John Bolton: Syria, World War and the destruction of America

Keep in mind this is John Bolton. Former Ambassador to the UN. Promoter of "diplomacy via death squads" -How Bolton Armed Haiti's Thugs and Killers. Let's not forget the Iran/Contra scandal.

The man is a certifiable psychopath. Instead of being locked up, which he should be, he is free to reign terror on the planet and it's people. His latest call for bloodshed and death was available for reading at the National Review online. It is lengthy, therefore, only the highlights will be quoted.
Written to bolster the Republican/Democrat divide, which Bolton knows doesn't really exist.
He is playing to the audience. Keep that in mind.
My commentary in italics.

In response, calls for U.S. military intervention of one sort or another to aid the opposition increase, while the Obama administration dithers ( there has been no dithering, only a media created perception of dithering) over whether to continue relying on the United Nations Security Council and former U.N. secretary general Kofi Annan.

 But what are the American interests at stake, and what is the best way to protect them?

Syria’s Assad family–Baath party dictatorship had nothing to recommend it before the current conflict, other than its being the devil we knew. Now, it is increasingly an Iranian satellite under Tehran’s growing regional influence. Syria remains a threat to Israel; has continuing aspirations to control Lebanon while serving as a conduit to supply and support the terrorist group Hezbollah; provides a base of operations for Russian military activity in the Middle East; and is quite possibly the site of ongoing, illicit nuclear-weapons activity by Iran and North Korea, despite Israel’s destruction of a Syrian nuclear reactor in September 2007. (the 2007 Israeli bombing was a crock of stinky stuff)

Oddly enough, Bolton asks what American interests are at stake and then proceeds to list Israel under threat and all variations of that threat to Israel.But how is that a threat to the US?

Accordingly regime change in Syria is prima facie in America’s interest as well as the interests of Israel and our Arab friends in the region, who see nothing but danger for themselves if Iran’s hegemonic ambitions unfold successfully.

It would have been one thing to work with the Syrian diaspora to remove Assad and the Baath party when we had a massive military presence in Iraq, right on Syria’s border. In the days just after Saddam’s ouster in 2003, conditions were optimal (if nonetheless imperfect) for overthrowing Assad and replacing his regime with something compatible with American interests. We would not have needed to use U.S. ground forces. Our mere presence in Iraq could have precluded Iran — or, what we see today, an Iraq under Iran’s influence — from trying to protect Assad.

The US should have just gone and attacked Syria sooner!

That possibility is now much more remote, given the widespread infiltration of the anti-Assad forces by al-Qaeda and other terrorists. In truth, we do not know enough about the opposition’s political or military leadership  (which currently, at least, appears confused and divided) to predict who would prevail in the immediate aftermath of Assad’s overthrow. (Oh yes Bolton knows enough. He knows Muslim Brotherhood will prevail, as desired) In such circumstances, the risk of a radical Islamist regime’s replacing Assad is considerably higher than it would have been if we had moved to oust him years ago. A relatively orderly exit by Assad is one thing. A disorderly, indeed chaotic exit is quite another, especially given the risk that Syria’s chemical- and biological-weapons assets, and possibly nuclear assets, might fall into hands even worse than Assad’s.

Fake concern. There is nothing better then chaos to John Bolton.

Accordingly, we are blinking at reality if we do not recognize that, following Assad’s ouster, especially if the violence grew, the bloodlust would be high and the risk of large-scale massacres of Alawites all too real. How would we feel if U.S. weapons were used in such massacres? (How does Bolton "feel" now about them being used?) Without a substantial on-the-ground troop presence, we could no more prevent them than we can prevent the current killings of civilians.

Advocates of U.S. intervention argue that, if we are unwilling to supply weapons to the opposition, we can at least declare a no-fly zone along the Turkish border and continue to supply non-lethal assistance. This less visible approach implicitly acknowledges that Arab states determined to prevent Iran from consolidating its hold over Syria are now arming the rebels and will continue to do so. Of course, they will arm factions they believe are congenial to their interests, and not necessarily (spin) those congenial to ours, a fact we can do little to change. Indeed, any level of U.S. support, if it turns out to be effective, implies the same potential political and humanitarian problems as does U.S. support that is truly robust. The more effective our aid is, the more likely the opposition is to prevail.

GCC and the US/Israel are right on the same page concerning arming "interested"  factions.
The no fly zone is what will happen. Without a UN mandate. This is why we have been getting repeated references to the Balkans war. NATO undertook that without UN approval.

-Assad remains in power because of Russia and Iran, with China supporting him in the background. 

