Oh, Please

I guess John Bolton, former UN Ambassador (a Bush recess appointment) and current fellow at the American Enterprise Institute has some time on his hands. In his op-ed column in today's Los Angeles Times, he took the time to rewrite history. The focus of this revisionism was ostensibly to point out that Barack Obama has no real grasp on foreign affairs. The result, of course, is that he inadvertently leaves Democrats a wonderful opening on the issue. Here's some of what Mr. Bolton had to say:

Barack Obama's willingness to meet with the leaders of rogue states such as Iran and North Korea "without preconditions" is a naive and dangerous approach to dealing with the hard men who run pariah states. It will be an important and legitimate issue for policy debate during the remainder of the presidential campaign. ...

Such realities should cause Obama to become more circumspect, minimizing his off-the-cuff observations about history, grand strategy and diplomacy. In fact, he has done exactly the opposite, exhibiting so many gaps in his knowledge and understanding of world affairs that they have not yet received the attention they deserve. He consistently reveals failings in foreign policy that are far more serious than even his critics had previously imagined. [Emphasis added]

Now, the Bush administration, the one that snuck Mr. Bolton in the back door of the UN while Congress was in recess, the one that couldn't get his nomination past the Senate twice, thereby leaving him off the federal gravy train, has been notable for a rather decided lack of imagination. It couldn't, for example, imagine that in free and fair elections, the people of Palestine would choose Hamas to lead them. Or that Saudi Arabi, Bush family BFF, would refuse to pump more oil at Junior's request.

And as for "failings in foreign policies," well, we have one awfully large elephant labeled "Iraq War" in the national living room as a pretty good example of what happens when a White House believes it can create reality simply by saying it can.

But the part that is especially telling in Mr. Bolton's little screed is the emphasis on Sen. Obama's lack of knowledge about the world. The man for whom Mr. Bolton worked didn't know there were some important differences between the two main strands of modern Islam and that those differences had some important consequences when dealing with the Middle East. Apparently the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party still doesn't realize that. For Mr. Bolton, all that matters is that Sen. Obama has indicated he will speak with our "enemies," rather than bomb them back to the stone age.

Thankfully Mr. Bolton isn't still mucking things up at the State Department and the UN. I just wish the L.A. Times had reserved Mr. Bolton's bloviations for the Letters To The Editor section.