Draining the Neocon National Security Swamp? Don’t Count on It

Now that things have gotten serious, it’s time for Donald Trump to kiss the ring.

Since clinching the Republican nomination, Trump’s true colors have started to emerge. He named a former Goldman Sachs partner to run his fundraising efforts, he named petty authoritarian, gangster wannabe Chris Christie to run his transition team, and he chose “everyone’s a terrorist” Rudy Giuliani as his planned head of the domestic gestapo, the Department of Homeland Security. He’s also been endorsed by Orc King Sheldon Adelson, who said he was prepared to spend $100 million to get him elected. Now he’s off to kiss the blood-soaked hands of Henry Kissinger.

– From the May 17, 2016 post: Donald Trump Will Meet War Criminal Henry Kissinger Tomorrow

Two names continue to be bandied about regarding Trump’s anticipated Secretary of State choice, neither of which are good. Those names are Rudy Giuliani and John Bolton. Rather than “draining the swamp,” this is more akin to me reliving either my 1990’s NYC childhood, or the post-9/11 neocon bonfire known as the George W. Bush administration.

For starters, John Bolton is about as reprehensible as you get, as Rand Paul so perfectly outlined in an Op-ed published earlier today over at Rare. Here’s some of what he wrote:

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.

A menace indeed. So why is Bolton even being considered for a senior post in the Trump White House? The Hill has some thoughts on the matter:

Adelson is also advocating for former United Nations ambassador John Bolton to have a big foreign policy or national security role in the Trump administration.

Bolton is under consideration for Secretary of State, according to a source with direct knowledge.

Trump’s chief strategist Steve Bannon is personally close to Bolton and admires his uncompromising stance against radical Islam.

Yet Bolton’s history seems at least partly at odds with Trump’s worldview. He was a Bush-era neoconservative who advocated for a more aggressive response to Russia.

Sheldon Adelson, why am I not surprised. For some prior articles on the man, see:

Top Editor Quits the Las Vegas Review-Journal Two Weeks After Oligarch Sheldon Adelson Buys It

Sheldon Adelson – The Dangerous American Oligarch Behind Benjamin Netanyahu

Inside the Mind of an Oligarch – Sheldon Adelson Proclaims “I Don’t Like Journalism”

Neo-Con Republicans Make Pilgrimage to Vegas to Kiss the Ring of Oligarch Sheldon Adelson

Moving along, given Bolton is so incredibly toxic, it seems probable that the Secretary of State position will be given to Rudy Giuliani. Which again, is more akin to filling the swamp as opposed to draining it.

As reported earlier today by International Business Times:

President-elect Donald Trump hasn’t yet formally announced who will be in his cabinet, but several major outlets are reporting that Rudy Giuliani is a favorite for secretary of state.

That would put Giuliani in a position to approve arms transfers to countries that helped make him rich after he termed-out as mayor of New York and began working in the private sector nearly 15 years ago.

Before joining Trump’s crusade to “drain the swamp,” Giuliani had a lucrative career as a lobbyist, lawyer and consultant in the private sector. He represented Purdue Pharma LP — which makes the painkiller OxyContin —and has worked for law firms that represent the Venezuelan state oil company,  the chewing tobacco lobby, and the casino industry. 

He’s also forged ties with some U.S. allies in the Middle East. His own security consulting business, Giuliani Partners, won a contract to help train the security forces of Qatar in 2005, and that same year Giuliani joined the Bracewell law firm in Houston —  a longtime lobbyist for government of Saudi Arabia.  

Giuliani has never revealed the value of those business relationships with the oil-rich Gulf States. But when he ran for president in 2008, financial disclosure forms showed that he earned over $4 million from Giuliani Partners that year, and pulled in another $1.2 million from his work at Bracewell.

In January 2016, Giuliani left what had become Bracewell & Giuliani to join the law firm Greenberg Traurig, a major lobbyist for the private prison industry. He’s still at the helm of Giuiani Partners and its subsidiary Giuliani Security and Safety; the full client list for both companies has never been made public. 

As secretary of state, Giuliani would likely be tasked with overseeing multi-billion dollar weapons transfers to former clients Qatar and Saudi Arabia. The secretary of state, through the assistant secretary for political-military affairs, must approve all foreign military sales — even those undertaken by a private defense contractor.  In September, for example, the  Obama administration signed off on a $4 billion sale of 72 Boeing F-15E Strike Eagles to Qatar, and a $1.2 billion deal to sell Abrams M1A1 tanks to Saudi Arabia.

Giuliani would not be the first secretary of state to face potential conflicts of interests in foreign military transfers.  As the top U.S. diplomat between 2008 and 2013, Hillary Clinton approved $165 billion in sales to 20 nations whose governments have given money to the Clinton Foundation, according to an International Business Times analysis.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Oh, and Adelson is also pushing Giuliani.

Finally, see my related article from last week: Draining the Swamp? Wall Street is Already Loving Donald Trump

Thanks for playin’ America.

In Liberty,
Michael Krieger

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