Secretary of State Mike Pompeo participates in a joint press conference with Ambassador Nikki Haley and National Security Council Advisor John Bolton, on the margins of the 73rd Session of the United Nations General Assembly, in New York City on September 24, 2018. [State Department photo/ Public Domain]
“Stop the ENDLESS WARS!” implored President Donald Trump in a Sunday night tweet.
Well, if he is serious, Trump had best keep an eye on his national security adviser, for a U.S. war on Iran would be a dream come true for John Bolton.
Last September, when Shiite militants launched three mortar shells into the Green Zone in Baghdad, which exploded harmlessly in a vacant lot, Bolton called a series of emergency meetings and directed the Pentagon to prepare a menu of targets, inside Iran, for U.S. air and missile strikes in retaliation.
The Wall Street Journal quoted one U.S. official as saying Bolton’s behavior “rattled people. … People were shocked. It was mindboggling how cavalier they were about hitting Iran.” Bolton has long believed a U.S. confrontation with Iran is both inevitable and desirable. In 2015, he authored a New York Times oped
whose title, “To Stop Iran’s Bomb, Bomb Iran,” said it all. He has urged that “regime change” in Iran be made a declared goal of U.S. foreign policy.While Trump has urged that the U.S. pull out of these Mideast wars, Pompeo has corrected him, “When America retreats, chaos often follows.”
Is Trump looking for a showdown with Iran, which could result in a war that might vault his approval rating, but be a disaster for the Middle East and world economy and do for him what Operation Iraqi Freedom did for George W. Bush?
One thing may confidently be said of the rhetoric and actions of Bolton and Pompeo: This is not what brought out the new populists who
made Donald Trump president, the people who still share his desire to “stop the endless wars.”
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