Dump Bolton before He Starts the Next War

Donald Trump very likely won the 2016 election with pronouncements like these:

Obviously the war in Iraq was a big fat mistake.”

“We should have never been in Iraq.”

“We have destabilized the middle east.”

“We will stop racing to topple foreign regimes that we know nothing about.”

Today, it is unclear exactly who is administering US foreign policy given the President’s consistently inconsistent views and with the B Team filling a prominent role in what appears to be a presidential vacuum.

As Trump’s closest national security advisors fanned the flames of unconfirmed, undefined “Iranian threats,” the President told White House reporters

It’s going to be a bad problem for Iran if something happens, I can tell you that. They’re not going to be happy.” and later tweeting

If Iran wants to fight, that will be the official end of Iran. Never threaten the United States again!”

Declaring “heightened tensions” as if Iran was out-of-their-minds crazy enough to imminently launch an attack on a US facility, the Trump Administration evacuated non essential US Embassy personnel from Baghdad after two Saudi oil tankers were ‘attacked’ off the UAE coast, a low grade rocket exploded near the Embassy, three mortar shells landed within Baghdad’s Green Zone and a Yemeni drone ‘attacked’ a Saudi pipeline.

Combining an alarming sense of panic with an overly zealous response, all of that confluence of confusion was sufficient for the US to react with its usual belligerence dispatching a B52 bomber task force, an aircraft carrier strike group led by the USS Abraham Lincoln aimed for the Strait of Hormuz (where one third of all oil passes through) and the release of a Pentagon “just in case” contingency for 120,000 troops in preparation for Armageddon. History has its irony as it was the flight deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln where President GW Bush grandstanded with his Mission Accomplished strut in May, 2003 announcing the end of major combat operations in Iraq, six weeks after the US invasion.

With no moderating voice on the President’s national security team, National Security Advisor John Bolton, also known as the “devil incarnate,” has been aided and abetted by the equally ‘bull in a china shop’ Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to create a neocon foreign policy strategy that was not what Trump campaigned on. While the combative trio is equally obsessive regarding Iran, Bolton and Pompeo organized the recent military buildup in anticipation for a rapid response deployment when the next Iranian ‘threat’ occurred. While Bolton holds dual citizenship with Israel and the US, both Israel and Saudi Arabia have long targeted Iran for a direct military confrontation and would relish the opportunity.

Not surprisingly, there was push back from some of the usual coalition allies with British deputy commander Maj. Gen. Chris Ghika daring to suggest “There’s been no increased threat from Iranian backed forces in Iraq and Syria,” and Germany’s Foreign Minister Heiko Maas that he made it clear to Pompeo that a unilateral strategy of increasing pressure against Iran was ‘ill-advised.’ Pompeo’s hastily arranged ‘drop in’ on a European foreign ministers meeting in Brussels did little to instill confidence in sloppy US intel or Trump’s Iran agenda.

The Pentagon helpfully pointed out that 120,000 troops would be insufficient if a ground mission was ordered which led Rep. Tulsi Gabbard to remark that war in Iran would make the Iraq war look like a “cake walk’ referring to the fact that Iran is a cohesive country, four times larger than Iraq and has more than double the population of Iraq. In other words, a recipe for an environmental, humanitarian and military disaster of epic proportions – in addition it should be expected that Russia and China would not be content to sit on the sidelines. Many will recall the 2003 prediction that the Iraqi people would welcome American troops as liberators, strewing roses in their path, just prior to the war descending into unthinkable carnage.

As a result of all the uncertainty, Trump gave up the trash-talk and told acting Pentagon chief Patrick Shanahan during a military briefing that he does not want to go to war with Iran letting his hawkish aides know that he does not want the “intensifying American pressure campaign against the Iranians to explode into open conflict.” It is worth knowing whether the President directly ordered Bolton and Pompeo to back off.

Trump’s assertion that “I make the final decision” is as if to reassure himself that he is in charge belies a reputation for vacillating and a weak-will that continues to plague his Administration especially on foreign policy. It is curious that there appears to be little sophistication on how to get things done as the Swiss were asked to provide the White House number to the Iranian government so that there could be ‘negotiations.” One presumes it would have been more diplomatically appropriate for the Secretary of State to initiate the call rather than ratchet the task to a third party but imagine the international incident if Iranian President Rouhani had refused to take the call. The fact that the United States has been ‘waiting by the phone’ for Tehran to call is nonsensical after having issued a barrage of reckless threats, sanctions and insults that were intended to generate a military reaction from the Iranians. The entire matter of who calls whom first is more of a telltale sign of the Empire’s feigned omnipotence on the world stage.

While Iran’s Supreme Leader Khamenei has refused to negotiate with the US, explaining that “negotiating with the current US Government is toxic,” the Iranians have no interest in bargaining away their ballistic missiles which could reach Tel Aviv or putting limits on their operational range. As with North Korea, Iran is well aware of Libya’s Mummar Quaddafi fate as he laid down his weapons only to have HRC organize a revolt and order his untimely demise.

A recent FoxNews interview added further confusion as Trump totally buys the neocon view that

Iran has been a problem for so many years, look at all the conflicts they have caused.” Further explaining “I want to invade if I have to economically” to provide jobs, Trump agrees that “there is a Military Industrial Complex” and “they do like war” while complaining that “I wipe out 100% of the caliphate and people here in DC, they never want to leave.”

And when asked about his campaign pledges in 2016, Trump responded “I’m not somebody that wants to go into war” offering the assurance that “I have not changed” and yet the belligerent talk comes too easily as if Bolton was the last person he spoke with as he fails to consider the possibility of a ‘false flag’ event.

After having conducted classified briefings with the Congress on Tuesday, Shanahan, with Pompeo by his side, informed a press briefing that

there will be no war with Iran” and the US had “deterred an Iranian attack based on our reposturing of assets, deterred attacks against American forces” and that now the “focus is to prevent an Iranian miscalculation. We do not want the situation to escalate. This is about deterrence; not about war. We’re not about going to war.”

In other words, the US was selling the notion to anyone who would buy it that the Iranians would have launched an attack if not for an increased US military build up that forced the Iranians to backpedal.

The always illuminating Sen. Lindsay Graham, Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee was on hand to add his own piroutte as if there had been verifiable evidence of an Iranian threat:

We are ready to respond if we have to. The best thing would be for everyone to calm down and Iran to back off. I am hoping that this show of force will result in de-escalating.”

As he has expressed little public reaction to the administration’s ineptitude with North Korea at the Vietnam summit or the fiasco in Venezuela, Trump allows himself to be played like a fiddle, complicit with the neocon’s latest nefarious schemes that reveal him as a second-rate player; deteriorating before the public with a history of clumsy international gaffes. There is no question that neither Bolton nor Pompeo are to be trusted and that Bolton’s over reach of authority is the key driver pushing for confrontation and divisiveness while Pompeo is a more personally shrewd team player and somewhat less of a loose cannon.

Thanks to the high level of public awareness that nailed down the faulty details of this latest kerfuffle and its excessive harangues, Trump needs to relieve Bolton of his key to the office and find someone who reflects his 2016 campaign promises.

Renee Parsons has been a member of the ACLU’s Florida State Board of Directors and president of the ACLU Treasure Coast Chapter. She has been an elected public official in Colorado, an environmental lobbyist and staff member of the US House of Representatives in Washington DC. She can be found on Twitter @reneedove31