Former Ambassador John BoltonFormer Ambassador to the UN John Bolton slammed Barack Obama and democrats for their policies of appeasement tonight on Hannity and Colmes:
Hannity and Colmes
May 19, 2008
(1 minute 30 seconds)
That about says it right there- The nails are complaining.
Ambassador Bolton wrote today in The Wall Street Journal about Obama's weak and flopping foreign policy:
President Bush's speech to Israel's Knesset, where he equated "negotiat[ing] with the terrorists and radicals" to "the false comfort of appeasement," drew harsh criticism from Barack Obama and other Democratic leaders. They apparently thought the president was talking about them, and perhaps he was.UPDATE: Caroline Glick also nailed it on the head:
Wittingly or not, the president may well have created a defining moment in the 2008 campaign. And Mr. Obama stepped right into the vortex by saying he was willing to debate John McCain on national security "any time, any place." Mr. McCain should accept that challenge today.
The Obama view of negotiations as the alpha and the omega of U.S. foreign policy highlights a fundamental conceptual divide between the major parties and their putative presidential nominees. This divide also opened in 2004, when John Kerry insisted that our foreign policy pass a "global test" to be considered legitimate...
...Negotiation is not a policy. It is a technique. Saying that one favors negotiation with, say, Iran, has no more intellectual content than saying one favors using a spoon. For what? Under what circumstances? With what objectives? On these specifics, Mr. Obama has been consistently sketchy.
...When the U.S. negotiates with "terrorists and radicals," it gives them legitimacy, a precious and tangible political asset. Thus, even Mr. Obama criticized former President Jimmy Carter for his recent meetings with Hamas leaders. Meeting with leaders of state sponsors of terrorism such as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or Kim Jong Il is also a mistake. State sponsors use others as surrogates, but they are just as much terrorists as those who actually carry out the dastardly acts. Legitimacy and international acceptability are qualities terrorists crave, and should therefore not be conferred casually, if at all.
OBAMA'S RESPONSE to Bush's speech was an effective acknowledgement that appeasing Iran and other terror sponsors is a defining feature of his campaign and of his political persona. As far as he is concerned, an attack against appeasement is an attack against Obama.Ouch!
Four words:
ReplyDeleteBolton.for.Vice.President.
I don't care who his Donk opponent would be in a VP debate: Bolton would have him (or her) in full-nelson verbal headlock within five minutes of the opening bell.
I second the motion. What do we have to do to get it voted on?
ReplyDeleteI third the motion.
ReplyDeleteThe best quote from the article:
ReplyDeleteAt first glance, the idea of sitting down with adversaries seems hard to quarrel with. In our daily lives, we meet with competitors, opponents and unpleasant people all the time. Mr. Obama hopes to characterize the debate about international negotiations as one between his reasonableness and the hard-line attitude of a group of unilateralist GOP cowboys.
The real debate is radically different. On one side are those who believe that negotiations should be used to resolve international disputes 99% of the time. That is where I am, and where I think Mr. McCain is. On the other side are those like Mr. Obama, who apparently want to use negotiations 100% of the time. It is the 100%-ers who suffer from an obsession that is naïve and dangerous.
Myself, I'd prefer him as Secretary of State.
I betcha, even though Fred Thompson has said that he isn't interested in being vice president, that McCain picks Thompson and Thompson accepts.
ReplyDeleteI heart Bolton. He's a deadly walrus.
ReplyDeleteIt's that puerile "war is not the answer" bumper sticker, writ large and possibly (shudder) in charge of foreign policy. How anyone can aspire to the highest levels of government and not understand that a quiver with one arrow tends to get empty pretty fast, I'll never understand. Somebody tell me again why Obama (and Clinton, for that matter) are so frickin' great?
ReplyDeleteSomebody tell me again why Obama (and Clinton, for that matter) are so frickin' great?
ReplyDeleteTo paraphrase Wretchard over at Belmont Club: "they will make it all go away". No more talk about a nuclear 9-11, radical Islam, etc. The Left can't handle this new reality, they need another Vacation from History
What I don't get is how the Left can rely so heavily on the soft power of diplomacy, while simultaneously sabatoging the use of force that backs that diplomacy up.
ReplyDeleteDoes Obama really think we'll have a position to negotiate from if Iran sees us as fleeing Iraq?
" ... Legitimacy and international acceptability are qualities terrorists crave, and should therefore not be conferred casually, if at all. ..."
