Marco Rubio loves foreign policy! I can't think of a single frosh senator who's so jubilantly committed to speaking out about, and screwing around with, the international community. First he came down like a gazillion-pound freedom hammer on the Ba'athist cretin Bashar al-Assad (which did little good, but oh well); then he condemned Barack Obama's speech on the Middle East (on totally specious grounds, but oh well) -- and now he's blocking Obama's appointment to the Vietnamese consulate, David Shear!
Not that he's got anything against David Shear. Shear's a good guy, and so far as Rubio or anybody else knows, he'll do a fine job representing the United States' interests in Hanoi. Rubio's blocking the appointment for symbolic reasons. And he's totally righteous for doing so.
Here's why:
Rubio has placed a temporary block on the
appointment (as Dick Lugar did some months ago) because of a tragic
bureaucratic boondoggle that is keeping Vietnamese
orphans from their adoptive parents in the United States -- including
three children who were set to be adopted by parents in Florida. Both the
U.S. and Vietnam are rejiggering their adoption regulations, which has
left 16 Vietnamese children in a weird purgatorial no-man's land in
which they are being clothed, fed, and tended to by their American
parents but are not allowed to come live with them.
This is not Shear's fault, nor is there anything he can do about it. But by
keeping the ambassador in his own purgatorial no-man's land, Rubio hopes
the Obama administration will prioritize the adoptee's plight, which
has lasted three long years.
The blocking of Shear's appointment
is unlikely to do any harm, by the way. Though Bush's appointee,
Michael M. Michalak, is long gone, our embassy is currently in the hands
of a very capable interim charge d'affaires, Virginia E. Palmer. She'll handle whatever comes up while Shear awaits his Senate confirmation and 16 orphans await a home.
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