Is that the voice of Tom Cotton, singing the words to the "Battle Hymn
of the Republic", as he urges America onward toward Armageddon?
Checks and Balances have been labeled, "Treason", and the Loyal
Opposition are now Terrorists. Now we can see clearly the "unity"
Donald Trump preaches, as he returns our nation to its former
greatness, and to the "Real News"...
From ghoulies and ghosties / And long-leggedy beasties / And things
that go bump in the night,
Carl Jarvis
On 12/26/17, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Alternet
Published on Alternet (https://www.alternet.org)
Home > Why the Mere Idea That Neocon Senator Tom Cotton Might Run Trump's
CIA Is Terrifying
Why the Mere Idea That Neocon Senator Tom Cotton Might Run Trump's CIA Is
Terrifying
By Max Blumenthal [1] / AlterNet [2]
December 17, 2017, 12:46 PM GMT
In a recent profile of Tom Cotton, the Wall Street Journal's Jason Willick
characterized [3] the 40-year-old junior Republican senator from Arkansas
as
"hawkish and realistic" and described his worldview as "tinged with
idealism." Yet it was unclear what the unabashedly Strangelovian Cotton did
to earn such a charitable description, as he rattled off a series of
opinions that amounted to a call for world war without end.
Cotton told Willick he favored arming Japan and South Korea with nuclear
weapons to counter North Korea, an unprecedented escalation that would
bring
the region a stride closer to armageddon. China, according to Cotton, is a
"rival in every regard" that must be isolated economically and confronted
militarily with aggressive freedom of navigation operations in the South
China Sea. (The senator ignored a recent Rand assessment [4] that found the
US could easily find itself outmatched in a duel with the Chinese
military.)
From eastern Europe to Asia to the Middle East, Cotton urged regime change
operations to replace governments that resisted Pax Americana with
"countries that share our principles." On Iran, Cotton would accept nothing
short of war, imagining a cakewalk that would only require "several days"
of
bombing, as he has previously said [5].
Cotton's remarks are especially disturbing in light of rumors of his
potential nomination as CIA director. Reports surfaced this November of a
coming reshuffle that would move Mike Pompeo, a longtime stooge of the Koch
Brothers and evangelical Muslim basher, from CIA to Secretary of State,
dislodging the insufficiently loyal Rex Tillerson, who Trump has trashed as
"weak on everything." While the Cotton appointment may not happen in the
immediate future, he still appears to be next in line to take the helm at
Langley in the Trump administration. If the move ever takes place, one of
the key hubs of the national security state would fall into the hands of a
militant neoconservative whose worldview was formed through prolonged
cultivation in a right-wing hothouse.
Cotton would hardly be the first ideologue to take the helm at Langley.
During the 1950s, Allen Dulles used the CIA as a vehicle to recruit a
collection of Nazi war criminals and mafia henchmen for covert
anti-communist campaigns across Europe, develop the failed mind control
program MK ULTRA and plot assassinations and international intrigues in
order to topple popular governments. Then there was Bill Casey, who painted
the Soviet Union as the puppet master of international terrorism in order
to
justify secretly funding Central American death squads through the world's
most unsavory third parties.
But Cotton is in a class of his own, not because he is an unbridled zealot,
but because he would be the first fully developed product of the
neoconservative movement to rise to such a sensitive position. If
appointed,
he is almost certain to militarize intelligence in the service of the
Saudi-Israeli axis and drive their destabilizing anti-Iranian agenda to
terrifying extremes.
The path to power, from Harvard to Iraq
Cotton's grooming as a neocon cadre began at Harvard University, where he
won a fellowship [6] from the Claremont Institute, a right-wing think tank
in California that fused the anti-gay kulturkampf with libertarian "starve
the beast" economics. At the Harvard Crimson, Cotton emerged as a prolific
voice of preppy reaction, promoting [7] divorce-proof "covenant marriages"
as a remedy for social decay, upholding political apathy as a virtue [8]
and
activism as a vice, and hailing the valor of professional golfers. "Without
great soldiers, we can receive such instruction, for instance, from Justin
Leonard, whose sixty-foot putt on the seventeenth hole after two-and-a-half
days of poor play sealed the American victory," Cotton wrote in September
1999, likening [9] the Ryder Cup to the Battle of Antietam.
Cotton's senior thesis at Harvard was an ode to the most elitist,
anti-democratic themes contained in the Federalist Papers. "Inflammatory
passion and selfish interest characterizes most men, whereas ambition
characterizes men who pursue and hold national office," Cotton wrote [10]
of
the Founding Fathers. "Such men rise from the people through a process of
self-selection since politics is a dirty business that discourages all but
the most ambitious."
His own ambition vaulted him into the ranks of the U.S. Army as it barreled
across Iraq and sent the country spiraling into a sectarian bloodbath. From
inside armored personnel carriers and behind the barrel of a gun, Cotton
experienced his only substantive engagement with the people of the global
south. It was clearly a formative period that left him brimming with
hostility. "One thing I learned in the Army is that when your opponent is
on
his knees, you drive him to the ground and choke him out," he reflected
[11]
this October. Though he failed to earn any special distinction on the
battlefield, Cotton resorted to opinion writing to earn a bit of fame back
home.
