Don’t Let Them Kill it in Committee
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has postponed its vote on whether or not to send the nomination of John Bolton for U.S. Ambassador to the UN to the Senate floor.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has postponed its vote on whether or not to send the nomination of John Bolton for U.S. Ambassador to the UN to the Senate floor.
Why? Surely not because Senators need more information about Mr. Bolton’s government career; it’s an open book. Surely not because Senators need more information about some alleged personal impropriety; no one is alleging any. Surely not because Senators need more information about Mr. Bolton’s views of the UN and the role he believes it can and should play (or cannot and should not play) in international diplomacy; he has spent hours on that with them.
No.
Some Senators want the delay to buy time to change the vote of one Senator in hopes of killing the nomination in Committee – because it would pass on the Senate floor. This is similar to the tactic that has been successfully used to delay votes on federal judges. Opponents of Mr. Bolton are abusing the Advise and Consent function of the Constitution and inter alia dashing hopes for real reform of the UN and depriving Israel and its supporters of a strong ally in the fight for Israel’s legitimization in the international arena.
Supporters of Israel should insist that Mr. Bolton’s nomination move forward to a vote of the whole Senate and insist that it pass.
The issue is how the U.S. relates to the UN and whether or how to improve an institution thoroughly discredited by it scandalous finances, indecisiveness in the face of massive human tragedy (the UN was WAY behind the U.S. Navy after the tsunami and hasn’t made it to Darfur yet), its failure to investigate serious human rights abuses in Cuba, China, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere, and its obsession with denigrating Israel. Supporters of Israel have to remind some Senators that Mr. Bolton was the strong hand behind the repeal of the UN General Assembly’s infamous Zionism is Racism proclamation – the first and only time that a GA Resolution was overturned by the UN Membership. [Because GA resolutions are non-binding, most people don’t care if they live on in the record. John Bolton understood that these resolutions form the basis for action by UN committees and institutions and hence command funding. Words have consequences and the record matters.]
Supporters of Israel should make it clear to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that we share Mr. Bolton’s skepticism about UN activities and capabilities. And that his principled positions on behalf of Israel, which are shared by the President who nominated him to the post, are positions that we share as well.
The delay of which we disapprove nevertheless offers us an opportunity as Americans and as supporters of Israel to go back and tell Senators that John Bolton should have his day on the Senate floor.