U.N. needs fixing, not John Bolton

National politics nowadays often resembles cable news channels: Partisan operatives find a good story line and then beat it to death. That's why Democrats have so enjoyed the five-month flap over President Bush's nomination of veteran diplomat John Bolton to be ambassador to the United Nations. It has what every drama needs: a villain...Reasons why he deserves the job...The first reason is obvious: Bush wants him. The U.N. ambassador is America's de facto spokesman to the world. The president, not the Senate minority, should be able to select him. The second reason should be obvious, too: The United Nations has reached such staggering levels of dysfunction and incompetence that having a determined critic representing its biggest donor nation is just what it needs...Here's the short list of U.N. fiascoes: the oil-for-food scandal, the biggest financial scam in history; the failure to develop anything resembling a coherent, unified world position against terrorism; the failure to stop genocide in Sudan; the persistent and appalling reports of sex crimes by U.N. peacekeepers; the years of stalling U.S. attempts to reform a bloated, overlapping U.N. bureaucracy.
Forget about U.S.-U.N. differences over Iraq. What this list shows is you don't have to be an admirer of U.S. foreign policy -- in Iraq or anywhere -- to conclude the world is being poorly served by the United Nations. That's why it boggles the mind to hear Democratic Senator's, Barbara Boxer, Christopher Dodd and John Kerry, among others, depict the United Nations as somehow being wronged by Bolton's critique....Click title for the rest...