Trump's reliance on arch neocons John Bolton and Elliot Abrams and his connection to other villains of the past like former "best friend" Roy Cohn, aide de camp, to the execrable Joe McCarthy, are disturbing signs of American decline. We seem to be living through a political Night of the Living Dead, a veritable Zombie Apocalypse in which the architects of disaster and defeat rise from the graveyard of their ruinous policies and once again appear at the side of a US president. Think of the astonishing squandering of American resources and the millions of people our policies have killed or displaced in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua. Does any half-sane person think that our national security or prosperity has in any way been enhanced by these adventures? With climate change (natural and man made) threatening our food supplies and the stability of our increasingly complex society, can any thinking person not agree that we would be safer and vastly more prosperous had we used our national treasure to achieve sustainable energy independence? But here we go again, sending Elliot Abrams to Venezuela to implement another regime change, seemingly with spineless Democrats falling in line, this after doing everything we can to destroy the Venezuelan economy with sanctions, the modern equivalent of a medieval siege. Indeed, this past week, Queen of the Undead, devoted interventionist Hillary Clinton, remarked that she had not ruled out another run for the presidency. In the cemetery of failed foreign-policy ideas, the graves are yawning wide! Regardless of past disasters, installing unelected leaders in other countries is simply what the US attempts when dealing with any oil-rich nation that refuses to turn over its resources. While the Corporate Democrats, bitter about Trump's displacing them at the feeding trough, bray incessantly about "Russian intervention", a Republican administration commits de facto acts of war against another sovereign nation. This level of hypocrisy is so delusional that it defies satire. It signals a psychotic break with reality. We certainly can't expect the likes of Bolton and Abrams to respect another country's constitution since they have no respect for our own, believing as they do that the CIA can wage undeclared war wherever its client corporations see a benefit.
How is it that the same people keep showing up and even increasing their power in spite of repeated disasters like the Iraq war or policies in Central America that have sent refugees fleeing to our borders? In what other line of work do repeated failures and catastrophic loss result in promotion? Do NFL coaches who can't win games get their contracts endlessly renewed? I think that we need to face up to a harsh reality: Many of our nation's war mongers and the people behind them have goals that are the opposite of those stated as justification for their actions. Thus, failing at their stated aims, maintaining national security, supporting democracy, etc., is not really failure. In the case of the neocons, for whom 9/11 was an event they openly wished for in their position paper "Project for a New American Century", the mayhem in the Middle East and Latin America supports their unstated goals: the control oil fields, Israeli confiscation of Palestinian land and water, and, most important of all, the diverting of money into the hands of the beneficiaries of the military-industrial complex. This latter objective is of course facilitated by our friendly central bankers who get to create out of thin air whatever dollars are required to finance the National Security State. The resulting inflation is of course no problem. If you're making millions, you don't care what happens to the price of bread... at least until you find yourself on the wrong end of a pitchfork. John Bolton and Elliot Abrams and their neocon cohorts like Mike Pompeo, lapdog of the Koch brothers, will continue to succeed by failing until Americans wake up to the deceptions they promote. At least Bolton openly admits that his aim is to gain control of Venezuelan oil. What these self-described war criminals are really engaged in is a Project for a Post Constitutional America and the subjugation of the American people by the the oligarchs of legacy industries that now threaten the very fabric of life. They are the most dangerous enemies we have ever faced, and we the people are paying their salaries.
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