The protestors, all Amherst townspeople, held strategically placed signs throughout the Red Room calling Bolton a “war criminal.” One particularly distraught man in the center of the room wearing a red T-shirt under a tweed jacket, hands also painted red, was screaming, “Blood on your hands! Blood on your hands! Blood on everybody here,” as Bolton was trying to speak.
“War criminal! Murderer! Murderer of innocent Iraqi men, women and children!” Earlier, a protester in the corner of the room had interrupted the former ambassador’s talk to call him a “chicken hawk” and question whether he had served in the military, to which Bolton quickly retorted, “Yes, I have actually. Six years in the army reserve and National Guard,” followed by applause from the audience. “Now look,” Bolton told the protestors. “If you want to speak, go ahead. I’ll be happy to sit down.” Bolton recalled his four and a half months of active duty for training and how he faced the prospect throughout his entire term of service of being called to active duty. “You see, I’d rather let these people talk,” Bolton explained as the protestors pointed to his lack of active service in Vietnam. “Let them have their say and then we’ll have our conversation.”
So it was in this contentious environment, as the man in the tweed jacket was screaming, “Blood on your hands!” and protesters were pushing students out of the way to make their signs visible, that Arkes signaled Marx to take a stand. “If America stands for anything, it stands for freedom of speech,” the president reminded the man reluctant to comply. Still, “I don’t want to listen to your crap,” the man in the tweed jacket yelled at Marx.
Bolton quickly turned to pages 10 and 11 of his book, “Surrender is Not an Option.” Joking that his publishers told him to “never miss an opportunity” for publicity, Bolton recalled being the only conservative speaker on Class Day at his 1970 Yale graduation among “liberal and worse than that classmates.” He described, “As I started my few minutes of remarks, I was greeted by hecklers, the only speaker so grazed. I had faced this sort of thing many times from the liberals at Yale, who saw themselves as brave and oppressed dissenters from U.S. national policy, but who couldn’t stand encountering dissent in their own little sandbox. What you have over there, I said, pointing to the hecklers, is a typical example of liberal tolerance.” To Bolton and the audience that applauded wildly after he read from his recently released autobiography, the anecdote could not have been more relevant.
The lecture fit into the work of the Committee for the American Founding, the organization founded by Arkes in conjunction with some former students dedicated to advancing and preserving the teachings of America’s Founders and Abraham Lincoln on natural rights and on the “anchoring moral truth” that all men are created equal at the center of the Declaration of Independence and the moral fiber of this country. The Committee hosts speakers and Amherst students and alums from the Class of 1943 to the Class of 2011 at its Colloquium weekends that take place once every semester and at lectures it sponsors throughout the year. “Even if we don’t accomplish anything else, there is just something charming about these encounters,” explained Arkes of the convergence of Amherst people, old and young, at the meetings. Traditionally conservative, enjoying the company of the likes of Supreme Court Justices John Roberts, Antonin Scalia P’03 and Clarence Thomas, Senator Rick Santorum, Representative Tom Davis ’71, classicist Victor Davis Hanson and The Wall Street Journal’s Bret Stephens, the Committee includes people from a host of political ideologies. They gather simply to engage in discussion on the Founders’ and Lincoln’s teachings, to promote open dialogue, the free exchange of ideas and viewpoints not often heard on the College’s campus.
In this vein, Arkes outlined in his introduction of Bolton the importance of distinguishing among different types of regimes, placing America and countries like it founded on moral grounds—that preservation of natural rights—above those that are not. The UN, explained Arkes does not distinguish between regimes and always seeks “to legislate without any moral ground we could recognize in claiming the moral authority to legislate and to legislate for the purposes that were often explicitly hostile to America and its interests and hostile to the principles of the American regime.”
Bolton, however, “hit the ground running with direct, savvy challenges to the way of life” in the UN during his 18 months there, said Arkes, thanks to the “thickness of his experience” in foreign policy, particularly disarmament. He left the post frustrated with a “seized up,” “sleepwalking” administration, too focused on the intricacies of negotiation, too unwilling to hold firm in defense of American interests and explore the increasing threat of Iran and North Korea.
