A Contrast

Loudly, With a Big Stick
By DAVID BROOKS
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Published: April 14, 2005 http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/14/opinion/14brooks.html

Disaster, Not Diplomacy
By Richard Cohen
Thursday, April 14, 2005; Page A27 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A51669-2005Apr13.html

I've posted both of these at the Guerrilla Campaign site together. And my response to Mr Brooks is below.

In the first column, Brooks, rather ineffectually I think, takes the position that bolton would be a good choice for our ambassador to the UN. It seems, though, that it's his disdain for the UN that makes him the right person. Since it seems to match Brooks' disdain.

In the second, Mr Cohen argues that bolton would be a disaster for the people of the US and the world, if he were to be confirmed.

"...But there are things that the United States will want done at the United Nations -- and Bolton is the wrong guy to get them done. After all, once an ambassador is instructed as to a policy or personnel issue, it is up to him or her to implement it. That means constructing the argument, persuading opponents, flattering friends. It means, in short, diplomacy..."

But, you can make up your own minds.

My response to Mr Brooks:

---

Apr 14, 2005
Mr Brooks,

I’m having trouble figuring out if you were intellectually dishonest, or just intellectually lazy. Either way, your column today, Loudly, With a Big Stick, is wrong. Apparently, you don’t care for the UN either. Let’s just look at these paragraphs;

"… John Bolton is just the guy to explain why this vaporous global-governance notion is a dangerous illusion, and that we Americans, like most other peoples, will never accept it.

We'll never accept it, first, because it is undemocratic. It is impossible to set up legitimate global authorities because there is no global democracy, no sense of common peoplehood and trust. So multilateral organizations can never look like legislatures, with open debate, up or down votes and the losers accepting majority decisions.

Instead, they look like meetings of unelected elites, of technocrats who make decisions in secret and who rely upon intentionally impenetrable language, who settle differences through arcane fudges. Americans, like most peoples, will never surrender even a bit of their national democracy for the sake of multilateral technocracy.

Second, we will never accept global governance because it inevitably devolves into corruption. The panoply of U.N. scandals flows from a single source: the lack of democratic accountability. These supranational organizations exist in their own insular, self-indulgent aerie.

We will never accept global governance, third, because we love our Constitution and will never grant any other law supremacy over it. Like most peoples (Europeans are the exception), we will never allow transnational organizations to overrule our own laws, regulations and precedents. We think our Constitution is superior to the sloppy authority granted to, say, the International Criminal Court…."

I know you’re intelligent, so I guess you just forgot about the World Trade Organization (WTO). You have forgotten that it has the power to overturn any law that will threaten the present or future profits of corporations. One example: the duly elected legislators of California passed, and the duly elected governor signed, a bill requiring the removal of MBTE from gasoline sold in their state. This was decided upon openly, and democratically, when it was found to be polluting the state’s ground water. The WTO court, which holds its proceedings in secret, ruled against the state, and ruled the Canadian company that produces that substance to be reimbursed for the loss of its future profits. The consequence of this is an economic weapon to be used to overturn, or stop the passage of, any law in any state of our country, and any country in the world.

Nobody elected the members of the WTO, and they are unaccountable to any of the world’s peoples. So, "…Instead, they look like meetings of unelected elites, of technocrats who make decisions in secret and who rely upon intentionally impenetrable language …"

Is this the kind of world you’re advocating? If you would rather have a world dictatorship, you could be honest about it, and disclose this fact to your readers.

As for your advocation of Mr Bolton to be the ambassador to the UN, again, you are misguided. The US has never been more universally hated than it is right now. The Bush administration is spending millions in PR campaigns to try to improve our image abroad. What is needed at the UN, more than anywhere else at this time, is a diplomat, not an angry pit bull, and that is a close proximity to Mr Bolton.

You say you don’t like his management style. Sir, I have to tell you that a person’s management style is a direct reflection of the person’s self. I’ve read his writings, and his speeches, and the man is the wrong person to be representing us in front of the world.

You may wish to read Mr Cohen’s column in the Washington Post today, Disaster, Not Diplomacy
, at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A51669-2005Apr13.html. He makes the case more eloquently than I can.

And to bring your illogic to a full circle; "…But this is certain: We will never be so seduced by vapid pieties about global cooperation that we'll join a system that is both unworkable and undemocratic…."

In case you forgot, we joined the WTO. You could look it up.

Tom Marshall