Shelf Life

I like John Bolton. I respect his opinions and his intelligence. But he outlived his usefulness in the Trump Administration
Bolton is a foreign policy hawk. He wants the United States to bring about regime change in socialist dictatorships. In other words, he wants us to meddle in the internal affairs of sovereign nations to overthrow states that we don’t like.
That mental attitude – that the United States has both the power and the obligation to make the world a better place – was the underlying rationale for the Iraq War, liberating Kuwait, and countless other excursions around the globe. But the more we spend on climate change avoidance and free student loans and Medicare for everyone, the less money we have to spend on foreign adventures. The more people want to be peace studies majors, the fewer people want to sign up for the military. The more Americans want to retire to Texas and Florida and Arizona, the less Americans want to see bombs falling on children across the globe.
Bolton’s ideas were perfect for the Bush Administration. But I don’t think that policy is going to fly in the 2020 world. I think President Trump has a better understanding of what’s possible, what’s realistic, what’s necessary, than John Bolton. So his services are no longer required.
Joe doakes

There was a time when the world needed phalanxes of Boltons. And therel’l come a time when we need more, I have a hunch.

38 thoughts on “Shelf Life

  1. Good post apart from the fact that it paints Trump as a moderate with an actual foreign policy. LOL

    That Bolton was following his own agenda should be no surprise. He single-handedly dragged the US into the Iraq war. The fact remains that despite everybody having known for decades that Bolton is a hawk Trump appointed him. Brought him into the fold. To have then had to dispose of him is humiliating. It is to admit that Trump made a serious error of judgement (yet again). Trump’s ‘You’re fired’ catchphrase stems from his terrible choices of employees. Trump’s business model for the executive branch is apparently The Apprentice. Someone should explain to him the difference between reality and a reality show.

    It’s going to be hard to find a national security adviser who shares Trump’s opinion that we should make lousy deals with bad actors.

  2. Really, EI?!
    So, you want the U.S. engaged in endless wars. Got it!

    You are so deluded with your TDS, that, after more than two years, you illustrate that you still can’t figure out that every person that Trump brings in, serves a purpose. When they have fulfilled that purpose, he let’s them go.

    And, speaking of crappy deals, does Obumbler’s deal with Iran ring a bell, hypocrite?

  3. Bolton, under Dubya was Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Affairs, In office from May 11, 2001 – July 31, 2005, and managed to single-handedly drag the US into the Iraq war?

    Leftists have this ability to write baseless and insulting drivel, post it with complete confidence and then when shown to be wrong, to return and do it again as if nothing had happened. Swiftee’s efforts in the “Wages Of Overreach” comment threads were magnificent in demonstrating this.

    And then, as if paid to do so, the little troll shows up again with more baseless and insulting drivel. Yikes, what a life.

    PS, I like it when bosshoss loses his patience.

  4. … and, oh, yeah, the other E-troll, Penigma (under whatever name is being used), and even Doggy-Gone all exhibited the exact same behavior.

  5. Wait… wut?

    “For the last 40 years, we’ve been involved in a gamble that says if we just trade with China, if we’re just nice with China, then that’s going to turn it into a benign non-communist power, and that’s been an utter failure,” Gertz said. “Donald Trump is the first one to recognize that, so he’s the one that’s taking tough action across the board, primarily in the economic sphere, but it’s impacting all the other spheres.”

  6. So, on Saturday Iran (through it’s Houthi front group) bombed the Saudi’s biggest refinery and a big oilfield with drones.

    I hope someone reminds Trump that we’ve sold SA some of our most advanced military hardware, and trained their people to use it. Bolton would have been advising Trump to lock and load, but thankfully, he’s gone. Let’s just sit back and enjoy the show for once and let muzzies expend some of their inventory sending one another to Allah.

    Although the bombing only effected 5% of the Saudi oil capacity, the price of crude is spiking. Let’s also get back to fracking the Permian basin and the Bakken formation. It’s good for the economy, and will surely put Fauxcahontas over the edge again resulting in many fine lulz.

  7. jdm, I’ve concluded that in addition to below average cognitive function and Dunning Kruger syndrome, Emery suffers from a form of Touretts syndrome.

    He reads SITD comments which trigger anxiety. He used to calm himself by plagiarizing the insights of people with normal IQ’s, but finally gave up when the resulting mockery ablated the calming effect.

    Now he calms his anxiety by blurting out inane statements. The statements are usually the exact opposite of the facts at hand, but increasingly they are apropos of nothing; just a reflexive reaction; a tic.

    He’s our pet kook, driven to amuse us.

