Tag Archives: United Nations

national news

U.N. envoy tells the hard, depressing truth

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

United Nations Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield had the temerity to tell a truth that few of us want to hear, but which we all need to hear.

CBS News put this out on Twitter: Amb. Thomas-Greenfield said this week “the original sin of slavery weaved white supremacy into our founding documents.” She tells @margbrennan “Our country is not perfect, but we continue to perfect it. Those imperfections are part of our history, we have to talk about them.”

Let’s understand a couple of things.

Ambassador Thomas-Greenfield is an African-American with extensive diplomatic experience. She’s not flaming fanatic, a novice.

The second point is this: The founders did not get rid of slavery. Many of them were slave owners themselves. They kept black Americans as property. The Constitution did not even recognize specifically that black Americans were entitled to the full rights of citizenship, even though they wrote that “all men are created equal.”

Dichotomy, anyone?

By almost any objective analysis you can use, you can determine that the founders implied that white men — the only Americans who could vote at the founding of the republic — were, uh, superior to anyone else.

Yet the U.N. envoy is getting plenty of blowback. I ask … why? She spoke — to borrow a phrase — an “inconvenient truth.”

medical news

Trump takes it out on WHO at worst possible moment

Donald Trump is so darn angry with the World Health Organization that he’s decided to pull back a huge amount of U.S. money … while WHO is trying to fight off the deadly coronavirus pandemic.

Is it me or does the timing of this bit of presidential pique seem cruel and dangerous?

Trump announced his decision to withhold money for WHO this week because of what he says is a mishandling of the pandemic when it began to alarm the world. He has accused WHO of being too “China centric,” even though the pandemic has its origins in China.

Meanwhile, the United Nations-based WHO is trying to gather data, trying to coordinate the international response to this pandemic, but now it must do so without a large chunk of money on which it relies to pay for its myriad functions. The United States kicks in about $400 million annually to WHO.

This is an international emergency. If there was a time for WHO to be fully funded and able to do its job, now is the time. However, we now hear from Donald Trump that he is turning off that financial spigot just as WHO needs all the support it can get.

Billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates, who contributes huge sums from his enormous fortune to fight infectious disease, calls Trump’s decision “as dangerous as it gets.” Other medical officials also are worried that Trump has acted hastily.

My own view is that a suspension of money from the United States to WHO could have come after the pandemic had been brought under control. Then we could have established a firm after-action examination of where WHO fell short.

This isn’t the time to strip WHO of much of its ability to fight this deadly health crisis.

International news

Ambassadorships = political payback

Kelly Knight Craft’s nomination to become the next U.S. ambassador to the United Nations has drawn the expected criticism from those who are indignant about the very nature of ambassadorial appointments.

To be honest, I believe Craft will be a superior envoy to the world body than the individual who pulled her name out of consideration. Heather Nauert brought next to zero qualifications to the job; Nauert’s experience consisted of a year as State Department spokeswoman and her time as a Fox News morning show co-host.

Craft is our nation’s ambassador to Canada. She also worked as an alternate U.N. delegate during the George W. Bush administration. I am concerned about her waffling on climate change and I wish she were committed to the idea that human industrial activity is a major contributor to the changing world climate.

OK, but what about her political ties. She and her husband, Joe Craft, are big GOP donors. They’re big-time allies of Donald Trump.

But in fact, their political involvement is no more involved than many of our nation’s ambassadors who serve around the world. Many of our ambassadors get those jobs as a form of political payment for the work they do to elect the presidents who appoint them.

There have been exceptions to that formula. Recent examples are former Vice President Walter Mondale and former U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield, both of whom were our envoys to Japan. Our current ambassador to Russia is former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, who once campaigned for the presidency.

The late Teel Bivins got appointed our nation’s ambassador to Sweden in 2004. Do you think President Bush appointed the Texas state senator because of his expertise on Scandinavian issues? No. He picked Bivins because the Amarillo Republican worked hard to elect Bush president in 2000. He raised a lot of money for the former Texas governor. Indeed, Bivins had never set foot in Sweden before he landed there as our nation’s ambassador.

Is Kelly Craft the perfect nominee to lead our U.N. delegation? No, but she’s capable enough.

International news

Where was this nominee hiding?

Donald Trump stumbled with his selection of Heather Nauert as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Nauert was profoundly unqualified to represent us on the world stage. She pulled her name out of consideration this past week, citing unbearable pressure on her family.

So, what does the president do? He finds a superb candidate to represent our interests in the world body. Kelly Craft is the current U.S. ambassador to Canada. She has years of diplomatic experience; she served as a member of our U.N. delegation during the George W. Bush administration.

