Mona Charen says that’s why Democrats don’t like him.
Frankly, in a decade that has brought us the Oil for Food scandal, the child sex slave trade carried on by U.N. workers, U.N. failures to confront horrific human rights disasters like North Korea and Sudan — indeed, even offering the genocidal regime of Sudan a place on the Human Rights Commission (other members: Zimbabwe, Congo, Cuba, Saudi Arabia) — the real question ought to be not why John Bolton isn’t sentimental about the United Nations, but rather why Democrats are.
If you really want to know why the Democrats are against John Bolton as our UN Ambassador, you need only read his chapter in the Cato Institute’s 1997 publication, Delusions of Grandeur:
Even worse, Clinton took office believing that U.S. foreign policy could largely be run through the UN system. Indeed, in many respects, he and his advisers longed to make the conduct of American foreign policy subordinate to the UN, so uncomfortable were they with the unashamed, unembarrassed American leadership exercised by Presidents Reagan and Bush.
The Carter foreign policy team reemerged from hibernation, after 12 years of failing to learn from their own mistakes. Having given away the Panama Canal, been paralyzed by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, been driven to their knees by the Communist-led Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua, been humiliated by the Iranian kidnapping of our diplomats in Teheran, and sabotaged our national defense readiness by inattention and ineptness, the Carter team came back for another turn at the plate.
During Clinton’s second term, Bolton had the temerity to chastise not only the Democrat currently in office, but the darling of despots around the world, Jimmy Carter. The only thing he could have done to make them madder would be to insult Hillary.
No arguing with his assessment. Simply describe the man as “troublesome.”