Chris Hedges's Blog, page 623

John Kiriakou: Gina Haspel Is Wrong Choice to Lead CIA

In this week’s episode of “Scheer Intelligence,” host and Truthdig Editor in Chief Robert Scheer speaks to former CIA counterterrorism official John Kiriakou, who served nearly 15 years with the agency. Kiriakou, who spoke openly about his opposition to the CIA’s torture program, served two years in prison after being charged with espionage and wrote the book “Doing Time Like a Spy: How the CIA Taught Me to Survive and Thrive in Prison.”

Scheer and Kiriakou discuss the nomination of Gina Haspel for CIA director. Kiriakou says that “Haspel should be disqualified for her past at the top of the CIA’s illegal torture program.” He also says her nomination sends the message that CIA agents need not respect the law in order to advance in the agency.

Scheer cites a poll showing a majority of Americans see torture as a tool that makes the nation more secure. “What’s happened here?” he asks Kiriakou.

“We’ve decided that, as a matter of policy, whatever is expedient is OK, because we’re the good guys, so we can do whatever we want. And that’s clearly wrong,” he says.

Kiriakou also says torture has become a partisan issue, with the majority of Republicans supporting its use and the majority of Democrats opposed. Yet, he adds, progressive politicians knew more than they revealed about the extent of the CIA torture program.

Listen to the interview in the player above and check back Saturday for the full transcript. Find past episodes of “Scheer Intelligence” here.

–Posted by Emily Wells

Operation Flailing Empire

You’ve got to hand it to the good old US of A: We sure know how to overpromise and underdeliver. After 17 years of perpetual wars stretching from West Africa to South Asia, nobody does it better. America’s military—the nation’s governmental tool of choice these days—never saw a problem it couldn’t “fix” or missed an opportunity to coin a slick code name for its open-ended operations.

First, we had Operation Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan), then Iraqi Freedom (well, you know where), New Dawn (Iraq, again), Unified Protector (Libya) and now, Freedom’s Sentinel (Afghanistan again). Boy, do these operations sound cool and altruistic. Hmm … I wonder how they actually turned out?

Well, that’s the tricky part. See, in reality, the U.S. has naught but a few defeats, several ongoing stalemates and a trail of chaos to show for all that effort. And, predictably, the local civilians usually foot the bloody bill.

If only the outcomes for the people on the ground bore any resemblance to those uplifting titles. And we’d hate to be dishonest or inaccurate in our labels, so how about we find a remedy? Seeing as Washington shows no predilection to even vote on, let alone end, its ongoing wars, perhaps the best we can do is review America’s recent record and suggest more appropriate code names for its ongoing wars.

***Operation Enduring Freedom

The invasion and occupation of Afghanistan in 2001—this is the one we had to do, right? The one even “liberal” President Barack Obama referred to as the “good war.” After all, al-Qaida had attacked the homeland, Osama bin Laden was there and, it seemed, the Taliban wouldn’t give him up—not fast enough for our liking, anyway.

Still, that mission “creeped” from counterterrorism to full scale nation-building. Nation-building on the cheap, that is, because most resources were promptly shifted to a war of dubious legality in Iraq. Seventeen years later, the only thing “enduring” in Afghanistan is chaos, and “freedom,” well, that’s limited, at best, to the urban centers the marginally legitimate, U.S.-sponsored Afghan government actually controls. With corruption rampant in Kabul, record numbers of districts contested by the Taliban and the harvesting of a record opium crop, it’s hard to argue that the U.S. military mission has lived up to its name.

After Obama finally reduced U.S. troop counts in 2014-15, Enduring Freedom was rebranded as Operation Freedom’s Sentinel, and the American military shifted to an advise, assist and sustaining force. Problem is, enduring freedom hadn’t ever been realized, so how the heck could the remaining U.S. troopers act as “sentinel” for the success-of-liberty that never came? It’s all so confusing.

For the sake of truth in advertising, let’s rename this ongoing conflict Operation Everlasting Quagmire.

Operation Iraqi Freedom

Boy, did the military planners dodge one heck of a gaffe when naming this one. They originally wanted to call it Operation Iraqi Liberation, but, yikes, that acronym spelled OIL—a bit too on the nose, no? Anyway, Washington settled on Iraqi Freedom and supplied a litany of reasons to invade: Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction (he didn’t), he’d colluded with al-Qaida (he hadn’t), the war would pay for itself (it wouldn’t), and on and on.

The conventional ground war took less than a month, President George W. Bush flew onto an aircraft carrier in a flight suit and declared the “mission accomplished” and everyone waited for Iraqi “freedom” to break out across the country. We waited and waited and … the place fell apart. The reality is that the U.S. military fractured an ethno-sectarian basket case of a country and unleashed chaos. We triggered a civil war, exponentially multiplied anti-American Islamists and delivered an Iraq even worse than had existed before 2003. Some 4,500 Americans and at least a couple hundred thousand Iraqis died. My unit didn’t arrive in Baghdad until October 2006, and one of the most heartbreaking—and recurring—interactions I had with those poor people was listening to them lament that life in the city was actually better under Saddam.

Iraqi Freedom was later renamed New Dawn when Obama shifted the mission to advisory and assistance and turned Iraq’s security over to a suspiciously chauvinist Shiite government under the strongman Nouri al-Maliki. New Dawn had such a nice ring to it. No more overt U.S. military occupation, increased Iraqi sovereignty and a fresh start for the embattled local civilians. A few years into New Dawn, in December 2011, almost all U.S. troops—as Obama had promised—left the country. Victory in Iraq.

Only the whole thing was a new-dawn-that-wasn’t. Maliki was an authoritarian, his government held little legitimacy in the eyes of minority Sunnis and Kurds, and the Iraqi army we’d trained and equipped collapsed in the face of the veritable Frankenstein’s monster that had grown up in U.S. military prisons: Islamic State. These lunatics helped themselves to billions of dollars’ worth of U.S.-supplied equipment and ran rampant for a couple of years across western Iraq and eastern Syria.

So, in round two (or three, if you count 1991’s Operation Desert Storm), the U.S. military was back on the ground, the Air Force was back to bombing and, while Islamic State has been rolled back, American troops are still there, with no end in sight.

So, in honor of a 1980s cult classic film, I propose a coded title that’s more apropos: Operation Neverending Story.

Operation Unified Protector

This is the NATO “humanitarian” mission to “protect” Libyan rebels from the vicious tyrant Moammar “Mad Dog” Gadhafi. The Arab Spring uprisings toppled a few Mideast dictators in 2011, but Obama had been elected on a promise of no more new wars in the region. So when assorted Libyan rebels were in danger of losing out to Gadhafi’s army, Obama assured us that Americans would “lead from behind,” keep U.S. “boots off the ground” and simply deter a massacre.

Unfortunately, that protection from the world powers wasn’t so unified after all, with Russia and China bowing out when the full scope of the NATO project became clear. And as for the “protection” part, or all that due-process stuff that Americans are always talking about, well, it didn’t apply to Gadhafi himself, who was tortured and murdered in a grisly manner by a lynch mob.

Things only deteriorated from there. Humanitarian intervention evolved into regime change, and then into the fracture of Libya into statelets led by rival warlords. Even Islamic State opened a local franchise. And that arsenal of guns Gadhafi had spent three decades accumulating? Tribal fighters took those south and across the border to sow chaos and destabilize Cameroon, Niger and Mali.

So in honor of what’s really occurred in Libya, I’ll leave the naming of this mission to former President Obama, who, in hindsight, referred to the Libyan mission as a “shit show.” Operation Shit Show. It has a nice ring to it.

