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	The Bolton Backfire: Weaken UN, imperil Americans by CS Monitor / Washington Post   September 08, 2005 edition   Why is the Bush administration seemingly hurtling toward confrontation with the rest of the world in the lead-up to the World Summit in New York next week?   Almost the first act taken by Washington"s new energetic, sometimes pugnacious, UN envoy John R. Bolton, was the submission of a list of 750 amendments he seeks in the draft of the summit"s declaration. That text, which deals with issues as important as nuclear disarmament, human rights, global warming, and counterterrorism, had been painstakingly negotiated by world diplomats over preceding months.   There is still time to reach a friendly accommodation on the contested portions of the text. But many nations - most notably the European states that are the strongest supporters of the present draft - now fear that US intransigence on the proposed revisions may be a serious blow to the heart of the UN.   It"s true that the UN also faces a serious issue of mismanagement and corruption in its bureacuracy. That issue must be resolved - whatever it takes. But right now, Washington"s deteriorating relationship with the world"s other peoples concerns me even more: The compact that underlies the way all nations interact within the UN is truly vital to human survival.   President Bush and his aides surely should work hard to reach agreement with other nations on the issues around the World Summit declaration. It would also be good for Bush and all Americans to reflect on the circumstances of the UN"s creation and the many benefits it has brought the US throughout its 60 years.   Back in 1945, Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman made decisions marked by broad strategic restraint and great wisdom. Two of these were particularly crucial: first, not to retreat to the isolationism the US had pursued after World War I; and second, to exercise Washington"s continued engagement with the world through a new body, based on principles of national sovereignty, national equality, and human solidarity. That body was the UN.   The past 60 years have been very good indeed to the US. The UN and the compact among nations that underlies it have certainly contributed to those benefits.   During the cold war, the UN helped mediate what would otherwise have been an even more precarious situation of hair-trigger nuclear destruction. After the Soviet empire collapsed, the UN helped ease transitions on several continents - as it did earlier in helping manage instabilities that arose when the West European nations empires splintered. The UN-related economic bodies - the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and World Trade Organization - have meanwhile buttressed a global market system that has generally been very good to Americans.   So why - at a time when it is increasingly evident that in Iraq, as in the fight against violent extremism elsewhere, the US needs international cooperation more than ever - should the Bush administration and its man in New York be threatening to cause serious disruption to Washington"s relations with the world body?   Mr. Bolton - named by Mr. Bush as a "recess appointment" ambassador to the UN last month, bypassing the wait for a Senate confirmation - startled the representatives of most other nations in New York with his list of amendments to the summit declaration.   On one issue he wants amended - the list of "Millennium Development Goals" that the UN adopted back in 2000 - a key Bolton spokesman got downright ornery, accusing UN officials of "manipulating the truth" when they claimed the US had previously endorsed these goals and now seemed to be backtracking from that earlier commitment. (The UN officials look right on that one.)   The tiff over this key issue in international development efforts epitomizes the deeper discord over whether the US really judges that responsibilities within the world system should be reciprocal and based on the principles of human equality and human solidarity - or not. The UN majority today thinks they should be. Bolton and his boss, the president, apparently disagree with that majority.   Yes, it"s true that the UN itself is far from perfect. But at the end of the day, the United Nations is just that: a confederation of the world"s largely independent nation-states. It has very little independent existence of its own, and can only ever be as strong as the commitment it gets from its members.   Under Bush - especially since he made the near-unilateral decision to initiate a war against Iraq in 2003 - the commitment of the world"s most powerful nation to the UN and its principles has eroded drastically.   To reduce American support for the foundations of this vital institution any further would be crazy. A UN that is any further weakened means the increased insecurity of everyone in the world. And, yes, that includes Americans.   September 1, 2005   "Bolton voices opposition to U.N. Proposals, fears effort will inhibit U.S. Authority", by Colum Lynch. (Washington Post )   John Bolton, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, has voiced firm opposition to U.N. reorganization measures that the Bush administration fears would inhibit U.S. authority to use force and place new legal obligations on countries to intervene where genocide, ethnic cleansing or war crimes were being committed.   Bolton outlined his positions in a series of letters to U.N. delegates participating in negotiations to draft a 39-page statement to be read by world leaders at a summit on development and U.N. reform that begins Sept. 14. The six letters, intended to clarify proposed U.S. amendments to the draft, constitute the most detailed public picture of Bolton"s thinking on a range of issues since he became ambassador, including on the fight against poverty and terrorism, the promotion of human rights and the streamlining of the U.N. bureaucracy.   