-Both Russia and Iran are prepared to shed a lot of Syrian blood, civilian or otherwise, to keep Assad in power, because it is in their interests, as they perceive them, to do so.

No mention of  all the blood spilled at the behest of the US/Israel/ GCC/Turkey/NATO. 
Very one sided Mr Bolton.  We have to ask - Is Mr Bolton out of touch with reality? No.
He is just managing perception. Your perception.

Yeah, Bolton dreams of bloodshed, death,despair, destruction!

-Significantly, U.S. intervention could not be confined to Syria and would inevitably entail confronting Iran and possibly Russia. This the Obama administration is unwilling to do, although it should. In the case of Russia, such a confrontation would likely break the famous “reset” button beyond repair. 

The blood thirsty maniac continues on:

-First and foremost, we should cut Syria off from its major supporters. The television images from Syria will not change permanently until the underlying strategic terrain changes permanently. Russia should be told in no uncertain terms that it can forget about sustained good relations with the United States as long as it continues to back Assad. We should resume full-scale, indeed accelerated, efforts to construct the limited missile-defense system designed by George W. Bush to protect American territory not against Russia but against rogue states such as Iran and North Korea. But we should immediately make it clear to Moscow that we will begin to consider broadening our missile-defense program to deal with Russian and Chinese ballistic-missile capabilities. (as if that isn't happening right now?)We should also announce our withdrawal from the New START arms-control treaty, and our utter disinterest in negotiations to prevent an “arms race” in space. Let Moscow and Beijing think about all that for a while.

-The magnitude of such a shift as a response to the conflict in Syria may seem startling, but each of these proposals is meritorious on its own terms. Wrapping several major policy redirections around the Syria problem thus advances multiple objectives simultaneously. 


 -Next, we should tell Iran that our patience with their decade-long ploy of using diplomacy to gain time to advance their nuclear-weapons program has ended. Tehran should face a stark choice, and we can leave to their imagination what will happen if they fail immediately to dismantle all aspects of their existing nuclear effort.

Recall the numerous mentions of just how pivotal the Syrian situation? And, that Syria is the fulcrum on which world peace precariously balances? These weren't exaggerations. John Bolton and his maniacal railings make that all the more obvious, if it wasn't  obvious enough before?

 -We should also reverse the fantasy still trumpeted by Obama that, despite its repeated violations of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty over 20 years, Iran is somehow entitled to a “peaceful” nuclear program. Until there is a new, trustworthy regime in Tehran, (regime change for Iran!!!) there can be no claim to benefits or “rights” under a treaty Iran has grossly abused. (untrue) We should introduce this new reality to our European friends as well, perhaps by simply being unambiguous with them. (Bolton not happy with Europe)

-Finally, in Syria itself, we should do now what we could have begun to do ten years ago (and what the Obama White House at least says it is doing now): find Syrian rebel leaders who are truly secular and who oppose radical Islam; who will disavow al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, and other terrorist groups; and who will reject Russian and Iranian hegemony over their country.

Bolton, if I may be frank, doesn't give a sh*t about secular leaders for Syria. He knows his GCC counterparts will have none of that! Which is why I bolded the truly important requirements
rejection of Iran and Russia!

-We will need some reason to believe (believe?)that this opposition can prevail against not only the Assad regime but also the terrorists and fanatics who also oppose Assad. This must be not a faith-based judgment ( contradicts himself, first we have to believe, but, not in a faith based manner?) but a clear-eyed assessment of reality.
-Such is the kind of opposition that, assuming it exists, (Bolton knows this kind of opposition, free of fanatics and terrorists, does not exist) we should support, aiming for regime change in Damascus when — and only when — it becomes feasible on our terms. (The terrorists are already being supported, as Bolton is aware) On this matter, too, we should tell our European allies that we want their support for something other than semiotic diplomacy.
-If we had pursued these kinds of policies after Saddam Hussein’s overthrow in 2003, we might today be in a very different place in the Middle East and have avoided much of the ongoing bloodshed. Better late than never.

Bolton is a mad man.

 Ambassador John Bolton's Curious Plan for Worldwide Chaos and Conflict

He draws an interesting conclusion-

" Bolton appears to be under the bizarre delusion that the United States faces no meaningful resource constraints and that if it wants to engage in military confrontation with most of the globe that it can easily afford to do so. This is obviously inaccurate. The United States accounts for a shrinking share of global economic output, and while it can temporarily spend “above its weight” on the military this is totally unsustainable. The United States will remain far and away the world’s most powerful country for at least another few decades, but Bolton’s prescription is one that will inevitably result in an America that is friendless, over-stretched, and bankrupt."

Perhaps that is the agenda?