Why Does John Bolton Hate America?

Shorter John Bolton: America is so weak that we lose by even talking to North Korea.

Sadly, I could easily debunk this garbage without trying too hard, yet couldn't get in a news article short of setting myself on fire. And even then wouldn't make the Yahoo homepage.

And finally, is there really any point in using the word "terrorist" if you're watering it down so far that it just means "anyone we don't like"?

Here's Bolton:

"It comes perilously close to negotiating with terrorists," Bolton told AFP when asked about Bill Clinton's trip to secure the release of journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee.
[....]
"I think this is a very bad signal because it does exactly what we always try and avoid doing with terrorists, or with rogue states in general, and that's encouraging their bad behavior," Bolton said.

I wonder if Bolton even knows what that word means. And do I need to remind everyone that Reagan negotiated with actual terrorists? Or that he approved the illegal sale of weapons to Iran for the release of hostages? The concept of not negotiating with terrorists was always a rhetorical point, with no actual bearing in reality.


UPDATE: Well it looks like Bill got the two journalists released. Bolton, on the other hand, didn't think we should engage in any sort of diplomacy, beyond what a bunch of bombs could deliver. So were it up to John Bolton, we'd have needed to declare war in order to hope to get the journalists released, while rational thinking people did it with words. Does it need to be mentioned that John Bolton is a douchebag? I think it does.

As I've said before, the entire point of the "Diplomacy encourages bad behavior" rationale is because diplomacy helps avoid war, and these jerks don't like that. Their problem with diplomacy isn't that it doesn't work, but rather, that it does.