Ambassador Craft reportedly was the most easily confirmable of all the potential nominees Trump was considering.

This nomination begs the question: Why didn’t the president select Kelly Craft instead of nominating the former Fox News anchor, Nauert, to represent our nation at the United Nations?

Indeed, the more I think about it, Craft has more foreign-policy chops than Nikki Haley, who resigned as U.N. ambassador at the end of 2018.

I am hopeful that Ambassador Craft will continue to serve the nation well.

International news

Nauert pulls out of U.N. envoy hunt; good for the U.S.

Heather Nauert, once nominated to be the next U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, had no business — none, zero! — being considered for the post.

She stayed in the hunt for the job. Until now. She has pulled her name out of consideration for the job.

My views on her are well known to readers of this blog. She is a former Fox News host with no foreign policy experience. Nauert was a State Department spokeswoman who once referred to Germany as an “ally” during World War II.

She says now that the stress of her pending nomination placed too much stress on her family. Nauert is pulling out. I wish her family well and I wish her well, too.

But back to the issue at hand: finding a capable U.N. envoy who can represent our nation’s interest before the world body.

Donald Trump keeps telling us how qualified individuals are knocking down the White House doors to work for the executive branch of government. No one should believe that assertion, but he keeps making it.

If it’s true, then the president should have no trouble finding someone with serious foreign-policy chops to be our nation’s top diplomat at the United Nations.

Isn’t that right?

International news

Is U.N. ambassadorship a training position?

Welcome to the real big leagues, Heather Nauert.

Donald Trump wants the former Fox News correspondent and morning talk-show co-host to lead the U.S. diplomatic effort in the United Nations. I am left to wonder if the president values the U.N. as much as his national security adviser, John Bolton, does. It was Bolton who (in)famously said you could remove the top 10 floors from the U.N. Building in New York and not lose a thing. Then he became the U.S. ambassador to the world body.

Nauert brings far less foreign policy experience to this most delicate of posts. She did serve as State Department spokeswoman for a year after leaving Fox News.

You know, I actually thought that Nauert wasn’t the first rookie to take this job. My thoughts turned to the late John Scali, the former ABC News correspondent who was U.N. ambassador from 1973 to 1975. However, a quick check of Scali’s record showed something quite revealing.

He helped mediate an end to the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 while working for ABC, carrying messages from President Kennedy and Attorney General Robert Kennedy to the Soviet embassy, warning them of the dire peril they were putting the world in by installing offensive missiles in Cuba. Scali then left ABC to work for the Nixon administration as a foreign policy adviser before becoming U.N. ambassador in 1973.

Thus, Scali had experience.

Nauert does not. In a way, though, she more or less mirrors the experience level of the man who nominated her. Donald Trump brought zero government or public service experience to the presidency when he got elected.

And it shows.

I fear the absence of any foreign policy chops is going to show itself yet again at the United Nations. Heaven help us.

International news

No, Mr. POTUS, ‘everyone’ not behind Ivanka for UN post

Dear Mr. President … You’re at it again. You’re putting words in the mouths of millions of Americans.

You’re tweeting goofy messages about whether you’re considering your daughter Ivanka to become the next U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

That Twitter message that declares “everyone wants Ivanka Trump to be the new United Nations ambassador.” You add that she would be “incredible” but that you’re already hearing “chants of “Nepotism!”

Well, duh! Do ya think?

First of all, you haven’t called me. Nor have you asked any one of my friends, acquaintances, social media contacts — probably not even those of whom support you and your presidency — about this idiotic notion.

Thus, you purport to speak for Americans about whom you know nothing.

I feel the need to remind you, Mr. President, that more Americans voted against your presidential campaign than supported it. Yes, you were elected with an Electoral College majority and I accept the result.

But, c’mon, will ya? Stop this baloney about “everyone” wanting Ivanka to join the corps of international diplomats. She isn’t qualified.

I mean, haven’t you said that thousands — maybe millions — of Americans are lining up to work in your administration? Doesn’t that imply, Mr. President, that you have the pick of a large field of potential applicants?

If that’s the case — and I find it a dubious assertion at best — then you wouldn’t need to keep floating Ivanka’s name as a possible U.N. ambassador.

Nikki Haley’s resignation as U.N. envoy surprised a lot of us, Mr. President. I actually applaud the manner in which you were able to keep that a secret.

I want to applaud your choice of a successor to the tough-talking former South Carolina governor. Nominating your unqualified daughter to do this difficult job — made even more difficult because of your foreign policy pronouncements — won’t produce any applause from me.