  8. @ jdm: To be fair I could have lumped Cheney and Rumsfeld into ‘single-handedly as well

    @shiftee: For a country that spends about 8% of GDP on its military and which has access to all but the best Western military hardware, KSA is completely incompetent when it comes to a fight. It seems all they can do is bomb hospitals and prisons from high altitude.

    Given the share of ugliness in the war in Yemen — I can’t really view Iran as the worse party in comparison with UAE and SA. Different brands of evil. Still that being said, see no reason to vilify Iran ahead of SA and UAE.

    Before I get jumped on, I in no way condone the actions of the Houthis or KSA or Iran.

    This was a very smart and well executed move, hit the Saudis in the pockets, push up the oil price. Maybe precipitate a global recession. And put pressure on the Iranian oil embargo.

    Cheap to execute, very hard to defend against and causes massive financial damage.

    Classic guerrilla tactics.

    You may not agree with the politics but as a tactical move it is genius.

  9. Before I get jumped on, I in no way condone the actions of the Houthis or KSA or Iran.
    (Hold my beer)
    “very smart and well executed move”
    “genius”

    I’m going to hold back my laughter, for just a second, while I mock Dunning_Kruger’s classically low IQ observations.

    The Arabs have 1 resource; oil; just oil. There is literally nothing else of value anywhere in the Arabian peninsula unless you’re a camel fancier. But to D_K, hitting that one thing of value was a stroke of genius; a military maneuver worthy of Napoleon.

    Of course, it is that blinding ignorance that precludes D_K from understanding that Yemen is nothing but a sack full of terrorists that occasionally take breaks from killing one another to launch attacks on the United States.

    D_K doesn’t know anything about Yemen. In addition to the Houthi’s, Yemen is home to The Islamic Jihad of Yemen (al Qaeda), Islamic State in Yemen (ISIS), al Shabab is there. One wonders how there can still be enough heads left to cut off by now.

    D_K is not aware of the USS Cole attack, the attack on the US Embassy in 2008, the 2010 attempt to blow up a commercial airliner.

    D_K cannot bring himself to be critical of Iran, because like most of his ilk he holds a hope that an Iranian attack will embarrass Trump. He’s pleased as hell that the global oil market is going nuts because it may embarrass Trump. Nothing would make D_K happier than a direct attack on the US by Iran, because it gives leftist reprobates something to blame Trump for.

    If their ranks were not composed of low IQ, drug addled losers, leftist reprobates might be the most dangerous domestic terrorists in the US.

  10. Emery:

    @ jdm: To be fair I could have lumped Cheney and Rumsfeld into ‘single-handedly as well.

    That’s a verrrrrry interesting definition of “single-handedly.” I don’t think that means what you think it means.

    And if you’re going with that spirit of extension, you should probably include Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and many other Democrats.

  11. It seems Persia’s Evil Plan is to blow up Saudi oil and capture tankers in the Gulf, thus reducing the world supply of oil, pushing up prices just in time for Winter. There is no other way to make up the shortfall, so Europe will have no choice but to buy Iranian oil in defiance of the American embargo, and Democrats will demand Trump not only rescind the embargo but also start sending pallets of cash by express air delivery because appeasement worked so well the last time.

    Putin, sitting on a lake of oil, is grinning his fool head off.

  12. OMG – not only did you think that but you wrote it down as well

    3rd time he’s posted that phrase. D_K has run across something, somewhere, that tickled his vestigial brain stem (tee hee!) and he can’t stop thinking about it.

  13. There are times now where especially after this attack I just wish we could launch a nuclear tipped ICBM up the Mullahs ass but in all honesty you want someone to blame for this you can legitmately blame Obama. Hear me out, in 2009 Iran was prime for a 1979 redux in the opposite direction but the people got no support, they were literally begging in the streets for it. Hussein was at best indifferent to the protestors and at worst outright sympathetic and suppportive to the Mullahs. I mean he did give them hundreds of millions in unmarked cash to finance the terrorism years later. Iran could be a democracy now if not for Obama.

  14. The “maximum pressure” campaign is on its way to becoming not only the Trump administration’s Stalingrad-on-the-Gulf but a strategic inflection point on America’s overall strategy in the Greater Middle East.

    The US and its allies in Saudi Arabia and the Netanyahu government in Israel have been institutionally and structurally pushing for “more war” as the basic strategic posture in the Greater Middle East, and this nexus has been pushing this posture since GW Bush assumed the US presidency in 2001. The crucial belief of this strategy is that it should be a US-led war, and the Trump administration walked blindly into endorsing this strategy by adopting the “maximum pressure” campaign, which was sold to the “maximum leader” as a cheap and painless way to cash a dividend check from being a big, strong country. A little gunboat diplomacy on the cheap.

