Will Someone Get This Guy a Muzzle?

After his several appearances in the past few weeks for analysis of the British-Iran hostage crisis, I think I prefer Former US Ambassador to the UN John Bolton in New York City than on TV. Not only has he been irrationally critical of Tony Blair’s handling of the hostages, calling Europeans the “weak link in this” but he has also issued stinging criticism of virtually every aspect of the Bush Administration’s foreign policy.

It’s numbing how only two years ago, President Bush fought vigorously with Congress to get Bolton’s confirmation as US Ambassador to the UN. Bush chipped away at his presidential legitimacy by appointing Bolton while Congress was at recess. In doing so, Bush facilitated the demise of alliances made with Republican House and Senate leaders.

So this is how Washington works. An estranged former UN Ambassador uses his former title to get around the talk-show circuit. At every chance, the former Ambassador bashes the choices made by his former employer and our current leader----Bolton’s speech at his current dwelling, the American Enterprise Institute, “I think [the North Korean deal] will inevitable fail. That day cannot come too soon in my view.”

He criticizes ally governments and their foreign policy decisions and explicitly points out success of foreign adversaries----in his article, “How Iran probed, found weakness and won a triumph,” in the Financial Times, UK published yesterday “Iran, sensing weakness, has every incentive to ratchet up its nuclear program, increase its support to Hamas, Hezbollah and others and even perpetrate even more serious terrorism in Iraq.”

And NOWHERE does he mention the work of himself as US Ambassador to the UN or his colleagues through the UN Security Council with both the nuclear programs of North Korea and Iran. This just says to me that he did not take his post as US Ambassador to the UN seriously, that he is NOT interested in diplomacy. Period. Thank God he is no longer our representative in the United Nations.

I agree with Huffington Post’s paralleling Bolton with former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who took the high road despite ideological differences with the administration. Even former Secretary of Defense, who some say was used as a scapegoat for the Administration’s unpopular foreign policy decisions in Iraq, has remained silent and respectful of the Administration.

Bolton has decided that it is much more profitable to join in the Bush bashing in American media than it is to bite your tongue and let the administration’s failures (or successes) speak for itself. Had his decision to be so vocal and critical of an administration he has intimate knowledge of been made only to expose the faults of the administration, than I would celebrate his frankness. However, I really don’t think Bolton is doing this for anyone else’s sake but his own. And quite frankly, he’s only rewarding President Ahmadenijad by giving Iran much more credibility, power and international prestige than it really does have.

John Bolton, please just shut up.