Trump’s New War Cabinet

by Shahed Ghoreishi

On Thursday, President Trump moved one step closer to completing his preferred cabinet. General H.R. McMaster, whom Trump called boring, was replaced as national security advisor by ultra-hawk John Bolton. This is the same John Bolton who wrote the forward for Pamela Geller’s hate-filled book about President Obama, called on Israel to nuke Iran, urged the United States to bomb Iran and North Korea, abused a female USAID employee, advocated on behalf of the NRA for more gun rights for Russian citizens, and still defends the Iraq war. I could go on.

Trump’s other appointments have similar attributes. Mike Pompeo, set to take over in Foggy Bottom, compared Iran to the Islamic State and called it a “thuggish police state” that is “intent [on] destroying America.” Lastly, Gina Haspel, set to take over the CIA, has a history of torturing detainees under the Bush administration. She even destroyed the recordings taken of the torture years later. Meanwhile, John Kelley remains in a precarious position as chief of staff.

This team constitutes a gang of evil. The anti-diplomacy, pro-torture, pro-war initiatives they have supported have cost lives and created instability in the Middle East to the detriment of U.S. national security and international standing. Additionally, Bolton and Pompeo have ties to hate groups that promote division at home (no wonder Trump likes them). Also, some of the initial appointments belong to the same gang, including UN Ambassador Nikki Haley and Michael D’Andrea, the head of the CIA’s Iran operations.

Three upcoming dates likely encouraged Trump to make these rapid changes.

North Korea and Iran

Trump is slated to meet directly with Kim Jong Un by this coming May. The changes in Trump’s cabinet have put a damper on the preparations as the deadline approaches. However, the changes are no accident. Trump has used bellicose language towards North Korea from early on in his presidency. By having a like-minded secretary of state and national security advisor in place, he is sending a deliberate signal to Kim Jong Un. If Trump is going to play lead diplomat, he still has threatening cabinet members in place as a counterforce. But with such a high-level start to the talks, as many analysts have repeated, there’s little room for diplomatic recourse should the Trump-Kim discussions fail. Bolton would be the ideal person to game the next move in such a situation and show an aggressive posture. That some in the president’s own party don’t seem to care about the consequences of war or even the consequences of a limited strike does not bode well should the talks fail (or fail to happen).

The Iran nuclear deal is another worrying case. On May 12, Trump must decide whether the deal should be recertified. The International Atomic Energy Agency, assigned to overlook the implementation of the deal, has said that Iran has complied to the benefit of the international community. Meanwhile, the Europeans and the Iranians have grown frustrated regarding Washington’s threats to tear up the deal. The Europeans have proposed adding an addendum regarding Iran’s ballistic missiles, but the Iranians are not having it. Iran remains irritated by the lack of investment from foreign businesses and banks, which they blame on Trump’s bellicose language.

The recent hiring of Bolton sends a major signal to Iran’s leadership that the United States is doubling down on its aggressive posture. Again, this is by design. Trump wants either to provoke Iran to withdraw from the deal first—thus shifting blame away from Washington—or to add sanctions in May in direct violation of the deal and thereby killing it. Either way, Bolton’s presence increases the chance of a conflict that already has concerned U.S. allies.

Several regional enemies of Iran would support an American intervention. The overlap of the Bolton announcement with the visit to Washington of hawkish Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, responsible for the deadly Yemen intervention, is likely no coincidence.

The Blue Wave

Everything points toward November. The president and the Republican Party know that they are likely to suffer a “blue wave” on election night. This is the third date likely inspiring Trump’s recent moves. The president is a showman at heart. He is more timing and appearance than substance. Trump is likely to ratchet up tensions with Iran and North Korea in reaction to, or in prevention of, a blue wave. Of course, Trump would need the unlikely approval of Congress for any major intervention, but the intervention does not have to be on a regular armed conflict. It could also be in the cyber realm. Or it could be clandestine, which requires less congressional oversight.

During the campaign, Trump loved to say that he was against the Iraq war, which he called a “disaster.” Apparently during negotiations with Bolton, Trump had him promise that he “wouldn’t start any wars.” However, this is the same Trump who has continued America’s war for the Greater Middle East despite lamenting the “trillions of dollars spent and thousands of lives lost” in the region.

The president has many attributes, but consistency is not one of them. Putting Pompeo and Bolton in such major positions of power suggests that Trump and his gang of evil are preparing for the very conflicts that he promised to avoid.

Shahed Ghoreishi is a graduate of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. 

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7 Comments

  1. Those must repent who ever said that Trump “believes” the Iraq war was bad.
    The only tangible fact is that Trump “said” the Iraq war was bad.
    Trumps own supporters seem to have known Trump was “just saying” it.
    Trumps own supporters would be mad now that Trump is said to have changed his position on war, if they had ever believed Trumps supposedly anti-war belief system was sincere.
    But we polite liberals never dreamed that Trump was only just saying all that peace stuff, he never believed any of it at all. Trump knows he isn’t good at his job, he doesn’t wish to work harder at it, he knows that a war could take the heat off him.
    The billionaires know socialism is coming, it doesn’t matter how much you prove they’ll make more money, they still prefer rubble and fascism to taking a chance on that. The billionaires want war and torture – so they don’t have to work hard at their jobs – so that instead people are just scared what will happen to themselves if they expose a billionaires weakness.
    The work ethic is gone from the billionaire class, they don’t want to have to be good at their jobs, to keep their jobs, they’ll kill us all rather than that.

  2. 1. Bolton is not in a position of power.
    2. Bombing Iran is not a new idea, McCain was an advocate as I recall.
    3. Trump thrives on chaos, obviously.
    4. Trump has not sent 70,000 additional troops to Afghanistan as Obama did. Nor anywhere else.
    5. Being anti-Iran has gone on for fifty years, except when the U.S. had its torturing puppet in charge. It’s as American as apple pie.
    6. Trump has never claimed to be consistent, he’s claimed to be successful, and he’s thrived on publicity and chaos.

  3. Both men are full of it and both are 80% bluff and 20% inconsistent. It’s all about beating a hollow drum to generate cash! Any 4th grader can propose a better foreign policy than these 2 men!

  4. In fact Iranian regime likes J Bolton since he was instrumental in destroying their enemy Saddam Hossein and then the US military handed off the country of Iraq to the Iranian regime’s brother or the Iraqi Shiite leader grand Ayatollah Sistani

  5. Who is funding John Bolton and his “Gatestone Institute”?

    “Gatestone Institute’s founder and director, Nina Rosenwald… An heiress to the Sears Roebuck fortune, Rosenwald spreads her millions through the William Rosenwald Family Fund, a nonprofit foundation named for her father, a famed Jewish philanthropist who created the United Jewish Appeal in 1939. His daughter’s focus is more explicitly political. According to a report by the Center for American Progress titled “Fear Inc.,” Rosenwald and her sister Elizabeth Varet, who also directs the family foundation, have donated more than $2.8 million since 2000 to “organizations that fan the flames of Islamophobia.”… (In 2003 alone the Rosenwald Family Fund donated well over half of its $1.6 million in total contributions to pro-Israel and Islamophobic organizations.) SOURCE: “The Sugar Mama of Anti-Muslim Hate” by Max Blumenthal, The Nation, July 2009

    People have to die so billionaires like Sheldon Adelson and Nina Rosenwald and Bernard Marcus and the Koch Brothers can play world leader

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