural fit than Bolton.
Is this possibly related to Bolton's unparalleled ability to get us out of international agreements? When he withdrew the US from the treaty creating the ICC, he called it "the happiest moment of my government service." Perhaps a withdrawal from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights? (Citizens for Global Solutions cites Bolton calling that agreement "mind-numbing" in 2000...http://www.globalsolutions.org/programs/intl_instit/bolton_facts.html)
Or maybe this is a thank you for "I'm with the Bush-Cheney team, and I'm here to stop the count." But that I doubt. Maybe I'm not giving Bush enough credit, but I doubt he'd have waited this long to give Bolton a prestige gig if it was a quid pro quo.
Or maybe, just maybe, Bush made the same mistake he did when picking a running mate: he asked Dick Cheney who he thought would be good for the job.
Last thought: at a Yale function on evening Bolton might have confessed that he wished he could be half as cool as Adlai Stevenson. What follows here is pure Bolton, trying to show off his finely honed "calling out Castro" skills, available from the State Dept. web site. It gets frighteningly ironic just after Syria:
http://www.state.gov/t/us/rm/9962.htm
"Syria has a combined total of several hundred Scud B, Scud C and SS-21 SRBMs, It is pursuing both solid- and liquid-propellant missile programs and relies extensively on foreign assistance in these endeavors. North Korean and Russian entities have been involved in aiding Syria's ballistic missile development. All of Syria's missiles are mobile and can reach much of Israel, Jordan, and Turkey from launch sites well within the country.
"In addition to Libya and Syria, there is a threat coming from another BWC signatory, and one that lies just 90 miles from the U.S. mainland -- namely, Cuba. This totalitarian state has long been a violator of human rights. The State Department said last year in its Annual Report on Human Rights Practices that 'the Government continued to violate systematically the fundamental civil and political rights of its citizens. Citizens do not have the right to change their government peacefully. Prisoners died in jail due to lack of medical care. Members of the security forces and prison officials continued to beat and otherwise abuse detainees and prisoners . . . The Government denied its citizens the freedoms of speech, press, assembly and association.'
"Havana has long provided safehaven for terrorists, earning it a place on the State Department's list of terrorist-sponsoring states. The country is known to be harboring terrorists from Colombia, Spain, and fugitives from the United States. We know that Cuba is collaborating with other state sponsors of terror...
"...Here is what we now know: The United States believes that Cuba has at least a limited offensive biological warfare research and development effort. Cuba has provided dual-use biotechnology to other rogue states. We are concerned that such technology could support BW programs in those states. We call on Cuba to cease all BW-applicable cooperation with rogue states and to fully comply with all of its obligations under the Biological Weapons Convention."
dKos community, Senator Voinovich wants to know and so do I: why the hell did Bush pick THIS guy?