Posted on 11/19/2016 11:20:11 AM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
Rumors are that Donald Trump might pick John Bolton for Secretary of State. Heaven forbid.
One of the things I occasionally liked about the President-elect was his opposition to the Iraq war and regime change. He not only grasped the mistake of that war early, but also seemed to fully understand how it disrupted the balance of power in the Middle East and even emboldened Iran.
We liberated Iraq, but today their best friend is Iran, their second greatest ally is Russia, and their third strongest alliance is with Syria. Trump really seems to get the lesson. Hillary Clinton never did.
Most importantly right now, John Bolton never learned and never will.
Bolton is a longtime member of the failed Washington elite that Trump vowed to oppose, hell-bent on repeating virtually every foreign policy mistake the U.S. has made in the last 15 years — particularly those Trump promised to avoid as president.
John Bolton more often stood with Hillary Clinton and against what Donald Trump has advised.
None of this is secret. It’s all out there. Perhaps the incoming administration should take a closer look.
Bolton was one of the loudest advocates of overthrowing Saddam Hussein and still stupefyingly insists it was the right call 13 years later. “I still think the decision to overthrow Saddam was correct,” Bolton said just last year.
Trump, rightly, believes that decision was a colossal mistake that destabilized the region. “Iraq used to be no terrorists,” Trump said in 2015. “(N)ow it’s the Harvard of terrorism.”
“If you look at Iraq from years ago, I’m not saying he was a nice guy, he was a horrible guy,” Trump said of Saddam Hussein, “but it was a lot better than it is right now.”
Trump has said U.S. intervention in Iraq in 2003 “helped to throw the region into chaos and gave ISIS the space it needs to grow and prosper.” In contrast, Bolton has said explicitly that he wants to repeat Iraq-style regime change in Syrian and Iran.
You can’t learn from mistakes if you don’t see mistakes.
Trump has blamed George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton for helping to create ISIS — but should add John Bolton to that list, who essentially agreed with all three on our regime change debacles.
In 2011, Bolton bashed Obama “for his refusal to directly target Gaddafi” and declared, “there is a strategic interest in toppling Gaddafi… But Obama missed it.” In fact, Obama actually took Bolton’s advice and bombed the Libyan dictator into the next world. Secretary of State Clinton bragged, “We came, we saw, he died.”
When Trump was asked last year if Libya and the region would be more stable today with Gaddafi in power, he replied “100 percent.” Mr. Trump is 100 percent right.
No man is more out of touch with the situation in the Middle East or more dangerous to our national security than Bolton.
All nuance is lost on the man. The fact that Russia has had a base in Syria for 50 years doesn’t deter Bolton from calling for all out, no holds barred war in Syria. Bolton criticized the current administration for offering only a tepid war. For Bolton, only a hot-blooded war to create democracy across the globe is demanded.
Woodrow Wilson would be proud, but the parents of our soldiers should be mortified. War should be the last resort, never the first. War should be understood to be a hell no one wishes for. Dwight Eisenhower understood this when he wrote, “I hate war like only a soldier can, the stupidity, the banality, the futility.”
Bolton would not understand this because, like many of his generation, he used every privilege to avoid serving himself. Bolton said, with the threat of the Vietnam draft over his head, that “he had no desire to die in a Southeast Asian rice paddy.” But he’s seems to be okay with your son or daughter dying wherever his neoconservative impulse leads us: “Even before the Iraq War, John Bolton was a leading brain behind the neoconservatives’ war-and-conquest agenda,” notes The American Conservative’s Jon Utley.
At a time when Americans thirst for change and new thinking, Bolton is an old hand at failed foreign policy.
The man is a menace.
Our Constitution and our founding fathers were explicit war was not to be fought without the permission of Congress. No matter which party occupies the White House, I will not shrink from my constitutional duty to oppose any advocate for war.
The true statesmen realizes, with reluctance, that war is sometimes necessary but as a country, we should resist any would-be leader who wants to bomb now and think later.
President-elect Donald Trump campaigned on changing our disastrous foreign policy. To appoint John Bolton would be a major first step toward breaking that promise.
Rand Paul is the junior senator from Kentucky.
You persistently introduce red herrings into this argument. I never advocated killing all Muslims, just as many as we need to kill. You also introduced (without justification) Malaysia because it is 61% Muslim. I haven't heard of any threate from Malaysia. Have you? If they threaten, we will deal with them as necessary.
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>> “You persistently introduce red herrings into this argument.” <<
Yes! Always.
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If the Islamosatrapies in question were flat, black and glowing in the dark, that would end that 1,000 year old civil war once and for all without our helping or protecting either side (because they would all be extinct) and that would be a win for us.
So you did propose that we could make them extinct.
I brought up Malaysia because you seem to be unaware how many Muslims there in the world nor how widely dispersed they are on the planet. You seemed to be under the impression they are were all in one convenient place where they could all be nuked in one go.
And yes, Malaysian Muslims have committed terrorist attacks in Bali, Australia, etc. Filipino Muslims have committed terrorists attacks in the Philippines ... etc. That's why the Aussies and Kiwis aren't keen to take any 'refugees' from Muslim countries. They've had enough trouble with Muslims in their own backyard (check a map).
The point is, your plain is not feasible.
BTW....Newt has reverted to his blue shirts.
Go snuggle up to Muhammed el Kaboomski while he is still available to snuggle.
All together now with Lorianne:
"Abbie Hoffman, Kumbaya!
Jerry Rubin, Kumbaya!
Chicago Seven, Kumbaya!
Tom Hayden, Kumbaya!
Jane Fonda, Kumbaya!
William Ayres, Kumbaya!
Bernardine Dohrn, Kumbaya!
George McGovern, Kumbaya!
Rand/Ron Paul Lord, Kumbaya!
Lost her mind, Lord, Kumbaya.
Lost her soul, Lord, Kumbaya.
She was blown up, Lord, Kumbaya!
By her Islamobuddies, Kumbaya!
Code Pink'll replace you, Kumbaya!"
New leaders? Sean Penn, George Clooney, Huma Abedin, Keith Ellison, Louis Farrakhan, Rand Paul, half of Hollyweird, Chelsea Clinton Mezvinsky, Colin Powell, Barack Insane Obozo, Chewbacca Obozo, Eric Holder, Loretta Lynch, Jeh Johnson, John Kerry......
The Ohio Class submarines insure that anyone not suicidal will not step forward to lead. Then we also have those nice, useful, surgically targeted DRONES!
They don't have to be in one place. If the Aussies don't want Islamoterrorism on their soil, they have quite adequate weaponry to put a stop to it. The, ummm, Kiwis are dedicated to being surrender monkeys. They once banned our warships from ther ports because w have, gulp!, NUKES! Unless and until their spines stiffen, the Muzzies can have them. It might pose a lesson to our domestic Kumbayas not to be too eager to be raped and murdered.
The area of the Phillipines infested by Islamic guerrillas has been in continuous rebellion as "nationalists," Huk communists, and now Islamofascists since about 1898 or longer for all I know. Duarte shows promise on this score. Despised Obozo. Likes Trump. Promises to summarily execute drug dealers, and is none too fond of the rebels. Go, Duarte! Before you presume to judge the feasibility of my plan which has the virtue of ending Islamofascism in our time, et's hear the details of your plan other than pie in the sky bye and bye "containing them" until they develop nukes while you coddle and protect them with "containment"rather than death from the sky. Thanks, but no thanks!
First line of #126 should read note rather than not.
Bolton was a Goldwater supporter. Please look up the definition of “neoconservative”. Then read Bolton on foreign policy.
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