{"id":354334,"date":"2018-03-29T04:20:52","date_gmt":"2018-03-29T03:20:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/get-ready-for-bush-2-0\/"},"modified":"2018-03-29T04:20:52","modified_gmt":"2018-03-29T03:20:52","slug":"get-ready-for-bush-2-0","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/get-ready-for-bush-2-0\/","title":{"rendered":"Get Ready for Bush 2.0"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Political reporters have <\/span>a saying<\/span><\/a>: There\u2019s always a tweet.<\/span><\/p>\n

That is, for nearly every political moment or presidential decree, there\u2019s an uncannily on-point comment buried somewhere in the presidential Twitter feed. Often it features the president expressing a past view that\u2019s diametrically opposed to whatever he\u2019s doing now.<\/span><\/p>\n

Here\u2019s an example from 2013: \u201cAll former Bush administration officials should have zero standing on Syria,\u201d <\/span>Donald J. Trump tweeted<\/span><\/a>. \u201cIraq was a waste of blood & treasure.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

I agree.<\/span><\/p>\n

According to Brown University and the Institute for Policy Studies, Americans <\/span>spend $32 million <\/span>every single hour<\/span><\/i><\/a> on wars started in the Bush era. Thousands of U.S. troops are dead, while credible estimates put the number of dead in the Middle East at upwards of a million. Byproducts included a shocking torture scandal that eviscerated U.S. standing abroad. <\/span><\/p>\n

Fast forward to 2018 \u2014 year two of \u201cmaking America great again\u201d after all that \u2014 and what do we find?<\/span><\/p>\n

Trump has tapped John Bolton<\/a>, perhaps the most ferocious war hawk from the Bush years, to be his National Security Adviser. There he\u2019ll enjoy top standing on Syria, along with Iran, Iraq, North Korea, and any other part of the planet he elects to immiserate.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"john-bolton\"<\/p>\n

John Bolton (Photo: Gage Skidmore \/ Flickr)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Trump most likely knows Bolton from Fox News, where the mustachioed chicken hawk appears regularly to drop rhetorical bombs in support of dropping literal bombs. Lately Bolton has been a loud advocate of pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal, scuttling talks with North Korea, and then bombing both countries.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the George W. Bush administration, Bolton did a lot more than talk. <\/span><\/p>\n

He twisted arms at the UN trying to oust arms control diplomats like <\/span>Jose Bustani<\/span><\/a> and <\/span>Mohamed elBaradei<\/span><\/a>, who (correctly) cast doubt on the administration\u2019s false claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. <\/span><\/p>\n

Bolton also persuaded the White House to walk away from a deal that had frozen North Korea\u2019s nuclear program for eight years. \u201cIt was,\u201d a <\/span>New York Times <\/span><\/i>editorial <\/span>put it delicately<\/span><\/a>, \u201cthe sort of simplistic and wrongheaded position he takes on most policies.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Back in the White House, Bolton could reprise both roles. <\/span><\/p>\n

He\u2019ll almost certainly lean on Trump to cancel the hard-won Iran deal, just as he bulldozed diplomatic impediments to the Iraq War. And he\u2019ll arrive on the cusp of a historic possible meeting between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jung Un \u2014 bad news for anyone who hopes those talks lower tensions.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBoy, that formula really worked well the last time the United States tried it, didn\u2019t it?\u201d <\/span>quipped <\/span><\/a>Harvard international relations expert Steve Walt. \u201cNo wonder a sophisticated foreign-policy expert like Trump wants to try it again.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Trump is also elevating torture enthusiast Mike Pompeo to lead the State Department. And he\u2019s picked Gina Haspel, who ran a CIA torture chamber in Thailand and then destroyed the evidence<\/a>, to head the CIA.<\/span><\/p>\n

Once upon a time, Trump seemed to issue a blanket ban on the Bush legacy. Now he’s brought back the architects of its darkest moments. <\/span><\/p>\n

Moments for which you and I shelled out $32 million in the time it took me to write this piece \u2014 while countless others cowered under bombs.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ideally, Congress will reassert its powers over war and peace before more “blood and treasure” are shed. If not, the only check left on Trump’s worst impulses will be his own old tweets.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The post Get Ready for Bush 2.0<\/a> appeared first on OtherWords<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This piece was reprinted from Other Words<\/a> by RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Political reporters have a saying: There\u2019s always a tweet. That is, for nearly every political moment or presidential decree, there\u2019s an uncannily on-point comment buried somewhere in the presidential Twitter feed. Often it features the president expressing a past view that\u2019s diametrically opposed to whatever he\u2019s doing now. Here\u2019s an example from 2013: \u201cAll former […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2523,"featured_media":354335,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-354334","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2523"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=354334"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354334\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/354335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=354334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=354334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=354334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}