Know Your Enemies, Know Thyself

The AP tries to do a hit piece on John Bolton:

Bush agenda came 1st for Bolton at U.N.

Shocking! Exactly whose agenda should have come first? Do other nation-states like Russia or China or Iran put other nation's agendas ahead of their own? Or is the United States (like Israel) forced to abide by different rules?

Tanzania's U.N. Ambassador Augustine Mahiga called Bolton's approach "sometimes abrasive" and "too rigid" and said it provoked "unnecessary controversies" and made compromise and consensus difficult

Wow! The Tanzania Ambassador! That's pretty scary; almost as scary as how far the AP had to go in order to get a negative quote on John Bolton from a member nation.

Negativity was much easier to come by from within the bureaucrats who run the UN itself:

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, whose strained relations with Bolton were no secret, reacted coolly to his resignation, saying he "did the job he was expected to do."

If Bolton made five minutes of Annan's life miserable, for that alone he was worth the appointment.

Deputy Secretary-General Mark Malloch Brown, the target of stinging criticism from Bolton, made his delight clear, telling reporters seeking reaction: "No comment — and you can say he said it with a smile."

And why does Malloch-Brown hate Bolton so? Because Bolton would not stand for a supposedly neutral UN administrator bashing his homeland:

Secretary General Kofi Annan's chief of staff called the United States an "ungainly giant" that only plays by its own rules, criticizing the U.N.'s largest donor in unusually strong terms Sunday...
...Malloch Brown's comments were unusually forceful for an organization whose leaders tend to abide by an unwritten rule of not criticizing member nations.

Ah, there's that "different ruless" things again. Bolton complained that "The fundamental problem is the illegitimacy of his commenting about the affairs of a member government and the people of that government"; but no matter, Annan backed Brown. Malloch Brown, by the way believes Hezbollah should not be designated as a terror group - no doubt that the latest photos of them using human shields during their war on Israel this past summer has swayed his limited mind not a whit...

But this may be the crux of the issue:

Bolton antagonized the powerful Group of 77, which represents 132 mainly developing countries and China, by leading other wealthy countries who pay about 85 percent of the U.N.'s budget to impose a cap on budget spending in December 2005 to press for U.N. management reforms.

What type of person can feel rightous indignation that the people paying 85% of your bills are asking (after a multitude of scandals) for a more transparent financial arrangement? Yeah, the type of people that populte the UN, and the type of people who despised United States Ambassador to the UN John Bolton.

So look at Bolton's enemies - Korrupt Koffi, anti-American anti-Semite Mark Malloch Brown, and the Associated Press. Oh, and the Ambassador of Tanzania.

Hold your head up high, Mr. Bolton...I will repeat what Claudia Rosett said yesterday:

Cold comfort indeed, but the upside of John Bolton resigning as ambassador to the UN is that the UN does not deserve to be dignified by ambassadors of the stature of John Bolton. His presence there endowed the place with a seriousness it has not earned.

...nor deserves. It is a den of vipers, and we just killed our mongoose; and are prepared to offer our legs up instead. Hold still, it will only hurt for a moment, and death will come quickly, quickly...