Rand Paul: Will Donald Trump betray voters by hiring John Bolton?

[Frank Cannon]

http://rare.us/story/rand-paul-will-donald-trump-betray-voters-by-hiring-john-bolton/

Rumors are that Donald Trump might pick John Bolton for Secretary of State. Heaven forbid.

One of the things I occasionally liked about the President-elect was his opposition to the Iraq war and regime change. He not only grasped the mistake of that war early, but also seemed to fully understand how it disrupted the balance of power in the Middle East and even emboldened Iran.

We liberated Iraq, but today their best friend is Iran, their second greatest ally is Russia, and their third strongest alliance is with Syria. Trump really seems to get the lesson. Hillary Clinton never did.

Most importantly right now, John Bolton never learned and never will.

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.

Our Constitution and our founding fathers were explicit war was not to be fought without the permission of Congress. No matter which party occupies the White House, I will not shrink from my constitutional duty to oppose any advocate for war.

The true statesmen realizes, with reluctance, that war is sometimes necessary but as a country, we should resist any would-be leader who wants to bomb now and think later.

President-elect Donald Trump campaigned on changing our disastrous foreign policy. To appoint John Bolton would be a major first step toward breaking that promise.

Rand Paul is the junior senator from Kentucky.

[DB]

http://rare.us/story/rand-paul-will-donald-trump-betray-voters-by-hiring-john-bolton/

Ron Paul gets a zero from me on foreign policy. He's dangerous. He has no problem with the mad mullahs in Iran getting the bomb and thinks they'll act rationally if they do. In short he's fool that could get us all killed if he had any real authority.

[Frank Cannon]

Ron Paul gets a zero from me on foreign policy. He's dangerous. He has no problem with the mad mullahs in Iran getting the bomb and thinks they'll act rationally if they do. In short he's fool that could get us all killed if he had any real authority.

Eh.....read the title again. This is Rand, not Ron.

[DB]

Eh.....read the title again. This is Rand, not Ron.

Thank you for correcting me. Rand isn't much better but is better - I think...

[Frank Cannon]

Thank you for correcting me. Rand isn't much better but is better - I think...

Rand is not far off of where Donny is. Stop the unending wars.

[Weird Tolkienish Figure]

Rand is not far off of where Donny is. Stop the unending wars.

Trump is transitioning to your average run of the mill GOPer.

[Frank Cannon]

Trump is transitioning to your average run of the mill GOPer.

Except he Tweets. Don't forget the Tweeting WTF. NEVER forget the Tweeting!

[Weird Tolkienish Figure]

Except he Tweets. Don't forget the Tweeting WTF. NEVER forget the Tweeting!

He's improving in this department.

[TomSea]

I heard Rand said Giuliani is similar.

Reason which is libertarian:

Five Horrifically Bad Foreign Policy Ideas That Should Disqualify John Bolton From Being Secretary of State
Calling for the preemptive use nuclear weapons, and other potential catastrophes from America’s mustachioed warmonger.

...

Paul's spot on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee gives him significant sway over the nomination of Bolton—or anyone else—as secretary of state, but you don't have to share Paul's skepticism about America's interventionalist foreign policy to be terrified by the prospect of having Bolton in charge of the State Department.

Here's a brief reminder of some of the terrible things Bolton has done (or wanted to do) in the realm of foreign policy. We only included five of the worst examples, but share your own not-so-fond memories of Bolton's disastrous ideas in the comments below.

1. Bolton was a primary cheerleader of the War in Iraq and stands for everything Americans rejected about the Bush administration's foreign policy.

...

2. Bolton wanted the U.S. to go to war with Cuba over WMDs that also didn't exist

...

3. Bolton really, really wants to bomb Iran

...

4. President Obama followed Bolton's terrible advice about Libya and then Bolton blamed Obama for the resulting mess

...

5. Bolton suggested Israel should unleash nuclear weapons against Iran

...

Full Article: http://reason.com/blog/2016/11/15/five-horrifically-bad-foreign-policy-ide

[txradioguy]

Thank you for correcting me. Rand isn't much better but is better - I think...

With that op-ed its easy to get the two confused.

That's the fathers words emanating from the sons mouth.

[Cripplecreek]

Rand is not far off of where Donny is. Stop the unending wars.

Unfortunately Bolton appears to be another of the any war any time crowd

[Jazzhead]

Unfortunately Bolton appears to be another of the any war any time crowd

Yes, but he's loyal to Trump.  That's what seems to matter most.   

[Cripplecreek]

Yes, but he's loyal to Trump.  That's what seems to matter most.

One of the biggest reasons I supported Cruz was his consistent opposition to getting involved in wars outside our own national interests like Libya and Syria and further opposed to the nation building that inevitably follows.

[GrouchoTex]

Interesting question, that the title poses.

We didn't learn the lesson that the English and the Russians learned in Afghanistan, and now we are closing in on 15 years there ourselves.
We didn't learn the lesson the French learned in Vietnam, and we were mired there for 15 years.
The proxy wars of 2 superpowers, send troops to far away places, should be a thing of the past, by now.
Bolton's answer to most problems is to send more troop, more bombings, etc.
While I am now Colin Powell fan, I do agree with the Powell doctrine of bring enough force, having a clear objective, and a clear exit strategy.