In January 2006, New York Times correspondents Eric Lichtblau and James
Risen revealed [12] the existence of a warrantless CIA program that
examined
the financial records of American citizens suspected of terrorist
involvement. The story appeared almost simultaneously in several other
papers, triggering a public tantrum from Vice President Dick Cheney. From
his garrison in Iraq, Cotton saw a perfect opportunity to rally the
conservative shock troops back in the States. He fired off an indignant
email to the New York Times and cc'ed a right-wing blog, Powerline, for
good
measure. Citing his credentials as a Harvard Law grad and former law clerk,
Cotton demanded Lichtblau, Risen and their editor, Bill Keller, be jailed
[13] under the Espionage Act: "By the time we return home, maybe you will
be
in your rightful place: not at the Pulitzer announcements, but behind
bars,"
he thundered at the journalists.
George W. Bush's approval rating was hovering around 30 percent by this
point, public support for the war had evaporated and Americans were coming
home by the thousands in wheelchairs and coffins. But here was a young
platoon leader-a Harvard Law grad, no less-willing to defend the war on
terror against the treasonous nabobs of negativism. When Powerline
published
[14] the letter, Cotton became an instant folk hero among right-wing Iraq
war dead-enders. Before he had even returned home to his family's cattle
farm in Arkansas, his political career had been made.
The great neocon hope
Cotton first entered Congress in 2012 as a representative from the formerly
Democratic Arkansas district that contained Bill Clinton's hometown.
Iran-bashing became his hobby horse, prompting him to introduce an extreme
"Corruption of Blood" bill [15] that would have forbidden trade with the
relatives of Iranian individuals who were under sanctions, from their
great-grandchildren to their nieces and uncles. Panned as an outrageous
violation of the Constitution, the bill died on the House floor, an
embarrassing rebuke to the self-styled constitutional law expert. (Article
III of the Constitution forbids punishing the relatives of those convicted
of treason, while the Fifth Amendment grants due process even to
non-citizens charged with crimes.)
Cotton struck out the following year on a campaign to unseat incumbent
Democratic Sen. Mark Pryor. On the stump, he demonstrated all the charisma
of a filing cabinet, compensating for his lifeless delivery with incendiary
warnings [16] that a coalition of ISIS terrorists and Mexican drug cartels
would overrun the country unless the southern border was sealed off with a
Maginot-style wall. Cotton won in a landslide, sailing into the Senate on
the strength of surging anti-Obama sentiment and piles of cash from
Likudnik
oligarchs.
As Eli Clifton and Jim Lobe reported [17], the second largest source of
funding for Cotton's senate campaign was Paul Singer, the pro-Israel
venture
capitalist who has bankrolled a who's who of neocon outfits in Washington.
Cotton also benefited from nearly a million dollars in supportive
advertising from the Emergency Committee for Israel, a right-wing group
founded by the face of the neocon movement, Bill Kristol. ECI operated for
a
time out of the offices of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, the
group that drummed up support for regime change in Iraq. This office also
housed [18] Orion Strategies, the lobbying firm that has represented the
governments of Taiwan and the Republic of Georgia, two of the key US-backed
bulwarks against China and Russia.
A relentless drive toward war with Iran
In the Senate, Cotton's obsession with Iran deepened by the day. Within
weeks of his swearing-in, he orchestrated an explosive letter [19] signed
by
46 Republican senatorial colleagues and addressed to the "Leadership of the
Islamic Republic of Iran." Published on Senate letterhead, the missive
aimed
to convince Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to disregard the power of
President Barack Obama to implement the internationally brokered P5+1
nuclear non-proliferation negotiations. The arguably unprecedented stunt
led
to accusations that Cotton had violated the Logan Act, which forbade
diplomatic freebooting.
While the White House fumed, Cotton tweeted a translated version of his
letter to Khamenei, Foreign Minister Javad Zarif and President Hassan
Rouhani. But in his haste, it appeared Cotton had acted without the help of
a native Farsi speaker and simply run the letter through Google translate
[20]: "We hope while the nuclear negotiations are progressing this letter
enriching your knowledge of our constitutional system and mutual clear
understanding elevating," the concluding line read.
A day after the diplomatic fiasco, Cotton scrambled off to a private event
[21] with the National Defense Industrial Association, the lobbying arm of
America's top arms merchants. Cotton's rhetoric on Iran was music to the
ears of the weapons industry. "The policy of the United States should be
regime change in Iran," he declared [22]. "I don't see how anyone can say
America can be safe as long as you have in power a theocratic despotism."
Ironically, the senator hasound a natural ally in Riyadh, the political
vortex of theocratic despotism. When Trump inked an unprecedented $150
billion arms deal with Saudi kingdom, Cotton chimed in with his effusive
approval. "This arms deal sends the right message to both friend and foe
alike," Cotton stated [23], describing it as a step "to maintain peace in
the region."
