Tomgram: Rebecca Gordon, Making Sense of Trump and his National Security State Critics | TomDispatch

Rebecca Gordon, Making Sense of Trump and his National Security State Critics

Imagine that across the planet, back in the early months of 2003, millions of people marchedin the streets of global cities and small towns, protesting, toting handmade signs, making their voices heard in every way they could to indicate that the prospective Bush administration invasion of Iraq would be an immoral disaster (and no matter what he saysnow, Donald Trump was not among them).  And imagine that they were right in ways that perhaps even they couldn’t have dreamed of.  And what of the few like the late Jonathan Schell, who, even earlier, spoke out against the invasion of Afghanistan?  Yes, we’re talking about a world of right and yet here’s the curious thing: ever since then, when the media focuses on our failed wars, still ongoing and spreading so many years later, or asks for comments on what went wrong, they regularly turn to those who were involved in launching them, sustaining them, or cheering them on.  This has been a commonplace of the last 13 years.  The very people who couldn’t have been more off the mark remain the official “experts,” the go-to guys, on the subject.  Those who got it right at the time have essentially been disappeared.  The uniquely vast antiwar movement that preceded the invasion of Iraq has essentially been obliterated from history.

It’s not that I haven’t offered this complaint before (more than once over the years), and yet the story always seems to remain the same.  The latest example: 50 Republican national security figures have come out staunchly against Donald Trump and that has been a headline story -- all the Mr. Rights finally take out after Mr. Wrong -- even though many of them bear a responsibility for the very world of war and failure that helped produce the moment of The Donald.  In frustration, I asked TomDispatch regular Rebecca Gordon who knows a thing or two about the criminal wars of these last years (and has written American Nuremberg: The U.S. Officials Who Should Stand Trial for Post-9/11 War Crimes) to make some sense of this latest round of expertise and Election 2016. Tom

What Does It Mean When War Hawks Say, “Never Trump”?
The Enemies of My Enemy May Be War Criminals
By Rebecca Gordon

It’s not every day that Republicans publish an open letter announcing that their presidential candidate is unfit for office. But lately this sort of thing has been happening more and more frequently. The most recent example: we justheard from 50 representatives of the national security apparatus, men -- and a few women -- who served under Republican presidents from Ronald Reagan to George W. Bush. All of them are very worried about Donald Trump.

They think we should be alerted to the fact that the Republican standard-bearer “lacks the character, values, and experience to be president.”

That’s true of course, but it’s also pretty rich, coming from this bunch. The letter’s signers include, among others, the man who was Condoleezza Rice’slegal advisor when she ran the National Security Council (John Bellinger III); one of George W. Bush’s CIA directors who also ran the National Security Agency (Michael Hayden); a Bush administration ambassador to the United Nations and Iraq (John Negroponte); an architect of the neoconservative policy in the Middle East adopted by the Bush administration that led to the invasion of Iraq, who has since served as president of the World Bank (Robert Zoellick). In short, given the history of the “global war on terror,” this is your basic list of potential American war criminals.

Cont.......