Trump rightly criticized George W. Bush for getting us into the disastrous Iraq war.
But now Trump’s presidency is turning into Bush’s third term …
Trump is appointing John Bolton as his National Security Adviser.
Who’s Bolton?
He’s one of the key architects of the Iraq war, who previously admitted that the Iraq war was about oil, not protecting the United States from weapons of mass destruction. And see this.
He has also openly called for partition of Iraq and Syria into a number of different countries … as Bolton’s beloved Neocons have been planning for over 20 years.
Slate notes:
John Bolton’s appointment as national security adviser—a post that requires no Senate confirmation—puts the United States on a path to war. And it’s fair to say President Donald Trump wants us on that path.
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Bolton has repeatedly called for launching a first strike on North Korea, scuttling the nuclear arms deal with Iran, and then bombing that country too. He says and writes these things not as part of some clever “madman theory” to bring Kim Jong-un and the mullahs of Tehran to the bargaining table, but rather because he simply wants to destroy them and America’s other enemies too.
His agenda is not “peace through strength,” the motto of more conventional Republican hawks that Trump included in a tweet on Wednesday, but rather regime change through war. He is a neocon without the moral fervor of some who wear that label—i.e., he is keen to topple oppressive regimes not in order to spread democracy but rather to expand American power.
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He was hostile to the idea of international law, having once declared, “It is a big mistake for us to grant any validity to international law even when it may seem in our short-term interest to do so—because over the long term, the goal of those who think that international law really means anything are those who want to constrain the United States.”
Reason notes that Bolton:
- Wanted the U.S. to go to war with Cuba over WMDs that didn’t exist
- Advised Obama to assassinate Libyan leader Gaddaffi … and then blamed Obama for doing just that
- Suggested that Israel should nuke Iran
- Helped cover up the Iran-Contra scandal
Trump also appointed Mike Pompeo to head the CIA … and has nominated him to helm the State Department.
And Trump nominated Gina Haspel to replace Pompeo as CIA chief.
Both Pompeo and Haskell are torture-promoting warmongers (and see this and this).
Make no mistake: Trump is gearing up for war.
Postscript: It’s ironic that many Democrats now love Bush and happily endorse Trump’s rush towards war … while getting distracted in a personality-based hatred of Trump based on his being a boor.
As Gaius Publius notes:
Leaders of the ruling bipartisan consensus like most of what Trump is doing; they just want someone else doing it.