Operation Restoring Hope

Yemen, 2015-present. Sure, it’s Saudi Arabia that kicked this one off and came up with the impressively ironic title. And sure, it’s Saudi pilots bombing and Saudi ships blockading that have unleashed the worst cholera epidemic in recorded history and brought millions of civilians to the brink of famine. So why should we care?

Simple. The U.S. backs and enables the Saudi terror campaign and has the power to end this war. The Saudi campaign could not continue without U.S. military support in the form of aerial refueling, targeting intelligence and guided munitions sales. One vignette, among countless others, says it all: In 2016, when a Saudi airstrike killed 140 Yemenis attending a funeral, it did so with American-manufactured bombs. Yemenis are fond of digging up the tail fins of these munitions, and many are manufactured in the USA. Nonetheless, the war, and America’s support for it, continues to this day.

Here’s an apt title for what America is really enabling in Yemen: Operation Moral Repugnance.

***I am done being cheeky and flippant. There are real human beings—too often women and children—under all those bombs and in the line of all that fire. What I suggest is twofold: First, let’s do less—militarily, at least—in the Mideast, and second, let us ditch the euphemistic-to-the-point-of-Orwellian code names and quit overpromising and underproducing.

The hard truth is that too often, in contrast to the noble code names, U.S. military operations have had precisely the opposite of their intended effects for the people living in the Greater Middle East.

What shall historians call these 17 years of post-9/11 warfare? Bush called it the “war on terror,” but terror is a tactic and not a tangible enemy. Others labeled it the “long war,” but that’s vague and not catchy enough. Esteemed historian Andrew Bacevich suggested “the war for the Greater Middle East,” which is indeed accurate, but a bit too scholarly and bland.

Given the actual outcomes of these campaigns, the horrors endured and the illogical paths blazed along the way, I’ll affix one more appropriate label to these disasters: “the war on reason.” Code name: Operation Flailing Empire.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author, expressed in an unofficial capacity, and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Army, Department of Defense, or the U.S. government.

John Bolton Is Just the Kind of Bully Donald Trump Admires

Nothing Donald Trump has done since his inauguration 14 months ago is more dangerous—to the United States, and indeed, to the world—than his selection of John Bolton for National Security Adviser. It is not surprising the president would feel most comfortable receiving advice from a fellow bully.

Trump bullies people on a nearly daily basis, directing his ire at immigrants, Muslims, women, LBGTQ people, the poor and the environment. He hurls Twitter attacks at those who disagree with him.

The president has encouraged police brutality, suggesting in a Long Island speech that law enforcement officers bang suspects’ heads against police car doors. “Please don’t be too nice” when arresting people, Trump advised. “Like when you guys put somebody in the car, and you’re protecting their head, you know, the way you put your hand over” their head, “I said, ‘You can take the hand away, OK?'”

After being told someone might throw tomatoes at him at a campaign rally, Trump urged his supporters to “knock the crap out of them … I promise you, I will pay for the legal fees.” He stated on Fox News that a Black Lives Matter activist who was attacked at a Trump rally “should have been roughed up.”

Trump’s fellow bully Bolton also engages in abusive behavior. Melody Townsel, working on a USAID project in Kyrgyzstan, became the object of Bolton’s wrath in 1994. Townsel had complained about incompetence, poor contract performance and inadequate funding of the project by a contractor Bolton represented. In a letter to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Townsel wrote that Bolton “proceeded to chase me through the halls of a Russian hotel throwing things at me, shoving threatening letters under my door, and generally behaving like a madman.” Townsel claimed Bolton threatened employees and contractors who refused to cooperate with him. She maintained Bolton’s behavior “wasn’t just unforgivable, it was pathological.”

Carl W. Ford, former Assistant Secretary for Intelligence and Research, and a conservative Republican, called Bolton a “kiss-up, kick-down sort of guy” who “abuses his authority with little people,” characterizing him as a “serial abuser.” Bolton chairs the Gatestone Institute, which publishes hateful, racist anti-Muslim rhetoric, calling refugees rapists and hosts of infectious diseases.

Bolton was such a lightning rod that in 2005, even the GOP-controlled Senate refused to confirm him as US ambassador to the United Nations. To avoid the need for Senate confirmation, George W. Bush named Bolton to the post in a recess appointment.

But Bolton doesn’t just bully individuals. He pushed for the 2003 invasion of Iraq, advocates military attacks on North Korea and Iran, favors Israel’s annexation of the Palestinian West Bank, and falsely claimed that Cuba had biological weapons.

As undersecretary of state for Arms Control and International Security in the Bush administration, Bolton was instrumental in withdrawing the United States from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which heightened the risk of nuclear war with Russia.

Anthony J. Blinken, deputy secretary of state in the Obama administration, wrote in The New York Times, “Mr. Bolton had a habit of twisting intelligence to back his bellicosity and sought to remove anyone who objected.”

Colin Kahl and Jon Wolf, writing in Foreign Policy, described Bolton’s “pattern of warping and misusing intelligence to build the case for war with rogue states; a disdain for allies and multilateral institutions; a blind faith in US military power and the benefits of regime change; and a tendency to see the ends as justifying the means, however horrific.”

When he left his position at USAID in the late 1980s, Bolton’s colleagues presented him with a bronzed hand grenade.

Bolton Eschews Diplomacy and Slams the UN

Bolton sees every international situation as an opportunity to make war, notwithstanding the United Nations Charter that mandates the peaceful resolution of disputes and forbids military force except in self-defense.

After two world wars claimed millions of lives, countries around the globe—including the United States—came together and established the United Nations system, “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.”

Yet in 1994, Bolton famously claimed, “there is no such thing as the United Nations.” He stated caustically, “If the UN Secretariat building in New York lost 10 stories, it wouldn’t make a bit of difference.”

When Bolton officially withdrew the US signature from the International Criminal Court treaty, he declared it “the happiest moment of my government service.”

Bolton Led the Charge to Invade Iraq

Bolton led the charge to invade Iraq and forcibly change its regime in 2003, falsely claiming that President Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction (WMD). In 2002, former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter affirmed that Hussein had destroyed 90-95% of its WMD; the remaining 5%, Ritter said, “doesn’t even constitute a weapons program . . . just because we can’t account for it doesn’t mean Iraq retains it. There’s no evidence Iraq retains this material.”

To bolster the case for war, Bolton pushed Bush to include in his State of the Union address the false statement that Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger, over the objection of the State Department.

Before the US invaded Iraq, Mohamed ElBaradei, director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said there was no evidence Hussein had any viable nuclear program. Hans Blix, chief inspector of the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, verified that weapons inspectors had found no evidence of WMD.

In 2002, Bolton orchestrated the ouster of Jose Bustani, head of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, to prevent him from inspecting and revealing that Hussein had no chemical weapons. When Bustani argued he should stay in the post, Bolton threatened, “You have to be ready to face the consequences, because we know where your kids live.”

No WMD were found after the US invasion of Iraq. Nearly one million Iraqis were killed and the US-led regime change led to a vacuum of leadership that was filled by ISIS.

A 2006 report prepared under the direction of former Rep. John Conyers (D-Michigan) concluded that “members of the Bush Administration misstated, overstated, and manipulated intelligence with regards to linkages between Iraq and Al Qaeda; the acquisition of nuclear weapons by Iraq; the acquisition of aluminum tubes to be used as uranium centrifuges; and the acquisition of uranium from Niger.” Those “misstatements were in contradiction of known countervailing intelligence information, and were the result of political pressure and manipulation.” A key source of that pressure and manipulation was Bolton.

