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Bolton Doesn't Deserve Moral High Ground on Human Rights Council Debate
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Just posted this over at Bolton Watch in response to Council on Foreign Relations Senior Fellow Lee Feinstein's call for a jousting match between our positions on Bolton and the UN Human Rights Council.
Someday I need to explicate for various Bolton-watchers like my colleagues and friends Ivo Daalder and Lee Feinstein the Japanese distinction between tatemae ("surface" or "appearance") and honne ("reality").
I'm concerned with Bolton's honne while I think that they are distracted by our UN Ambassador's tatemae.
More later.
-- Steve Clemons
UPDATE: New TWN correspondent Sameer Lalwani provides a nice write-up on John Bolton's comments Sunday morning at the annual AIPAC public policy conference.
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bolton's reality is and always has been "my way or the highway" with generous side helpings of kita (kick 'em in the ass)... you can put lipstick on the pig...
Who does Bolton work for?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/05/AR2006030500698.html
How about explaining /tatemae/ and /honne/ to *us*? If they just mean "appearance" and "reality", then they're not needed -- but I think I understand you to mean that there are subtler shades of meaning here.
John Bolton is so funny! What a comedian. Bolton is an ardent student of the Deadeye Dick Cheney school of shotgun diplomacy. Bolton says, "Iran faces tangible and painful consequences if it (Iran) continues it's nuclear activities..." What a hoot. John Bolton is personally going to walk to Tehran and punch the Ayatollahs squarely in the face. Why, Bolton most certainly is going to do just that. Funny thing though, the only "painful" consequences will be suffered by American mothers as they bury more and more of their precious children. Isn't that just hysterical?
Ken,
John Bolton works for Dick Cheney and has for some time.
His brief is to do his best to sabotage any other nation or group of nations that might take effective action that is not completely subservient to the U.S.
That's why his temporary assignment to the United Nations is so important. He is in the perfect position to prevent the other Nations from taking United action.
I truly believe that his actions with respect to the U.N. Human Rights Council are fully consistent with his instructions, from Dick Cheney.
Given the U.S.'s previous positions on land mines, global warming, AIDs, and on and on, don't his actions fit very nicely?
Jim, so he works for Cheney and reports to AIPAC?
STEVE,
Japanese terms will not salvage you from your unreality. Both in respect of what Bolton is trying to do in the UN, e.g., saving it from abysmal irrelevance, and about his personality. Even some unreconstructed critics of him from academe and the media, consider him to be, the hardest of realists. Yet you judge him to be a "surfie", a TATEMAE, riding on the foam of the waves, and not a diver of the DEEP.
How more wrong could you be!
C G-K, while I disagree with you about Bolton, you are right that some critics of him are turning around because they are easily distracted by the gloss. But all that aside, I appreciate your thinking through the implications of a tatemae-honne approach to UN reform....and your post gave me a good chuckle tonight. For that, I thank you.
All the best,
Steve
STEVE, it's an infinite pleasure to have a knightly and gallant opponent as you.
Con George
march 9, 2006
Steve, ---- very interesting post by Wayne Madsen on www.thetruthseeker.co.uk website. It's about the death of a State Department official, questioning whether Bolton had any role in that. He pleads for an investigation into the strange circumstances of this death. here's the link:
http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=3029
Your take on this.
Please help the American people see that it is crucial to start the impeachments process now! Bush and Cheney are screwing the world!!
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