Bolton focused his talk on a subject he deemed “important and timely” as we head into the 2008 presidential election season: “The lessons of Iraq as we deal with other rogue states, particularly rogue states that seek to acquire weapons of mass destruction—nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and ballistic missile systems that can be used to deliver them,” “These are the threats, these are the main challenges to our friends and allies around the world in the coming decades,” he told the Red Room audience.
Bolton traced what he called the two “mislearned” lessons from the War in Iraq. The first, he described, is the flawed understanding that “if only you engaged in diplomacy, as opposed to something else, that all of the world’s problems could be solved. If only the United States had engaged with Saddam Hussein or fill-in-the-blank, you could reach a satisfactory solution.” Bolton said that there are two camps of diplomats: one that believes that diplomacy can solve 99.4 percent of the world’s problems and one that believes diplomacy can solve 100 percent of them. He sees himself in the former camp as the latter camp “has taken diplomacy to obsession” and “has raised diplomacy from technique to policy, which it manifestly is not.”
The “second mislearned lesson” relates to the status of Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction and how critics believe Bush distorted intelligence to imagine an unfounded imminent threat. Yet, Bolton reminded, the war in Iraq was never grounded on intelligence relating to an imminent threat posed by Hussein, but based on suspicion that he held nuclear weapons and readiness to use them. “His proclivity to expand his authority by military force and his demonstrated willingness to use weapons of mass destruction showed why that threat could not be allowed to ripen again,” said Bolton. Politicians on both sides of the aisle, he said, seemed to agree.
Iraq’s own 1991 declaration of nuclear weapons “changed the calculus with which we [had] to deal with them,” said Bolton. “If you misjudge when that capability exists and misjudge the progress they’re making, by the time you make a decision to act, they may already have the weapons and your task is significantly greater.”
Now Bolton believes America faces two acute threats in North Korea and Iran, calling his avoidance of these two dangerous countries while at the UN a “mistake.” First, he said, the U.S. must “try to identify the strategic policy [the two countries] are pursuing” in order to determine the best course of action.” “I do not favor just-in-time non-proliferation,” said Bolton. After all, for both, nuclear weapons represent “trump cards for their regimes that are too valuable to be given up for any peaceful incentive.”
Heralding North Korea “essentially a prison camp for some 20 million people,” Bolton explained it is a “criminal regime that will sell anything to anyone for hard currency” as it is the “largest proliferator of ballistic weapon technology” and engages in the trade of illicit narcotics and promoted the illegal gambling industry in Japan. North Korea, clarified Bolton, “is not going to give up [nuclear] capability for any price we’re willing to pay.” North Korea is willing to talk, but “when push come to shove, North Korea is never willing to fulfill its side of the bargain,” demonstrating what Bolton labeled “capacity for boundless mendacity.”
To solve the North Korean quagmire, Bolton proposed the U.S. encourage China to pressure North Korea to relinquish its program because China, a country so focused on bolstering its energy capacity, could understand that North Korea’s possession of nuclear weapons might encourage other South East Asian countries to develop their own programs and challenge China’s prominence in the region. However, China is reluctant, Bolton explained, because they fear too much pressure might collapse the regime and cause a newly unified Korea to join forces with the U.S. and bring American troops to the region.
Bolton spent less time elaborating the threat Iran poses, but nevertheless professed its capabilities and the importance of diminishing its potential, although our options are limited. “One is regime change,” said Bolton. “The other, as a very last resort and a very unattractive option, but one we have to consider, is the targeted use of force against Iran’s program.” He explained that if the U.S. had been more vigorous in working within the fragile country to bring about regime change, “we would be in a much different place today” as “regime change” cannot be turned “on and off like a light switch.” Bolton prophesied the U.S. might have to “consider reluctantly, and as a last resort, the use of force” in Iran.
“These are the questions we will have to face long after Americans have withdrawn from Iraq,” said Bolton, ending before he took questions on a somber note. “If we don’t deal with those threats now, you and your children will have to deal with these threats long after the baby boom generation has left the scene.”