File this one away now under curiousities of the 2016 campaign.
Former United Nations Ambassador John Bolton stoked rumors that he’s considering a presidential run on Thursday when he a took direct shot at possible Democratic presidential contender Hillary Clinton and said foreign policy — Bolton’s professional forte — should be at the center of the next election.
I guess you can get away with any kind of nonsense at CPAC.
Bolton cited the attack on the American compound in Benghazi and called out Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton by name in his address.
“Under Barack Obama, you can murder his personal representative and get away scot-free,” he said of the Benghazi attack, which left four Americans dead, including Libyan Ambassador J. Christopher Stephens. “We would be happy to tell Hillary Clinton in unmistakable terms we know what difference it makes, even if you don’t.”
He went on: “We must make national security the center of our political debate throughout 2014 and the presidential election in 2016. We can and must replace the Obama-Clinton-Kerry-Biden doctrine on defeatism with a Reaganite foreign policy.”
The "ObamaClintonKerryBiden" doctrine? That's quite a mouthful, even for someone with an oversized clown moustache.
Bolton's Neocon fantasies of a "Reaganite" foreign policy apparently ignore the fact that Ronald Reagan presided over the worst terror attack on American soldiers of the century:
The Beirut Barracks Bombings (October 23, 1983, in Beirut, Lebanon) occurred during the Lebanese Civil War when two truck bombs struck separate buildings housing United States and French military forces—members of the Multinational Force (MNF) in Lebanon—killing 299 American and French servicemen. An obscure group calling itself 'Islamic Jihad' claimed responsibility for the bombings.[1]
Suicide bombers detonated each of the truck bombs. In the attack on the building serving as a barracks for the 1st Battalion 8th Marines (Battalion Landing Team - BLT 1/8), the death toll was 241 American servicemen: 220 Marines, 18 sailors and three soldiers, making this incident the deadliest single-day death toll for the United States Marine Corps since World War II's Battle of Iwo Jima, the deadliest single-day death toll for the United States military since the first day of the Vietnam War's Tet Offensive, and the deadliest single attack on Americans overseas since World War II.
Years later, Caspar ("Cap") Weinberger, Reagan's Secretary of Defense, recalled
"imploring" Reagan before the bombing to pull the Marines back from a situation he considered untenable. To no avail.
But nevermind that. The worst UN ambassador-turned-paid-Fox News--pundit we've ever had, responsible for alienating nearly all of our Western allies in trumping up the disastrous, losing war on Iraq, is terribly, terribly concerned about the death of a single U.S. diplomat. Notably, Bolton has never expressed any similar concern over the hundreds of thousands killed, maimed or wounded (including over 4000 American soldiers) as a result of his own actions and those of his neo-con confederates:
Bolton is alleged by Democratic Congressman Henry Waxman to have played a role in encouraging the inclusion of statement that British Intelligence had determined Iraq attempted to procure yellowcake uranium from Niger in Bush's 2003 State of the Union Address.[56] These statements were claimed by critics of the President to be partly based on documents found to be forged.
What would a
Reaganite foreign policy look like? Between his support for brutal death squads in Guatemala and El Salvador and skirting the law to provide
surface-to-surface missiles to terrorist states
in exchange for American hostages, Reagan abetted some of the worst human rights abuses in this country's history--possibly outdone only by Bolton himself and his pals Bush and Cheney who collectively lied us into a pointless an unnecessary war, a war whose repercussions continue to haunt to this day. By botching the war in Iraq Bolton is directly responsible for the resurgence of an Iranian state he spent the better part of his career trying to bring down. That is folly on a truly monumental scale.
But of course the purpose of the CPAC convention is not to put forth serious policy analysis, but to bash President Obama at all costs, reality be damned:
This is a president who does not believe in American exceptionalism... and America’s place in the world...[.]
Americans should thank their lucky stars that Bolton's vision of "America's place in the world" will never come to pass.