Trump Names America First, Fascist Warmonger John Bolton to His War Cabinet

March 22, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

John Bolton has been a lying, America First, fascist warmonger for decades who’s made other mass murdering, right-wing imperialist hawks look like humanitarians. Now Trump has appointed him national security advisor, replacing General H.R. McMaster. His appointment, on the heels of nominating Christian fascist Mike Pompeo as secretary of state and torturer Gina Haspel as CIA director, underscores this very grave reality: Trump is assembling a war cabinet!

During his tenure as Assistant Attorney General at the Department of Justice in the Reagan Administration (1981-1989), Bolton aggressively tried to cover up the Iran-Contra scandal, when the U.S. secretly sold arms to Iran and flooded ghettoes with devastating drugs. The U.S. then used the money from these sales to buy weapons for counter-revolutionaries in Central America who mass murdered tens, if not hundreds of thousands of people! 

During the 1990s, Bolton attacked allowing U.S. power to be restrained in any way by any international alliances or agreements, declaring, “There is no United Nations. There is an international community that occasionally can be led by the only real power left in the world, and that’s the United States, when it suits our interests and when we can get others to go along.” In 1998, he signed the Project for a New American Century’s open letter to then-president Bill Clinton arguing the U.S. should wage war on Iraq.

As Undersecretary of State for Arms Control in the George W. Bush administration, Bolton helped concoct the phony intelligence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, used to justify the war. In 2002, he stated, “We are confident that Saddam Hussein has hidden weapons of mass destruction and production facilities in Iraq.” That war, which Bolton still defends, was a disaster of immense proportions for the people of Iraq and the Middle East, a war that has led to an estimated 2.4 million deaths since 2003!

When Bolton was temporarily appointed U.S. ambassador to the UN in 2005, he began agitating for war on Iran and North Korea.

Bolton remained a loud-mouth, sometimes Fox News’ cheerleader for U.S. military aggression when he no longer had an official position. In 2009, he blithely called for a nuclear attack by Israel on Iran, which would have been a catastrophe for the region and the world: “Unless Israel is prepared to use nuclear weapons against Iran’s program, Iran will have nuclear weapons in the very near future,” he said.

In 2011, he advocated war on Libya to overthrow the Qaddafi regime. Obama and Hillary Clinton carried out this war and created an ongoing humanitarian nightmare for millions of Libyans.

Bolton opposed the Iran nuclear accord, and in a 2015 New York Times piece, “To Stop Iran’s Bomb, Bomb Iran,” Bolton claimed military action and regime change were the only ways to accomplish U.S. objectives there.

Of late, Bolton has opposed the Paris Climate Accord, said the U.S. has “no obligation” to admit any refugees from Syria, and thinks the U.S. should tear up the Iran nuclear accord. He recently wrote an op-ed, “The Legal Case for Striking North Korea First.” Bolton says Trump should issue a disarm-or-else ultimatum at his meeting with North Korea’s Kim Jong-un.

The appointment of John Bolton, Mike Pompeo, and Gina Haspel, along with the other monsters already in the Trump/Pence regime, represents a grave and immediate danger to millions and millions of people around the world—a danger that must be stopped!

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