Before
the presidential election, some Americans expressed hope that Donald
Trump, if elected, would scale back U.S. militarism and the federal
government’s habit of instigating and supporting regime change
abroad. This hope came despite Trump’s promise to expand the scope
of the American military. On the campaign trail, Trump criticized the
Iraq war and nation-building. Since his election, he has garnered
positive feedback from Russia, signaling cooling of tensions between
the two large powers and highlighting a stark difference between
Trump and his competitor, Hillary Clinton. But the president-elect’s
impending choices for his cabinet and advisers should raise alarm for
anyone interested in diminishing the U.S. military’s presence
around the world.
Here are
five figures who shatter the perception that Donald Trump will be a
“peace” president:
1.
Vice President-elect Mike Pence – Much of the nation is
reeling over Pence’s regressive views on homosexuality and
abortion, but one of his most damning stances is his support for
traditional neoconservative foreign policy. When he was a House
representative, Pence voted in favor of George W. Bush’s invasion
of Iraq — the same one Trump has criticized. Pence has indicated
the same type of hawkishness in his stance on Syria, which also
contradicts Trump’s.
“If
Russia…continues to be involved in this barbaric attack on
civilians in Aleppo, the United States of America should be prepared
to use military force to strike military targets of the Assad
regime,” Pence said during one of the vice presidential debates
this election cycle. Interestingly, his rhetoric sounds much like
that of Hillary Clinton, who drew the support of many pro-war
Republicans this year.
With Joe
Biden as his predecessor, it’s easy to assume Pence will have
little tangible power, especially under a colossal personality like
Trump. That being said, he recently said he views Dick Cheney as his
role model. Cheney, one of the key architects and profiteers of the
Iraq war, was largely believed to pull the strings of the Bush
presidency. As President Obama previously joked: “A few weeks
ago Dick Cheney said he thinks I’m the worst president of his
lifetime, which is interesting, because I think Dick Cheney is the
worst president of my lifetime.”
2.
Rudy Giuliani — Rudy Giuliani is on Trump’s
presidential transition team, and earlier this week he was he rumored
to be up for the role of secretary of state. The New York Times
reported Tuesday that Giuliani, who enthusiastically backed Trump’s
campaign, is vying for the role of top diplomat and that Trump is
inclined to reward his loyalty.
Giuliani,
who was mayor of New York City during the 9/11 attacks in 2001, has
long espoused hawkish policy in favor of security, often referencing
the historic attacks as justification for his views.
His lack of
regard for rule of law is apparent in his recent statement that
“anything’s legal” in war. He is apparently unaware of the
Geneva Conventions. Giuliani was also a staunch proponent of the Iraq
War and, unfortunately, fails to see the consequences of perpetual
overseas intervention.
Ron Paul
attempted to explain these consequences during a 2008 presidential
debate when both he and Giuliani were running for president. “We
need to look at what we do from the perspective of what would happen
if somebody else did it to us,” Paul urged, attempting to
explain that the United States’ ongoing bombing of the Middle East
sows resentment and inspires terror attacks.
Giuliani
ultimately insisted on adding to the conversation and was quick to
invoke fear mongering and emotion surrounding 9/11: “That’s
really an extraordinary statement. That’s an extraordinary
statement, as someone who lived through the attack of September 11,
that we invited the attack because we were attacking Iraq. I don’t
think I’ve heard that before, and I’ve heard some pretty absurd
explanations for September 11th. And I would ask the congressman to
withdraw that comment and tell us that he didn’t really mean that.”
Paul did not
retract that comment and rather, went on to explain the CIA’s
concept of blowback and the United States’ meddling in Iran in
1953.
Eight years
later at the Republican national convention, Giuliani appeared to
have ignored Paul’s warning, choosing instead to focus on the
dangers of Islamic extremism without addressing the root causes but
inserting plenty of 9/11 references. He promised terrorists that
America is “coming for you.”
Considering
Hillary Clinton was able to leverage a war in Libya, weapons sales to
regimes that donated to her foundation, and the failed policy of
arming radical Syrian rebels in their fight against Assad, a Giuliani
State Department could have violent ramifications.
3.
John Bolton – Trump’s other potential secretary of
state also adheres to establishment Republican party foreign policy.
Bolton served as George W. Bush’s undersecretary, and in 2002, made
wildly inaccurate claims about the impending Iraq war. As noted by
the Atlantic: “Bolton was both a booster, and a minor architect,
of the war in Iraq. As George W. Bush’s undersecretary of state in
late 2002, he told the BBC that ‘We are confident that Saddam
Hussein has hidden weapons of mass destruction and production
facilities in Iraq.’ He added that ‘the Iraqi people would be
unique in history if they didn’t welcome the overthrow of this
dictatorial regime,’ and that although building a democracy would
prove a ‘difficult task,’ the people of Iraq ‘are fully
competent to do it.’ So competent, in fact, that ‘the American
role [in post-war Iraq] actually will be fairly minimal.’”
