Beinart on Bolton
washingtonpost.com: Wrong Man for This U.N.
Moynihan and Kirkpatrick were effective because their oppositional styles suited the time -- a time when there was little the United States could do at the United Nations other than oppose. Today the United States has an opportunity to lead. And by choosing Bolton, the Bush administration may be squandering it.
Dead on ... unfortunately, as anyone who recalls the post-9/11 world we lived in, this administration is all-too-well-known for squandering opportunities to unite, instead seeking out methods to divide.
What's amazing, however, is that by making the favorable comparisons to Kirkpatrick and Moynihan, George Bush seems to conclude that 9/11 really hasn't changed anything after all.
The more I read from Beinart on foreign policy the more I like the guy. I do miss Daniel Patrick Moynihan. I found him quite an inspiration during his time as U.S. Ambassador to the UN. I liked how he stood up to corrupt UN bureaucrats and called on them to remain faithful to the UN's more noble traditions and lambasted leftist and rightist dictators alike. When Moynihan became a Senator, I hoped that he would eventually run for the White House, but I could not imagine anybody with his eccentric genius and unusual upper crust, anglicized accent being elected President. (Note: The accent was especially unusual because Moynihan was a product of Hell's Kitchen, alhough he eventually went to the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and the London School of Economics and became a famed Harvard professor.) For a short while, Moynihan and his friend Scoop Jackson were the remaining hopes of the last of the Cold War Liberals. I also miss the days when Kirkpatrick was still a Cold War Liberal Democrat and a protege of Hubert Humphrey and Henry M. Jackon, as opposed to an ultra-conservative Republican. Kirkpatrick's condemnation of the "Blame America First," San Francisco Democrats was especially injurious to the Democratic Party of the 1980s, because the American people sensed it had an element of truth. Both Moynihan and Kirkpatrick were vastly superior to the bombastic and incendiary Bolton.
The more I read from Beinart on foreign policy the more I like the guy. I do miss Daniel Patrick Moynihan. I found him quite an inspiration during his time as U.S. Ambassador to the UN. I liked how he stood up to corrupt UN bureaucrats and called on them to remain faithful to the UN's more noble traditions and lambasted leftist and rightist dictators alike. When Moynihan became a Senator, I hoped that he would eventually run for the White House, but I could not imagine anybody with his eccentric genius and unusual upper crust, anglicized accent being elected President. (Note: The accent was especially unusual because Moynihan was a product of Hell's Kitchen, alhough he eventually went to the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and the London School of Economics and became a famed Harvard professor.) For a short while, Moynihan and his friend Scoop Jackson were the remaining hopes of the last of the Cold War Liberals. I also miss the days when Kirkpatrick was still a Cold War Liberal Democrat and a protege of Hubert Humphrey and Henry M. Jackon, as opposed to an ultra-conservative Republican. Kirkpatrick's condemnation of the "Blame America First," San Francisco Democrats was especially injurious to the Democratic Party of the 1980s, because the American people sensed it had an element of truth. Both Moynihan and Kirkpatrick were vastly superior to the bombastic and incendiary Bolton.