[News] John Bolton’s Prominence in the Media Proves Our Entire Society Is Diseased

[Anti-Imperialist News]

orinocotribune.com
<https://orinocotribune.com/john-boltons-prominence-in-the-media-proves-our-entire-society-is-diseased/>
John Bolton’s Prominence in the Media Proves Our Entire Society Is Diseased
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[image: John Bolton interviewed by CNN. Photo: File photo.]

John Bolton interviewed by CNN. Photo: File photo.

By Caitlin Johnstone – Mar 30, 2023

In order to narrative-manage the public conversation about the Iraq War on
the 20th anniversary of the invasion, those who helped unleash that horror
upon our world have briefly paused their relentless torrent of “Ukraine
proves the hawks were always right” takes to churn out a deluge of
“Actually the Iraq War wasn’t based on lies and turned out pretty great
after all” takes.

Council on Foreign Relations chief Richard Haas — who worked in the US
State Department under Colin Powell when Bush launched his criminal
invasion — got a piece published
<https://www.project-syndicate.org/onpoint/iraq-war-20-years-later-causes-misconceptions-and-lessons-by-richard-haass-2023-03>
in
Project Syndicate falsely <https://archive.is/HHYsQ> claiming that the US
government and his former boss did not lie about weapons of mass
destruction, and that “governments can and do get things wrong without
lying.”

Former Bush speechwriter David “Axis of Evil” Frum cooked up a lie-filled
spin piece
<https://consortiumnews.com/2023/03/18/iraq-20-years-caitlin-johnstone-bush-era-neocons-should-shut-up-about-iraq-and-everything-else/>
with
The Atlantic claiming that “What the U.S. did in Iraq was not an act of
unprovoked aggression” and suggesting that perhaps Iraqis are better off as
a result of the invasion, or at least no worse off than they would
otherwise have been.

Neoconservative war propagandist Eli Lake
<https://militarist-monitor.org/profile/eli-lake/>, who has been described
<https://harpers.org/2013/08/anatomy-of-an-al-qaeda-conference-call/> by
journalist Ken Silverstein as “an open and ardent promoter of the Iraq War
and the various myths trotted out to justify it,” has an essay published
<https://www.commentary.org/articles/eli-lake/iraq-freer-than-20-years-ago/> in
Commentary with the extraordinary claim that the war “wasn’t the disaster
everyone now says it was” and that “Iraq is better off today than it was 20
years ago.”

But by far the most appalling piece of revisionist war crime apologia
that’s come out during the 20th anniversary of the invasion has been an article
published in National Review
<https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2023/04/03/after-the-iraq-war/> by
the genocide walrus himself, John Bolton.

Bolton sets himself apart from his fellow Iraq war architects by arguing
that the actual invasion and overthrow of Saddam Hussein “was close to
flawless,” and that the only thing the US did wrong was fail to kill more
people and topple the government of Iran.

Bolton criticizes “the Bush administration’s failure to take advantage of
its substantial presence in Iraq and Afghanistan to seek regime change in
between, in Iran,” writing that “we had a clear opportunity to empower
Iran’s opposition to depose the ayatollahs.”

“Unfortunately, however, as was the case after expelling Saddam from Kuwait
in 1991, the United States stopped too soon,” Bolton writes.

Bolton claims that the notoriously cruel
<https://truthout.org/articles/us-sanctions-caused-mass-civilian-deaths-in-iraq-afghan-civilians-are-up-next/>
sanctions
that were inflicted upon Iraq between 1991 and 2003 were too *lenient*,
saying there should have been “crushing sanctions” that were “enforced
cold-bloodedly”.

As Reason’s Eric Boehm notes
<https://reason.com/2023/03/20/john-bolton-is-still-wrong-about-iraq/> in
his own critique of Bolton’s essay, perhaps the most galling part is where
Bolton dismisses any responsibility the US might have for the consequences
and fallout from the Iraq invasion, attempting to compartmentalize the
“flawless” initial invasion away from all the destabilization and human
suffering which followed by saying “they did not inevitably, inexorably,
deterministically, and unalterably flow from the decision to invade and
overthrow.”

“Whatever Bush’s batting average in post-Saddam decisions (not perfect, but
respectable, in my view), it is separable, conceptually and functionally,
from the invasion decision. The subsequent history, for good or ill, cannot
detract from the logic, fundamental necessity, and success of overthrowing
Saddam,” Bolton writes.

