ratbastid

ace, I get the impression that you haven't read anyone's posts in this thread but your own. Scroll up and read. That should give you an adequate overview of what people object to about Bolton's attitude toward the UN.

Let's say, I disagree with you that the Middle East is a black-and-white issue. I also disagree with Bush and Bolton and Israel's one-way-ness about the whole thing. For Israel, it's a matter of survival, and that puts them in a fairly unilateral spot. I can understand that. I don't understand why the US has to be so blindly unilateral with them.

IMO, Israel did some things during the recent conflagration that were morally questionable, and I'm not against holding them to account for that. So in that sense, I'm not for the veto.

Look--that we vetoed something speaks to exactly the arrogance and jingoism I'm talking about. There's no interest on Bolton's part to build consensus, to come up with solutions that people can agree on. In his world, there are allies and enemies, and you cozy up with the former, and bomb the everliving shit out of the latter, and that's just absolutely how it is. I'd like to have somebody representing us on the international stage who has some flexibility in their view of the world. A rigid view is death.

Also, notice that you're spinning this as a matter of "courage". Consider that it's not that we were the only ones with the courage. Maybe we were just the only ones who wanted it to go that way. That's sort of what "veto" means, after all.