John Bolton - A Pajamas Challenge

Over at Pajamas Central we’re already working on our site to make it more action oriented and generally bloggy. [I warned you it was beginning to look like a branch bank.-ed. Will you shut up?] We’ve heard mucho criticism that there’s not enough there there, to use Gertie Stein’s immortal words. Well, we’re trying to put more there there. Just give us a few days and some time to gobble some turkey of our own. We did get to the name thing pretty quickly, didn’t we?

Now one of the things we’re planning on doing is making our site more hospitable to vigorous moment-to-moment blog debates on the issues right at the top of our homepage. We want to keep it clean, but not pull punches. Toward that, I am issuing a Pajamas blog challenge right on this page (that I would do over at PJM, if it were ready). That challenge is to two guys who I really like personally, but disagree with on a number of issues, especially in the foreign policy area – David Corn and Marc Cooper (who has been a personal friend for a couple of decades).

These guys were of the stripe that probably thought the sky was falling when John Bolton was nominated as US Ambassador to the United Nations. We were all headed for neocon Hell in a basket and about to pull out of the UN.

So I would like to know what they think of what Bolton pulled off today. From the Jerusalem Post:

Following intense US pressure, the United Nations Security Council on Wednesday issued an unprecedented condemnation of Monday’s Hizbullah attacks on northern Israel.

This condemnation – slamming Hizbullah by name for “acts of hatred” – marked the first time the Security Council has ever reprimanded Hizbullah for cross-border attacks on Israel. The condemnation followed by two days a failed attempt to get a condemnation issued on Monday, the day of the attack, when Algeria came out against any mention of Hizbullah in the statement.

When asked what changed from Monday to Wednesday, one diplomatic official replied: “John Bolton,” a reference to the US ambassador to the UN. Bolton lobbied vigorously for the passage of the statement.

So, fellas, was this a good thing or a bad thing? Yes or no answer, please – then you can unwind all your provisos. Does Bolton deserve praise for getting the Security Council to speak out on this kind of terror action for the first time? I’ll tell you what I think … in the parlance of the old days … “Right on!” But then, as you guys know, I think the old “Which Side Are You On?” thing has been turned upside down.