Bolton vs. the appeasers

Cal Thomas:

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Writing about Mr. Bolton’s appointment, Jerusalem Post columnist Caroline Glick rightly stated: “For the better part of three decades, Mr. Bolton has bravely held positions that fly in the face of the establishment’s innate preference for appeasement. He was a vocal critic, for example, of then-President Bill Clinton’s disastrous nuclear diplomacy with North Korea.” Mr. Bolton was also a critic of President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran. Some of his predictions and policy recommendations turned out to be right.

Here are some pithy Bolton-isms that are clear-eyed and have the advantage of being right. About diplomatic dealings with Iran, Mr. Bolton has said: “When you have a regime that would be happier in the afterlife than in this life, this is not a regime that is subject to classic theories of deterrence.”

On the strategy known as negotiation, Mr. Bolton is quoted as saying, “Negotiation is not a policy. It’s a technique. It’s something you use when it’s to your advantage, and something that you don’t use when it’s not to your advantage.”

There is also this about the United Nations to which he was once the U.S. ambassador: “There’s no such thing as the United Nations. If the U.N. secretary building in New York lost 10 stories, it wouldn’t make a bit of difference.” But then Mr. Bolton is equal opportunity when it comes to dysfunctional bureaucracies: “You could take several stories off the buildings of most U.S. government agencies and we’d all probably be better for it, too.”
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He is much smarter than Obama when it comes to understanding Iran.  So is Trump.  That is probably one of the reasons he chose Bolton.