In spite of the horror the US military unleashed on Iraq 15 years ago, Bolton wrote in 2016 that the removal of Hussein was “a military success of stunning scope and effectiveness, achieved in just three weeks.”

After the disastrous US invasion of Iraq, Bolton tried to get the Iran file removed from ElBaradei in order to lay the groundwork for an unjustified attack on Iran.

Bolton Wants to Rip Up the Iran Nuclear Agreement

Bolton favors bombing Iran and changing its regime and he opposes the Iran Nuclear Agreement. He has advocated an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities and encouraged the United States to support it.

In the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), Iran agreed to cut back its nuclear program and in return, received billions of dollars of relief from punishing sanctions. Iran has complied with its obligations under the deal, says a bipartisan group of over 100 national security veterans called the National Coalition to Prevent Nuclear Weapons.

Under the US Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act, the president must decide every 90 days whether Iran remains in compliance with the JCPOA and whether the agreement continues to serve US interests. Trump reluctantly certified Iran’s compliance in April and July 2017. But in October, to the consternation of his secretary of state, secretary of defense, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Trump refused to certify Iran’s compliance with the agreement. He did not, however, pull out of the deal at that time.

On May 12, Trump will decide whether or not to end US participation in the agreement. Bolton and CIA director Mike Pompeo, Trump’s nominee for Secretary of State, both favor renouncing the deal. If the US breaches the agreement, Iran may well resume the unlimited production of nuclear fuel.

“Bolton is an unhinged advocate for waging World War III,” according to Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council. “Bolton now represents the greatest threat to the United States,” he added, stating, “Trump may have just effectively declared war on Iran.”

Bolton Wants to Attack North Korea

In February, contrary to the overwhelming weight of legal authority, Bolton argued in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that mounting a first strike on North Korea would comply with international law.

Bolton stated on Fox News, “I think the only diplomatic option left is to end the regime in North Korea by effectively having the South take it over.” During another Fox appearance, Bolton declared, “the way you eliminate the North Korean nuclear program is to eliminate North Korea.” He maintained that North Korea having nuclear weapons was worse than the “millions” of North and South Koreans who would be killed if the US attacked North Korea.

If Trump destroys the Iran deal, that will send a dangerous message to Pyongyang that his word cannot be trusted. North and South Korea are slated to meet in April and Trump has indicated he will meet with North Korean President Kim Jong-Un. Diplomacy at this moment is critical.

Bolton has provocatively suggested a linkage between Iran and North Korea on nuclear weapons. In January, he wrote in the Wall Street Journal, “Little is known, at least publicly, about longstanding Iranian-North Korean cooperation on nuclear and ballistic-missile technology. It is foolish to play down Tehran’s threat because of Pyongyang’s provocations. They are two sides of the same coin.”

The dangers inherent in following Bolton’s favored policies in Iran and North Korea cannot be overestimated.

Bolton Falsely Claimed Cuba Had Biological Weapons

Bolton argued unsuccessfully for the inclusion of Cuba in Bush’s “axis of evil” (which consisted of Iraq, Iran and North Korea). Bolton advocated a military attack on Cuba one year before Bush invaded Iraq. After Bolton falsely claimed Cuba was developing a bio-warfare capacity, a congressional investigation found no evidence to support such an allegation.

As Nicole Deller and John Burroughs from the Lawyers’ Committee on Nuclear Policy have documented, Bolton is widely credited with the defeat of the Protocol to the Biological Weapons Convention, which would have created an inspection system to protect us against those deadly weapons.

Bolton Wants to Give ‘Pieces’ of Palestine to Jordan and Egypt

Bolton’s solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is to give “pieces” of Gaza to Egypt and “pieces” of the West Bank to Jordan since, he thinks, Palestine is composed of “bits and pieces” of the former Ottoman Empire.

In January, Bolton wrote in The Hill, “Once it becomes clear the two-state solution is finally dead, Jordan should again be asked to exercise control over suitably delineated portions of the West Bank and have the monarchy’s religious role for holy sites like the Temple Mount reaffirmed. Accepting Jordan’s sovereignty would actually benefit Palestinians, as would Egyptian sovereignty over Gaza, by tying these areas into viable, functioning states, not to the illusion of “Palestine.”

Neither Jordan nor Egypt supports this proposal, and Palestinians are vehemently opposed to it. Jewish Voice for Peace stated, “The appointment of Bolton is a complete disaster for the Middle East, the US, and the entire world.”

Bolton’s Appointment Is ‘a Disaster for Our Country’

The National Security Adviser’s job is to inform the president of the different options that affect national security, briefing him on the National Security Council’s findings. Bolton is such an ideologue, he will invariably slant his advice toward waging war. Bolton is so extreme, he reportedly promised Trump he “wouldn’t start any wars” if appointed, according to CNN. In light of Trump’s aversion to reading daily intelligence reports, Bolton will play an even greater role in the formulation of policy.

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Unfortunately, National Security Adviser is not a cabinet position, so Bolton doesn’t need Senate confirmation.

Former President Jimmy Carter said in an interview with USA Today that Bolton’s appointment is “a disaster for our country,” adding it may be “one of the worst mistakes” of the Trump presidency.

But as Stormy Daniels and Robert Mueller close in on Trump, the president will seek to create a major distraction. With bully Bolton egging him on, that may well be a military attack on North Korea or Iran. The consequences would prove disastrous.

How Can a Scientist Make Sense of the Religious Impulse?

“Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine”
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“Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine”

A book by Alan Lightman

Science writers generally fall into one of two categories: Some of us are textbook authors trying to convince ourselves that we are storytellers, while others are journalists who aren’t real scientists but like to play them on TV. Alan Lightman, however, is different. He is the poet laureate of science writers. His best-known book, “Einstein’s Dreams,” a lyrical novel putting us inside Albert Einstein’s mind as he makes his great discovery, established him as the Picasso, the Schoenberg, the Gehry of science writing. He didn’t just do it better—which he did; as a wordsmith Lightman stands alone among science writers—he did something with the genre no one imagined could be done. He created narrative poetry from relativity theory that was nothing short of magical. So, when a new work by Lightman emerges, the excitement is legitimate.

“Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine” is what we can call a grand unified intellectual narrative. Lightman points out that most physicists have a motivating belief in a final theory, a grand unified theory, a theory of everything. There must be, they hold, a single, elegant, ultimate law of nature from which the rules that govern all observable phenomena can be derived. Similarly, science writers long for a grand unified intellectual narrative, a discussion of everything, a single coherent conversation that will unite the great insights of physics, philosophy, religion, biology, art, neurology and sociology. This is Lightman’s.

Click here to read long excerpts from “Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine” at Google Books.

But to give an account of everything, you have to know what constitutes everything. As a physicist, Lightman felt secure that our best current theories tell us. Sure, there are the worries about dark matter and dark energy, but scientific methodology, which exposed these problems in the first place, will ultimately supply us with the answers.

Then he took his boat out to his summer home on Pole Island, Maine. It was a beautiful night, and Lightman cut the engine and lay down on the deck. Floating silently in the night, looking up at the stars, he felt himself transported out of his body, floating up among the heavenly lights, feeling a deep sensation of connectedness—not only Lightman with the stars, but of all things. It was a spiritual experience.

