Evidence for why Bolton should not be confimed

Exactly. And we don't want some ham-handed bully representing us there. Reagardless of your opinions of the UN, Bolton is a bad choice for the USA. The job calls for someone with diplomatic skills, capable of building rapport between dissenting factions etc. You don't send a "kiss-up, kick down" guy to do this kind of job. His selection epitomizes the policies of Bush and his administration - lets put (perceived) US interests first, suck up to the interests of our confirmed supporters, and everyone else be damned.This message has been edited by EZscience, 05-16-2005 05:04 PM

Quite barbarically, yet realistically, we have to stand up for some of our power grabs, because if we don't do it, our standard of living will always be going down while all of the developing countries are climbing. I don't know if this is my greedy nature, but I want to have social security and will support efforts to secure cheap oil if it means that I get to keep it. I suppose that as a Christian I should allow my country to grow weaker so that others may have more, but I see a conflict of interest. Is it possible for the developing countries to develop without the greedy CEO's hiring cheap labor and forcing my middle class position to be compromised for the good of the many? (Just being honest...I know what I should do. )

It is not simply a matter of bankrolling things. It's about setting up a world in which the rich countries don't take a giant dump on the poor ones and then act all surprised when they don't get thanked for the aid money they send.People in the poorer parts of the world may not be free, but they ain't stupid.If someone tells them for example that they can't develop Nukes, all the while sitting on the largest stockpile in the world, they're not going to take kindly to any kind of lecture on world stablity. Talking things through may not be the answer to everything, but it has to have a more lasting effect than ordering people around because you have the biggest, shittiest stick.

Yes. Share the technology, but limit the greed.Its entirely analagous to where we decide to put the fulcrum of balance between capitalism and socialism. I must admit I am also for preservation of what I have materially.
But I would contend if we don't assist social development in poorer countries they will be more likely to produce our suicide bombers of the future than become formal allies.But I really would like to address your point about our standard of living decling relative to that of other countries.
Hasn't it been more than a fair bit higher for some time?
Don't we still have the highest per capita energy consumption of any country by a factor of 4 or 5 to 1 ?So if any country were to improve their standard of living, our standard of living would have to decline relative to theirs.But forget relative - let's talk in absolute terms.
If we don't establish some improved international economic relations in a hurry, the worst case scenario is this:Our currency could continue to decline in value, the cost of money (i.e. interests rates) could rise, current over-confident consumer borrowing would abruptly cease, employment levels will fall as a result, and a far more serious recession would begin.
It sounds like a house-of-cards scenario, but it is entirely possible.If the European Union consolidates economically, we will risk losing the dollar as the international currency standard. All it would take is China and Japan to back them up.
After all, they own almost 1/3 of our national debt between them, and we have to hope they keep buying our paper, or else it is going to cost us a lot more to service that debt.Does anyone still think we can afford to send a bozo like Bolton to the UN just because he appeals to the superficial agenda of the current administration ?

I am not even religious, but I will say "Amen" to that.

How can we get along with the rest of the world if we expect THEM to change (i.e. do what we say, when we say it, how we say it)? We helped create the United Nations, then when they don't tell us what we want to hear, we decide that we don't really need to do what they say. They didn't want us to go into Iraq, there are many good reasons for their decision (I'm sure some of them were financial and a conflict of interest), but when the rest of the world except for England (oh, and don't forget Poland) tell us not to do it, maybe we should listen. The rest of the world hates us, and this is just shortly after the world was sympathetic towards us from 9/11. This administration went from the largest outpouring of sympathy and hope from the world to the most hated nation (above and beyond Iraq and Iran) in less than 3 years. Bolton will just keep us on this course or worse, he is the WORST person to nominate. No matter what you feel about an organization, you don;t appoint a person to be your representative when that person has said he doesn't even believe the organization exists.

quote:

---

Clearly Bolton is a dick, but putting someone who is anti-UN in the UN isn't going to bring the UN down.

---

Did you watch that movie I posted?Bolton isn't just a dick who loses his shit in an international forum and shouts that the only thing that matters is the UN doing exactly what the US wants it to do.He's supposed to be a diplomat who is going to be representing the United States to the rest of the world in the UN.I'm not at all worried about Bolton bringing the UN down.I am worried about the US being shut out.Congress just voted to appropriate another $83 BILLION to sink into the black hole of Iraq. That pain might have been spread around a bit more had Bush not decided to act unilaterally and piss everyone else in the world off.The US is not invulnerable, especially if we make the rest of the world angry enough to band together.

Phat, the US wields incredible power in the UN, by design.Which of those "couple of hundred little countries" enjoys permenant veto power like the US and a few other countries have?

quote:

---

If the European Union consolidates economically, we will risk losing the dollar as the international currency standard. All it would take is China and Japan to back them up.
After all, they own almost 1/3 of our national debt between them, and we have to hope they keep buying our paper, or else it is going to cost us a lot more to service that debt.

---

It costs around $1.35US to buy one Euro.The small business I work for imports specialty food from mostly very small producers in Europe and we have just not been able to afford to get as much on the last three import shipments, and we have not been able to afford to purchase several very expensive products at all.Freight costs have gone up as well because fuel is more expensive, and our insurance rates have also gone up because since 9/11 we are more likely to have unusual items rejected by the FDA.We have had to raise the price of some olive oils as much as 40%, for example, so we have ordered less because we know we will sell much less than when it was less expensive.So, no raise for me this year, less income for the farmers who make the olive oil, less work for the truckers, and higher costs of doing business for everyone.Our ever-rising national debt is eroding our credit worthiness as a nation.In my eyes, the EU has already consolodated a lot of it's economic power, and it's crushing the dollar....or, rather, the dollar/US economy is so weak it cannot compete with the Euro.

