by AMCD advisor Kenneth R. Timmerman (April 11, 2018)
John Bolton, who began work Monday as President Trump’s national security adviser, has repeatedly been hit with false accusation and demonized and attacked by the left – but shows no signs of changing his views to curry favor with those advocating a weak national security policy. Any fair assessment will show him to be a valuable addition to the Trump administration.
Bolton has shown repeatedly that can he act swiftly, decisively and wisely. One sign of this came Tuesday with the resignation of White House Homeland Security Adviser Thomas Bossert.
A White House source told Fox News that Bossert’s resignation was a result of Bolton’s “cleaning house” at the National Security Council. The source also said that Bolton may merge the National Security Council and the Homeland Security Council, which now function separately but share staff.
Vox has called Bolton “one of the most radically hawkish voices in American foreign policy,” and claimed Bolton would lead America into wars with North Korea and Iran – rogue regimes with nuclear weapons or weapons capabilities that in the eyes of the left are less dangerous to America than Bolton himself.
The far-far-left hero Ralph Nader has berated Bolton for “having played an active role in the Bush/Cheney regime’s criminal war of aggression that destroyed Iraq,” and declared Bolton “a clear and present danger to our country and world peace.”
The New York Times lumped Bolton together with Secretary of State designee Mike Pompeo, arguing both were a danger because they “have ties to individuals and groups promoting a worldview that regards Islam not so much as a religion, but as a political ideology that is infiltrating the United State and other countries with the goal of imposing Shariah law.”
This leftist hysteria is hyperbolic nonsense. John Bolton is not a warmonger. He believes, correctly, that a strong America is the best way to guarantee peace.
Bolton enjoys political combat, and is undoubtedly one of its most skilled warriors. But the left doesn’t hate him for his skills, his knowledge, or even his views. They hate him because he is fearless in exposing their outrageous preference for the enemies of America.
Bolton understands that threats to America must be dealt with forcefully – not necessarily with military might, but with the full spectrum of statecraft. This is true in North Korea, which successive U.S. administrations have attempted unsuccessfully to bribe into submission, as well as in our dealings with the radical Islamic regime in Iran long coddled by Democrats from Jimmy Carter to John Kerry.
And it’s not just the left that hates Bolton. His appointment has also sent shivers down the milky spines of Deep State “shadow warriors,” who have sought to undermine every Republican president since Ronald Reagan by spreading rumors, leaking classified intelligence and even lying to the president himself.
The latest of these Deep State agents is Fulton Armstrong, a former CIA analyst who complained in a Wall Street Journal op-ed this week that Bolton dared to challenge him in 2002 over bogus intelligence the CIA was then promoting about Cuba’s biological weapons program.
Armstrong seems to believe that the Washington press corps is full of useful idiots, or bots who have no memories. Bolton challenged Armstrong at the time because Armstrong was peddling information that had been planted in the U.S. intelligence community by a convicted Cuban spy – a spy whose lies Armstrong apparently continues to peddle even today.
I discussed this in detail in my 2007 book, “Shadow Warriors: The Untold Story of Traitors, Saboteurs, and the Party of Surrender.”
Bolton is like the boy who shouts out as the emperor parades naked down the street that “the emperor has no clothes!” It’s his penchant for truth-telling that the left and the shadow warriors fear the most.
A little-known entry on Bolton’s resume is the fact he was nominated in 2006 for the Noble Peace Prize by a former deputy prime minister of Sweden for having crafted something known as the Proliferation Security Initiative while he was U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
The initiative was a U.S.-led effort to interdict shipments of weapons of mass destruction on the high seas. (Full disclosure: I was jointly nominated with Bolton for the prize, for my work in exposing Iran’s nuclear weapons program).
Few people know about the Proliferation Security Initiative. Why? Because it’s a multilateral effort that has been a tremendous success, thanks to John Bolton.
President Trump finally has found a kindred spirit to help him sort through the lies the Deep State is continuing to feed him. Both the president and America will be well-served by National Security Adviser John Bolton.
First published in Fox News.