Posted on: Thursday, March 10, 2005

EDITORIAL
Bolton is plain wrong as U.N. ambassador

Nominating shock jock Howard Stern to head the Federal Communications Commission or Courtney Love as the White House drug czar makes no sense.

Nor does naming Undersecretary of State John Bolton, a staunch opponent of multilateralism, to the sensitive diplomatic post of U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

Even the nation's most conservative hawks are scratching their heads about this one.

It was Bolton who said the United States should be the only permanent member of the U.N. Security Council and that the United States shouldn't have to pay its unpaid dues to the United Nations because international treaties are not legally binding.

A core member of the neoconservative movement that has guided President Bush's foreign policy, Bolton apparently is against virtually everything that the United Nations stands for: diplomacy, multilateralism, arms control, international law.

To be sure, there's much room for improvement at the United Nations. The agency is far from perfect, as the Iraqi oil-for-food scandal demonstrates. But as political dynamics shift around the globe, particularly in the Middle East, the United Nations is likely to play an even greater role on the world stage.

The United States should respond with an ambassador who understands that role and takes it seriously. Bolton's nomination illustrates a complete lack of respect or understanding of that responsibility and for the role of the U.N.