Hi Schraf, That's my point. For reasons that I have pointed out, Bolton is being appointed to a forum that Bush sees, with some justification, as being politically irrelevant. The point being that the pain should have been spread around a bit, & Bush wouldn't have been acting unilaterally if the UN members that voted on the various Chapter 7 resolutions weren't just guffing hot air when they did.Bush has every reason to think the UN isn't worth real consideration when appointing an ambassador to it.MarkThis message has been edited by mark24, 05-17-2005 04:49 AM

---

There are 10 kinds of people in this world; those that understand binary, & those that don't

I am a bit confused as to your position. Politically irrelevant to him, or irrelevant to the world in general?To my mind the UN did its job in not backing the US war in Iraq. At best, its failure was to not be able to apply some pressure against the US for moving against international law.It is irrelevant to Bush because it neither rubberstamped his agenda, nor stopped him from pursuing it. It could be said that it is irrelevant to the world because it couldn't stop Bush's actions, but then that wasn't what it was designed to do.I think we have been seeing the problems that the UN has facing modern problems, given its original purposes. We have not outlined how it will deal with nations that move against it's will since it is generally an intermediary which at best authorizes the use of force when international conditions are met.Is this similar to your position, or are you suggesting Bush was correct in Iraq and that it never would have arisen if steps were taken earlier by the UN to actually put some teeth in resolutions?

---

holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

Hi Holmes,My position is that when a resolution is passed that has the use of force as an implicit threat of non-compliance, then force should be used when non-compliance occurs. That the UN failed to do this is why Bush is snubbing the UN by nominating Bolton.The debate as to whether or not force should be used should to guarantee the resolutions should have been had when the UN decided to use Chapter Seven resolutions, rather than a lesser Chapters resolution, not when non-compliance occurred.Why was the UN opposing the use of force for non-compliance when it passed Chapter Seven resolutions? Force should be a last resort, but a decades worth of sporadic, systematic non-compliance with no hint that the situation was going to change warrants the use of force under the resolutions IMHO. If the UN were prepared to use force, like they implied they would, when exactly? Twenty years? Thirty? Clearly Iraq was in breach & the UN should have had the courage to do what it threatened, or it had no business passing those resolutions as they did within the UN's own framework in the first place.But they did, & they did fuck all about it when push came to shove.Mark

---

There are 10 kinds of people in this world; those that understand binary, & those that don't

This seems inconsistent with other positions you have taken, but I will assume it is on the up and up. Although I agree in part, I disagree in a much larger part. The UN passes resolutions which are not met, nor sanctions applied, in many situations.The US has unilaterally vetoed applying sanctions based on resolutions passed by the UN. That would make complaining about the UN now, or specifically making it appear that the US dislikes that toothlessness, a bit hypocritical. The threat of veto has often kept authorizations of force from being brought to the table which is exactly what happened with Iraq.If you remember correctly, Bush repeatedly stated that one specific resolution was what allowed the possibility of force, but the reality of the wording is that it allowed for the further authorization of force to be used. When this point was made he claimed they'd bring it to the table just to show it would only be France that would veto it. He made some pretty bold speeches about this.Then he gutlessly renegd on that promise, likely because there was little support, but at best because one nation would veto the sanctions... just as the US has been doing for ages.Thus the fact that nothing had been done with Iraq may have been more about the political atmosphere regarding use of sanctions, partcularly military ones, to back resolutions as is the case in the many outstanding resolutions against many other nations.Should something have been done sooner? I don't really have an opinion one way or the other, unless you go back to support of Saddam in the first place and the US quashed dissent over Saddam's blatant homocidal activities. After 9/11 I do think it was time to revisit the process which had been degrading.The fact is that the threat of force was working. I did see the value in it, and the interview Saddam gave before the invasion pretty well backed that up. Threat of force was necessary and useful. Indeed it worked. He was complying.Why was more than a threat of force... actual invasion... necessary when threat of force was working? There is a difference between having a resolution which authorizes the ability to use force, and then deciding to use it, to solve a problem. Can you please explain why you believe the situation in Iraq would have been any better if an invasion had occured years ago, as opposed to the current one?I do not see it as having resolved any of the underlying issues we were worried about, and current evidence indicates that the containment had worked. The Food for Oil scandal is a side issue, involving criminal activity, and so not directly related to the will of the UN, so its failure is something I'd rather not lump into the argument, unless you can make the connection.More on topic, Bolton will not solve the gutless issue, but rather continue the gutless tradition of choosing might over right. What's the difference if a bunch of small nations choose not to fight when they pass a resolution, and one large nation tells everyone not to fight when they pass a resolution? Once the US is innocent of the same problems, then they can criticize the UN.

---

holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

Not even close. Among developed countries, Canada and Iceland are both higher. Most European countries are about 50-80% of the US figure.Source: Page Not Found | World Resources Institute(nice searchable databse).Of course this is off topic. So my 0.02 on that:1) Bolton shouldn't be confirmed. He's not qualified.2) The UN is terminally dysfunctional.

I should have specified *compared to developing countries".For example, using data from your link,
in 2001 the US had 2.54 x the pc energy consumption of Spain,
almost 15 x the consumption of Albania and Phillipines,
17 x the consumption of Peru
and 24 x the consumption of Senegal. So we shouldn't participate in trying to improve it?
How else are we going to establish the alliances we need to secure our international interests ?
What are you suggesting we do - start from scratch to create a new international council of nations ?
Our ignore it and simply impose American policies unilaterally around the world ?
Even if you don't care much about how we are viewed by other countries, don't you think that would adversely affect our already elevated national security concerns ?