I am pretty sure I heard Donald J. Trump call the Iraq War a “disaster,” a “mistake,” a “terrible decision.”
It’s not clear to me, though, whether the president-elect actually opposed the war fromĀ its beginning, or during the period leading up to the first shots being fired in March 2003.
But during the 2016 presidential campaign Trump did criticize the Bush administration’s decision to go to war in Iraq.
Why, then, is he going to send a deputy secretary of state before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for confirmation?
John Bolton is a serious war hawk. He believes in regime change. He supported the Iraq War. He bought into the notion that the late Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. He has called for going to war with Iran. At least one key Republican committee member, Rand Paul of Kentucky, says he’ll vote automatically against Bolton’s confirmation.
Bolton isĀ hoping to join a State Department team headed by a designated secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, whose confirmation itself isn’t a sure thing. He’ll have to answer many questions about his friendship with Russian strongman Vladimir Putin, who Sen. John McCain has labeled a “butcher” and “murderer.”
But this Bolton character, a former U.N. ambassador, brings a serious dichotomy into play.
The president-elect opposed the Iraq War — he says — and yet he’s going to bring the hawkiest of hawks into his foreign-policy team?
I do not understand any of this.
My head is spinning.