Why Do They Hate Us? Start With John Bolton

Visit Lobelog.com for the latest news analysis and commentary from Inter Press News Service’s Washington bureau chief Jim Lobe.

Does former UN Amb. John Bolton – now with the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI) — still speak for Dick Cheney?

The new British government of Prime Minister Gordon Brown must be scratching its collective head over that question given the truly unbelievably arrogant and threatening op-ed Bolton, a Cheney protege, published in Wednesday’s Financial Times.

The column’s title, “Britain Cannot Have Two Best Friends,” refers to what Bolton calls “a clear decision point” for Britain — to choose between the United States and the European Union or, as he refers to it, the “European porridge” of which he so clearly disapproves. For Bolton, it is a zero-sum game, and, in his view, it is now up to Brown to make the choice. “[W]hether the ‘special relationship’ grows stronger or weaker lies entirely in British hands,” he states.

The catalyst for Bolton’s outburst appears to have been Brown’s statement during his visit with Bush last week that Britain’s “single most important bilateral relationship” is with the U.S. The only U.S. ambassador to the UN never to have been confirmed by the U.S. Senate – despite repeated attempts – calls that characterization a “clever but meaningless dodge.

“Drop the word ‘bilateral’. What is Britain’s most important ‘relationship’? Does Mr. Brown regard the EU as a ‘state under construction’, as some EU supporters proclaim, or not?

The answers to these questions are what Washington really needs to know. What London needs to know is that its answer will have consequences.”[Emphasis added]

For example, Bolton goes on, Britain’s absorption into the European porridge raises questions about whether it (as well as Sarkozy’s France) should still be entitled to a permanent seat in the UN Security Council. “Of course the Security Council permanent seat is not the real issue – it is the question of whether Britain still has sovereignty over its foreign policy or whether it has simply taken its assigned place in the EU food chain.”

“Consider also the US-UK intelligence relationship. Fundamental to that relationship is that pooled intelligence is not shared with others without mutual consent. Tension immediately arises in EU circles, however, when Britain advocates policies based on intelligence [such as Saddam’s uranium purchases from Niger, for example?] that other EU members do not have. How tempting it must already be to British diplomats to ‘very privately’ reveal what they know to European colleagues. How does Mr. Brown feel about sharing US intelligence with other Europeans?”

“Finally there is Iran’s nuclear weapons programme, which will prove in the long run more important for both countries than the current turmoil in Iraq. Here the US has followed the EU lead in a failed diplomatic effort to dissuade Iran from pursuing nuclear weapons. If Mr. Bush decides that the only way to stop Iran is to use military force, where will Mr Brown come down? Supporting the US or allowing Iran to goose-step towards nuclear weapons?”[Emphasis added]

Bolton’s coda displays the kind of diplomacy for which he became widely despised throughout the UN during his ruinous tenure there. “I will wait for answers to these and other questions before I draw conclusions about ‘the special relationship’ under Mr. Brown,” he harrumphs. “But not forever.” At least, he didn’t use the royal “We.”

Still, one must positively wonder at the tone, content, and not least the intent of Bolton’s utterly offensive bloviation. Is he trying to provoke Brown into proving his independence from Washington? Is he trying to drive the new prime minister closer to his former UN nemesis, Mark Malloch Brown, as part of some bizarre masochistic compulsion? Is he trying to create even more anti-American feeling in Britain and “Eurabia,” as some of his Anglo-chauvinist friends refer to Western Europe these days? Is he trying to split the West? Does he actually work for bin Laden? (Is AEI an al-Qaeda sleeper cell?) And does Bolton still speak for Cheney?

Thirty-Eight-Year Military Campaign Finally Ends

Operation Banner in Northern Ireland, the British army’s longest continuous military campaign in its history, has finally ended after thirty-eight years. 

Lieutenant-General Nicholas Parker, the General Officer Commanding, “makes it clear that he will not offer an opinion on ‘who won’ – no matter how many times the question is rephrased.”

Will the United States be in Iraq for thirty-eight years? Since we have had troops in Japan, Italy, Germany, and South Korea for over fifty years, I say yes.

The Army Times: Ron Paul ‘Surprise Fave Among Troops’

From the August 6 edition of The Army Times (print edition only, not online):

Washington

Surprise fave among troops

WHAT’S UP: Among Republicans running for president, the anti-war candidate — Texas Rep. Ron Paul — has the highest total of campaign contributionns from service members, according to the most recent Federal Election Commission reports. Paul collected $14,840 from service members, slightly more than the $14,775 collected by Arizona Sen. John McCain, a supporter of the war in Iraq. The other Republican candidates got $2,600 or less from contributors who identified themselves as service members.

WHAT’S NEXT: Paul, who served as a flight surgeon in the Air Force in the 1960s, and McCain, a Navy pilot who was a prisoner of war in Vietnam, could not be further apart in their views of the Iraq war, which is the biggest military issue so far in the 2008 campaign that is just beginning. The current front-runner in the race, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, received $2,550 from military contributors, the FEC report shows.

Andy Worthington

America’s Guantanamo Gulag

[audio:http://dissentradio.com/radio/07_07_31_worthington.mp3]

British historian Andy Worthington discusses the plight of over 700 so-called “enemy combatants” at the Guantanamo Bay prison, who’ve been kept illegally, often times on bogus evidence with no defense.

MP3 here.

Andy Worthington is a British historian, and the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (to be published by Pluto Press in October 2007).

Karen Kwiatkowski

Americans Waking Up to Reality

[audio:http://dissentradio.com/charles/aw073007karenkwiatowski.mp3]

Ret. Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski Ph.D discusses the “good news” about people waking up to the corruption of the American Empire and its threat to our liberty, the mysterious death of Pat Tillman, her time observing the necons lie us into war in Iraq from her desk at Near East South Asia at the Pentagon in the run up to war and her take on the surge.

MP3 here. (35:49)

LRC columnist Karen Kwiatkowski, Ph.D., a retired USAF lieutenant colonel, has written on defense issues with a libertarian perspective for MilitaryWeek.com, hosted the call-in radio show American Forum, and blogs occasionally for Huffingtonpost.com and Liberty and Power. To receive automatic announcements of new articles, click here.

William S. Lind

How to Win in Iraq

[audio:http://dissentradio.com/charles/aw073107billlind.mp3]

Military strategist William S. Lind explains how the invasion of Iraq has benefited stateless terrorist groups and the logic behind his proposal for withdrawal.

MP3 here. (16:53)

William Lind is Director of the Center for Cultural Conservatism at the Free Congress Foundation. He is a former Congressional Aide and the author
of many books and articles on military strategy and war.