SCREW you, world. This is the message that President Bush has conveyed in his selection of nominees to fill high-level intelligence and security positions. In a time when multinational cooperation is essential for our own national security, the president has managed to nominate a U. N. ambassador who despises the United Nations, while his nominee for national intelligence chief is a war criminal.
John Bolton, the president's choice for America's ambassador to the United Nations, is quite possibly the least diplomatic person in government. Carl W. Ford Jr., who worked with Bolton in the State Department, told the Senate Foreign Relations committee that Bolton was "a quintessential kiss-up, kick-down sort of guy" who bullied the junior employees and attempted to fire intelligence analysis whose work undermined the Bush administration's agenda.
In a disagreement over intelligence, Bolton reportedly called a retired Navy lieutenant commander a "midlevel munchkin." Bolton has displayed the same diplomatic flair in his public and private statements regarding the United Nations. He once remarked, "The Secretariat building in New York has 38 stories. If it lost ten stories, it wouldn't make a bit of difference."
Bolton's contempt for the United Nations is well documented, but even more disturbing is his vision of how the international community should operate. After famously commenting, "There is no such thing as the United Nations," Bolton told the Global Structures Convocation, "There is an international community that occasionally can be led by the only real power left in the world and that is the United States when it suits our interest, and we can get others to go along."
Considering the results of the United States' last effort to lead the international community, Bolton may be out of luck.
President Bush displayed perhaps even greater audacity in his nomination of John D. Negroponte for the new position of national intelligence chief. You may remember Negroponte from the Honduran death squads, in which the CIA trained Contras to rape and murder tens of thousands of people. Although he denies knowledge of the crimes, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in Honduras found that in his term as the U.S. ambassador to Honduras, Negroponte was actively involved in these covert operations, which included the physical, mental and sexual torture of prisoners in the name of gathering intelligence.
President Bush could have used this opportunity to appoint a national intelligence chief who has demonstrated a genuine commitment to multinational cooperation and to gathering intelligence with respect for human rights and international law. Instead, he extended a fat middle finger and nominated a known war criminal who is unrepentant about his past actions.Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, praised Negroponte's record, stating, "He has worked on intelligence and national security issues all through his career, and, in that respect, I think, brings a great deal of experience to this position."
Americans might prefer to forget that our government sponsored war crimes in Latin America, but the world remembers. When a U.S. senator praises Negroponte's "experience," he is displaying ignorance at best, endorsement of these tactics at worst.
This appalling nomination comes at a time when the global community has serious reason to question the Bush administration's professed dedication to human rights. After the obscene human rights abuses that occurred in Iraq, most famously in the Abu Ghraib prison, the world has little reason to trust the Bush administration to engage in ethical intelligence gathering. Unfortunately, Negroponte's nomination suggests that the Bush administration plans to continue to break international law in the name of intelligence. Having ripped up the Geneva Convention, President Bush is now spitting on the pieces.
The problem is not simply that Bolton and Negroponte will be terrible at these jobs -- though they will be -- but that their mere nominations represent frightening arrogance and naiveté about the America's role in the world. Bush continues to behave as though our military strength should allow us to disregard global opinion and engage in whatever destructive actions we deem necessary. These nominations will alienate foreign countries at a time when we need them most.
The United States cannot gather adequate intelligence without the cooperation of foreign countries, which can choose to deny us access at any time. Bush managed to bully and bribe our allies into sending troops to Iraq, but next time the United States decides to respond to a real or imagined threat, we may find ourselves acting alone.
Cari Lynn Hennessy's column appears Fridays in The Cavalier Daily. She can be reached at chennessy@cavalierdaily.com.
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