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Title: Donald Trump Called The Iraq War A ‘Disaster.’ His New National Security Adviser Was Its Biggest Cheerleader
Source:
The Daily Sheeple
URL Source: http://www.thedailysheeple.com/dona ... its-biggest-cheerleader_032018
Published: Mar 22, 2018
Author: Will Racke
Post Date: 2018-03-26 10:25:50 by Deckard
Keywords: None
Views: 233
Comments: 4
President Donald Trump secured an improbable win in 2016 by tapping into widespread but largely ignored disgust among American voters for the governing elite, who had driven the economy to near ruin and mired U.S. troops in endless war. Along with conventional wisdom on the benefits of free trade and open immigration, he unapologetically attacked the liberal interventionism favored by Washington’s foreign policy establishment. No foreign policy decision earned more of Trump’s scorn than the George W. Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq in 2003. On the campaign trail, he consistently denounced the invasion and occupation as a waste of American blood and treasure. Trump delivered this scathing indictment of the Iraq war during a GOP debate in December 2015: We have done a tremendous disservice not only to the Middle East — we’ve done a tremendous disservice to humanity. The people that have been killed, the people that have been wiped away — and for what? It’s not like we had victory. It’s a mess. The Middle East is totally destabilized, a total and complete mess. I wish we had the 4 trillion dollars or 5 trillion dollars. I wish it were spent right here in the United States on schools, hospitals, roads, airports, and everything else that are all falling apart! Trump’s assertion that resources that could have been put to use at home were needlessly squandered abroad formed the core of his “America First” message. It comported perfectly with his denunciation of the Beltway political class, which, through incompetence or malfeasance, had failed regular Americans by promoting foreign wars, ruinous trade deals, and mass immigration. Ironically, one of those foreign policy elites so disdained by then-candidate Trump is about to become his national security adviser. John Bolton, the famously hawkish Bush administration official, will replace H.R. McMaster at the White House, effective April 9. As the undersecretary of state for arms control and international security in the Bush State Department, Bolton was a leading voice in favor of toppling the regime of Saddam Hussein. In that role, he was instrumental in making the case that Hussein had developed weapons of mass destruction and forged ties with al-Qaeda, the group responsible for the 9/11 attacks. “We are confident that Saddam Hussein has hidden weapons of mass destruction and production facilities in Iraq,” Bolton told the BBC in the run-up to the Iraq war. He added that “the Iraqi people would be unique in history if they didn’t welcome the overthrow of this dictatorial regime.” Both of those assessments turned out to be deeply flawed. Later, it was revealed that Bolton, Colin Powell and other Bush administration officials used skewed analysis of shoddy intelligence to hype the threat of Hussein’s supposed WMD program. In typically blunt fashion, Trump went so far as to accuse the Bush administration, and Bolton by extension, of deliberately misleading the American public about the threat of Iraqi WMDs. “You call it whatever you want. I want to tell you — they lied,” Trump said during a Republican debate in February 2016. “They said there were weapons of mass destruction; there were none. And they knew there were none. There were no weapons of mass destruction.” Trump never singled out Bolton in his denunciations of the Iraq War. Still, his criticism could make for some awkward moments in the Oval Office given that Bolton continues to insist that the 2003 invasion was the right call, even if its aftermath still haunts U.S. foreign policy today. “I still think the decision to overthrow Saddam was correct. I think decisions made after that decision were wrong, although I think the worst decision made after that was the 2011 decision to withdraw U.S. and coalition forces,” he told the Washington Examiner in 2015. “The people who say, ‘Oh, things would have been much better if you didn’t overthrow Saddam,’ miss the point that today’s Middle East does not flow totally and unchangeably from the decision to overthrow Saddam alone.” That decision was informed by a plan that Bolton and like-minded foreign policy experts at the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) put together long before 9/11. Founded by neoconservatives Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan, the now-defunct think tank in 1998 sent an open letter to former President Bill Clinton calling for regime change in Iraq. Bolton was among the signatories of the letter, which called for a new strategy to deal with Saddam Hussein, a threat “more serious than any we have known since the end of the Cold War. “That strategy should aim, above all, at the removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime from power,” the PNAC letter advised. “We stand ready to offer our full support in this difficult but necessary endeavor.” Clinton never did fulfill PNAC’s wish, settling instead for a four-day bombing campaign on Iraqi targets in response to Hussein’s intransigence over U.N. weapons inspections. Five years later, though, Bolton and many of PNAC’s core members got the chance to turn their recommendation into policy as leading national security officials in the George W. Bush White House. On the eve of the 2003 invasion, PNAC alumni serving in the Bush administration included Bolton, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy Paul Wolfowitz, Special Assistant Elliot Abrams, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, and Chairman of the Defense Policy Board Richard Perle. When he takes the helm at the National Security Council in April, Bolton will become the first of those Iraq War architects to return to government service since the end of the Bush era. 
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#1. To: Deckard (#0)
Bolton was well within the pack of neocon types but in no way had the kind of power that, for instance, Wolfowitz had at the DoD. Plenty of other neocon warmongers were far more prominent in public discourse than Bolton was. Bolton is also older and wiser, having seen the failures of the Iraq policies, the whole "we'll be greeted as liberators" blah-blah-blah. He no longer defends a lot of the Iraq policy the neocons embraced. The article overstates how influential Bolton was at the time.
Well stated comment.
Truth is, Trump is terrifying to Kim Jong Un. He has panicked him into seeking a settlement with South Korea. Truth is, Trump has kept a good working relationship with Russia, because the national leaders know that, beyond the tit-for-tat at the State Department level, there's no desire to expand the Cold War: so they don't. Truth is, Trump's a terror to Iran and ISIS. And truth is, Bolton is a terrifying man - probably THE most terrifying man - that all of our adversaries and enemies could face, because he is known for his willingness to lead the charge into the Iraq, Afghan and any other war. So, Trump has signaled to all of our adversaries: I am will, even eager, to go to war with you, full on military conflict. This is your last chance for a deal. Bolton is there to play bad cop, and it's a great role for him. Trump is there to sit at the table with the rattled foreign leaders and apply "The Art of the Deal". Remember, the head of Exxon was Trump's boy, not the other way around. Trump is the Alpha Alpha male in that group. General Kelly is cowed by him. General Flynn was cowed by him. Trump does not hire professionals for the top department jobs and leave them alone. Trump hires professionals, and expects them to run things the way he wants to, and hectors those who do not. Bolton is vicious. Trump wants a settlement of the Korean situation, he wants fair trade with China, he wants security for Taiwan and Israel, he wants good relations with Russia. If he gets Korea out of Bolton because they're afraid of Bolton, then Trump will get Korea out of Bolton and fire Bolton's ass when Bolton tries to rekindle the Cold War with Russia. Trump wants a lot of things - to serve him, you give him what HE wants. If Bolton does that, he'll survive. If not, he'll be out. But while he's in there, his pit bull presence and bellicosity will certainly scare Kim into going faster into settlement talks.
I'll give Trump credit. Nobody has greater propensity for bring assholes and asshole thinking into his administration than he does.
Title: Donald Trump Called The Iraq War A ‘Disaster.’ His New National Security Adviser Was Its Biggest Cheerleader
#2. To: Tooconservative (#1)
Bolton was well within the pack of neocon types but in no way had the kind of power that, for instance, Wolfowitz had at the DoD. Plenty of other neocon warmongers were far more prominent in public discourse than Bolton was.
#3. To: Deckard (#0)
#4. To: Deckard (#0)
Donald Trump Called The Iraq War A ‘Disaster.’ His New National Security Adviser Was Its Biggest Cheerleader
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