Together, the letters reflect Bolton"s long-held opposition to international agreements that he considers incursions on U.S. sovereignty and provide a glimpse at how he is working to influence the internal negotiating process. that has been dominated by foreign policy professionals in the State Department.   Bolton argued that the Security Council already had sufficient legal authority to send foreign troops to halt atrocities in places such as the Sudanese region of Darfur. He insisted that the U.N. charter "has never been interpreted as creating a legal obligation for Security Council members to support enforcement action." He also urged the deletion of language calling on nations to prevent "incitement" of mass atrocities, saying it runs counter to the U.S. First Amendment protections of speech.   Bolton wrote that the United States "stands ready" to intervene in select cases where governments fail to halt mass killings on their soil. But he said that world leaders should not "foreclose" the military option by the United States and other governments "absent authorization by the Security Council."   The U.N. doctrine of humanitarian intervention, known as the "responsibility to protect," has been promoted by Secretary General Kofi Annan, European governments and human rights advocates, who had been pressing U.N. members to accept greater responsibility for intervening in countries where atrocities are taking place. They have also been pressing to ensure a more central role for the Security Council in authorizing military action, a position that the Bush administration has strenuously opposed.   Bolton also pressed for changes in the U.N. document that would ensure that U.S. or Israeli forces would not be exposed to terrorism charges if they killed or injured civilians during military operations. Bolton wrote that the "scope" of the terrorism provision should be limited to "terrorist actions," not "military activities that are appropriately governed by international humanitarian law." Arab governments have insisted for years that the Israeli army has engaged in "state terrorism" against Palestinian civilians.   Bolton urged the U.N. members to deliver a strong statement condemning terrorism but to defer any discussion on a definition of terrorism to the General Assembly, which is negotiating a convention on terrorism. The United States argues that the convention should exclude any acts by armed forces during a conflict.   Jeffrey Sachs, a Columbia University economist advising Annan on the world summit, on Wednesday charged that the United States was engaging in a last-minute campaign to "gut" the summit document "with arguments that change by the day."   Sachs accused the Bush administration of backtracking on previous pledges to encourage an increase in foreign assistance by wealthy governments.   He cited President Bush"s endorsement of the Monterrey Consensus, a 2002 summit in Mexico that urged wealthy governments "to make concrete efforts" toward reaching a target of contributing 0.7 percent of their national income to poor countries.
	US Democrats step up criticism of White House response to Hurricane Katrina by Adam Nagourney & Carl Hulse LA Times / The New York Times   Published: September 19, 2005   "Kerry, Edwards blast Bush over Relief Effort", by Ronald Brownstein. (LA Times - Edited Extract)   Both members of the 2004 Democratic presidential ticket sharply criticized President Bush today. Speaking to a large crowd at Brown University in Rhode Island, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee, delivered his most sweeping indictment of Bush''s priorities and performance since last year''s election.   The crisis surrounding the hurricane, Kerry charged, exposed a "pattern of incompetence and negligence" in the Bush administration and "beyond that, a truly systemic effort to distort and disable the people''s government, and devote it to the interests of the privileged and the powerful."   Meanwhile, at a Washington think tank, former Sen. John Edwards, Kerry''s vice presidential running mate, offered more new policy proposals in an address focused on combating poverty. Echoing Bill Clinton''s famous campaign formulation about welfare, Edwards urged "a serious long-term effort to end poverty as we know it.."   Kerry and Edwards each began his speech with a similar argument, contending that the devastation in New Orleans exposed problems that the Bush administration had not sufficiently addressed. But from there, Kerry and Edwards moved in very different directions.   Edwards focused his speech at the Center for American Progress solely on poverty, portraying the suffering among those left behind in New Orleans as a metaphor for the struggles of poor families across America.   He spoke often about disparities between the "Two Americas" of affluence and need. But others were new elements of what he called a "Working Society." For New Orleans and the rest of the gulf coast, Edwards proposed a modern version of the Works Progress Administration that Franklin D. Roosevelt devised to create jobs during the Great Depression.   "We ought to have a new WPA where we make sure that the people who lost their homes, and lost their jobs, and are now displaced are able to ... rebuild their own communities," he said.   Edwards'' agenda also included an increase in the minimum wage to $7.50 per hour (from its current $5.15), providing housing vouchers to help more poor families move into middle-class neighborhoods, and new government subsidies to help working-poor families purchase a first home or build savings accounts. Edwards said he would pay for his ideas partly by allowing Bush tax cuts for the top brackets to expire, and increasing the tax rate that high earners pay on capital gains and dividends.   John Kerry focused his speech on broader themes, critiquing Bush on two large fronts. First, Kerry charged, the administration''s response to the hurricane showed a lack of competence also evident in areas such as planning for the reconstruction of Iraq.   Accusing Bush of ignoring warnings about the threat of flooding in New Orleans, Kerry declared: "This horrifying disaster has shown Americans at their best — and their government at its worst."   