And for the umpteenth time, I implore you to stop putting words in my mouth.

national news

Ivanka won’t seek UN job. Fine, but who would want it?

Ivanka Trump says she won’t be the next U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

She wrote this on Twitter: It is an honor to serve in the White House alongside so many great colleagues and I know that the President will nominate a formidable replacement for Ambassador Haley. That replacement will not be me.

That’s good to hear. Why? Well, for starters, Ivanka Trump is nowhere close to being qualified for the job that Nikki Haley is leaving at the end of the year. Her only credential is that she is a product of the president’s loins. Period. End of story.

She wouldn’t acknowledge, of course, that any such appointment would be totally inappropriate and that it would hand this highly critical diplomatic post to someone who has no business serving in any official adviser capacity in the White House.

Yet the president, Daddy Trump, has said she would be terrific. She’s up to the job. She’s the tops … he says.

I now will quote fictional Col. Sherman T. Potter: Buffalo bagels.

The task now for the president is to find someone who can work within an administration that suffers from maximum chaos and confusion. What’s more, the president is now being served by a national security adviser, John Bolton, who once said of the UN that you could “lose the top 10 floors” of the UN building and not lose a thing. Oh, and that quip came from a guy, Bolton, who served as ambassador to the United Nations.

The next UN ambassador will have to work with Bolton. And with a president who still has to exhibit any understanding at any level of the nuances of international diplomacy.

Who will Trump nominate for this job? That remains the latest parlor game to occupy idle minds in Washington, D.C. He’ll boast about being able to select from an enormous pool of applicants. Of course, we have no way to know about the size of that pool.

Trump will tell us his applicant pool is h-u-u-u-uge and many Americans will believe him. I won’t.

As for Ivanka’s decision to take herself out of running, man, I hope she can tell her father privately in no uncertain terms that she really and truly means it.

She won’t replace Nikki Haley.

national news

Haley exits in non-Trumpian style

I have to hand it to United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley.

Her resignation, which she announced today in the Oval Office sitting next to the president of the United States, was done without the usual rhetorical public flogging that has accompanied so many of previous Cabinet officials’ departures.

Donald Trump, for instance, notified former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson of his firing via Twitter. That came after several days of public speculation about what his future held.

Former EPA administrator Scott Pruitt endured weeks of publicity regarding his use of public money; former Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price endured much the same kind of (mis)treatment; Veterans Secretary David Shulkin was hung out to dry before he got shown the door.

And, of course, we have staff-level jobs that changed hands in messy, turbulent manners. Chief of staff Reince Priebus, national security advisers Michael Flynn and H.R. McMaster, communications director Anthony Scaramucci, press secretary Sean Spicer … all left amid chaos and confusion.

Haley’s departure was vastly different. It came as a legitimate surprise to the media and to many Trump administration officials.

It goes to show, I suppose, that it actually is possible for the president to keep a secret, given that he knew of her plans to depart several days in advance. It also is possible for him to announce a key administration departure with a semblance of class.

Will it continue? Do not bet the farm on it.

International news

Haley is out as UN envoy; let’s wait for the rush to replace her

Nikki Haley’s resignation as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations opens up a whole new round of speculation about who should succeed her.

I want to stipulate that I am unhappy to see Haley leave this critical post. She is a pro and she comported herself well as the nation’s top UN diplomat. I like the way she stood up to White House chief of staff John Kelly after he said she had gotten “confused” in announcing White House sanctions against Russia; her response: “I don’t get confused.”

Nikki Haley is a grownup in an administration populated by too many sycophants.

But here’s what I am waiting to hear. I am waiting to hear the president tell us of the dozens, maybe hundreds, of qualified applicants pounding on his door wanting to succeed Haley as the UN envoy. You see, he has this maddening habit of embellishing the reputation he and his administration have among career government employees.

The search begins

I have no doubt that Donald Trump will seek to oversell his administration’s standing as he seeks to find someone to replace Haley, who will leave her post at the end of the year.

I am chuckling at the chatter that his son-in-law Jared Kushner is among those who might succeed Haley. Even more ridiculous is that Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, might get the nod.

If the president’s need to beat back the horde of applicants is true, then he should be able to find a top-tier, high-quality nominee to succeed Haley at the UN. If he settles on yet another sycophant — say, someone like Kushner or — God forbid — Ivanka, then we’ll know he is lying about that as well.

I’ll lament the pending departure of Nikki Haley in the meantime and wish her well as she takes “time off” and considers her next calling. A former two-term South Carolina governor who stood up to the Confederate flag proponents in her state and performed well on the international stage likely has a bright future.