There is much to be said in honor of Jeane Kirkpatrick, who died Thursday night at the age of 80. But most immediately, it is worth revisiting the words of Kirkpatrick herself, who at the height of her game spoke with a clarity that has lately gone missing in Washington. The following lines are from the close of “Dictatorships and Double Standards,” her famous essay published in Commentary magazine in 1979, as Soviet-backed “popular liberation” was heading for its highwater mark around the globe. This was the article that brought Jeane Kirkpatrick to the attention of President Reagan — who in 1981 sent her as his ambassador to the UN:
“Groups which define themselves as enemies should be treated as enemies … a posture of continuous self-abasement and apology vis-a-vis the Third World is neither morally necessary nor politically appropriate. Nor is it necessary to support vocal enemies of the United States because they invoke the rhetoric of popular liberation. It is not even necessary or appropriate for our leaders to forswear unilaterally the use of military force to counter military force. Liberal idealism need not be identical with masochism, and need not be incompatible with the defense of freedom and the national interest.”
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Note: Here is a brief statement delivered to the press today by someone who in the late 1990s had an office next to Jeane Kirkpatrick’s, at the American Enterprise Institute; someone who has been the only U.S. ambassador to the UN in 20 years to rival Kirkpatrick’s courage and vision in standing up for our country’s interests — John Bolton:
Ambassador Bolton: I just wanted to say a few words about the death of Jeane Kirkpatrick. She was a great American. She was a great Ambassador of the United States here. She never forgot who she was representing. She was a friend and colleague of many people at AEI, at Georgetown University, in the diplomatic community. She was a great scholar. She was one of the most outstanding advocates of American foreign policy in our history. When I was at AEI in the late nineties, for most of that time our offices were right next to each other, and I benefited very greatly. It really is very sad for America. But she will be — she will be greatly missed.
More on Ambassador John Bolton’s time at the UN — a Gulliver dispatched to Lilliput — in my column today for the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Today, while Jim Baker and Lee Hamilton of the Iraq Study Group were expounding to the whole wide world their detailed plan for the surrender of the United States, Sen. Rick Santorum, who last month lost his seat, was delivering a bracing farewell to a near-empty Senate chamber. If this were all historical fiction, or maybe a movie starring Jimmy Stewart, that contrast between the myopic pedants and the young visionary might be a nice touch. But as reality, it is chilling. The day will come when we will re-read Santorum’s words, and wish our leaders had listened.
Invoking some highly pertinent lines from Winston Churchill, Santorum titled his speech “The Gathering Storm of the 21st Century.” He warned that we will not win this war against Islamic fascism by taking tea — a la Iraq Study Group — with Assad and Ahmadinejad. He argued that we must understand and confront the well-organized and widening web of threats arrayed against us, its spokes now reaching from North Korea to Venezuela; and that central to victory is confronting the government of Iran — which has been at war with us since its totalitarian Islamic revolution of 1979.
Santorum’s speech was carried live on C-Span 2, and if a video link becomes available, I will post it. Here’s the transcript. And here are a few excerpts:
Santorum warned that “Our troops in Iraq are being killed by Iranian weapons today, paid for with Iranian money, smuggled into Iraq by Iranian logistics, and utilized by Iranian-trained terrorists… Iran is the centerpiece in the assault against us and other countries in the civilized world.” He noted, accurately enough, that initially in Iraq things were going pretty well, “and then after a year or so, really started to turn south.” Why? Because “Immediately after we were there, the Iranians were scared to death of us and dared not play in that sandbox. But they quickly surmised that we were not serious, that we were not going to confront this evil, and so they began what we now see.”
“… we should not have entered into any negotiations in spite of the entreaties of Europe with this evil regime in Iran. We should confront them and only confront them. If we want the support of the people of Iran, we have to earn it with the integrity of our mission, and we are not doing that.”
“The Islamic fascists understand us better than we understand them… They need not look long to see how quickly America tires of confrontation and conflict and death. And so they plan. And more importantly, they kill. Every day. And it’s reported here every day. And support for this war goes down every day… ”
He recalled how the fascist threat grew in Europe in the 1930s, unchecked, until Britain stood alone. “This is the hour that we need leadership, Churchillian leadership… I ask my colleagues to stand and make this America’s finest hour. I regret that the new Secretary of Defense is not up to the task.”
News Flash, from the same UN where Kofi Annan’s team can barely contain its glee over the departure of John Bolton. This concerns that perennial love-interest of the UN bureaucracy — money — and one of Bolton’s foes in the Secretariat, Annan’s deputy, a.k.a. George Soros’s tenant, Mark Malloch Brown. Thanks to persistent questioning by Matthew Russell Lee of the Inner City Press, we now learn that two years ago, while heading the UN Development Program, Malloch Brown launched a project in which a historian was hired by the UNDP to produce a book, recently published, that is basically a paean to the UNDP: “The United Nations Development Programme: A Better Way?”
