Posts Tagged → state department
about John Bolton’s departure from government
John Bolton has been a Washington, DC, fixture since I was in college, which is a long long time ago. He has held a number of high level government jobs in that long time, as well as the usual garden variety of middlin’ roles that regular revolving door people in DC have. Like mid-level government, academic, lobbying, and think tank jobs.
And all that time John Bolton has been a staunch, unabashed defender of America and American interests.
John Bolton was our hero when he worked for the last Bush administration and he took on the gun prohibitionists at the United Nations. That was a proud day for America, with Bolton at the podium, when American government told European tyrants that one of the great defining characteristics of America is the right and the ability of our people to make an effective armed revolt against our own government, and so No, we would not be signing their small arms treaty as a back door way to strip American citizens of their Constitutional rights.
Over the past year or two, US National Security Advisor John Bolton has been hugely criticized by conservatives for being a war hawk, someone too eager to use full American force at the drop of a hat. A warmonger some call him.
“We are so tired of wars. We are not the world’s police man,” goes one refrain, which on its face certainly makes sense, within certain basic parameters.
Another common refrain which does not make sense goes “Iran is not a threat to America, and we should do everything we can to avoid war with Iran.”
Thus, with that second refrain, anyone promoting a strong deterrent policy and posture with Iran, like John Bolton, is automatically risking another Mid East war, which we are told, we absolutely must avoid at all costs. Apparently even at the cost of letting Iran nuke a few of our major cities.
The left-right crossover by these so-called anti-war conservatives is fascinating to me, and Bolton became the friction plane for where their war-weary criticism met the Trump Administration’s foreign policy activities. As a Bush II legacy, Bolton reminded everyone too much of poorly implemented wars, in which the USA rules of engagement put our warriors’ lives and limbs at unnecessary risk, and where America foolishly sought to implement a second Marshall Plan, this time in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Like Bolton, I also say Give War a Chance, but let it always be total war, uninhibited war, completely and immediately successful war, not the war of namby pamby uniparty globalists worried about how America will be perceived poorly as some sort of meany arch defender of its own interests. Hell, Russia, Turkey, Iran, and China do not give a damn about how anyone else perceives their pursuit of their national interests. They do whatever they want, come hell or high water, with a lot of extra brutality thrown in, just so the defeated remember the high price of resisting.
So, in turn, I believe, America should be just as ruthless and just as bold as they, our main competitors, if we are to survive them. John Bolton was a proud promoter of this stance. He believes in America, a successful, strong, defiant America.
It is certain that Bolton was a nettlesome cowboy inside the Trump Administration. He was well suited to the first year or two of this administration, when America was being felt abroad for the first time in decades, but Bolton was not a good fit in the third or fourth years, where Trump is beginning to tame the bureaucracy and bring his own more nuanced policies to bear. Anyone with a huge manly mustache like Bolton has, in this day and age, is living in the 1950s past, where mustachioed gunslingers in chaps and dusty cowboy hats still represented the best that America had been and the best that she still could be.
It is no surprise that Bolton was taken down by Mike Pompeo, the Secretary of State, because no matter who runs the State Department, they all at that agency are always the weanies, the wimps, the “war-no-more” tip-toeing weasel fairies of our foreign touch. Everyone at the State Department believes fervently that all our conflicts can be resolved amicably, if America just gives in and gives away enough of its own interests.
On the other hand, every day he was on the job John Bolton was leading the US cavalry straight up San Juan Hill with the American flag in his left hand and a smoking Colt .45 revolver in his right. I will miss the guy.
John Bolton’s approach to American foreign policy: TR’s famous charge up San Juan Hill with the Rough Riders
The US State Department: Obsequious weasel with a toothy beaming sycophantic smile looking perky and wide eyed, always
Hillary Clinton: Public Threat #1
Had any Republican of note engaged in the same email account shenanigans as Hillary Clinton while she was employed by the American taxpayer to represent us abroad in the US State Department, his or her career would be over in seconds.
World-wide condemnation of her ham-handed use of unsecured, hackable email accounts to conduct secret official diplomatic business in a very competitive worldwide environment would have destroyed any Republican.
Never mind that Clinton’s secret, private email accounts were designed to avoid public scrutiny of transparent public email accounts. Public scrutiny of her emails might reveal the deep, dark corruption behind Clinton’s private sales of public influence through her role at the the US State Department to the Clinton Foundation.
The liberal mainstream media has given liberal Hillary Clinton multiple public opportunities to explain away her dangerous games that have cost Americans their personal security. But now even the mainstream press corps might have limits. Yesterday was apparently the end of the media coddling the Clintons have grown up with, because even liberal outposts like the Washington Post are now criticizing Hillary Clinton’s poor performance at her press event.
Would it not be rewarding to see Democrats subject more often to the same rules the media establishment apply to conservatives and Republicans? We might actually get some good government as a result. Or at least we won’t have an obvious, avowed public threat being considered for the most important, most influential public office on the planet.
IRS and US State Department Spying On Citizens
That Sad, Unimaginable Moment Has Arrived
By Josh First
Incredible as it may sound to some people, and I admit to being naive enough myself that I did not see this coming, proof is out that the Internal Revenue Service and the US State Department have been spying on US citizens and using their official capacities to crush Constitutionally protected political dissent.
American citizens who disagree with Obama administration policies have been targeted by the IRS with intrusive questions and audits designed to either collect information to be used against them, or to intimidate them into dropping their non-profit status and political activities. Simple citizens, non-profit groups, businessmen, have all been targeted by the IRS in a patently illegal effort to stifle dissent. Christian groups, Jewish groups, better-government groups, all targeted with crushing audits designed to open up the groups and expose their members and financial sources to potential faux criminal charges, or to intimidate them into submission and compliance with policies they are against.
The US State Department has now been caught recording phone calls by US reporters and whistleblowers, including retired military officers and civil servants long released from their confidentiality obligations. News reporters being targeted by the government? Sounds like efforts to silence news reporting, right?
This isn’t normal behavior for a US government. At least it is not supposed to be normal. It is not acceptable in America. All of this behavior and activity is illegal on its face, contravening most of the US Constitutional rights and all of the many court holdings designed to uphold those rights. Similar efforts in the 1950s were used to try and shut down the civil rights movement. President Richard Nixon was impeached for crimes much less intrusive and less far-reaching in the 1970s.
Deafening silence about these illegal activities by my friends on the left means only one thing: They are in politics to win by any means. As discouraging as that is, it is reality, and again, I admit to being naive enough to think that kind of behavior is not generally accepted outside of certain small, very narrowly focused political circles.
And so, the moment has come to do what must be done, what in America might be called “the nuclear option.” And that is impeachment of a sitting president, in this case Barack Hussein Obama.
The newly unveiled crimes of this administration are monstrous and demand an adequate response. Nothing short of impeachment will suffice. Democracy, freedom, liberty, and government of the people, by the people, and for the people require it if we are to survive as a unified nation.