This is self-evidently absurd. A Bush administration warmonger arguing that
you can’t logically connect the invasion to its aftereffects is like an
arsonist saying you can’t logically connect his lighting a fire in the
living room to the incineration of the entire house. He’s just trying to
wave off any accountability for that war and his role in it.

“One might suspect that Bolton imagines a world where actions should not
have consequences because he’s been living in exactly that type of world
for the past two decades,” Boehm writes. “Somehow, he’s retained his
Washington status as a foreign policy expert, media commentator, and
presidential advisor despite having been so horrifically wrong about Iraq.”

And that to me is what’s the most jaw-dropping about all this. Not that
John Bolton still in the year 2023 thinks the invasion of Iraq was a great
idea and should have gone much further, but that the kind of psychopath who
would say such a thing is still a prominent news media pundit who is
platformed by the most influential outlets in the world for his “expertise”.

It’s actually a completely damning indictment of all western media if you
think about it, and really of our entire civilization. The fact that an
actual, literal psychopath whose entire goal in life is to try to get as
many people killed by violence as he possibly can at every opportunity is
routinely given columns and interviews in The Washington Post
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/search/?query=john+bolton&facets=%7B%22time%22%3A%22all%22%2C%22sort%22%3A%22date%22%2C%22section%22%3A%5B%5D%2C%22author%22%3A%5B%5D%7D>,
and is regularly brought on CNN
<https://edition.cnn.com/search?q=john+bolton&from=0&size=10&page=1&sort=newest&types=all&section=>
as
an expert analyst, proves our entire society is diseased.

To be clear, when I say that John Bolton is a psychopath, I am not using
hyperbole to make a point. I am simply voicing the only logical conclusion
that one can come to when reading reports about things like how he
threatened the children <https://archive.is/RJSFs> of the OPCW chief whose
successful diplomatic efforts in early 2002 were making the case for
invasion hard to build, or how he spent weeks verbally abusing
<https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/bolton-would-bang-on-my-door-and-shout-503763.html>
a
terrified woman in her hotel room, pounding on her door and screaming
obscenities at her.

And that’s just Bolton’s *personality*. The actual *policies* he has worked
to push through, sometimes successfully, are far more horrifying. This is
the freak who has argued rabidly for the bombing of Iran
<https://archive.is/3idHz>, for bombing North Korea
<https://archive.is/wqI2c>, for attacking Cuba over nonexistent WMD
<https://archive.is/YtvTm>, for assassinating Gaddafi
<https://archive.is/WTAVe>, and many other acts of war
<https://www.vice.com/en/article/3kjdpb/watch-a-brief-history-of-john-bolton-advocating-for-war>.
Who helped cover up <https://washingtonnote.com/john_bolton_has/> the
Iran-Contra scandal, who openly admitted
<https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/the-empire-is-showing-more-and-more>
to
participating in coups against foreign governments, and who tried to push
Trump
<https://reason.com/2019/09/18/john-bolton-is-mad-that-trump-wouldnt-let-him-bomb-iran/>
into
starting a war with Iran during his terrifying stint as his National
Security Advisor.

This man is a monster who belongs in a cage, but instead he’s one of the
most influential voices in the most powerful country on earth. This is
because we are ruled by a giant globe-spanning empire that is held together
by the exact sort of murderous ideology that John Bolton promotes.

Bolton is not elevated at maximum amplification *in spite of* his
psychopathic bloodlust, but exactly *because of* it. That’s the sort of
civilization we live in, and that’s the sort of media environment that
westerners are forming their worldviews inside of. We are ruled by
murderous tyrants, and we are propagandized into accepting their
murderousness by mass media which elevate bloodthirsty psychos like John
Bolton as part of that propaganda.

That’s the world we live in. That’s what we’re up against here.

And that’s why they’ve been working so hard to rewrite the history on Iraq.
They need us to accept Iraq as either a greater good that came at a heavy
price or a terrible mistake that will never be repeated, so that they can
lead us into more horrific wars in the future.

We are being paced. Until now, “Iraq” has been a devastating one-word
rebuttal to both the horror and failure of US interventionism. The essays
these imperial spinmeisters have been churning out are the early parlay in
a long-game effort to take away that word’s historical meaning and power.
Don’t let them shift it even an inch.

(Caitlin Johnstone
<https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2023/03/21/john-boltons-prominence-in-the-media-proves-our-entire-society-is-diseased/>
)

Caitlin Johnstone

Rogue journalist. Bogan socialist. Anarcho-psychonaut. Guerrilla poet.
Utopia prepper.
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