This epiphany was real. It was undeniable. But Lightman is a materialist. He does not believe in a nonmaterial soul, much less a supernatural God. How can one square the reality of the spiritual experience with the belief that the material world is all there is to reality? Can one have transcendence in a universe that cannot be transcended? How can a scientist, who buys the assumptions on which the scientific worldview is based, make sense of the religious impulse?

This is the question of the book. There are three different approaches to the spiritual. Philosophers label them religious rationalism, fideism and phenomenology. Rationalism is the view that we can demonstrate the likely or certain existence of God. Fideism holds that proof of God’s existence is irrelevant as religion requires faith, not reason. Phenomenology contends that religion is not a matter of believing at all but of feeling. Spirituality is a result of lived experience, not abstract propositions.

Lightman tries all of these on in turn, reaching for the writings of great minds from a wide range of times, places and traditions. We are treated to discussions of Aristotle, Einstein, Tagore, Shakespeare, Augustine and Galileo. From Buddhist monks to Lightman’s rabbi to physicist and atheist Steven Weinberg, no perspective is eliminated from being a possible source of insight and wisdom. Each is examined to see if it is possible to believe in both our best scientific theories and some sense of the spiritual.

The book comprises 20 short vignettes, each dedicated to a big idea—stars, truth, centeredness, death—weaving together expected and unexpected sources. The sections are short but thoughtful, allowing the reader to savor a piece at a time or to make a meal of the whole.

The approach is synthetic, not analytic. Distinctions and incompatibilities between perspectives are shown, but judgments are never rendered. In treating all viewpoints with the utmost respect, the book does, at points, feel like “Chicken Soup for the Materialist’s Non-Existent Soul,” but those moments are few, in a work of great range, sensitivity and thoughtfulness.

Lightman’s preference emerges for the phenomenological. “For me, as both a scientist and a humanist, the transcendent experience is the most powerful evidence we have for a spiritual world. By this I mean the immediate and vital personal experience of being connected to something larger than ourselves, to feeling some unseen order or truth in the world.” Even this, he worries, may be a step too far as it requires that consciousness be considered itself a real thing in the world. Would that mean “I” would have to be more than the neurochemical interactions occurring in my brain? Can a materialist take that step?

“Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine” demonstrates Lightman’s ability to make the most abstract notions accessible to all. No background is needed in physics, philosophy, religion or any other field to fully understand every step of the wide-ranging intellectual trek. No matter who you are, you will emerge ready to be more impressive at your next dinner party.

Of course, a path that overlooks so many vistas will sacrifice depth for the sake of breadth. If you have a significant background in any of the areas discussed, you will recognize the complexity that could come from a narrower but deeper exploration of the topic. But if you want a book about black holes, Buddhism or the brain, there are plenty of those out there. This is a grand unified intellectual narrative.

“Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine” reads like you are sitting on a lichen-covered bench on Pole Island alongside one of our best minds, exploring the geographic features of the entire intellectual landscape. No matter your views on science and the transcendent, this engaging read will be as pleasant as a summer afternoon spent on an island in Maine with good company.

Steven Gimbel is a professor of philosophy at Gettysburg College and the author of “Einstein: His Space and Times” and “Einstein’s Jewish Science: Physics at the Intersection of Politics and Religion.”

©2018 Washington Post Book World

Will We Ever See the Results of the Mueller Investigation?

If you want to make sure you learn whether President Trump’s campaign colluded with the Russians and whether Trump himself committed obstruction of justice, there’s one thing you must do: Vote in November to take control of Congress away from the Republican Party.

Spoiler alert: We already have evidence that Trump at least tried his best to obstruct justice; and despite the president’s frequent all-caps tweets to the contrary, collusion is still very much an open question. For more definitive answers, however, we have to await special counsel Robert Mueller’s findings—and there is no guarantee we will learn, in detail, everything that he finds out.

The Washington Post reported this week that Mueller intends to produce a series of reports about the various issues he is probing, with the first likely to be on the obstruction of justice question.

The Post also reported that Mueller considers Trump a “subject” of the investigation but not a “target.” It is unclear whether that distinction denotes an actual difference.

In Justice Department argot, a “subject” is someone who is under investigation and a “target” is someone against whom prosecutors believe they have enough evidence to file criminal charges. But Mueller may be following the internal Justice Department opinion, last updated in 2000, that a sitting president cannot be charged with a crime and can only be judged by Congress in impeachment proceedings. If this is indeed Mueller’s view, then Trump could never be formally considered a “target,” even with a smoking gun in each little hand.

As we have seen, Mueller does not hesitate to file charges against those he believes guilty of crimes, such as Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn, Rick Gates and a growing list of defendants. But let’s assume that as far as Trump is concerned, he confines himself to reports detailing the president’s actions. And let’s assume the first report is indeed on possible obstruction.

Mueller is required to send that report confidentially to Attorney General Jeff Sessions. But since Sessions has recused himself from the investigation—his unreported Russia contacts could make him, I suppose, a potential “subject”—the report will go to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.

Rosenstein is then required to provide an “explanation” of Mueller’s findings to the chairmen and ranking members of the House Judiciary Committee and the Senate Judiciary Committee. Rosenstein apparently can put as much or as little detail into his submission to the committees as he wants. But given the stakes, his clear duty is to pass along absolutely everything Mueller reports about the president’s role. The good, the bad, the ugly—all of it.

At that point, Rosenstein’s report about Mueller’s report should be released in full. But there is no guarantee that it will be.

With a few notable exceptions, Republicans in Congress have shied away from the Mueller investigation as if it were the political equivalent of a root canal. I understand the danger of being seen as hostile to a president who remains popular with the GOP base. I also understand that many Trump supporters, including his rah-rah squad on Fox News, may genuinely see the whole Mueller investigation as an attempt by progressives, Hillary Clinton and some shadowy entity called the “deep state” to steal the presidency from a populist outsider who won it fair and square.

That’s not what it is, though. As Mueller has already demonstrated in convincing detail, Russians did meddle in the 2016 election, at first as general mischief and later to boost Trump’s chance of winning. Trump campaign officials and advisers had numerous contacts with Kremlin-connected Russians that they failed to disclose or tried to obscure. Trump told NBC’s Lester Holt in a television interview that he fired FBI director James Comey because of the Russia investigation, of which Comey was then in charge.

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It is hardly a secret that I see Trump as unfit to be president and his administration as a dangerous shambles. I have argued, perhaps to the point of tedium, that it is desperately important for voters to elect a Congress in November that will exercise the Constitution’s checks and balances on an erratic, out-of-control executive. That means electing Democratic majorities whose committee chairmen will properly use their powers of oversight and investigation—and also the power of the purse.

Now we have yet another reason to vote in November: A Democratic Congress is the only ironclad guarantee that we will fully learn whether Americans helped Russians subvert our democracy and whether the president tried to cover it up.

Why I’m Giving Up on Understanding My Racist White Relative

A perfectly nice 70-year-plus elderly white man in a rural part of New England posts an alt-right-themed digital meme to his Facebook page, sporting the words: “I’m proud to be white. I bet no one passes this on because they are scared of be called a racist.” This grammatically incorrect sentence is superimposed on a Confederate flag and is re-posted several times on this nice man’s feed. Elsewhere on his Facebook page is an image of President Obama with the words: “Cuts Veterans Assistance by $3 billion, Allocates $5 billion for Syrian Refugees,” and an image of a boy saluting the U.S. flag, with the caption: “Facebook had the NERVE to remove the beloved photo because non-Americans find it ‘hateful.’ ”

Both assertions made in the graphics have been debunked as false by Snopes.com here and here.

