Posted on 11/10/2007 7:09:40 PM PST by Son House
A courageous defender of America takes you behind the scenes at the UN and the State Department -- during his fiercest battles Surrender Is Not an Option by John Bolton
Candid, plain-spoken, and indomitably courageous, John Bolton served for sixteen tumultuous months as our Ambassador to the United Nations. While there he engaged in furious battles with weapons-of-mass-destruction proliferators, terrorists, Islamic supremacists, and rogue states such as Iran and North Korea -- all of which he carried through with verve, eloquence, and unapologetic patriotism. Now, in Surrender Is Not an Option: Defending America at the United Nations and Abroad, John Bolton tells the whole story. Here the straight-talking former Ambassador takes you behind the scenes at the UN and the State Department -- and reveals for the first time ever why his efforts to defend American interests and reform the UN resulted in so much controversy.
In this revealing and often blunt memoir, Bolton recounts his 2005 appointment as Ambassador to the United Nations, and the headline-grabbing confirmation battle that followed -- resulting finally in his recess appointment and sixteen-month tenure at the UN. Bolton here offers piercing and never-before-revealed insights into international crises -- many of which are still simmering, such as North Korea's nuclear test, Iran's fanatical pursuit of nuclear weapons, the Muslim-on-Muslim genocide in Darfur, the month-long negotiation that in the summer of 2006 produced the controversial end of hostilities between Israel and the terrorist group Hizballah, and more.
Bolton is frank throughout Surrender Is Not an Option in detailing both his successes and his failures. He explains why it is so difficult to mount an effective response in the UN against those who are bent on combating the United States and sowing havoc in the world, exposing the operational inadequacies that hinder the UN's effectiveness in international diplomacy. Bolton exposes the UN's deeply ingrained biases against Israel and the United States, and criticizes in no uncertain terms the bureaucratic inertia and timidity in the State Department -- which has done so much to undermine presidential policy. He also details how the U.S. can once again lead the way to a realistic and workable global security arrangement for the twenty-first century, and identifies the next generation of threats that our children will face.
This book is at once both a fascinating career retrospective from one of the most outstanding statesmen on the scene today, and a clear-sighted prescription for the foreign policy steps we must take now in order to preserve American sovereignty and strength.
Insights, revelations, and prescriptions from a great defender of America:
* How the UN was sidelined by the Cold War, and never regained its footing -- and how it has continued to be a sounding board for anti-Western and anti-American propaganda even after the demise of the Soviet Union
* Why North Korea will never give up its nuclear weapons voluntarily, and why it is only a matter of time before their cheating is exposed
* Darfur: why Sudan steadfastly refused a UN peacekeeping force, despite Secretary General Kofi Annan's rosy predictions to the contrary
* How the bias toward Israel pervades the UN at the highest levels -- and how Kofi Annan wouldn't even answer Bolton's probing questions about it
* How Bolton tried to remove UN funding from the Palestinian Authority's Hamas government, but ran into enormous opposition from the UN bureaucracy and Europe
* Why the Bush Administration was not able to pursue its plan to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons
* How Bolton went after North Korea at the UN -- and why he had to do it without much help from the State Department
* Condoleeza Rice: her surprising role in watering down beyond all effectiveness attempts to call upon the various Palestinian factions to renounce violence
* How the UN's new Human Rights Council performed just as badly or worse than the original -- as Bolton predicted
* How Kofi Annan undercut the Bush Administration diplomatically and proved consistently unhelpful in Iraq, both before and during the war
* How China has both improved and slipped backward during the Bush Administration -- improving in large part because of the effective use of sanctions against some of its major trading companies
* The American Left's strategy: building international support for their proposals, so as to leave the United States isolated in the world
* Iran: why it will never voluntarily give up its nuclear program, and why a policy based on the contrary assumption is both delusional and dangerous -- and is the road to a Nuclear Holocaust
* The UN's record: why it is so uniformly disappointing, and what can be done about it now
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,310421,00.html
Bolton Book: Powell Wanted to Offer ‘Carrots’ to Iran Over Nuke Program
“The Europeans had a long list of them — trade and investment options, technology,” Bolton said. “The list of carrots was always longer than the list of sticks.”
Well just wait till Clinton gets her stick out, really works well on Bill./sarc
Thanks for this post. It’s disgraceful that John Bolton could not continue as our rep to the UN.
http://www.newsmax.com/insidecover/bolton_un_return/2007/11/10/48398.html
Bolton Blasts U.N. at U.N.
