Trump's National Security Team Out to Make War

While the national news cycle seems focused on the Mueller Report and the Trump administration’s denial of its conclusions as well as access to the full version Trump and his handpicked advisors like National Security Advisor John Bolton, Special Representative for Venezuela Elliot Abrams, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo seem to be shopping for a nice small war. Trump has been antagonizing Iran since his first days in office and last year unilaterally withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal, officially named the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. For the last several months he and his enablers have been escalating rhetoric and threats against the duly elected leader of Venezuela.

Elliot Abrams is best known for his involvement in the Iran-Contra scandal, which supplied weapons to right wing insurgents in Nicaragua, during the Reagan administration, and led to his conviction in 1991 on two counts of unlawfully withholding information from Congress.

John Bolton is also of Iran-Contra scandal alumnus and has worked tirelessly to undermine nuclear weapons reduction and biological weapons treaties. Until last year Bolton was chairman of the Gatestone Institute, a nonprofit organization that disseminated false anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim information, where Bolton published articles on Iran and other topics.

Mike Pompeo denies climate change and claims that reduced sea ice in the Arctic Circle is a good thing as it can lower the cost of international trade. Pompeo is known for making bombastic and false statements like claims that China is investing in facilities in northern Canada of which there are no such investments. He has also state strong support for torturing prisoners of war.

Trump has been talking about military intervention in Venezuela since the summer of 2017 including asking advisors why the US wasn’t at war with Venezuela, noting that “they have all that oil and they’re right on our back door.” Just last week Pompeo stated that American troops might be used in support of the overthrow of Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro.

Earlier this week, Bolton announced that the United States was dispatching an aircraft-carrier strike group and bombers to the Middle East, saying that the U.S. is sending “a clear and unmistakable message to the Iranian regime” and threatening “unrelenting force.” Actually the deployment has been scheduled for months as part of a rotation of forces. Nevertheless the unprovoked comments follow a yearlong campaign of threats and intimidation aimed at Iran, after the administration’s withdrawal one year ago from the Iran nuclear deal. Since then, the United States has instituted tough new sanctions aimed at crippling Iran’s economy and cutting off its oil exports.

Over the past few weeks, the campaign of threats and what the White House calls “maximum pressure” has intensified. In early April the administration took provocative action via the State Department announcement that it was labeling Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Tehran’s main military arm, a terrorist group. Trump seems to be following Bush's pattern of manufactured false charges that Saddam Hussein had ties to Al Qaeda and 9/11, the Trump administration is painting the Iranian nation as a terrorist threat. In the two-decade history of the State Department’s terrorist listing no nation's entire armed forces have ever been designated as a foreign terrorist organization.

Watch for further sabre rattling as Congress pursues its investigation of the Mueller report and Trump’s financial dealings. Don’t be shocked if Trump starts a war in an effort to preserve his presidency.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - May 10, 2019