    Yemen has always been the war-crime-in-waiting ready to topple the latest imperial pretension of the Washington elite.

    It’s long since time to bring the Pentagon home

  15. Aw look everyone, D_K thinks he understands middle eastern geopolitics. Isnt that special.

  16. Also your analysis would have gotten a C or D in my middle eastern politics course I took at a local community college over a decade ago. Go run into a brick wall, please.

  17. Oh, isn’t it cute? Emery’s talking about it being Stalingrad when U.S. forces have yet to fire a shot at the Iranians. It is as if before Bull Run, someone was saying that Winfield Scott was going to be surrendering soon.

  18. Someone is showing their historical retardedness. Stalingrad lasted over a year and had people resort to not just cannibalism, but EATING LIVE PEOPLE. D_K got a real shitty education.

  19. Amazing. The little troll really tried to gaslight me that single-handed might mean more than one person. Which was later followed by:

    The US and its allies in Saudi Arabia and the Netanyahu government in Israel have been institutionally and structurally pushing for “more war” as the basic strategic posture in the Greater Middle East, and this nexus has been pushing this posture since GW Bush assumed the US presidency in 2001.

    This sentence is just weird in light of the fact that Bolton was just let go (resigned, fired, whatever). And that Dubya and the rest of the neocons “hate” Trump. And that Trump is trying to get us out of Afghanistan.

    Like I said, being able to write BS, be corrected, brutally, and come back with more BS as if the correction never happened. Gift? Curse? I dunno; you be the judge.

  20. JDM hey at least he hasnt called you a Russian bot yet. But yes he has already jumped shark. another week or two of this and I;ll start lobbying Mitch to have them both blocked.

  21. @jdm: Another big lesson that may get driven home to American voters is that there are no good exits from bad wars. That’s what the American establishment is trying to sell the public today — that there is some sort of “good exit” from these endless quagmires. A different and harder reality beckons. 

    Let’s look at the interrelationships between three factors:

    1. Upon whom do the costs of energy price instability fall?

    2. Upon whom do negative political consequences fall if there is an outbreak of open hostilities in the Gulf?

    3. The role of failed policy in Yemen. 

    The costs of price instability will be borne by the economies of the Far East and Europe  (and many others) and will further undermine crumbling US influence and leadership with these countries. Gratuitously putting the world economy on a slower growth track for tawdry neoconservative political reasons will not just undermine leadership but will lead to permanent shifts in allegiances and understanding of just who is looking out for whom’s interest. The Americans will cement their reputation as unreliable stewards. There will be a profound disjuncture of interests between the eastern hemisphere countries and the selfish energy-independent western hemisphere behemoth with its aircraft carriers and brutish mentality. 

    Slowing down world growth eventually causes seismic shocks; growing world income is an important necessity.

    Yemen demonstrates Washington’s inability to manage a militarized foreign policy–even if it were desirable–in the Greater Middle East.

    The perception that American policy in the Greater Middle East is undergoing widespread failure and possible collapse will grow across the eastern hemisphere. Chasms of misunderstanding are developing.

    Iran is more or less winning. It will probably behave in a more prudent manner than the US, but the upcoming American election may indeed be a hugely moderating factor in restraining American recklessness. 

    Iran should play for American reentry into the Iranian nuclear agreement and building wider support for Iran’s reintegration into the world economy — and it should be willing to moderate its external behavior to improve its domestic situation. Iran, too, has pressing domestic priorities. 

  22. What “bad war?” The US isn’t involved in any bad wars, only fully justified and completely moral wars of liberation, all commenced by President Obama. The major premise fails.

    The United States has propped up the House of Saud as the ruling family of Saudi Arabia for decades precisely to avoid energy price instability. Iran bombed the refinery, not us. The primary minor premise fails.

    The first victims of war in the Middle East are people killed in the Middle East – Israeli children killed by Palestinian rockets; Saudi oil workers killed by Iranian drone strikes; Syrian civilians gassed by their own government. The second victims are people who can’t buy oil as cheaply. If neocon demands to intervene are misguided because a side-effect of war would be inconvenience in the Far East, then there is no role for America as the world’s policeman. Good, we agree on that. Welcome to the America First party.

    Here’s an idea. Iran knocked out Saudi oil fields to make Iranian oil more valuable. Iran has been seizing oil tankers in the Gulf to make Iranian oil more valuable. What if the United States exercised its authority under Article 1, Section 8, Clause 11 to authorize privateers to seize Iranian tankers? A taste of their own medicine might bring clarity to the minds of mullahs. And if that doesn’t work, perhaps a few mines could fall off a ship, or a submarine could accidentally fire a torpedo, or an airplane could mistakenly drop a bomb . . . wouldn’t take much to reduce Iran’s oil transport capacity. Sure, they’d be pissed, and might retaliate, for which we’d have just cause to respond, and next thing you know, mushroom cloud over Tehran. All it would take is one crazy sumbich with his finger on the button which, luckily, we just happen to have. Iran only thinks they’re winning.

