Moderation Out - American Hawkishness In (#219)

One of Donald Trump’s interminable boasts has been that he hires only the very best. In actuality, the very start of his Presidency dispelled that myth forthwith as Trump started having to get rid of his early handpicked team including some of his most prominent campaign team members, and then those that survived into the Presidency itself, particularly his personal favourite the highly suspect and thoroughly tainted and intemperate National Security Advisor, Retd. General Mike Flynn. Since then the revolving door at the White House has been spinning red hot as senior cabinet secretaries, top advisers and aides, spin in and spin out at a breathless pace.

Lately though, the level of seriousness has risen as Trump’s handpicked senior-most officials have been unceremoniously booted out, not because they were not good enough, but precisely because they were good at what they did, and had a moderating influence on the volatile and impetuous President. They had the temerity to try and moderate Trump’s dangerous impulses, and inform his ignorance, especially in sensitive Foreign Policy issues that posed significant conflict, and possible nuclear threats to the United States, and to the World. Even though that was precisely what they had been handpicked to do, advise and inform him. How dare they.

The ignobly ousted officials were:

The highly accomplished Texas oil man and long term CEO of Exxon, who had been handpicked by Trump as Secretary of State, the stoic but much too subservient Rex Tillerson, America’s top Diplomat. His ousting was particularly galling, as he was apparently informed of his pending ouster while sitting on the toilet nursing an upset stomach in Kenya, one of Trump’s sh*thole countries, in the service of America, by the Chief of Staff, Retd. General John Kelly. The actual firing came via the President’s weapon of choice, twitter, a couple of days later while he was in the air, returning home.

His unforgivable sin which condemned him while Secretary of State? He dared to disagree with the President, in rashness of motive and motion, and advised Trump restrain and sensible diplomacy in dangerous situations like North Korea and Iran. Trump listened to Tillerson for a while and then started to undermine him, and then decided he wasn’t aligned enough with his animal-spirits and fired him. In his place Trump appointed the ultra hawk, former CIA Director, Mike Pompeo.

During the same time there were some significant White House staffers to go, but they were not cabinet level officials, but the next serious replacement was the soldier and scholar, the much respected and still on Active Duty, General H.R. McMaster, who was, again, handpicked by Trump when his other handpicked choice, Flynn, turned out to be as rotten as Trump. Trump had been warned about Flynn by the American intelligence agencies, and the then outgoing administration of Barack Obama, and had to be fired for lying to the Vice President and the FBI. Trump of course had contemptuously ignored all warnings about Flynn, being, in his own mind, much smarter than all who were warning him, and such a talent at spotting talent.

In the place of the ‘sound-of-mind-and-policy’ McMaster, Trump has, via twitter, announced his replacement, the former George W. Bush era Neo-Con John Bolton, who beats the drums of war long, loud and consistently, and was pantomiming his hawkish World views on Fox News when Trump picked him for his Trumpish-Tunes.

Trump is keen to hear that sweet sound as he has been frustrated by all the calls of restraint from his experienced and generally respected generals and former large corporations CEO’s.

So much for hiring the very best and finding them to be an impediment rather than useful because they were not the skill sets you needed, or the voice of reason you wanted to hear. That’s the very definition of poor hiring skills.

Increasingly unfettered by the careful, thoughtful and experienced advisors, and by the shamefully silent and compliant Republicans, Trump is ratcheting up aggressive rhetoric and fanning the winds of war on trade, the nuclear programs of North Korea, and the maddeningly compliant Iran, on its Nuclear Agreement.

Just itching for a fight anywhere (and needing a major distraction from his alarmingly mounting domestic problems), Trump is gathering to him his War councillors and cheerleaders, the ultra aggressive conservatives who want to break and bomb first, and negotiate later, with preferably a gun to their opponent’s head.

As Trump’s first priority is always self-preservation, an unnecessary and destructive war is totally acceptable to a man that skipped repeated chances to actually go to war and fight, by reports of bone spurs in a foot (he doesn’t recall the spurs when asked ‘which foot?’). But he is certainly ready to start a war from the comfort and safety of the Oval Office, and play the great ‘Arm-Chair-General-in-Chief.’

Mike Pompeo and John Bolton are a good start to get unnecessary, destructive and wasteful Bush-era-style wars going, so they are being brought into the White House (if Pompeo gets cleared by the Senate Hearings on his appointment as Secretary of State, which Bolton doesn’t need as the next National Security Advisor).

Mike Pompeo is an American hawk. His political roots are embedded in the extremist side of American conservatism, in the Tea Party movement - nothing else need be said there.

From the start Pompeo’s political ambitions have been supported by the Far-Right conservative billionaires, the Koch Brothers. His hawkish views on everything from Iran, to ‘black sites’ maintained by the United States, off-shore, for the torture of suspected political and Islamic extremists (to try and maintain the ludicrous image of a law-abiding, civilized America), are text book ultra conservative. Distressingly, Mike Pompeo is not above bending the truth, or ignoring it altogether, about domestic and international issues to secure partisan conservative points.

By replacing Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, a raving moderate Republican when compared to Mike Pompeo, Trump is signalling his impatience with restraint and diplomacy, for the greater freedom of enhanced aggression and immoderate views of a Mike Pompeo.

To further enhance the change, the person slated to replace Mike Pompeo as the Head of CIA is the CIA Deputy Director Gina Haspel, who is a 30-year career intelligence officer, who may have the possible distinction of becoming the first woman CIA Head, if she clears the Senate Hearings, which she may not due to her enthusiastic acceptance of torture as an acceptable American policy.

Gina Haspel has the less than flattering reputation of being in-charge of the ‘black site’ operations in Thailand, where suspected Al Qaeda prisoners were tortured with inhumane ‘water boarding’ and other ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ (a euphemism for torture) and then was ordered to destroy the evidence (video tapes) when the existence of such sites and practices became public, which she dutifully did.  

Trump thrills to, and endorses such ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ in his favourite wannabe role as one of the international ‘tough guys’ dictators that he so admires.

To add to the growing team of ultra hawks that now surround him, Trump has of course added John Bolton, a well known ‘Super hawk’ from the ill-fated Bush times, who is well known to be an enthusiastic warmonger that endorses a preeminent ‘first strike’ to destroy the nuclear armed North Korea, and an Iran that to America should not exist because Iranians are Shia Islam, rather than the lot that America and Israel has made pacts with, the majority Sunni Muslims led by Saudi Arabia.

The right of Iranians to live as they please, under the government they choose, is of little concern to the Pompeos and the Boltons who would rather see Iran shattered as Iraq was, and still is, in the geo-political and economic interest of the U.S., Israel and Saudi led Sunni Islamic World.

Now, if Pompeo and Haspel get approved by the Senate Confirmation Hearings, and with Bolton not needing any clearance, Trump and his White House shall certainly have no constraints from the Head of the State Department or the Head of the CIA, or the National Security Advisor, to turn America back into a conflict seeking ‘Hawk’ as in George W Bush’s time with his coterie of ultra hawks like Paul Wolfowitz, Elliot Abrams, Richard Perle, Paul Bremer, and their disciples Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Chaney and their compliant President, the utterly unforgettable George W. Bush. May God save the United States of America, and the World.