This man constantly posts similar inflammatory and easily refuted hate-filled assertions common to alt-right and ultra-conservative America aimed at immigrants, women and people of color, to his Facebook page, interspersed with cute videos and photos of animals and kids doing funny things. I obsessively check his Facebook page because he is related to me through marriage, and because for all the years I have known him he has been a loving husband, father and grandfather. He is a small-business owner with working-class roots and a nice house. Gagging at the racism and sexism he has seen fit to embrace on social media and trying constantly to reconcile that with the person I know has become a favorite pastime.

I suspect many Americans know others within their circle of family and friends who fit the profile of my relative: perfectly nice Americans who love their families, hug their grandchildren, send their kids checks for their birthdays and even have loving relationships with nonwhite family members like me, while propagating hatred toward those perceived as “others” in their online lives.

In private conversations with many friends who share my values, I’ve learned it is common to have such family members. Those of us who expose the virulence and violence of the alt-right publicly, struggle privately with the prevalence of such ideology in our own families. These Americans we know and may love voted for Donald Trump in 2016. They may or may not have admitted this at the dinner table. These are the Americans whose burning resentments Trump brashly embodies and boldly expresses—with little regard for the consequences for the rest of us.

There is a paranoia infecting the conservative mind-set that is particularly susceptible to false assertions. The Russian-originating social media accounts aimed at wreaking havoc in the November 2016 elections were treated with much more credibility by those on the right than those on the left. Researchers studying the phenomenon found that: “Although an ideologically broad swath of Twitter users was exposed to Russian Trolls in the period leading up to the 2016 U.S. Presidential election, it was mainly conservatives who helped amplify their message.” In fact, “Conservatives retweeted Russian trolls about 31 times more often than liberals and produced 36x more tweets,” according to the study.

Such false and polarizing posts on social media, together with overtly partisan Fox News anchors on cable television, now have their political views amplified even more by hundreds of local television stations owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group. Trump’s son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner revealed in 2016 that Sinclair had “struck a deal,” with the presidential campaign to “broadcast their Trump interviews across the country without commentary.” A recent viral mash-up of local news anchors parroting a centrally written script that ironically warned of the dangers of fake news shows that Sinclair has continued to amplify the Trump agenda in numerous ways. In addition to centrally written partisan scripts, the network forces its local stations to air unabashedly pro-Trump commentaries by a former Trump aide named Boris Epshteyn. Trump has rewarded the network by praising it on Twitter in a move seen as essentially green-lighting the company’s impending acquisition of Tribune Media.

There exists a perverse relationship between the White House, the aforementioned constellation of conservative media, and Americans like my relative. All three forces work in symbiosis to affirm each other’s power, fuel a mutual paranoia and assuage fragile egos. What is lost in this unholy triangle is any semblance of reality. Trump, who is one of the biggest purveyors of lies today, has perfected the art of deflecting attention from his own deceit by repeatedly harping on about fake news. It is no coincidence that the script Sinclair mandated its local anchors to read on the air was focused on “fake news,” and included the innocent-sounding sentence: “We’re concerned about the troubling trend of irresponsible, one-sided news stories plaguing our country.”

This perfectly echoes Trump’s own sentiments dismissing mainstream media as fake news even as he constantly disseminates fake news. Indeed, Trump’s goal appears to be to dilute the idea of “fake news” so much that it ultimately becomes meaningless and the distinction between reality and fiction becomes ever more blurred—eventually reduced to an exercise in arbitrariness, as if objective truth were simply a concoction of one’s partisan position. There is an old word for this seemingly new phenomenon: propaganda. When cast within such a frame it becomes easier to accept that we need not make sense of why our family members consume and proliferate nonsense.

I have spent months trying to understand why my relative responds to the wildly preposterous claims he encounters and why he re-posts them. In person he does not appear to espouse such values. But online he freely insults and degrades those who look like me—never in his own words, only through the pre-digested vitriol he encounters online. I suspect that if I were to confront him with the fact that most of his Facebook posts are verifiably false he might become defensive or simply deny everything (much as Roseanne Barr, a self-described Trump voter, displayed in her stunning ignorance and vociferous denials in a recent interview about her popular show’s reboot).

There have been many attempts to explain the economic, racial and psychological motivations of Trump voters, and I have read perhaps all of them hoping that I will be able to relate to, or at least understand the anger my relative feels and why he finds it acceptable to perpetuate outrageous claims. But maybe there is no point in understanding him or the Trump voters who continue to back a dangerous demagogue. In attempting to understand or reconcile with them we risk normalizing that which is utterly not normal.

We need to cast as utterly “abnormal” the hateful rhetoric that Trump and his supporters harbor and express. Racist claims perpetuated in digital memes and fake news stories, anti-immigrant rhetoric that dehumanizes real people and other related pieces of right-wing propaganda cannot remain acceptable. They embody on a very personal level a danger to me, and to the vast numbers of people of color and immigrants like me. We may be related to the paranoid foot soldiers of hate, but we are on opposite sides of an existential crisis, and my right to exist in safety is not a compromise I am willing to make. None of us should be willing to make such a compromise.

Nuclear Power Firms Woo Middle East

Nuclear power firms are scrambling to sell reactors to countries in one of the most troubled parts of the world, the Middle East. Many lack domestic customers and see this new market as a potential lifesaver.

A report last year by the US-based Center for Climate & Security included the Middle East in a list of what it called “potential crisis regions where combining security, climate, and nuclear risks must be addressed urgently.”

The biggest prize is the oil-rich kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which has announced plans to build 16 nuclear plants over the next 25 years at a cost of US$80 billion, part of an effort to diversify away from fossil fuels. South Korea, China, France, Russia, Japan and the United States are all bidding to build them.

In a region where renewables are half the price of nuclear power – because the sun shines for longer and with greater intensity than almost anywhere else in the world – building new nuclear plants may seem strange.

Saudi Arabia, which is also investing heavily in solar power, points to rapidly rising domestic demand for electricity and says renewables will not provide enough for its needs.

Other countries in the region that are already building or have signed contracts to build new reactors are Iran, United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Egypt and Turkey.

All say the decision to go for nuclear power is entirely a consequence of the local need for more electricity, although perhaps the Saudi rulers also have an eye on their power rival Iran, which already has an operating nuclear power station and is building more.

Mohammad bin Salman, the Saudi crown prince who effectively runs Saudi Arabia for his father King Salman, was asked about this on the US TV network CBS in March. He replied: “Saudi Arabia doesn’t want to own a nuclear bomb. But without a doubt, if Iran develops a nuclear bomb, we will follow suit as soon as possible.”

Rival contenders

Despite this, the Trump administration remains keen to sell its Westinghouse-designed nuclear power stations to the Saudis. Russia, China, Japan and South Korea also want to sell their own designs.

As well as the need to keep their national nuclear companies ticking over and grabbing lucrative exports, all these countries would welcome the political influence that providing such important infrastructure would give them in the Middle East.

Well ahead of Saudi Arabia in developing nuclear power is the neighbouring United Arab Emirates. Its first reactor was due to open this year and is almost complete, though its start-up date has been pushed back to 2019.

The UAE’s $24.4bn Barakah power plant is the world’s largest currently under construction. It will contain four reactors, is being built by the Korea Electric Power Corporation (KEPCO) and appears to be going well.

Too few operators

The postponement seems not to have been caused by construction delays but by lack of trained crew to operate the first of the four reactors. When it is up and running, the UAE will become the first country to start operating a nuclear plant in more than 20 years.

Again, the country has plenty of oil reserves and renewable resources, but wants nuclear power to provide a guaranteed electricity supply instead of having to rely on imported gas.

