John Bolton’s Love of
Bombs
By Lawrence Davidson
April 01, 2015 "ICH"
- The year
was 1968. I had just earned a master’s
degree in history at Georgetown University,
where I had also helped found the
university’s chapter of the Students for a
Democratic Society (SDS). Unfortunately,
there was no time to celebrate, because
within days of getting the degree I was on
U.S. Army bus, along with about 30 others,
heading from Washington, D.C. to Fort
Holabird in Baltimore. At that time there
was a military draft induction center there,
and according to my low draft lottery
number, my time had come.
At Holabird we piled into a
classroom-like setting and were given a
lecture by a rather over-muscled middle-aged
sergeant with buzz haircut. He told us (I am
paraphrasing from memory here) that “the
Vietnam war was absolutely necessary. If the
commies got their way the domino effect
would see all of Southeast Asia go Red.
There was no way you could negotiate with
Hanoi and so it was time to increase the
intensity of bombing over North Vietnam.” I
remember that he ended by telling us that
“there were no innocent civilians in Vietnam
– when they call their soldiers part of a
people’s army, they mean it.” Only later did
I realize he was extrapolating on the
position laid out by the infamous General
Curtis “Bomb Them Back to the Stone Age”
Lemay. When the sergeant had talked himself
out, he began distributing the written
intelligence and aptitude tests that were
part of the pre-induction process. As he was
doing so he asked if there were any
questions. I was the only one who raised his
hand.
You have to keep in mind that
I was 23 years old, a radical, and not
afraid of authority figures. So I asked him,
“Why should any of us here believe a word
you say about this war when all you have
given us are opinions standing in for
facts?” He looked at me in a murderous way
and said. “What is it about these forms that
you don’t understand?” A good number of the
boys (I was the oldest among the prospective
inductees) in the room laughed – at me. What
the heck can you expect from cannon fodder.
I eventually beat the draft
and forgot about the above incident. That
is, until I read John Bolton’s 26 March 2015
op-ed “To Stop Iran’s Bomb, Bomb Iran” in
the New York Times (NYT).
Part II – 2015: Bolton’s
Bombs
John Bolton is a
neoconservative veteran of the George W.
Bush era. His claims to fame, besides a real
talent for temper tantrums, include serving
as President Bush’s Under Secretary of State
for Arms Control. In this capacity he
undercut international efforts to limit such
things as biological weapons. He also served
as Bush’s ambassador to the United Nations.
It would appear he was chosen for this post
mainly because he despised the UN. Under
George W. Bush the times were truly
Orwellian. Finally – and this is what took
me back to 1968 – Bolton’s op-ed
demonstrated that he can’t tell the
difference between his own opinion and fact.
Let’s analyse Bolton’s NYT
op-ed:
First, Bolton is absolutely
convinced that Iran will produce nuclear
weapons. How does he know? Because “Iran’s
steady progress toward nuclear weapons has
long been evident.” To firm up his case he
misleadingly tells us that “the president’s
own director of National Intelligence [James
Clapper] testified in 2014 that they
[economic sanctions] had not stopped Iran’s
progressing its nuclear program.” Yes, the
quote is accurate, but Mr. Bolton’s use of
it is not. As intelligence agencies,
including those under Clapper, attest, the
nuclear program Iran has been working on
since 2003 is not a weapons program. Rather,
it is one aimed at the production of energy
and nuclear medical capabilities. Again, it
should be emphasized that it is the
consensus of all U.S. intelligence agencies,
dating from 2011, and not 2007 as Bolton
asserts, that there is no evidence that Iran
seeks to build nuclear weapons. Today there
is no evidence that would cause a change of
view.
However, Mr. Bolton is so
obsessed with bombs that, in the case of
Iran, there is no difference between any
sort of nuclear program and a weapons
program. And, he obviously feels his opinion
is more “true” than the estimates of
professional intelligence agencies. It is a
blindspot he shares with the Republican
Party and other certain political leaders,
such as Benjamin Netanyahu. Of course, it is
exactly to ensure that Iran’s “progress”
stays focused on non-weapon use of nuclear
power that the present negotiations between
the P5 + 1 and Iran are directed. But Bolton
will never be satisfied. He “knows” the
Iranians are out for weapons. Maybe he is
psychic.
Second, Bolton claims that
taking the negotiation or diplomatic path
with Iran has triggered a nuclear arms race
in the region. How does he know this? The
Saudis tell him so. The governing oligarchy
in Riyadh has already said that if the
Shiite Iranians are building the bomb, they
want nuclear weapons too. Like Bolton, the
Saudis equate know-how with production. So
Bolton tells us that we can expect the
Saudis to acquire nuclear weapons from
Pakistan – and it is all Iran’s fault. Hold
on! Why shouldn’t it be Israel’s fault?
