Five Reasons to Fire Bolton

Trump should send his warmongering national security advisor packing!

By S.T. Patrick

John Bolton has proven that there still exists in politics that place where the absurd would be comical if it were not so dangerous. His newly created label for international super-villainy, the “Troika of Tyranny,” once again illustrates why Bolton should be fired from his position as National Security Advisor. Bolton is a danger to the safety and security of the nation he has pledged to protect.

The 1964 political satire “Dr. Strangelove” parodied the war hawks that continually beat the drums of battle in an effort to enrich the military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower created and then criticized. Those were the days of Generals LeMay, Lemnitzer, and Taylor, all dangers to anyone desiring a peaceful post-World War II existence. The 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall changed that and ended the reactionary tendencies of Cold War tensions—or so it was thought. The globalist interventionists who ushered in President George H.W. Bush’s “New World Order” have directed foreign policy since 9/11. Bolton is chief among those still active in politics.

There are valid reasons to demand that President Donald Trump fire Bolton before he completely derails any hope Trump had of making America great again, at least internationally:

1) The Troika of Tyranny. As if the administration hadn’t stretched the interventionism strategy thin enough, Bolton looked southward to trump up new battlefields in Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua. This “Troika of Tyranny” is no more serious than George W. Bush’s “Axis of Evil,” Ronald Reagan’s “Evil Empire,” or Winston Churchill’s “Iron Curtain.” Before billions of dollars can be poured into covert coup d’états, Pentagon propaganda, and fruitless exercises of military might, the targets must be set up as boogeymen out to ruin the American way of life.

2) The Itch to Bomb Iran and North Korea. Bolton was Dick Cheney’s first choice when the UN ambassadorship became available in 2005 because Bolton favored swift military action in Iran. He has never wavered on that position and has long favored preemptive strikes against both Iran and North Korea.

3) A Terrorist Around Every Corner. In Bolton’s world, every country disagreeable with U.S. foreign and economic policy is a terrorist state in need of toppling. From Bolton’s troika to Iran, Iraq, Libya, and Syria—nations looking to guide their futures independently without American coercion—are “breeding grounds for terrorism,” which, today, means “nations tired of seeing Americans with guns pointed at them in their own countries.”

4) A Bully Trump Can Respect. José Bustani, a Brazilian diplomat, was once the head of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). In 2001, Bustani received a “thank you” note from Secretary of State Colin Powell for negotiating a deal with Saddam Hussein to allow OPCW weapons inspectors into Iraq. The problem was that nuclear danger and the refusal of inspectors were the pretexts on which the Bush administration’s hopes for war were pinned.

In 2002, one year before the American invasion of Iraq, Bolton was sent to The Hague to speak with Bustani, who had been unanimously reelected to his OPCW post.

“Cheney wants you out,” Bolton told Bustani. “We can’t accept your management style … . You have 24 hours to leave the organization, and if you don’t comply with this decision by Washington, we have ways to retaliate against you.” Bustani sat dumbfounded as Bolton paused. Bolton looked at Bustani directly once again and finished, “We know where your kids live. You have two sons in New York.” This is the kind of anti-hero tough talk that Trump respects. But does the world? Bolton, alone and as a significant spoke in the Cheney wheel, has spent decades damaging the American reputation abroad. He is the “Ugly American” stereotype so bandied about in foreign literature and film.

5) The Face of American Hypocrisy. Bolton is the face of what liberal and libertarian foreign policy analysts see as the hypocritical policies of American foreign policy. While challenging that Americans can be tried in international criminal courts, he favors “unfriendly” African leaders being tried in the same courts. He favors stronger nuclear inspection policies around the globe, but then says that any random international inspections to American nuclear sites would threaten the security of the country. When the Russian hacking story first broke, Bolton called it “an act of war,” again pulling the war card from his pocket quicker than a Vegas whale. When he was chosen for an appointment to the Trump administration, it had become a “witch hunt.” He also favors on-site American “monitoring” of foreign elections, which he, of course, does not see as an act of war.

The fact of the matter is that Bolton should have never had a position within Trump’s administration. Trump campaigned against a “deep state” entity that he swore was working against his campaign. Yet, after his election, he began replacing his original nominees with career statists bent on expanding America’s military reach.

It may be that Bolton appeals to Trump’s worst personal instincts, the rigid ideologue who talks tough and threatens tougher. Bolton may also be one of the few who morphs Trump’s tirades and tongue-lashings into tangible policies—dangerous, costly policies, but policies, nonetheless. It is because Bolton bends Trump’s worst reflexive outbursts into hawkish, neoconservative benchmarks that he remains a danger to the country and should be put out of the administration.

S.T. Patrick holds degrees in both journalism and social studies education. He spent ten years as an educator and now hosts the “Midnight Writer News Show.” His email is STPatrickAFP@ gmail.com. He is also an occasional contributor to TBR history magazine and the current managing editor of Deep Truth Journal (DTJ), a new conspiracy-focused publication now carried by the AFP Online Store.