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Bolton Genocide Appeasement Watch II. Six years ago, back on March 24, 1999, John Bolton told Bill O'Reilly he thought that the US had no business intervening to stop massive Serb ethnic cleansing and killing of Kosovo Albanians. What a wuss! This is a guy who doesn't think the US can challenge a two bit bully in the Balkans!
I change my mind. Bolton is the PERFECT Bush administrative representative to the UN! He stands for nothing. He's a bully to his subordinates but rolls over at the slightest sign of strength from an opponent. He is "a quintessential kiss-up, kick-down kind of guy. He's got a bigger kick, and it gets bigger and stronger the further down the bureaucracy he's kicking," as former assistant secretary of state Carl Ford characterized him today. Big bark, very little stick. As Albert Wohlstetter characterized the stance to Frank Gaffney's group during the Bosnia genocide, Bolton epitomized the consummate "surrealist" appeaser of genocide in Bosnia and Kosovo and Rwanda.
Here's the O'Reilly-Bolton interview, courtesy of Nexis:
My G-d. Here's O'Reilly sounding like Dick Cheney and Bolton sounding like Michael Moore. Incredible. Taiwan can get him cheap again after his term is up.BOLTON: I think that the United States is now involved in a conflict where it has no tangible national interest, where it has no clear objectives in mind, and where the ultimate outcome could be very risky for what our real interests are, as evidenced by the fact that we've already severely strained relations with Russia.
I think this is a mistake. I think it continues a series of mistakes that the Clinton administration has made in former Yugoslavia. And I'm very uneasy about the situation tonight.
O'REILLY: All right. Now let's say you and I were walking down the street in Washington, DC. And across the road we saw a gang beating up a woman and hurting a woman. We didn't know that woman at all. And it wasn't in our interests personally to stop the beating.
But I think you and I would cross the street. Don't you, Mr. Bolton?
BOLTON: Well, maybe. Or we might call the police. Or we might do something else. But I think it's very misleading...
O'REILLY: I'll tell you what. I would cross the street right there.
BOLTON: ... Good for you.
O'REILLY: OK.
BOLTON: I think it's very misleading to try to analogize what's going on in the Balkans with a street crime in the United States. What the Kosovar-Albanians and the Serbs are fighting about has deep historical roots, where the United States basically has no interest in whatever the outcome is. The Serbian...
O'REILLY: Well, I would agree that we don't have an immediate interest. But on a humanitarian basis, both you and I know the Serbian army can go into Kosovo and crush those people and do pretty much what they want to do to them. And they will, based upon what they've done in Bosnia, based upon what they tried to do in Slovenia.
These are brutal, brutal people. They are not a civilized, disciplined army.
And I find it difficult to stand by and watch another Cambodia, another Rwanda, unfold. And I believe the United States has a responsibility here.
BOLTON: Let me ask you this, Mr. O'Reilly. How many dead Americans is it worth to you to stop the brutality?
O'REILLY: I don't think I would quantify that because...
BOLTON: I think you have to quantify it. I think if you don't answer that question...
O'REILLY: ... I think if you're going to be a superpower...
BOLTON: ... you're ducking the key point that the commander in chief has to decide upon before putting American troops into a combat situation. We are now at war with Serbia. And the president has to be able to justify to himself and to the American people that Americans are about to die, or may well die, for a certain specific American interest.
O'REILLY: And I think the American military people over there understand that because of the status of America as the superpower policeman of the world, which we are whether we like it or not, there are some situations where we will have to put ourselves at risk for a long-term objective. And that long-term objective is basically not letting butchers like Milosevic run around and do what they want with impunity while we have the power to stop it.