Bolton has common sense -- that's why Democrats hate him

By Mona Charen:

...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.

Bolton is not of the "U.S. out of the U.N., and U.N. out of the U.S." persuasion. He believes that the United States should lead the body, rather than be led by it. Bolton was our point man in seeing to it that the infamous "Zionism is Racism" General Assembly resolution was overturned.

He thinks the United Nations has been useful at times. The Security Council helped negotiate and monitor a truce between Iran and Iraq in the late 1980s. The United Nations supervised free elections in Namibia, and provided monitors as Soviet troops departed Afghanistan and Cubans left Angola. The first Gulf War, Bolton argues, was the only historical example of the Security Council behaving as the United Nations' founders envisioned. That vigorous reversal of blunt aggression was possible only because of American leadership.

...Bolton was placid during his grilling -- though why so few Republicans chose to attend the hearing is anybody's guess. Perhaps sensing that substantive policy differences with Bolton would not be enough to sink his nomination -- he is, after all, supposed to represent President Bush at the United Nations, not President Kerry -- the Democrats switched tactics. This is a well-worn pattern by now. We saw it with Robert Bork, and then with Clarence Thomas and countless others. It is the find dirt game. Or perhaps the invent dirt game.

It has now reached truly hilarious depths. It seems, don't say this too loud, that Bolton has been known to yell at subordinates, particularly those who lie to him. This intelligence has led Democratic senators -- and two very limp Republicans, George Voinovich and Chuck Hagel -- to conclude that Bolton lacks the proper "temperament" for a high-ranking position in the U.S. government. Can anyone say this with a straight face?
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Charen places blame for this with the Republicans, for going limp.

Of course, Democrats would employ their politics of personal destruction. The proper Republican response to this predictable tactic is to challenge it, not give in to it.

Martin Luther King said, "We will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."

Yes.