Now free from his White House shackles, Bolton pulled no punches as he lectured reporters.
When asked about the chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency (the U.N. atomic watchdog) , Mohamed ElBaradei, who has been actively trying to head off U.S. moves to impose new sanctions on Iran for its refusal to halt its atomic “research” program Bolton said:
“He is an apologist for Iran. His actions have been contrary to Security Council resolutions. He may not think he is a secular Pope, but he thinks he is a secular cardinal who is over and above the member governments. This is a fundamental perversion of the way the IAEA ought to work. I think he is discrediting the IAEA and harming a very important UN agency.”
On the potential of U.S. military strike on Iran:
“I always used to say when the President said it was unacceptable for Iran to have nuclear weapons that he was a man of his word. When he said unacceptable, I thought what he meant was unacceptable. What that means is that you have to use military force if there is no other option.”
While the book has drawn mixed reviews inside the U.N., (the U.N. book store refuses to carry it), outside the world body, critiques seem to fall along partisan lines, republicans generally like it, democrats have called it a “waste of time.”
While the book has drawn mixed reviews inside the U.N., (the U.N. book store refuses to carry it), outside the world body, critiques seem to fall along partisan lines, republicans generally like it, democrats have called it a “waste of time.”
Yes, I hope his book is #1, as it should be soon.
Bolton is a great man. We need more like in government but we aren’t likely to get them. Ardent defenders of US interests aren’t popular in Washington. You have too many of the types who do not know how to delineate between what an enemy says and what the truth is. The left has a horrible fault of believing that because someone feels or thinks something that it is some how valid of its own accord whether the thought or feeling is based on truth or not. So many of the lefts pet lawsuits are based upon the flawed premises of thought crime.
Most of it is colored by infantile hatred of the US so it makes them even more prone to accept ignorant and dangerous premises. They pride themselves in taking the inconvenient nonintuitive position and then hold that up as an example of how intelligent they are when in reality it demonstrates nothing more than a high form of intellectual vanity. They choose those positions not because of any deep intellect but because their thoughts flow through the basic geography of their fairly warped minds.
SHOW: FOX HANNITY & CO 9:00 PM EST
November 7, 2007 Wednesday
110704cb.253
NEWS; Domestic
1430 words
Former U.N. Ambassador: Surrender Not an Option
Sean Hannity, Alan Colmes
John Bolton
BOLTON: Well, I think there’s a cultural problem at the State Department that’s been developing for decades. And it does not lead to effective advocacy on behalf of the United States. It’s something we really need to correct. And I hope the book explains it.
A senior career official at State used to say, “If the American people knew how we conducted foreign policy they’d be after us with pitchforks.”
HANNITY: Well, there really — one of the things you and I have discussed before is the United States pays, what, 20-some odd percent of the bill of the United Nations.
BOLTON: Right.
HANNITY: We pay 27 percent of peacekeeping costs.
BOLTON: Right.
HANNITY: And yet, this is — you even discuss, this is a — a body has been traditionally anti-American. And in many ways, I would argue, anti-Semitic.
BOLTON: Right. Very much so. And I think one of the reasons is that entitlement mentality that develops in New York because they know they’re going to get 22 percent of the budget reduces our influence. I think we should move to voluntary contributions, where the U.S. pays for what it wants and insists that it gets what it pays for.
............
And the thought and the idea of the liberal Democrats that we would act militarily is just off the table. Is this modern day appeasement? Is this, you know, appeasement in our time, chamberlain surrender, in your mind?
BOLTON: I think it’s very close to it. And this is a classic case, those two countries, Iran and North Korea, where the State Department can’t think of anything else to do. And why State is so hostile to Republican administrations. That’s why this is a problem we have to correct.
But on Iraq and North Korea, we are kidding ourselves if we think either of those countries will ever voluntarily give up nuclear weapons.
....
BOLTON: Let me ask you a question. Do you think Kim Jong-Il will follow through this time on his commitment to give up nuclear weapons?
COLMES: Of course, I can’t answer that question. I don’t know.
BOLTON: The way he hasn’t — the way he hasn’t followed through on his previous four commitments to give up nuclear weapons. That’s why this Israeli raid on September the 6th into Syria is so important. The administration is sitting on the information. It’s causing a lot of discontent among Republicans.
We need to know whether North Korea was cloning part of its nuclear facility with the Syrians, because that would show they’ve been violating the February agreement.
Monday morning Bolton bump.
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