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This Week on
the Right
Bolton’s Listening Post
By Tom Barry
As Undersecretary of State for Arms Control, John Bolton didn’t
like what he heard from U.S.
intelligence officials. Not happy with the information provided by the State
Department and CIA, Bolton started listening to phone
conversations taped by the National Security Administration as his own source
of intelligence about countries targeted by the Bush administration for “regime
change.”
Gov. Bill Richardson, who served as UN ambassador during the
Clinton administration, is
concerned that Bolton, who is the Bush administration’s
controversial nominee for the UN post, may have been listening to his phone
conversations. During the Senate confirmation hearings last week, Bolton
admitted that he had requested NSA recordings “on a couple of occasions, maybe
a few more.” Later the State Department said that Bolton
had made ten such requests.
Despite rising pressure from Senate Democrats and the media,
the administration has refused to release any more information. Administration
stonewalling raised speculation that any disclosure of the actual number
of requests and the names involved—possibly including Richardson—may further
tarnish Bolton’s reputation, and sink the nomination.
Bolton obviously has a listening
problem. Even after the CIA and State department officials told Bolton
that Syria
didn’t have a nuclear weapons program and that Cuba
didn’t have a bioweapons program, Bolton publicly
targeted the two nations for “regime change” because of their alleged weapons
of mass destruction. Instead of being reprimanded for spreading false
intelligence, President Bush has vigorously defended Bolton.
That’s no surprise, given that the White House invaded Iraq
based on cooked-up, politicized intelligence about Iraq’s
WMDs—which were never found.
In the view of Bolton and the leading voices calling for a
U.S. policy of “regime change” in North Korea, such as the American Enterprise
Institute and the Project for the New American Century—two neoconservative
institutes where Bolton formerly had leadership positions—diplomacy and
dialogue only give Kim Jong Il more time to build his nuclear arsenal.
Bolton’s confrontational
posture—combined with the administration’s quickening plans to attack Iraq—led
North Korea to
pull out of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, announce that it would resume
developing nuclear weapons, and to demand that UN inspectors leave the country.
Given that the Bush administration had targeted it as part of the “axis of
evil” along with Iraq
and Iran, North
Korea decided that creating a nuclear
deterrence was its best defense against a “preventive war” waged by the Bush
administration.
Before they
precipitate more unnecessary wars, it’s time that ideologues like Bolton listen to what wiser voices are
saying. But rather than listening in on private conversations of prominent
Americans, such as Bill Richardson, Bolton would do better to ask his advice.
After all, Richardson has successfully negotiated several
agreements with the North Koreans when he was a MA congressional
representative, and proved his mettle as UN ambassador in helping arrange the
successful framework agreement with North Korea. But it’s not just the famous
“green chile diplomacy” of Richardson that should be the model for Bolton and this administration.
Surely, a
policy of “constructive engagement” that encourages North Korean diplomats to
come to Santa Fe to talk to nonideological figures like Richardson is better than having the two
nuclear powers engage in a battle of insults. Bolton has repeatedly called for the
overthrow of the “tyrannical dictator” and North Koreans have responded saying
that they would never engage in talks with “such human scum” as Bolton. Having the North Korea delegation come to New Mexico, and come out of Santa Fe shops wearing cowboy hats, sporting
bolo ties, and strutting in cowboy boots, pointed to virtues of constructive
engagement.
Fortunately,
senators of both parties are no longer listening passively to the hyped
intelligence assessments provided by Bolton and other hardliners. They would do better to
listen to diplomats with successful track records like Richardson, and to South
Korea’s advice that diplomacy and quid pro quo agreements with North Korea is
the best and indeed the only way to deescalating the explosive tensions in East
Asia. Or even start listening to what State Department and CIA experts say
about WMD capacities—or lack of them—of countries on Bolton’s list of targeted
nations.