  23. : “Saudi Arabia should fight their own wars.” ~ Donald Trump, 2014

    “We are waiting to hear from the Kingdom…under what terms we would proceed. ~ President Trump, 2019

    Apparently Prince Bone-Saw is directing US foreign policy now.

  24. That’s nothing new. Why do you think President Bush whisked hundreds of Saudis out of the country right after 9/11, just before the controlled demolition of the twin towers (obviously a CIA contrived event, it was the first time in history that fire ever melted steel).

    Look, do you want cheap gas, or don’t you?

  25. Joe, Emery/EI has a lot of flaws but I think even calling him a 9/11 troother is a step too far. Id love to hear his idiotic take pn the upcoming Israeli election today.

  26. Trump’s assessment that Obama’s nuclear agreement with Iran was deeply flawed was an assessment that was in fact never made because he doesn’t “assess.” Trump’s position was cheap opportunism somewhat shaped by Israeli and Saudi inputs that it was a “bad deal.” Trump was riding on the coattails of incredibly bad thinking coming from many quarters. Neither Trump nor any of his minions have ever provided any meaningful explanation of what a “better deal” would be like coming from the “master dealmaker.” There was never any thought-out strategy—just impulsive theater aimed at an audience sitting in the cheap seats. 

    The Netanyahu government in Israel and the Saudi government attacked the Obama foreign policy furiously and relentlessly the entire time he was in office and actively supported a Trump presidency with a view of overturning the Iran nuclear agreement — and overthrowing whatever stability that agreement provided to the region and the remarkable cohesion that saw the world’s five leading powers support the agreement.

    It is important to understand that these two supposedly “allied” governments were major adversaries to American fundamental foreign policy in the region, a foreign policy rooted in the United States’ foreign policy goals of promoting stability through improved economic trade that goes back to the 1940s. American security alliances have always worked remarkably effectively when they have been followed by widespread economic prosperity in their wake, prosperity that can only flow from stability and never from conflict. The most important international value that many thought was permanently embedded in American character and policy was relentlessly and opportunistically undermined. 

    Trump had been the agent of some of the worst impulses and sloppiest thinking on the international stage in decades. Nothing aligns — there’s no goal congruence in this matrix of chaos. And because Trump’s government is so hapless, incompetent, and negligent, nothing good is going to come from this confrontation.

  27. Trump had been the agent of some of the worst impulses and sloppiest thinking on the international stage in decades. Nothing aligns — there’s no goal congruence in this matrix of chaos. And because Trump’s government is so hapless, incompetent, and negligent, nothing good is going to come from this confrontation.

    Yes destroying ISIS was so horrible, its really ashame the Caliphate is gone. Your idiocy is so deep its almost impressive EI.

  28. And Joe after that last post he made nevermind. Its 100% fair to call him a truther. He’s a left of center Alex Jones. All he needs to do now it start schilling for shady products.

  29. And all those employed minorities, how dare they get off the government dole huh? You might not be able to use them to vote against the man that helped get them employment. That lowest unemployment rate in 50 years? Its just fake because we all know Obama really deserves credit for it right?

  30. That is the historical equivalent of us being allies with the Soviet Union and Stalin over Hitler and the axis powers in WWII. You sometimes need to temporary ally with somone evil to defeat a greater and more immediate evil. Its not like history ever repeats itself though…

  31. And yes at the time ISIS was a greater and more immediate evil than Iran. If you dont believe that you need help

  32. @ jdm: Well played sir — I’ll bite!

    You could argue that it was not Iran but the Saudis and the Netanyahu government who overplayed their hand in the first place. They misjudged Trump’s capacity and willingness to fight their wars and underestimated Iran’s resilience and sophistication.

    I think that Trump is starting to understand that Israel ans Saudi Arabia are prepared to fight Iran to the last American soldier.

  33. PoD wrote: “I[‘]d love to hear his idiotic take pn the upcoming Israeli election today.

    Anyone passing an ‘immunity clause’ while under investigation should be ousted by their own party. Berlusconi ruined Italy for many years on the same road.

    With corruption charges hanging about Netanyahu’s neck I’m surprised Israeli voters voted for this far right ideologue; although if they’ve been fooled into giving him numerous terms it’s hardly surprising a more decisive result wasn’t delivered.

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