Dear John. (Forward Editorial re John Bolton)

[Tom Joad]

http://www.forward.com/articles/dear-john/
Forward is the largest Jewish Daily in the United States.

John Bolton’s resignation as American ambassador to the United Nations is an important and welcome step in the national healing process that began on Election Day, November 7.(Snip)

His decision to pack his bags is an occasion for a national sigh of relief and even gratitude.

Alas, one major constituency on the public stage has chosen to greet Bolton’s resignation not with relief but with regret. In a noisy, tin-eared outpouring of sycophantic unanimity, a phalanx of America’s most influential and respected Jewish organizations has flooded cyberspace this week with heartfelt salutes to Bolton and laments of his departure. At last count, the list included the American Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation League, the World Jewish Congress, B’nai B’rith International, the Orthodox Union and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs. In statement after statement, the agencies hail Bolton for his supposed effectiveness and passion in defending Israel and advancing the causes of democracy and U.N. reform.

(snip)

That said, none of them has done as much as Bolton to undermine that American influence by alienating the rest of the world community. His actions, and the larger Bush administration policies that they reflect, have left Israel and America huddled together in utter isolation, facing ever-growing, worldwide impatience and disdain. Even the signature cause of U.N. reform, which had been taken up by Kofi Annan and advocated with determination in the Clinton and current Bush administrations, suffered crippling setbacks as a result of Bolton’s inflexibility, his insistence on holding out for the unattainable and refusing to accept the best deals possible.

All this is now obvious to the American public, to the Congress — even to the outgoing, Republican-led Congress — and, in the end, to Bolton himself. Everyone gets it except the Jewish advocacy community.

It’s no great secret why the Jewish agencies continue to trumpet support for the discredited policies of this failed administration. They see defense of Israel as their number-one goal, trumping all other items on the agenda. That single-mindedness binds them ever closer to a White House that has made combating Islamic terrorism its signature campaign. The campaign’s effects on the world have been catastrophic. But that is no concern of the Jewish agencies. Given the record, the agencies’ paeans to Bolton come as no surprise. And yet, they still offend. Coming barely a month after the midterm elections, in which Jews voted 7-1 against the Bush record, the statements show a communal representative structure working directly against the wishes and values of the community it purports to represent.
(snip)
______________________________

Comment: Bush must be happy that he has still a few bastions of support for his criminal international policies of military aggression.