Jordan, which has no fossil fuel resource, and Egypt, with the region’s largest population, are also going nuclear. In both cases they have signed deals with the Russian state-owned giant Rosatom. Egypt has signed a deal for four nuclear plants costing $30bn, and Jordan for an energy package worth $12bn, but which also includes some American involvement, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

Avoiding imports

Turkey, again a populous nation that has to import most of its energy in the form of fossil fuels, is building a nuclear power station at Akkuyu on its Mediterranean coast in partnership with Rosatom. The first reactor was expected to be operating by now, but the opening date has been put back to 2020. It has other plants planned on its northern Black Sea coast.

This sudden enthusiasm for nuclear power in such a volatile region has prompted a debate about some governments’ motives. Israel is the only country in the Middle East that has long had the means to make nuclear weapons with its Negev Nuclear Research centre in the desert near Dimona.

It is already alarmed by Iran’s nuclear programme. A number of other potentially hostile states may also soon have the means to produce highly enriched uranium or plutonium.

If they do, they will face an already fully armed Israel. According to an estimate by the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Israel, which began operating a plutonium-production reactor in 1963, possesses enough material for between 100 and 170 atomic weapons. Israel has never admitted this.

A Small Town Bans Assault Weapons

The village board of Chicago suburb Deerfield, Ill., voted unanimously Monday to ban assault rifles and high-capacity magazines—and it’s planning to heavily fine residents who don’t comply.

Deerfield outlawed weapons with recognizable names like the AK-47 and the AR-15, but over a dozen other weapons are listed in the ordinance as well. The ordinance enumerates several reasons for the ban, including the use of assault weapons in an “alarming number of notorious mass shooting incidents at public schools, public venues, places of worship and place of public accommodation.” It references the Parkland, Fla., shooting specifically.

The authors of the legislation claim the law “may increase the public’s sense of safety … not withstanding potential objections regarding the availability of alternative weaponry or the enforceability of such a ban.”

Fines for noncompliance can range from $250 to a hefty $1,000 a day and will continue until all residents follow the new ordinance. It will go into effect on June 13.

I’m proud of communities like my home Deerfield that are stepping forward to say enough is enough. I don’t believe military-style assault weapons belong on our streets and have co-sponsored a bill that would ban the sale and manufacture of these weapons. https://t.co/RpBPN30A1E

— Rep. Brad Schneider (@RepSchneider) April 4, 2018

The Chicago Tribune reports that “the trustees had virtually no debate Monday night” before they passed the ban. But many among the 70 residents who showed up for the meeting were not happy about the action.

Joel Siegel of the neighboring town of Lincolnwood encouraged civil disobedience as a way to stay safe. “There’s an ancient and honored American tradition called disobeying an unjust law,” Siegel said. “I have urged [people] to listen to their conscience and if so moved do not obey this law.”

Richard Pearson, executive director of the Illinois State Rifle Association (ISRA), told CNN, “They are blatantly violating state law and they are violating the Second Amendment.” He added that the ISRA has been receiving calls from people upset about the ban and believes that a coming legal challenge by the organization will succeed.

Chris W. Cox, executive director of the National Rifle Association’s lobbying arm, said in a written statement: “Every law-abiding villager of Deerfield has the right to protect themselves, their homes, and their loved ones with the firearm that best suits their needs.”

Another neighboring town, Highland Park, passed a similar ordinance several years ago. The town faced opposition in court on the grounds that its gun restrictions were unconstitutional. However, in December 2015 the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the challenge, which effectively handed the victory to Highland Park.

Deerfield Mayor Harriet Rosenthal decided to take up the ban after the Feb. 14 school shooting in Parkland. “Enough is enough,” Rosenthal said. “Those students are so articulate—just like our students. There is no place here for assault weapons.”

In a press release from Deerfield’s management office, Rosenthal is quoted as saying: “We hope that our local decision helps spur state and national leaders to take steps to make our communities safer.”

New Teacher Activism Signals Revolt Against Conservative Ideology

To “reading, writing and arithmetic,” we can now add “solidarity.”

The new teacher activism—born in West Virginia and spreading to Oklahoma, Kentucky and Arizona—is not a flash in the pan. And it’s about more than the demand for higher wages and benefits. It is a revolt against decades of policies that gutted public institutions.

More immediately, it is a response to the decimation of state spending on education since the 2008 recession. The economy has recovered, but state support for education has not. In an excellent report last November on K-12 expenditures, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities showed that in 29 states, “total state funding per student was lower in the 2015 school year than in the 2008 school year” in real terms.

In Arizona, spending per student was down an astonishing 36.6 percent; in Oklahoma, it had dropped 15.6 percent; in Kentucky, 5.9 percent. Among the states, Concordia University-Portland reported, Arizona and Oklahoma ranked, respectively, 48th and 47th in 2015 per-pupil outlays.

As a marker of our country’s political direction, the teacher strikes and demonstrations are part of a larger upheaval against conservative assumptions that have long been embedded in the country’s thinking, in some cases going back to the 1970s. They should be seen in tandem with the student-led revolt against National Rifle Association orthodoxy on gun control and the mobilization against President Trump.

Progressives and moderates have been winning elections in unlikely places. Democrat Conor Lamb’s victory in a very red Pennsylvania district last month is a prime example of a trend visible all over the nation. In eight special elections in Oklahoma since Trump took office, according to an analysis last month by FiveThirtyEight, the swing to Democrats was 32.1 percentage points. It ranked behind only Kentucky, which held just two special elections in that period.

And progressives have been clawing back lost ground in some of their former strongholds. On Tuesday, a liberal backed by Democrats was elected to Wisconsin’s formally nonpartisan state Supreme Court. Rebecca Dallet’s triumph marked the first time the party had won an open seat on the top court since 1995.

The interaction of broad opposition to Trump, growing engagement on the Democratic side of politics, and specific revolts against conservative ideas suggests that we may be at the beginning of an uprising that transcends the moment. Corey Robin, a Brooklyn College political scientist and the author of “The Reactionary Mind,” argues that what we’re seeing is an attack on the “Prop 13 Order.”

In 1978, California passed the property-tax-slashing Proposition 13, which portended the Reagan Revolution and a general shift to the right. The measure reflected conservative activism and the power of right-wing money. But it was also a sign of genuine popular feeling that property taxes on average homeowners had risen too high, too fast. The anti-tax movement quickly took hold across the country.

Today’s rebellion, Prop 13 in reverse, is also built on genuine disaffection, in this case over the impact of deep budget cutbacks in conservative states, usually to support tax cuts tilted toward corporations and the well-off.

The teachers are bringing this home by refusing to confine their energies to their own pay. They are highlighting the deterioration of the conditions students face—aging textbooks, crumbling buildings, and reductions in actual teaching time. About 20 percent of Oklahoma’s school districts have gone to four-day weeks.

The focus on school funding could also transform our education debate. A legitimate desire for education reform and widespread interest in charter schools as one vehicle for change have often elided into unrestrained teacher- and union-bashing. Parts of the right have used both as cover for undermining the very idea of public education.

The red state insurrections are a reminder of something that can be lost in our back-and-forth about school reform: Money matters. You can’t run a decent school system on the cheap. If you could, successful suburban school districts wouldn’t invest so much, and teacher pay is part of this. Genuine reformers aren’t wrong to demand improvements in school quality. But they need to separate themselves unequivocally from those who simply want to trash public services.