As Senator
Rand Paul detailed in an op-ed explaining why he will oppose a Bolton
appointment should it come to pass: “Bolton is a longtime member
of the failed Washington elite that Trump vowed to oppose, hell-bent
on repeating virtually every foreign policy mistake the U.S. has made
in the last 15 years” — particularly those Trump promised to
avoid as president. “John Bolton more often stood with Hillary
Clinton and against what Donald Trump has advised.”
Bolton
recently advocated war with Iran and is a member of the Council on
Foreign relations, a foreign policy think tank. Dick Cheney is a
member of the council and Hillary Clinton has lauded it for its
leadership, which is guided by a litany of corporations, including
Lockheed Martin, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase & Co., and Exxon
Mobil Corporation.
As Paul also
noted, Bolton shares many policy aims with Clinton: “In 2011,
Bolton bashed Obama ‘for his refusal to directly target Gaddafi’
and declared, ‘there is a strategic interest in toppling Gaddafi…
But Obama missed it.’ In fact, Obama actually took Bolton’s
advice and bombed the Libyan dictator into the next world. Secretary
of State Clinton bragged, ‘We came, we saw, he died.’” A
Bolton State Department is, like a hypothetical Giuliani one, a
recipe for continued aggression and reckless foreign policy.
4.
James Woolsey – Few things scream “establishment”
louder than appointing a former CIA director and key member of the
Project for a New American Century (PNAC) to serve as a senior
national security adviser. PNAC was a pro-war think tank made up of
prominent neoconservatives. It has since been disbanded, but archived
versions of their website reveal the organization’s foundationally
militaristic objectives). Woolsey has carried their torch.
According to
the Intercept, Woolsey was a key supporter of the 2003 invasion of
Iraq long before it transpired: “Woolsey signed a letter in 1998
calling on Clinton to depose Saddam Hussein and only hours after the
9/11 attacks appeared on CNN and blamed the attacks on Iraq. Woolsey
has continued to insist on such a connection despite the complete
lack of evidence to support his argument. He also blames Iran.”
The
Intercept added: “He chairs the leadership council at the
Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a hawkish national
security nonprofit, and is a venture partner with Lux Capital
Management, which invests in emerging technologies like
drones,satellite imaging, and artificial intelligence.”
Interestingly,
Woolsey also served as Vice President of Booz Allen Hamilton, the
firm where whistleblower Edward Snowden worked before exposing the
NSA’s secret surveillance programs. Woolsey has said Snowden should
be “hanged by the neck until he’s dead, rather than merely
electrocuted.” So there’s that.
5.
General Mike Flynn – Some have expressed optimism that
Donald Trump included General Mike Flynn on his transition team and
as a potential member of his administration. Flynn deviates from
other militaristic members of Trump’s new team in that he’s
willing to acknowledge the Iraq war was a mistake and has criticized
Obama’s drone wars. Flynn played an active role in the wars in
Afghanistan and Iraq.
As he said
last year: “When 9/11 occurred, all the emotions took over, and
our response was, ‘Where did those bastards come from? Let’s go
kill them. Let’s go get them.’ Instead of asking why they
attacked us, we asked where they came from. Then we strategically
marched in the wrong direction.”
Even so,
Flynn has criticized the Iran deal, and as the Intercept noted: “What
Flynn appears to view as speaking honestly has a tendency to veer
into dangerous and Islamophobic terrain. Earlier this year, he called
for the destruction of Raqqa, the Syrian city captured by the Islamic
State where tens of thousands of civilians remain trapped.”
Flynn has
condemned elements of war, but his military mindset prevails. As the
Intercept also observed: “Militarily, the campaign Flynn
envisions would be ‘similar to the effort during World War II or
the Cold War’ and would be guided by a single leader answering to
the president.”
Flynn may
have issues gaining a key role in a Trump administration because of
his previous role as Director of Intelligence for the Pentagon (he
was ousted in 2014), as well as his consulting firm’s ties to a
close ally of Turkish President Recep Erdogan, who has imposed
authoritarian policies in Turkey.
According to
the Wall Street Journal, Trump also recently added Frank Gaffney —
a longtime hawk with a penchant for condemning Islam — to his
transition team. The Trump campaign asserts he is not officially a
member and is simply offering advice.
Though some
may point to Trump’s potential partnership with Vladimir Putin as
hope that some international conflicts may be resolved, Trump has
willfully chosen to surround himself with establishment figures who
contradict the foreign policy points he seemed to espouse — namely,
the failures of regime change and the Iraq War. In fact, these
individuals actually lean toward Hillary Clinton’s hawkish foreign
policy agenda.
Unfortunately,
Trump’s campaign promises to “bomb the hell” out of ISIS belie
a chronically establishment foreign policy outlook — one sure to
produce more terrorists in the indefinite, nebulous war against an
ideology continually catalyzed by aggressive American militarism.
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