The death of diplomacy

Diplomacy is obviously a dirty word in the Cheney/Rumsfield ... er ... I mean "Bush" administration. First, Colin Powell was successfully muzzled and then marginalized, and then, in a move so craven and cynical that only doughboy Karl Rove could have come up with it, he was replaced by Condoleezza Rice, thereby making it a statement of BOTH racism and sexism to criticize the Secretary of State. Meanwhile, the visibility of the Secretary of State has become even further diminished. In truth the position has become a mere adjunct to the fiefdom of the Secretary of Defense, an executive position occupied by a man that more than half of the military brass would like to see ass-kicked from one end of the Pentagon to the other. And the sad thing is that the rest of the world knows better than to take the meager appearances of Condoleezza Rice seriously. She is no diplomat. Merely the Angel of Death flying Neocon Airlines.

The other "diplomat"of the Bushite Reich is of course interim UN Ambassador John Bolton. His is the true face of what passes for diplomacy in the "New American Century." A divisive, contemptuous, war-pimping blowhard, Bolton's first mission was to terrorize the vote-recounters in Miami, FL after the 2000 dejection, lest they find out that Al Gore really did win Florida. The specter of Bolton as permanent UN ambassador is suddenly rising again (see here and here). God help us. This creep is yet another preternaturally unbalanced chickenhawk whose red-faced (and in your face) concept of international diplomacy is unending war. Here's Jesse Helms on the man: "John Bolton is the kind of man with whom I would want to stand at Armageddon, if it should be my lot to be on hand for what is forecast to be the final battle between good and evil in this world."

Uh, wrong side, Jesse.