Jeane J Kirkpatrick

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Jeane Kirkpatrick was a professor at Georgetown University for many years, and during the Reagan administration was US ambassador to the UN. She died on 8 Dec 2006[1]

Kirkpatrick was an early neocon and ultra-rightwinger. She was a professor at Georgetown University for many years, and during the Reagan administration was US ambassador to the UN. She gained notoriety during the 1970s for attacking Carter's "human rights" agenda in foreign policy [2].

Diplomatic Highlights

Reagan's ambassador to the United Nations "professed to detest" the body, which she compared to "death and taxes.[3]"

At the United Nations, she defended Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and the American invasion of Grenada in 1983. She argued for El Salvador’s right-wing junta and against Nicaragua’s left-wing ruling council, the Sandinistas...She was a crucial participant in a March 1981 National Security Planning Group meeting that produced a $19 million covert action plan to make the contras a fighting force.

Ronald Reagan admired "her strong diplomatic stands and her undiplomatic language" which included, for example, accusing 40 third world ambassadors 'of spreading "base lies" and making "malicious attacks upon the good name of the United States."

In March 2003, President Bush recalled her to active duty and sent her to Geneva on a mission "to head off a diplomatic uprising against the imminent war against Iraq". Arab ministers wanted to condemn it as an act of aggression:

Instead, she argued that the attack was justified by Saddam Hussein’s violations of United Nations resolutions dating from the 1991 war against Iraq. The foreign ministers found her position convincing and their resolve against the war faded... [4]

Some More Equal Than Others

Ms. Kirkpatrick first entered Mr. Reagan’s inner circle on the strength of a 10,000-word article she published in the neoconservative magazine Commentary in November 1979. The article, "Dictatorships and Double Standards", drew a bright line between right-wing pro-American governments and left-wing anti-American ones...[5]"Traditional authoritarian governments," she argued, “are less repressive than revolutionary autocracies." She said it was an historic mistake for the United States to have shied away from dictators like the Somozas in Nicaragua and the Shah of Iran.

According to NYT, when Kirkpatrick became the UN ambassador, "Dictatorships and Double Standards" became an important part of the foreign policy of the United States.

Affiliations

References, Resources and Related Articles

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Notes

  1. Harold Jackson, Jeanne Kirkpatrick Obituary The Guardian,9-December-2006, Accessed 14-March-2009
  2. Harold Jackson, Jeanne Kirkpatrick Obituary The Guardian,9-December-2006, Accessed 14-March-2009
  3. Tim Weiner, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Reagan’s Forceful Envoy, Dies, New York Times, 9 December 2006
  4. Tim Weiner, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Reagan’s Forceful Envoy, Dies, New York Times, 9 December 2006
  5. Jeane Kirkpatrick, Dictatorships and Double Standards, Commentary, November 1979
  6. Clark & Weinstock Vin Weber Accessed 20th March 2008