Cotton has insisted that "there are no mythical moderates" among Iran's
leadership. Even worse, according to him [24], was the fact that the
Iranian
government was "already in control of Tehran." While Cotton melted down
over
the Iranian government's presence in its own capital, most Iranians seem to
have accepted that the United States was comfortably in control of
Washington.
Trump's open embrace of the Saudi-Israeli axis has elevated Cotton's
influence, transforming him into the administration's congressional Iran
whisperer. While advising efforts to whittle away at the Iran nuclear deal,
he has co-sponsored legislation to make it easier to reimpose sanctions
despite Iran's faithful compliance with the agreement. Cotton's presence in
the Senate is so central to the neocon agenda that the Weekly Standard's
Fred Barnes has argued against [25] his promotion to CIA director. But as
Cotton made clear in his senior thesis long ago, he views himself as a man
of destiny driven to the heights of power by limitless ambition. Before
long, the world could become a laboratory for his own "inflammatory
passion."
Max Blumenthal is a senior editor of the Grayzone Project at AlterNet, and
the award-winning author of Goliath [26], Republican Gomorrah [27], and The
51 Day War [28]. He is the co-host of the podcast, Moderate Rebels [29].
Follow him on Twitter at @MaxBlumenthal [30].
Share on Facebook Share
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Report typos and corrections to 'corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx'. [31]
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Source URL:
https://www.alternet.org/grayzone-project/why-even-idea-neocon-senator-tom-c
otton-might-run-trimps-cia-scary
Links:
[1] https://www.alternet.org/authors/max-blumenthal
[2] http://alternet.org
[3]
https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-foreign-policy-for-jacksonian-america-1512774
761
[4]
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/09/us-could-potentially-lose-next-war-to-russia
-or-china-warns-rand.html
[5]
http://www.cnn.com/2015/04/08/politics/tom-cotton-bombing-iran-several-days/
index.html
[6]
http://www.claremont.org/page/fellowships/publius-fellowship/publius-fellows
hip-alumni/
[7]
http://www.thecrimson.com/article/1997/10/3/promises-and-covenants-pmen-are-
simple/
[8]
http://www.thecrimson.com/article/1998/2/18/one-cheer-for-apathy-pwalter-rat
henau/
[9]
http://www.thecrimson.com/article/1999/9/27/editorial-notebook-all-glory-to-
the/
[10]
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/09/the-making-of-a-conserv
ative-superstar/380307/
[11]
https://www.cfr.org/event/conversation-iran-nuclear-deal-senator-tom-cotton
[12] http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/23/washington/23intel.html
[13]
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/11/tom-cotton-arkansas-new-york-tim
es/#
[14]
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/10/a-fateful-letter-to-the-editor
-of-the-times.php
[15]
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/22/tom-cotton-corruption-of-blood_n_3
322251.html
[16]
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2014/10/07/tom-cotton-terr
orists-collaborating-with-mexican-drug-cartels-to-infiltrate-arkansas/?utm_t
erm=.faa8e4abb78c
[17]
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2017/10/16/trump-ignores-advisers-iran-de
al-follows-money
[18]
https://thinkprogress.org/washington-post-conservative-blogger-aligned-with-
the-pro-israel-far-right-b70db28bccf9/
[19]
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/03/09/world/middleeast/document-the
-letter-senate-republicans-addressed-to-the-leaders-of-iran.html
[20]
https://foreignpolicy.com/2015/03/30/sen-tom-cottons-farsi-version-of-his-ex
plosive-letter-to-iranian-leaders-reads-like-a-middle-schooler-wrote-it/
[21]
https://theintercept.com/2015/03/09/upon-launching-effort-scuttle-iran-deal-
senator-tom-cotton-meets-defense-contractors/
[22]
https://www.politico.com/story/2017/06/25/trump-iran-foreign-policy-regime-c
hange-239930
[23] https://www.cotton.senate.gov/?p=press_release&id=677
[24]
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/tom-cotton-us-senator-appar
ently-does-not-know-the-capital-of-iran-10111640.html
[25]
http://www.weeklystandard.com/dont-do-it-why-moving-tom-cotton-to-the-cia-is
-a-bad-idea/article/2010794
[26]
http://www.amazon.com/Goliath-Life-Loathing-Greater-Israel/dp/1568586345
[27] http://republicangomorrah.com/
[28] https://www.amazon.com/51-Day-War-Ruin-Resistance/dp/156858511X
[29] http://moderaterebelsradio.com/
[30] http://twitter.com/maxblumenthal
[31] mailto:corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=Typo on Why the Mere Idea
That
Neocon Senator Tom Cotton Might Run Trump's CIA Is
Terrifying&body=URL:http://www.alternet.org/grayzone-project/why-even-idea-n
eocon-senator-tom-cotton-might-run-trimps-cia-scary
[32] https://www.alternet.org/
[33] https://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