Israel was the first country in the Middle
East to actually build and stockpile nuclear
weapons. In Bolton’s mind, apparently,
that’s different. Bolton tells us “other
states in the region understood … that
Israel’s nukes were intended as a deterrent,
not as an offensive measure. Iran is a
different story.” This is a proposition for
which Bolton offers no proof. Given Israel’s
continuous history of aggressive expansion,
just what is the Israeli stockpile
deterring? After all, holding a nuclear
weapon over other people’s heads while you
conquer Arab land seems a very offensive use
of “deterrence.” And sure “Iran is different
story.” It doesn’t even own a nuclear
weapon, much less a stockpile.
Third, John Bolton has an
answer for all of this. Being a
neoconservative who cut his teeth on
undermining arms control, the answer is that
“only military action like Israel’s 1981
attack on Saddam Hussein’s Osirak reactor in
Iraq or its 2007 destruction of a Syrian
reactor … can accomplish what is required.”
He goes on to detail the targets and the
ultimate goal of his proposed aggression:
“Rendering inoperable the Natanz and Fordow
uranium-enrichment installations and the
Arak heavy-water production facility and
reactor would be priorities. So, too, would
be the little-noticed but critical
uranium-conversion facility at Isfahan. …The
United States could do a thorough job of
destruction, but Israel alone can do what’s
necessary. Such action should be combined
with vigorous American support for Iran’s
opposition, aimed at regime change in
Tehran.”
What this scenario actually
proves is that Mr. Bolton has little
capacity to think his schemes through. By
his own admission such a bombing adventure
would only “set back its [Iran’s] program
three to five years,” meanwhile killing
thousands, making a dangerous enemy of Iran
for years to come and, last but not least,
risking a war in the Persian Gulf that would
seriously disrupt the world’s flow of oil.
And let’s not forget that such an attack
would, at the very least, disrupt Iran’s
fight against ISIS, which is supporting an
important U.S. interest.
As for Israel, Bolton is
exaggerating. The Zionist state does not
have the capacity to “do what’s necessary.”
The distance between the two countries is
prohibitive, and even if Israeli warplanes
could get to Iran and back (say by refueling
in, of all places, Saudi Arabia), the
operation would take multiple sorties,
during which the Israel stands to lose a
good number of planes and pilots. In fact
Prime Minister Netanyahu has sought to
prepare the Israeli air force for an attack
on Iran only to have his own military
officers strongly object.
Part III – Sloppy Thinking
John Bolton’s op-ed to the
New York Times is just a mess – a dangerous
flight of fancy based on skewed opinions
rather than hard evidence and facts. In what
must have been a very weak moment while
writing this piece, he actually admits that
there is a “lack of palpable evidence” for
his case. He then moves right ahead as if
the absence of evidence and facts just do
not matter.
And what are the facts? Well,
the Iranians do have a certain level of
nuclear know-how which has been turned
toward energy production and medical use.
They do not have a nuclear bomb and have
repeatedly said they don’t want a nuclear
bomb. They have stated that they have
religious objections to moving in that
direction and know that the use of such a
weapon would be a suicidal act. Western
governments, pressured by Zionist and other
special interests, have decided that the
Iranians are not trustworthy, and so
draconian economic sanctions have been
implemented. Now, negotiations to put in
place mechanisms to ensure that the Iranians
stay true to their word appear near
completion.
However, just like that
hard-nosed sergeant back in 1968, Bolton
dismisses negotiations. Like the
analytically deficient noncom at the
induction center, he is much more
comfortable with death and destruction. And
indeed, given Bolton’s influence on the
right, his public advocacy of a nuclear
attack on Iran in 2009, and his having
become a foreign policy advisor for
presidential candidate Ted Cruz, he might be
judged the most dangerous man in the U.S. –
if it wasn’t for the fact that he has so
much competition: all those Republican
leaders in Congress beating their breasts
and swearing that they are going to destroy
the president’s one positive effort to make
the world safer; the sharks at AIPAC who are
determined, for the sake of Israel, to make
war on Iran right down to the last American
soldier; and untold millions of Christian
Zionists who see any conflagration in the
Middle East as a good thing because it
brings closer the annihilation for which
they positively yearn.
What is the New York Times
doing publishing this nonsense? It seems to
me when you accept a piece for an op-ed page
it should be recognized as having been
thought through and demonstrating some
relation to reality. And, you should
certainly make sure that it does not
represent, as Robert Parry put it, an
“incitement to murder and violation of
international law.” I guess the NYT editors
disagree.
Lawrence Davidson is a
retired professor of history from West
Chester University in West Chester PA. His
academic research focused on the history of
American foreign relations with the Middle
East. He taught courses in Middle East
history, the history of science and modern
European intellectual history.
Copyright © 2010
tothepointanalyses. All Rights Reserved.