It’s too early to be certain that 2018 is 1978 turned on its head. But it would be short-sighted to overlook the signs that conservative ideology is on the defensive and that most voters are exhausted by divisive and short-sighted presidential leadership. We have a lot of problems to solve, and the old right-wing bromides are only making them worse.

‘Crazy’ Has Become the New Normal in Washington

John Bolton’s March 22 appointment-by-tweet as President Donald Trump’s national security adviser has given “March Madness” a new and ominous meaning. There is less than a week left to batten down the hatches before Bolton makes U.S. foreign policy worse that it already is.

During a recent interview with The Intercept’s Jeremy Scahill (minutes 35 to 51), I mentioned that Bolton fits seamlessly into a group of take-no-prisoners zealots once widely known in Washington circles as “the crazies,” and now more commonly referred to as “neocons.”

Beginning in the 1970s, “the crazies” sobriquet was applied to Cold Warriors hell bent on bashing Russians, Chinese, Arabs—anyone who challenged U.S. “exceptionalism” (read hegemony). More to the point, I told Scahill that President (and former CIA Director) George H. W. Bush was among those using the term freely, since it seemed so apt. I have been challenged to prove it.

I don’t make stuff up. And with the appointment of the certifiable Bolton, the “the crazies” have become far more than an historical footnote. Rather, the crucible that Bush-41 and other reasonably moderate policymakers endured at their hands give the experience major relevance today. Thus, I am persuaded it would be best not to ask people simply to take my word for it when I refer to “the crazies,” their significance, and the differing attitudes the two Bushes had toward them.

George H. W. Bush and I had a longstanding professional and, later, cordial relationship. For many years after he stopped being president, we stayed in touch—mostly by letter. This is the first time I have chosen to share any of our personal correspondence. I do so not only because of the ominous importance of Bolton’s appointment, but also because I am virtually certain the elder Bush would want me to.

Scanned below is a note George H. W. Bush sent me eight weeks before his son, egged on by the same “crazies” his father knew well from earlier incarnations, launched an illegal and unnecessary war for regime change in Iraq—unleashing chaos in the Middle East.

Shut Out of the Media

By January 2003, it was clear that Bush-43 was about to launch a war of aggression—the crime defined by the post-WWII Nuremberg Tribunal as “the supreme international crime differing from other war crimes only in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”  (Think torture, for example.) During most of 2002, several of us former intelligence analysts had been comparing notes, giving one another sanity checks, writing op-eds pointing to the flimsiness of the “intelligence” cobbled together to allege a weapons-of-mass-destruction “threat” from Iraq, and warning of the catastrophe that war on Iraq would bring.

Except for an occasional op-ed wedged into the Christian Science Monitor or the Miami Herald, for example, we were ostracized from “mainstream media.” The New York Times and Washington Post were on a feeding frenzy from the government trough, and TV pundits were getting high ratings by beating the drum for war. Small wonder the entire media was allergic to what we were saying, despite our many years of experience in intelligence analysis. Warnings to slow down and think were the last thing wanted by those already profiteering from a war on the near horizon.

The challenge we faced was how to get through to President George W. Bush. It had become crystal clear that the only way to do that would be to do an end run around “the crazies”—the criminally insane advisers that his father knew so well—Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, and Undersecretary of State John Bolton.

Bolton: One of the Crazies

John Bolton was Cheney’s “crazy” at the State Department. Secretary Colin Powell was pretty much window dressing. He could be counted on not to complain loudly—much less quit—even if he strongly suspected he was being had. Powell had gotten to where he was by saluting sharply and doing what superiors told him to do. As secretary of state, Powell was not crazy—just craven. He enjoyed more credibility than the rest of the gang and rather than risk being ostracized like the rest of us, he sacrificed that credibility on the altar of the “supreme international crime.”

In those days Bolton did not hesitate to run circles around—and bully—the secretary of state and many others. This must be considered a harbinger of things to come, starting on Monday, when the bully comes to the china shop in the West Wing. While longevity in office is not the hallmark of the Trump administration, even if Bolton’s tenure turns out to be short-lived, the crucial months immediately ahead will provide Bolton with ample opportunity to wreak the kind of havoc that “the crazies” continue to see as enhancing U.S.—and not incidentally—Israeli influence in the Middle East. Bear in mind, Bolton still says the attack on Iraq was a good idea. And he is out to scuttle the landmark agreement that succeeded in preventing Iran from developing a nuclear weapon any time soon.

Trying to Head Off War

In August 2002, as the Bush-43 administration and U.S. media prepared the country for war on Iraq, the elder Bush’s national security adviser, Gen. Brent Scowcroft, and Secretary of State James Baker each wrote op-eds in an attempt to wean the younger Bush off the “crazies'” milk.  Scowcroft’s Wall Street Journal op-ed of August 15 was as blunt as its title, “Don’t Attack Saddam.” The cautionary thrust of Baker’s piece in the New York Times 10 days later, was more diplomatic but equally clear.

But these interventions, widely thought to have been approved by Bush-41, had a predictable opposite effect on the younger Bush, determined as he was to become the “first war president of the 21st Century” (his words). It is a safe bet also that Cheney and other “crazies” baited him with, “Are you going to let Daddy, who doesn’t respect ANY of us, tell you what to do?”

All attempts to insert a rod into the wheels of the juggernaut heading downhill toward war were looking hopeless, when a new idea occurred. Maybe George H. W. Bush could get through to his son. What’s to lose? On January 11, 2003, I wrote a letter to the elder Bush asking him to speak “privately to your son George about the crazies advising him on Iraq,” adding “I am aghast at the cavalier way in which the [Richard] Perles of the Pentagon are promoting the use of nuclear weapons as an acceptable option against Iraq.”

My letter continued: “That such people have the President’s ear is downright scary. I think he needs to know why you exercised such care to keep such folks at arms length. (And, as you may know, they are exerting unrelenting pressure on CIA analysts to come up with the “right” answers. You know how that goes!)”

In the letter I enclosed a handful of op-eds that I had managed to get past seconnd-tier mainstream media censors. In those writings, I was much more pointed in my criticism of the Bush/Cheney administration’s approach to Iraq than Scowcroft and Baker had been in August 2002.

Initially, I was encouraged at the way the elder Bush began his January 22, 2003, note to me: “It is only ‘meet and right’ that you speak out.” As I read on, however, I asked myself how he could let the wish be father to the thought, so to speak. (Incidentally, “POTUS” in his note is the acronym for “President of the United States”; number 43, of course, was George Jr.)

The elder Bush may not have been fully conscious of it, but he was whistling in the dark, having long since decided to leave to surrogates like Scowcroft and Baker the task of highlighting publicly the criminal folly of attacking Iraq. The father may have tried privately; who knows. It was, in my view, a tragedy that he did not speak out publicly. He would have been very well aware that this was the only thing that would have had a chance of stopping his son from committing what the Nuremberg Tribunal defined as “the supreme international crime.”

It is, of couse, difficult for a father to admit that his son fell under the influence—this time not alcohol or drugs, but rather the at least equally noxious demonic influence of “the crazies,” which Billy Graham himself might have found beyond his power to exorcise. Maybe it is partly because I know the elder Bush personally, but it does strike me that, since we are all human, some degree of empathy might be in order. I simply cannot imagine what it must be like to be a former President with a son, also a former President, undeniably responsible for such widespread killing, injury and abject misery.