ReplyDeleteBut for Obama and his ilk, the US is just as much a "terrorist" state sponsor as is Iran, Syria, Libya, North Korea, et al.
For this reason alone, he should not be President.
I've been listening hard to what Barack Obama has had to say on this point. His words suggest to me that he has had no idea of how multilevel US diplomacy actually is, and also no idea of the facts surrounding our recent, lower-level and other-topic discussions with Iran, or how and why they terminated. Nor is he aware of the nice package of positive incentives that we left on the table.
ReplyDeleteIn short, he appears to have swallowed the lies in the party's talking points. That's the danger of having false talking points -- they make your candidate look stupid if he uses them.
Valerie
Mr. Bolton would certainly make a great Sec of State or VP.
ReplyDeleteMr. Obama’s campaign brings up that other president’s have negotiated with our enemies. They neglected to mention one situation that almost resulted in nuclear war. Anyone old enough, as I, to remember what we went though during the Cuban Missile Crisis and the causes of that event can imagine similar errors from BHO due to his lack of experience and our present enemies lack of knowledge of our system of government; apparently much less knowledge than that of the Soviets.
Perceptions, unfortunately, are important and in the information age the media provides the ammunition. Mr. Obama, as was Mr. Kennedy, is a likeable, personable individual and one who inspires people but Mr. Obama hasn’t had his mantel tested politically or in a leadership position such as a CEO. America has already experienced, in President Kennedy, the dangers of having a President , even one surrounded by the “best and brightest” of the times, who inspired but was young and had limited political and international experience. President Kennedy was a war hero, unlike Mr. Obama who has never even served, yet that apparently didn’t register with the Soviets. But because of JFK’s fate we tend to forget about his failures in our highest office.
When he and America were challenged in Cuba, those who noticed, saw the cause; the Bay of Pigs disaster, the failure to challenge the building of the Berlin Wall and Mr. Khrushchev’s sizing up of him during their one-on-one meeting that lacked sufficient planning. JFK was eager to engage our adversaries in negotiations but the ground work was obviously not properly laid. Those failures cumulatively persuaded the Soviets to place nuclear tipped missiles in Cuba and the result was us close to entering into a nuclear war. The meeting notes from the 1961 Kennedy-Khrushchev summit meeting in Vienna give a sense that Kennedy's Cuba language was vague enough to have contributed to Mr. Khrushchev's belief that he could get away with putting missiles on the island.
While Mr. Kennedy was considered inexperienced by many, at least he had considerably more congressional experience than Mr. Obama, his father was a diplomat so he was exposed to that part of government, and had lived In Great Britain as a young man during a time of conflict and saw the effects of war as a PT boat captain. Mr. Obama is a lightweight compared to the young and inexperienced JFK.
I would prefer not to experience that type of situation again; this time it could easily be with Iran or their surrogates, who are much less rational and reasonable adversaries who have shown to be caught up many times in suicidal religious zealotry.
Obama's attitude seems to suggest he believes in his own greatness. Basically, he seems to think that "If I could only sit down with them so they could see how wonderful I am, then all of these disputes could be worked out in no time."
ReplyDeleteAt least that's the impression I'm getting of Obama.
One wonders if Obama knows squat about history. One wonders if he's ever seen that video of Hitler doing his little jig after meeting with Chamberlin. England tried very hard to avoid WWII but in doing so they wasted time and they wasted lives. Those who don't know history...
ReplyDeleteBolton has been and will continue to be a falied, desperate voice. He has no mandate, no support and zero backing from anyone but the extreme right wingnuts. He's a dinosaur, let him amble back to the tarpits.
ReplyDeleteanon @7:04 is further proof of leftist No-think.
ReplyDeleteMuch as I would like to see Fred Thompson on a national ticket -- I voted for him on Super Tuesday -- I don't think a McCain-Thompson ticket is a good idea. Having one septuagenarian on the ticket is risky; having two is just asking for trouble.
ReplyDeleteBut I'd be delighted with a McCain-Bolton ticket. McCain-Romney would likewise be very interesting indeed, if the two gentlemen can learn to work together.
While I'm at it, let me put in another request. We're pretty much guaranteed that our next President will be a Senator, i.e. someone without actual governing experience. (Yes, Sen. McCain was a Naval Captain, which puts him head-and-shoulders above Sens. Clinton and Obama... still.)
So -- could we have a Republican vice-presidential nominee with some executive experience, please?
respectfully,
Daniel in Brookline