Bolton from the Blue.2

Eric Levitz:

"Last night was the darkest of the past 14 months.

From day one, it was clear that America’s election of Donald Trump was an act of self-harm. But the president’s hiring of John Bolton has radically increased the risk that it will also prove to be one of mass murder on a world-historic scale.

The top national security adviser to the most ignorant and impressionable president in modern memory is a man whose lust for war is so rabid, it makes Senate Republicans uncomfortable."

The Washington Post editorial board:

"John Bolton, whom President Trump has said will take over the position next month, is unsuited for that role. His record is that of a rigid, bombastic ideologue with a history of bullying colleagues and twisting intelligence. His advocacy of extreme policies, including preventive war against North Korea and Iran, could lead Mr. Trump and the country to catastrophe."

The New York Times editorial board, in an editorial entitled Yes, John Bolton Really Is That Dangerous :

"There are few people more likely than Mr. Bolton is to lead the country into war. His selection is a decision that is as alarming as any Mr. Trump has made."

Fred Kaplan at Slate, in his post titled It’s Time to Panic Now
John Bolton’s appointment as national security adviser puts us on a path to war:
"John Bolton’s appointment as national security adviser—a post that requires no Senate confirmation—puts the United States on a path to war. And it’s fair to say President Donald Trump wants us on that path.

After all, Trump gave Bolton the job after the two held several conversations (despite White House chief of staff John Kelly’s orders barring Bolton from the building)."


In his post, America Takes the Next Step Toward Tyranny, Andrew Sullivan lines up in some rational order the recent events that culminate in both a dictatorship backed by a cult (the R party, morphing into the N party) and before that is complete (perhaps as an instrument to complete it): "War is coming. And there will be nothing and no one to stop him."

The basic points are that Bolton is a carbon copy of the worst aspects of the antipresident but with ideological fanaticism: he is a bully with no sense of proportion and little impulse control.  And that the antipresident is systematically getting rid of anybody in the WH or cabinet who can even attempt to restrain him.

For example, this from Kaplan (above):
Bolton is not likely to put up with a professional staff, and the flood of White House exiles will soon intensify. One subject of discussion at Bolton’s Senate hearings, back in 2005, was his intolerance of any views that differed from his own. He displayed this trait most harshly when, as undersecretary of state, he tried to fire two intelligence analysts who challenged his (erroneous) view that Cuba was developing biological weapons and supplying the weapons to rogue regimes.

There are even worse examples of pathological bullying on record; in one harrowing case at least, of a woman.  Put it all together and you see why panic buttons were being pushed all over Washington.  But the consequences are likely to be felt by American soldiers and mostly by faceless multitudes abroad.

In her New Yorker column John (“Bomb Iran”) Bolton, the New Warmonger in the White House, Robin Wright quotes:
Jon Soltz, an Iraq War veteran and chairperson of VoteVets, the largest progressive veterans group, called Bolton’s appointment “downright frightening.” In a statement, he said, “A man who was key in sending me and thousands and thousands of my fellow troops to Iraq is now the National Security Adviser to Donald Trump. Let there be no mistake—there is no war for regime change, anywhere, that John Bolton wasn’t for. He sees troops not as human beings, with families, but as expendable resources, in his real-life game of Risk. We are undoubtedly closer to a war in Korea, now, and a war with Iran.”

Levitz ends his post with this preemptive eulogy for thousands of victims and for peace:

American voters, elected officials, policymakers, political operatives, and journalists shoulder a responsibility much greater than that borne by their counterparts in most (if not all) other countries. How the greatest military power in world history chooses to govern itself has implications for people far beyond our borders. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis aren’t walking the Earth today because of the invasion our government launched 15 years ago this week.

Picture them alive, standing before you in a crowd stretching out past the horizon. Hear the cacophony of their collective conversations, prayers, children’s laughter. Look into their faces. See the weddings they did not celebrate, the babies left unborn. Read the poems they did not write. Rue the apologies left undelivered, unrequited loves left unlamented, parents unmourned, friendships unformed and un-betrayed, amends left unmade, and all the other sorrowful, wondrous gifts of human existence that were incinerated by our cruise missiles, eviscerated by our assault rifles, or snuffed out by the fascistic death cult that both left in their wake.

Imagine 20,000 South Koreans joining them, each day."