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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">John Bolton’s Prominence in the Media Proves Our Entire Society Is Diseased</h1></div>
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John Bolton interviewed by CNN. Photo: File photo. </p>
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<p>By Caitlin Johnstone – Mar 30, 2023</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Council on Foreign Relations chief Richard Haas — who worked in the
US State Department under Colin Powell when Bush launched his criminal
invasion — <a href="https://www.project-syndicate.org/onpoint/iraq-war-20-years-later-causes-misconceptions-and-lessons-by-richard-haass-2023-03">got a piece published</a> in Project Syndicate <a href="https://archive.is/HHYsQ">falsely</a> 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.”</p>
<p>Former Bush speechwriter David “Axis of Evil” Frum cooked up a <a href="https://consortiumnews.com/2023/03/18/iraq-20-years-caitlin-johnstone-bush-era-neocons-should-shut-up-about-iraq-and-everything-else/">lie-filled spin piece</a> 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.</p>
<p>Neoconservative <a href="https://militarist-monitor.org/profile/eli-lake/">war propagandist Eli Lake</a>, who has been <a href="https://harpers.org/2013/08/anatomy-of-an-al-qaeda-conference-call/">described</a> by
journalist Ken Silverstein as “an open and ardent promoter of the Iraq
War and the various myths trotted out to justify it,” has <a href="https://www.commentary.org/articles/eli-lake/iraq-freer-than-20-years-ago/">an essay published</a> 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.”</p>
<p>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 <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2023/04/03/after-the-iraq-war/">article published in National Review</a> by the genocide walrus himself, John Bolton.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>“Unfortunately, however, as was the case after expelling Saddam from
Kuwait in 1991, the United States stopped too soon,” Bolton writes.</p>
<p>Bolton claims that the <a href="https://truthout.org/articles/us-sanctions-caused-mass-civilian-deaths-in-iraq-afghan-civilians-are-up-next/">notoriously cruel</a> sanctions that were inflicted upon Iraq between 1991 and 2003 were too <em>lenient</em>, saying there should have been “crushing sanctions” that were “enforced cold-bloodedly”.</p>
<p>As <a href="https://reason.com/2023/03/20/john-bolton-is-still-wrong-about-iraq/">Reason’s Eric Boehm notes</a> 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.”</p>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>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”.</p>
<p>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 <a href="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">columns and interviews in The Washington Post</a>, and is <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/search?q=john+bolton&from=0&size=10&page=1&sort=newest&types=all§ion=">regularly brought on CNN</a> as an expert analyst, proves our entire society is diseased.</p>
<p>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 <a href="https://archive.is/RJSFs">he threatened the children</a> of the OPCW chief whose successful diplomatic efforts in early 2002 were making the case for invasion hard to build, or how he <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/bolton-would-bang-on-my-door-and-shout-503763.html">spent weeks verbally abusing</a> a terrified woman in her hotel room, pounding on her door and screaming obscenities at her.</p>
<p>And that’s just Bolton’s <em>personality</em>. The actual <em>policies</em> he has worked to push through, sometimes successfully, are far more horrifying. This is the freak who has argued rabidly for <a href="https://archive.is/3idHz">the bombing of Iran</a>, for <a href="https://archive.is/wqI2c">bombing North Korea</a>, for attacking Cuba <a href="https://archive.is/YtvTm">over nonexistent WMD</a>, for <a href="https://archive.is/WTAVe">assassinating Gaddafi</a>, and <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/3kjdpb/watch-a-brief-history-of-john-bolton-advocating-for-war">many other acts of war</a>. Who <a href="https://washingtonnote.com/john_bolton_has/">helped cover up</a> the Iran-Contra scandal, who <a href="https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/the-empire-is-showing-more-and-more">openly admitted</a> to participating in coups against foreign governments, and who <a href="https://reason.com/2019/09/18/john-bolton-is-mad-that-trump-wouldnt-let-him-bomb-iran/">tried to push Trump</a> into starting a war with Iran during his terrifying stint as his National Security Advisor.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Bolton is not elevated at maximum amplification <em>in spite of</em> his psychopathic bloodlust, but exactly <em>because of</em> 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.</p>
<p>That’s the world we live in. That’s what we’re up against here.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>(<a href="https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2023/03/21/john-boltons-prominence-in-the-media-proves-our-entire-society-is-diseased/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Caitlin Johnstone</a>)</p>
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Caitlin Johnstone </span>
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<p>Rogue journalist. Bogan socialist. Anarcho-psychonaut. Guerrilla poet. Utopia prepper.</p>
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