Kerry said the recovery agenda for the region Bush announced last week "turns the region into a vast laboratory for right wing ideological experiments," such as waiving requirements that federal contractors pay prevailing wages during the clean-up.   On the second track, Kerry said the hurricane should show Americans the need to take collective action through government against entrenched problems, such as persistent poverty and lack of access to healthcare.   Kerry charged that Bush, by emphasizing tax cuts and limited government, had encouraged an ethos of "you''re on your own" and "every man for himself."   "It''s time we framed every question, every issue, not in terms of what''s in it for ''me,'' but what''s in it for all of us," Kerry said.   Washington. 08 September 2005   US Democratic leaders unleashed a series of attacks on the White House on Wednesday, saying the wreckage in New Orleans raised doubts about the country''s readiness to endure a terrorist attack and exposed ominous economic rifts that they said had worsened under five years of Republican rule.   From Democratic leaders on the floor of Congress, to a speech by the Democratic National Committee chairman at a meeting of the National Baptist Convention in Miami, to four morning television interviews by Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrats offered what was shaping up as the most concerted attack that they had mounted on the White House in the five years of the Bush presidency.   "Oblivious. In denial. Dangerous," Representative Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California and the House minority leader, said of President Bush as she stood in front of a battery of uniformed police officers and firefighters in a Capitol Hill ceremony that had originally been scheduled to commemorate the fourth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.   "Americans should now harbor no illusions about the government''s ability to respond effectively to disasters," she said. "Our vulnerabilities were laid bare."   Former Senator John Edwards, a likely candidate for president in 2008 and the Democratic Party''s vice-presidential nominee in 2004, argued that the breakdown in New Orleans illustrated the central theme of his national campaigns: the nation has been severed into two Americas. "The truth is the people who suffer the most from Katrina are the very people who suffer the most every day," Mr. Edwards said in a speech in North Carolina on Wednesday, according to a transcript provided by his office.   And Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, the Democratic presidential nominee in 2004, said in an interview: "It''s a summary of all that this administration is not in touch with and has faked and ducked and bobbed over the past four years. What you see here is a harvest of four years of complete avoidance of real problem solving and real governance in favor of spin and ideology."   The aggressiveness was evidence of what Republicans and Democrats said was the critical difference between the hurricane and the Sept. 11 attacks: Democrats appear able to question the administration''s competence without opening themselves to attacks on their patriotism.   Not insignificantly, they have been emboldened by the fact that Republicans have also been critical of the White House over the past week, and by the perception that this normally politically astute and lethal administration has been weakened and seems at a loss as it struggles to manage two crises: the aftermath of the hurricane on the Gulf Coast and the political difficulties that it has created for Mr. Bush in Washington.   Their response may have allowed the Democrats to seize the issue that Republicans had hammered them with in the past two elections: national security. "Our government failed at one of the most basic functions it has - providing for the physical safety of our citizens," Senator Evan Bayh, an Indiana Democrat who is considering a run for president in 2008, declared in a speech on the Senate floor.   The Democrats'' aggressiveness is not without its risks. The White House has been seeking to minimize the criticisms of Mr. Bush by portraying them as partisan, and some prominent Democrats had earlier avoided going after Mr. Bush on this issue, aware of what the Republicans were trying to accomplish.   Mrs. Clinton, in back-to-back television interviews Wednesday morning, angrily dismissed those kinds of attacks as a diversion from legitimate attempts by critics to point up shortcomings. "That''s what they always do; I''ve been living with that kind of rhetoric for the last four and a half years," Mrs. Clinton, Democrat of New York, said on the "Today" show. "It''s time to end it. It''s time to actually show this government can be competent."   The Democratic reaction took many forms, from urging campaign contributors to give money to hurricane victims, to proposing legislation to provide aid to stricken areas, as Mr. Kerry did, to criticizing the Bush administration for cuts it had made to the budget of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, as Mrs. Clinton did. In one less-noted gesture, Al Gore, the former vice president, chartered a private jet and flew doctors to storm-stricken areas.   The Democratic National Committee chairman, Howard Dean, said this could be a transitional moment for his party. "The Democratic Party needs a new direction," he said. "And I think it''s become clear what the direction is: restore a moral purpose to America. Rebuild America''s psyche."   "This is deeply disturbing to a lot of Americans, because it''s more than thousands of people who get killed; it''s about the destruction of the American community," Mr. Dean said. "The idea that somehow government didn''t care until it had to for political reasons. It''s appalling."   Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, said: "The powerful winds of this storm have torn away that mask that has hidden from our debates the many Americans who are left out and left behind."
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