Total cost, out of funds one might have supposed the UNDP was spending on helping the poor? $567,000, which included $252,000 paid to the author, Wellesley College professor Craig Murphy; $91,559 for research and editing, and $55,452 paid by the UNDP to buy copies of the book from the publisher. You can read the rest of Matthew’s eye-opening story here, and if you scroll down from that item, he’s got plenty more about the hijinks of the UNDP — which for reasons not entirely clear, though no doubt Craig Murphy could illuminate them for us, is widely regarded as one of the UN’s better operations. If you have an appetite after that for even more UN-alia, here’s a link to an excellent story by my sometime co-author at Fox News, George Russell, on yet more odd doings, in another part of the UN system, UNDESA, including a short-term consultancy that brought in a $118,000 fee for the consultant (this on top of the scandal of missing millions, in which UNDESA is already embroiled).
A radio host just asked me if John Bolton has been “brusque.” No, not that I have observed. Rather, as far as the constraints of his office allowed, Bolton as U.S. ambassador to the UN has been honest. That may be a trait prized by the American people, but in the high-falutin’ circles of the UN, the U.S. State Department, and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, integrity is about as welcome as the Creature from the Black Lagoon. This is a crowd that would have answered George Washington’s confession about cutting down the cherry tree by banning him forever from public office.
Meanwhile, this same diplomatic crew, with Kofi Annan’s limo cruising in the vanguard (Kofi never did tell us what happened to that Mercedes, nor has he apologized for presiding over the biggest scam in the history of relief), sees no problem in sitting down to “talk” with the thugs who rule Syria and Iran. They may be tyrants, killers and liars, they may be sponsoring terrorists and threatening genocide, but hey, in diplomatic circles that’s OK. At least by lights of current global diplomacy, they’re not brusque.
Cold comfort indeed, but the upside of John Bolton resigning as ambassador to the UN is that the UN does not deserve to be dignified by ambassadors of the stature of John Bolton. His presence there endowed the place with a seriousness it has not earned. Bolton has been valiant in his efforts to clean up UN corruption and malfeasance, and follow UN procedure in dealing with such threats as a nuclear North Korea, a Hezbollah bid to take over Lebanon, and the nuclearization of Hezbollah’s terror-masters in Iran. But it has been like watching one man trying to move a tsunami of mud.
I’m reminded here of an episode from the historical novels of Robert Graves about the life of the Roman Emperor, Claudius, who tried to reform the empire. Toward the end, as Graves interprets it, Claudius concludes that despite his best efforts, Rome cannot be redeemed. Is too far gone in autocratic decay. Claudius figures that before things have any chance of getting better, they must get even worse. So, he lets the throne pass to Nero. Rome burns.
The immediate obstacle to Bolton’s confirmation was the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. But the larger problem is that the UN is a place where straight-shooters, especially anyone who unabashedly stands up for the interests of the Free World — especially the interests of America — will be undermined and pilloried.
The big question now is whether President Bush will understand the lesson of sending Bolton to Turtle Bay, and recognize the folly of trying to work in good faith through the UN. Founded with the aim of promoting peace, the UN is a collective, which predictably enough has morphed into a machine for promoting and expanding itself — captive of special interests ranging from the left-wing of American politics, to the corrupt bureaucrats within its own ranks, to the dictators of places such as China and the Middle East. Something to consider: The U.S. pays some $420 million per year in dues to the UN, but then lavishes close to another $5 billion in “voluntary” contributions on UN operations — some of them profoundly anti-American in leadership and intent. If Bush can’t have his chosen ambassador on hand to keep an eye on such stuff, why keep the optional billions flowing?
At a time of rising threats, the U.S. Mission to the United Nations now resides in limbo, led by an ambassador who has turned in the best performance since Jeane Kirkpatrick — and who, for his pains, now seems all but certain to be gone when the Senate adjourns, possibly within about a week.
The cold comfort may be that the UN is an institution so bent that no lone ambassador, however decent, diligent and dilomatically skilled (the Heritage Foundation has assembled a list of testimonials ), can do much to set it straight. But as far as it matters at all to have U.S. interests well-represented there, the fate of Ambassador John Bolton serves by now as shorthand for a foreign policy turning to mush. It is passing strange that in a time of rising threats on many sides, we now have Condoleezza Rice’s State Department eagerly rolling over to “talk” with Syria and Iran; President Bush preparing to accept dog-eared advice from the Iraq Study Group; and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, courtesy of Rhode Island’s swing vote Senator-in-a-snit Lincoln Chafee, busy smothering for a second time the nomination of a diplomat who acts on the principle that he is serving not the interests of a blinkered and paper-pushing Washington bureaucracy, but of the American people.
