Bolton: US Should Resign from 'Clown Convention' at UN

Former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton said the United States should resign from the United Nations Human Rights Council, calling it a “clown convention,” after one of its officials said U.S. foreign policy contributed to the Boston bombings.

Comments made by human-rights investigator Richard Falk “reflect the prevailing world view” of the U.N. Human Rights Council, Bolton said on Monday in an interview with Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren.

“So I think the thing for the United States to do is resign from the Human Rights Council. It’s just a clown convention anyway,” Bolton said. “We should defund all the activities of the Human Rights Council and then maybe they will pay attention.”

Falk, writing about the Boston bombing in Foreign Policy Journal, recited a litany of U.S. foreign policy actions — from “unlawful wars” to Abu Ghraib prison atrocities — before concluding that “America’s military prowess and the abiding confidence of its leaders in hard-power diplomacy makes the United States a menace to the world and to itself.”

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“What he said about the Boston Marathon bombing is unacceptable, for a U.S. citizen to say it let alone a U.S. citizen working for the United Nations,” Bolton said.

Bolton said that simply firing Falk, who was appointed in 2008 to a six-year term as U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in Palestinian territories, wouldn’t solve the problem.

“I’m all in favor of firing him sooner rather than later. But here’s the sad news: He will be replaced with somebody else and it won’t make a bit of difference,” Bolton said. “I think the culture at the United Nations is such that merely firing one guy will not change anything.”

Bolton said the problem is that the entire U.N. human rights mechanism is fundamentally directed against Israel, adding that more resolutions are passed dealing with Israeli human rights violations than “the rest of the world combined.”