As part of part of Hillsdale
College’s DC-based Kirby Center for the Constitution and Citizenship
“First Principles on First Fridays” lecture series, John Bolton spoke at the Heritage Foundation today. 9/11 is of course a somber anniversary for our country, and a fitting moment to reflect on how how American foreign policy is being shaped in the post-George W. Bush era.
In Ambassador Bolton’s view, it is not a pretty picture. He graded President Obama’s performance as ”absent.” As Bolton pointed out in his remarks, the administration is pursuing a course of “Neo-Isolationism,” the point of which appears to be withdrawing American forces and refraining from using American influence around the world because such actions might be objectionable to the global community. Ambassador Bolton noted that while President Obama has declared he believes in “American exceptionalism ,” the President followed up that assertion by saying he believed in it just as he suspects “that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.” By this logic all countries are exceptional in their own view–which should make everyone feel good–but the problem is that then no country is truly exceptional, including America. This approach, Bolton surmised, has been the guiding principle that unites the President’s repeated offers to negotiate directly with Iran, enabling of the dog-and-pony show that was former President Clinton’s visit to North Korean, and eagerness to cede power to the International Criminal Court–while presiding over the evisceration of the Defense budget. Ambassador Bolton was particularly outspoken on the current situation in Honduras, in which the administration is siding with Hugo Chavez, Daniel Ortega and Fidel Castro and against Honduras’ constitutional process. He gave that situation “an F. No question about it. This is a disgrace.”
After the lecture, Ambassador Bolton graciously granted Redstate an exclusive interview to follow up on the formation (or lack thereof) of foreign policy by President Obama’s national security team, Hugo Chavez’ mischief-making around the globe, and the ramifications of the Obama administration’s policy towards Israel. Click here to listen to the full podcast.
We are sonorously told to respect the “Palestinians,” that their “government” is one we must work with to solve the ages old conflicts of the Middle East. We are also told by those advocating realpolitik between the west and the Muslim world that their system based on Islam is just as good as anyone else’s, just as we are so often assured that all governments deserve equal consideration merely because they exist.
Late Saturday evening, a car containing 100kg (220 lbs) of explosive compound was deposited in the outer parking lot of Lev Hamifratz mall in Haifa, Israel. The car was parked in a crowded section of the parking lot next to structural pilings holding up a portion of the mall, and the explosives were mixed with ball bearings to ensure maximum human and structural damage from the blast.
Kudos must go to the Wall Street Journal for standing by its principles. 
(back from internal exile from her previously calling the new Secretary of State a “monster”) 
Sadly, we are used to the anti-Semitism of Europe. After all, that is where anti-Semitism has historically thrived in a most virulent form and does still today. We are also used to the Jew hatred of the illiterati of Europe’s universities having seen so often the petitions they’ve raised to denounce Israel and give succor to Hamas and Fatah — and any other terrorist group that comes down the pike, for that matter. Of course, this infection of hate, racism and self-destructive terror worship is increasingly appearing at our own universities in the U.S. Nothing is more representative of that than the example of the “U.S. Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel” recently emanating out of several California Universities.