But that
may be asking too much. Former Senator Jesse Helms once called Bolton “the kind of man I would want to
stand with at Armageddon.” Problem is that ideologues like Bolton look forward to Armageddon as a
test of U.S. military power and purpose, and in
the belief that Armageddon is a battle that can be won—another Iraq-like
“cakewalk.”
*Bad Neighbor of the Week*
In the field of world policy I would dedicate this nation
to the policy of the good neighbor -the neighbor who resolutely respects
himself and, because he does so, respects the right of others."
-President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Inaugural Address, March 4, 1933
Inspired by Franklin D. Roosevelt's vision of international relations guided by
"mutual respect" and cooperation, the IRC's Global Good Neighbor
Initiative is initiating a process of reclaiming this legacy by
promoting dialogue and action aimed at forging a new animating vision for
foreign policy in our time.
Each week Right Web News will profile an organization or
individual that embodies the Bad Neighbor policy of the U.S.
government in recent years. First up is J.D. Crouch, who comes to the
administration from the Christian Right and the Nuclear Warriors lobby.
Nuclear Enthusiast as Top
National Security Official
http://rightweb.irc-online.org/analysis/2005/0504crouch.php
J.D. Crouch, a virulent nationalist, enthusiast of nuclear
weapons, and Christian right adherent, has recently become the right-hand man
of National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley. A protégé of Paul Wolfowitz and
Richard Cheney, Crouch has ties with such militarist organizations as the
Center for Security Policy and the National Institute for Public Policy, as
well as having close connections with social conservatives through such groups
as the Ashbrook Center
for Public Affairs.
Typical of his extreme views, Crouch blamed the Columbine High massacre on
"30 years of liberal social policy that has put our children in day care,
taken God out of the schools, taken Mom out of the house, and banished Dad as
an authority figure from the family altogether."
Right Web Profile J.D.
Crouch II
Featured
Analysis
SMS—Liberal Arts It’s Not
Few schools put the lie to the conservative myth that academia is
controlled by liberals and leftists as well as Southwest Missouri State
University (SMS), particularly its Department of Defense and Strategic
Studies. Located in Springfield, Missouri,
SMS’s strategic studies department serves as a home away from home for an impressive
list of former government officials and hawkish defense policy ideologues.
Faculty members include: William Van
Cleave, a leading Cold Warrior in the 1970s and 1980s whose record includes
membership on the notorious Team B Strategic
Objectives Panel and the U.S. delegation to the START talks; J.D. Crouch, on
loan to the Bush administration where he currently serves as deputy national
security adviser; Keith
Payne, founder of the hawkish strategic affairs think tank, the National Institute for
Public Policy, and former chair of the Bush administration’s Deterrence Concepts
Advisory Panel; Henry Cooper, a
former head of the Strategic Defense Initiative and founder of the pro-missile
defense group High
Frontier; William
Graham, a former Reagan administration adviser whose record includes
membership on Donald
Rumsfeld’s Commission
on the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States and executive of
various defense contractors, including R&D Associates and Jaycor; and Charles
Kupperman, a former Lockheed executive and director of Empower America.
A brief perusal of the department’s web site suffices to get
a sense of its agenda. When you click over from the department’s
homepage—appropriately adorned with a large photo of a rippling American
flag—to its “Program Information” page, you are confronted with a landscape
shot of the Potomac with the Pentagon situated
prominently in the foreground. As the site claims, “While many program
graduates will go on to Ph.D. programs and academic work, it is anticipated
that the majority of Program graduates will begin their professional career in
government or in other defense policy oriented work.” Perhaps to facilitate
this goal, the department plans to move closer to the Beltway, to a new campus
in Fairfax, Virginia,
just outside Washington, D.C.
