JOHN BOLTON: A TRUE REPUBLICAN WAR MONGER

Bush´s former Ambassador; John Bolton, makes John McCain look like a pacifist.

…John R. Bolton

As a number of today´s media pundits have stated, "If Bush and the GOP were still in power today, we would probably be fighting a war in Iran."

When I first heard this comment, I seriously questioned it because I thought that even Bush and Cheney wouldn´t go that far with a two US wars in the Middle-East already in progress and heading toward a full 8 years of duration.

However, based on a recent article in the Washington Post from a well known, Senior Fellow at the ultra-conservative American Enterprise Institute, the pundits were probably correct.

Mr. John Bolton, who was also Bush´s U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations from August 2005 to December 2006, wrote the article in question. (FYI: John Bolton´s term at the UN was so short because even a Republican controlled Senate would not confirm the "War-Monger Bolton" as the US Ambassador to the UN.)

As stated in Mr. Bolton´s article and as with Bush & Cheney, his idea for dealing with Iran can be summed up with the title of his WP article: "Time for an Israeli Strike?"

Bolton´s assumptions are that since, "Secretary Hillary Clinton spoke to her Russian and Chinese counterparts about getting Iran back to negotiating on some of these concerns that the international community has." His interruption is that: "The stolen Iranian election and its tumultuous aftermath have dramatically highlighted the strategic and tactical flaws in Obama's game plan."

Per Bolton: "With regime change [in Iran] off the table for the coming critical [4 year] period in Iran's nuclear program, Israel's decision on using force is both easier and more urgent. Since there is no likelihood that diplomacy will start or finish in time, or even progress far enough to make any real difference, there is no point waiting for negotiations to play out. In fact, given the near certainty of Obama changing his definition of "success," negotiations represent an even more dangerous trap for Israel."

In other words, "Forget any ideas of diplomacy, just bomb the hell out of them to let them know that we really mean business."

Let´s ignore the fact that the clerics that actually run the show in Iran have divided up the nuclear development program and they have spread it all over Tehran and other Iranian cities. They have also buried the multiple development facilities in hardened underground facilities and these are surrounded by Iranian residential communities and their citizen´s open markets.

Should Mr. Bolton´s idea come to fruition, if Israel were to attack all of Iran´s nuclear locations that they have identified to date, "tens-of-thousands" of innocent Iranians would be killed. Any progress with the younger generation of Iranians that protested the recent elections would disappear virtually overnight. It would also solidify even more than today, both the Iranian population and the world´s Shiite Muslims against the Israeli´s, plus all of Western Europe. And of course, America, "the great Satan" would ultimately carry most of the blame.

Mr. Bolton feels that "Iran's nuclear threat was never in doubt during its [recent] presidential campaign, but the post-election resistance raised the possibility of some sort of regime change. That prospect seems lost for the near future or for at least as long as it will take Iran to finalize a deliverable nuclear weapons capability." In other words, since the elections and the protestors didn´t change the current theological leadership regime, let´s get out the big guns and start another war that says; "It´s our way or the highway".

I am not naïve enough to believe that negotiations would do all that is needed to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons. But ask yourself, what has a pre-emptive invasion of Iraq done for America in our relationships within all of the Middle East? Wasn´t it al Qaeda´s, Osama bin Laden that said that "he wanted the US to invade a Muslim nation so that it would inflame the Muslim world"? And didn´t we not only do just what he asked for, we even went and did it using torture and faulty intelligence.

Most world leaders today admit that the big winners of the US invasion of Iraq were Osama bin Laden and Iran. The big losers were the Iraqi´s general population, the United States and all those that joined with the US in attacking Saddam Hussein while using bad intelligence on WMD´s.

We not only lost our precious young American men and women, but we also lost our world reputation for equality and fairness, plus billions of US tax-payer dollars in the process. And today, Iran is now considered the most powerful Muslim nation in the Middle East. When Saddam was still around, that was not the case.

Apparently, according to Mr. Bolton, we now need to do what we did in Iraq, to Iran.

Bolton actually thinks that because of the citizen uprising during the recent Iranian elections, Israel today could attack Iran´s nuclear facilities and the Israeli´s, with the US, could then explain it to all of the Iranian people, to quote Mr. Bolton: "that such an attack [was] directed against the regime, not against the Iranian people." Pardon me, but just as a minor little issue, other than sending a "Tweet" from "Twitter", just how would this message be transmitted to all the citizens of Iran?

And I´m truly sorry, but with thousands of dead, innocent Iranian citizens laying around the formally hidden underground facilities that took "Bunker Busting Bombs" to destroy, I don´t think the remaining Iranian citizens would be buying much of Mr. Bolton´s explanation.

Everyone is aware that Tehran isn't going to negotiate in good faith. They haven´t for the past six years with the European Union and they won't start now. And Secretary Clinton has already stated that, "Iran has a huge credibility gap because of its electoral fraud".

I agree that with Iran's nuclear progress, even if Obama´s stronger sanctions could be agreed upon, they probably would not prevent Iran from fabricating nuclear weapons and delivery systems as they have been striving to do for the past 20 years. I also agree that time is short, and using sanctions failed long ago. But is bombing Iran´s general population all that is left?

Up to this point, due to Bush´s cowboy program of "we´re not talking except on our terms", the US has stayed out of dealing directly with Iran. Even with the Cuban Missile Crisis of the 60´s, JFK didn´t pull out the ole six gun and start blasting away. He used a sea-going blockade and proceeded to communicate with the Soviet Union.

The US has learned the hard way what happens when we do a pre-emptive military strike instead of taking other approaches for dealing with a conflict. And it is especially difficult when our intelligence is either "cherry picked" or is sparse and from countries where we have few reliable intelligence agents, as it was with Iraq and it is today with Iran.

To not even sit down and discuss different ways to go forward, while trying to depend on our European surrogates, as they are having to depend on getting their petroleum products from Iran, is not a good way to do business.

But doesn´t Iran also depend on doing business in other areas of the world? Can´t the US have some "arm-twisting" influence in those areas? In a worst case scenario, couldn´t the US Navy stop Iran from shipping their petroleum products?

My point is, we need to do much more before we, or Israel, decides to just bring out the "big guns". America´s world reputation is already in question and we first, need to show some real restraint.

We should at least try to do something "face to face" before we consider taking such a a big step.

Copyright G.Ater 2009

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