One one hand, Trump is against sending troops to engage in long drawn-out affairs.
On the other hand, he talks of "knocking the hell out of" and wiping off the face of the earth", etc., a mixed signal, unless he were to follow the Powell doctrine.

While I am no isolationist, I tend to side with Rand Paul here. Bolton's history is one of all the other "war" experts that come on TV. Most of these have ties to lobbyist groups, military contractors, etc.

I think we would all agree that we should be careful when and how our troops our deployed.
It is our family members who will do the fighting, not theirs, for the most part, and they should ask the basic question:
"What would I do if that were my child going off into harms way?"
We should hold ALL politicians to this standard.

[txradioguy]

Interesting question, that the title poses.

We didn't learn the lesson that the English and the Russians learned in Afghanistan, and now we are closing in on 15 years there ourselves.
We didn't learn the lesson the French learned in Vietnam, and we were mired there for 15 years.
The proxy wars of 2 superpowers, send troops to far away places, should be a thing of the past, by now.
Bolton's answer to most problems is to send more troop, more bombings, etc.
While I am now Colin Powell fan, I do agree with the Powell doctrine of bring enough force, having a clear objective, and a clear exit strategy.

One one hand, Trump is against sending troops to engage in long drawn-out affairs.
On the other hand, he talks of "knocking the hell out of" and wiping off the face of the earth", etc., a mixed signal, unless he were to follow the Powell doctrine.

While I am no isolationist, I tend to side with Rand Paul here. Bolton's history is one of all the other "war" experts that come on TV. Most of these have ties to lobbyist groups, military contractors, etc.

I think we would all agree that we should be careful when and how our troops our deployed.
It is our family members who will do the fighting, not theirs, for the most part, and they should ask the basic question:
"What would I do if that were my child going off into harms way?"
We should hold ALL politicians to this standard.

We got mired in the places you mention because politicians...primarily Democrats decided to go the kinder and gentler approach to combat rather than go for a victory.  It's been that way since Korea.

Fight to a draw then sue for peace.  And it gets those quagmires you speak of.  If it were up to the current crop of politicians we'd have sued for peace with Hitler shortly after Operation Market Garden and tried to negotiate a settlement with Japan after Iwo Jima.

"We know that peace is the condition under which mankind was meant to flourish. Yet peace does not exist of its own will. It depends on us, on our courage to build it and guard it and pass it on to future generations. George Washington's words may seem hard and cold today, but history has proven him right again and again. "To be prepared for war," he said, "is one of the most effective means of preserving peace." Well, to those who think strength provokes conflict, Will Rogers had his own answer. He said of the world heavyweight champion of his day: "I've never seen anyone insult Jack Dempsey." - Ronald Reagan

[GrouchoTex]

@txradioguy

I do not disagree with that sentiment at all.
Good point.

[TomSea]

I really respect Rand Paul speaking up; I don't blame him.

Now, the Senators like Paul and Lee actually have a chance to accomplish something..

The Media very unfairly, sided against Bush during the Iraq war. This is also a drawback of these conflicts, the blasted liberal media.

That treaty was signed and implemented, so we will see.

I remember Trump and Cruz campaigning together at a rally over this Iranian deal.

[massadvj]

I really respect Rand Paul speaking up; I don't blame him.

Now, the Senators like Paul and Lee actually have a chance to accomplish something..

The Media very unfairly, sided against Bush during the Iraq war. This is also a drawback of these conflicts, the blasted liberal media.

That treaty was signed and implemented, so we will see.

I remember Trump and Cruz campaigning together at a rally over this Iranian deal.

OK I will say it.  Rand Paul or Mike Lee for Secretary of State.  Who better to exemplify American freedom to the rest of the world?  Let us find an alternative to the neocon/globalist foreign policy of the post WWII era.  We need a digital age foreign policy that focuses on local control and individual freedom, and does not attempt to impose "democracy" on the rest of the world.  Human rights should arise from respecting the autonomy of each individual in certain matters, not by imposing the tyranny of the majority upon people. 

[TomSea]

OK I will say it.  Rand Paul or Mike Lee for Secretary of State.  Who better to exemplify American freedom to the rest of the world?  Let us find an alternative to the neocon/globalist foreign policy of the post WWII era.  We need a digital age foreign policy that focuses on local control and individual freedom, and does not attempt to impose "democracy" on the rest of the world.  Human rights should arise from respecting the autonomy of each individual in certain matters, not by imposing the tyranny of the majority upon people.

Articles out there seem to say Giuliani has a very good shot at this. I will find one and maybe post such an article. Rudy would not be as Hawkish as Bolton.

At least, people are seeing the press for how biased it is, Iraq really went to hell under Obama.

[Bigun]

A John Bolton appointment as Secretary of State would instantly get me onboard with the Trump administration!  He's a GOOD man who knows what needs doing and will get it done!