Right Web Profile SMS
Featured
Right Web Profiles
· Hawk and "Colonial Governor" All but chased out of Turkey
as a “persona non grata,” Eric Edelman is being promoted to defense
undersecretary for policy. Like many other top officials of the Bush
administration’s foreign policy team, Edelman began his government career in
the Reagan administration. Edelman served under Defense Secretary, now vice
president, Cheney during the administration of the president's father. At that
time he worked as part of a team headed by Paul Wolfowitz that was charged with
formulating a Defense Policy Guidance that would serve as the post-Cold War
framework for U.S.
military strategy. Vice President Cheney brought Edelman back under his wing as
Principal Deputy Assistant for National Security Affairs. As an assistant to
Cheney, he was part of the foreign policy network that hurriedly established
the "intelligence" rationales for the U.S.
invasion of Iraq.
Right Web Profile Eric
Edelman
· On Top of the World More than ten years ago Paul
Wolfowitz was the principal author of the strategy of preventive war to ensure U.S.
global supremacy. Now he is moving from the Pentagon to direct development
politics as World Bank president. This move has spurred a new round of
hand-wringing among some pundits about the undue influence of the
neoconservatives, who now seem poised to take their agenda to a whole new
playing field. Other observers, however, aren’t so sure about where Wolfowitz
falls on the ideological sliding scale, and it seems clear that World Bank
board members are not worried that its decisionmaking will be held hostage to
U.S. geopolitical interests--this despite some neocons’ hope that Wolfowitz
will be able to turn the Bank into a “useful tool of American statecraft,” as
one American Enterprise Institute scholar said.
Right Web Profile Paul Wolfowitz
Letters
From Our Readers
(Editors Note: We encourage feedback and comments, which can be
sent for publication through our feedback page, at: http://rightweb.irc-online.org/form_feedback.html.
Thank you.)
Re: Eugene Rostow
Quite excellent work you are doing. But while you have
forgotten a key figure in the making of an interventionist, neocon foreign
policy: Eugene Rostow (co founder of the reincarnation of the committee on the
present danger in 1976.)
- Salim Kerboua
Re: Grover Norquist
A few months ago I wrote you asking why Grover Norquist was
not on your right web list. Your answer that he was not a neo-con sent me on an
investigation of just what a neo-con is. After much reading, I've come to a much
better understand of not only what a neo-con is, but also of the unholy
tripartate that call themselves republicans today. I've come to se that the
three legs of alliance each have their own objectives, but at least pay lip
service to the other two. We have the religious right wanting to regulate
personal behavior, the libertarians (such as my old friend Grover) wanting to
reduce and eventually strangle the federal government, and the neo-cons want to
extend American hegomony around the world. This is an interesting coalition,
one that I feel will eventually fall victim to internal conflict. Thank you for
opening my mind. Prior to this, I grouped every right wing-nut as a neo-con.
- John Dadmun
Re: Wolfowitz on Top of the World (http://rightweb.irc-online.org/analysis/2005/0504wolfworld.php)
Why this puff piece on Wolfowitz? The man is a complete
hack, overblown as an intellectual.
And by the way, the WB together with the
IMF are despicable loan-shark organizations that
prey like blood-sucking leeches on the world's
non-European peoples. The WB is not about "alleviating
poverty"; rather it is a vile institution
set up by the West to harbour
individuals in disgusting sinecures where big-gutted,
pink-faced men get together regularly to
chomp on the best beef, suck on
the best French vins.
What exactly has the WB
done beyond keeping African and Latin
American nations in line at the
behest of Western neo-colonial hegemony? So what
else is new? Both institutions should
be just shut down and the its
idle functionaries sent packing. As long as
the Euro-American world decides who heads
these institutions and as long as there is
a huge disparity in currency values and
convertibilities the WB and IMF would
remain not much more than loan-sharking
agencies feeding on mesmerised victims.
- Dian Souare
Re: Bob Park
Suggest you add Bob Park, Chairman of ProEnglish and
Arizonans for Official English
- Tom Tracy
Re: John R. Bolton (http://www.irc-online.org/content/commentary/2005/0503bolton.php)
Highly useful and illuminating. You've pulled it all
together here. Bush and Rice's patronage of this vile individual says
everything we need to know about what they stand for.
- Robert P. Forbes