Speaking Out–Too Late

It was a dozen years too late, but George H.W. Bush finally did give voice to his doubts about the wisdom of rushing into the Iraq War. In Jon Meacham’s biography, “Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush,” the elder Bush puts most of the blame for Iraq on his son’s “iron-ass” advisers, Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney, while at the same time admitting where the buck stops. With that Watergate-style “modified, limited hangout,” and his (richly deserved) criticism of his two old nemeses, Bush-41 may be able to live more comfortably with himself, hoping to get beyond what I believe must be his lingering regret at not going public when that might have stopped “arrogant” Rumsfeld and “hardline” Cheney from inflicting their madness on the Middle East. No doubt he is painfully aware that he was one of the very few people who might have been able to stop the chaos and carnage, had he spoken out publicly.

Bush-41’s not-to-worry note to me had the opposite effect with those of us CIA alumni alarmed at the gathering storm and the unconscionable role being played by those of our former CIA colleagues still there in manufacturing pre-Iraq-war “intelligence.”  We could see what was going on in real time; we did not have to wait five years for the bipartisan conclusions of a five-year Senate Intelligence Committee investigation. Introducing its findings, Chairman Jay Rockefeller said: “In making the case for war, the Administration repeatedly presented intelligence as fact when in reality it was unsubstantiated, contradicted, or even non-existent.”

Back to January 2003: a few days after I received President Bush’s not-to-worry note of January 22, 2003, a handful of us former senior CIA officials went forward with plans to create Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). We had been giving one another sanity checks before finalizing draft articles about the scarcely believable things we were observing—including unmistakable signs that our profession of intelligence analysis was being prostituted. On the afternoon of February 5, 2003, after Powell misled the U.N. Security Council, we issued our first (of three) VIPS Memoranda for the President before the war. We graded Powell “C” for content, and warned President George W. Bush, in effect, to beware “the crazies,” closing with these words:

“After watching Secretary Powell today, we are convinced that you would be well served if you widened the discussion … beyond the circle of those advisers clearly bent on a war for which we see no compelling reason and from which we believe the unintended consequences are likely to be catastrophic.”

Team B

When Gerald Ford assumed the presidency in August 1974, the White House was a center of intrigue. Serving as Chief of Staff for President Ford, Donald Rumsfeld (1974-75), with help from Dick Cheney (1975-76), engineered Bush’s nomination to become CIA Director. This was widely seen as a cynical move to take Bush out of contention for the Republican ticket in 1976 and possibly beyond, since the post of CIA director was regarded as a dead-end job and, ideally, would keep you out of politics. (Alas, this did not turn out the way Rumsfeld expected—damn those “unknown unknowns.”)

If, at the same time, Rumsfeld and Cheney could brand GHW Bush soft on communism and brighten the future for the Military-Industrial Complex, that would put icing on the cake. Rumsfeld had been making evidence-impoverished speeches at the time, arguing that the Soviets were ignoring the AMB Treaty and other arms control arrangements and were secretly building up to attack the United States. He and the equally relentless Paul Wolfowitz were doing all they could to create a much more alarming picture of the Soviet Union, its intentions, and its views about fighting and winning a nuclear war. Sound familiar?

Bush arrived at CIA after U.S.-Soviet detente had begun to flourish. The cornerstone Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty was almost four years old and had introduced the somewhat mad but stabilizing reality of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD). Crazies and neocons alike lived in desperate fear of losing their favorite enemy, the USSR. Sound familiar?

Bush was CIA Director for the year January 1976 to January 1977, during which I worked directly for him. At the time, I was Acting National Intelligence Officer for Western Europe where post-WWII certainties were unravelling and it was my job to get intelligence community-wide assessments to the White House—often on fast breaking events. We almost wore out what was then the latest technology—the “LDX” (for Long Distance Xerography) machine—sending an unprecedentedly high number of “Alert Memoranda” from CIA Headquarters to the White House.  (“LDX,” of course, is now fax; there was no Internet.)

As ANIO, I also chaired National Intelligence Estimates on Italy and Spain. As far as I could observe from that senior post, Director Bush honored his incoming pledge not to put any political gloss on the judgments of intelligence analysts.

Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, of course, had made no such pledge. They persuaded President Ford to set up a “Team B” analysis, contending that CIA and intelligence community analyses and estimates were naively rosy. Bush’s predecessor as CIA director, William Colby, had turned the proposal down flat, but he had no political ambitions. I suspect Bush, though, saw a Rumsfeld trap to color him soft on the USSR. In any case, against the advice of virtually all intelligence professionals, Bush succumbed to the political pressure and acquiesced in the establishment of a Team B to do alternative analyses. No one was surprised that these painted a much more threatening and inaccurate picture of Soviet strategic intentions.

Paul Warnke, a senior official of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency at the time of Team B, put it this way:

“Whatever might be said for evaluation of strategic capabilities by a group of outside experts, the impracticality of achieving useful results by ‘independent’ analysis of strategic objectives should have been self-evident. Moreover, the futility of the Team B enterprise was assured by the selection of the panel’s members. Rather than including a diversity of views … the Strategic Objectives Panel was composed entirely of individuals who made careers of viewing the Soviet menace with alarm.”

The fact that Team B’s conclusions were widely regarded as inaccurate did not deter Rumsfeld.  He went about promoting them as valid and succeeded in undermining arms control efforts for the next several years. Two days before Jimmy Carter’s inauguration, Rumsfeld fired his parting shot, saying, “No doubt exists about the capabilities of the Soviet armed forces” and that those capabilities “indicate a tendency toward war fighting … rather than the more modish Western models of deterrence through mutual vulnerability.”

GHW Bush in the White House

When George H. W. Bush came into town as vice president, he got President Reagan’s permission to be briefed with “The President’s Daily Brief” and I became a daily briefer from 1981 to 1985. That job was purely substantive. Even so, my colleagues and I have been very careful to regard those conversations as sacrosanct, for obvious reasons. By the time he became president in 1989, he had come to know, all too well, “the crazies” and what they were capable of.  Bush’s main political nemesis, Donald Rumsfeld, could be kept at bay, and other “crazies” kept out of the most senior posts—until Bush the younger put them in positions in which they could do serious damage. John Bolton had been enfant terrible on arms control, persuading Bush-43 to ditch the ABM Treaty. On Monday, he can be expected to arrive at the West Wing with his wrecking ball.

Even Jimmy Carter Speaks Out

Given how difficult Rumsfeld and other hardliners made it for President Carter to work with the Russians on arms control, and the fact that Bolton has been playing that role more recently, Jimmy Carter’s comments on Bolton—while unusually sharp—do not come as a complete surprise. Besides, experience has certainly shown how foolish it can be to dismiss out of hand what former presidents say about their successors’ appointments to key national security positions. This goes in spades in the case of John Bolton.

Just three days after Bolton’s appointment, the normally soft-spoken Jimmy Carter became plain-spoken/outspoken Jimmy Carter, telling USA Today that the selection of Bolton “is a disaster for our country.” When asked what advice he would give Trump on North Korea, for example, Carter said his “first advice” would be to fire Bolton.

In sum, if you asked Bush-41, Carter’s successor as president, how he would describe John Bolton, I am confident he would lump Bolton together with those he called “the crazies” back in the day, referring to headstrong ideologues adept at blowing things up—things like arms agreements negotiated with painstaking care, giving appropriate consideration to the strategic views of adversaries and friends alike. Sadly, “crazy” seems to have become the new normal in Washington, with warmongers and regime-changers like Bolton in charge, people who have not served a day in uniform and have no direct experience of war other than starting them.

Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington.  He served as an Army Infantry/Intelligence officer and then as a CIA analyst for a total of 30 years.  In January 2003, he co-founded Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) and still serves on its Steering Group.