Bush-Era Neocons Activated for Kamala Harris

Ryan DeLarme, October 22nd, 2024

The Kamala Harris campaign recently began to run a new ad featuring none other than John Bolton, one of the most unhinged, bloodthirsty neocons in Washington. This decision comes fresh on the heels of the campaign’s glowing endorsements from both Dick and Liz Cheney.

I try to approach political topics from a nonpartisan perspective. I think that there should be more of a distinction between journalism and punditry. Most “journalists” today have been radicalized in one direction or the other by the dramatic political polarization that’s been occurring in the West since Brexit in the UK and the rise of Donald Trump in the U.S.

The major impetus for creating this publication was the unlikely shifting of anti-war and pro-free speech populist sentiment from the left to the right. This observation is not meant to be an endorsement of any candidate or political party—I’m mostly referring to portions of the voter base and a few select representatives of principle—the majority of the Republican establishment only pay lip service to these sentiments out of necessity.

That being said, there are still significant swaths of the public who’ve been successfully propagandized and remain in favor of war. There’s a very sizable sect on the right that wants to see billions of dollars going to Israel instead of being used to enrich the lives of those who are suffering here in America; similarly, much of the left is in favor of sending billions to a proxy war in Ukraine.

War is a bipartisan effort, not because of any moral stance on the part of career politicians in Washington, but because the donor class who funds their campaigns demands it.

As Gaza and Ukraine are laid to waste, private hedge and investment funds like Blackrock and JP Morgan Chase are already circling like vultures, salivating over the reconstruction contracts. The military-industrial complex (MIC) and its representatives also require these wars to drag on endlessly at the expense of the American taxpayer.

The process goes something like this: an already suffering public is milked by the federal government for tax dollars, foreign policy elites and various think tanks plot new wars (the more drawn out and destructive the conflict, the better), corporate media and elements within alternative media begin to propagandize their target audiences to drum up public support for these wars, the endless war economy is stimulated, the big investment funds like Blackrock (who not only are the largest shareholders in the big media companies but also many of the corporations that comprise the MIC) swoop in and scoop up the rebuilding contracts in whatever country has been laid to waste. It’s arguably the biggest racket on planet Earth and the primary cause of anti-American sentiment abroad.

The abandonment of economic populism by the Democrat Party happened years ago, so it only makes sense that it would reemerge elsewhere. Interestingly, at around the same time, the War Hawks, who loathed the “bleeding heart Liberals,” began to flirt with the Democrat party and its operatives.

It was during the Carter Era, as the Cold War was beginning to peter out, that Zbigniew Brzezinski plotted the Soviet-Afghan Proxy War that would build up the Taliban, a future enemy to keep the War Machine running. The Clinton Administration saw the planning and groundwork being laid for the various conflicts in Iraq by the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), a neoconservative think tank founded by Robert Kagan and Bill Kristol, which included such esteemed deep politicians as Dick Cheney, John Bolton, Jeb Bush, David Kramer (of Russiagate fame), Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz, who is considered the architect of the Iraq Invasion.

Remember these names.

Twenty years ago these individuals and what they represent were anathema to the Liberal mind, they were seen as the most detestable warmongers in the public view. Today, Kamala Harris’ campaign proudly touts endorsements from most of them.

A letter signed by "more than 100 former Republican national security officials" was the first attempt by this neocon coalition to get Kamala to the White House. It read as follows:

We believe that the President of the United States must be a principled, serious, and steady leader who can advance and defend American security and values, strengthen our alliances, and protect our democracy. We expect to disagree with Kamala Harris on many domestic and foreign policy issues, but we believe that she possesses the essential qualities to serve as President and Donald Trump does not. We therefore support her election to be President. [source]

In case you require a translator, what they are essentially saying is that Kamala Harris has played ball for establishment powers in the past and will almost certainly bow before the awesome might of the Security State and the military-industrial complex if it gets her elected.

They claim that Donald Trump’s “susceptibility to flattery and manipulation by Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, unusual affinity for other authoritarian leaders, contempt for the norms of decent, ethical and lawful behavior, and chaotic national security decision-making” render him a danger to U.S. national security interests. Naturally, detractors point out that many of these individuals are the same Washington swamp gremlins that led our nation into unending foreign conflicts and made a tremendous amount of money off of them for over 20 years.

The letter’s signatories are a who’s who of the most revolting supporters of Bush-era neoconservatism. Despite this, Liberal outlets like Mother Jones and the New Republic promptly praised the letter as a "victory" for the Harris campaign, as if the horrors of the endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan had been completely scrubbed from history. Only The Nation was principled enough to express its disapproval of their fellow liberals and progressives for aligning themselves with individuals such as Bush Jr.’s Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Vice President Dick Cheney.

Others spoke out against this betrayal. Howard University Law School professor Ziyad Motola wrote in Al Jazeera:

“What makes Cheney’s endorsement, and the Democratic Party’s embrace of it, particularly galling is the way in which they gloss over these past sins in order to paint him as a guardian of American values…”

Other signatories include individuals with ties to the RAND Corporation—an influential US think-tank with extremely close links to the US military and the corporate sector—as well as former CIA and NSA director Michael Hayden, who is believed to be one of the “chief architects of the Bush/Cheney administration’s program of warrantless surveillance of U.S. citizens and denier of CIA torture.”

A second letter would emerge, containing signatures of such high-profile deep establishment spooks and loyalists as John Brennan, Victoria Nuland, Michael McFaul, Leon Panetta, and Hillary Rodham Clinton—a list of individuals whose opinions should have ceased to hold weight years ago.

In the final weeks of the election, the Harris/Walz Campaign released an ad that relied on statements made by a litany of establishment goons, including one of the most unhinged maniacs in all of Washington: John Bolton.

Harris-Walz campaign ad

These quotes are coming from some of the most fanatical warmongers this country has ever known. Both Pence and Bolton have basically supported every U.S.-sponsored war in the last 2 decades, and have both proposed and advocated for additional wars. Bolton was upset when Trump wouldn't take more aggressive action against Iran and wouldn't pursue the coup that he wanted to engineer in Venezuela. Trump resisted all of the aggression that Bolton has historically advocated for, and in the end, he sacked Bolton. Now, Kamala Harris is presenting Bolton as some kind of wizened statesman, a foreign policy guru whose opinions should be heeded.

Then you have Mark Esper, who served as Secretary of Defense under Trump from 2019-2020. Though Trump did appoint him, he is a creature straight from the military-industrial swamp. A former Raytheon lobbyist, Esper has held many positions in MIC corporations and the Defense Department. Naturally, he hates Donald Trump, who, regardless of how one might feel about him, was the first U.S. president in many decades to not take the bait and get the country caught up in any new wars.

These people view Trump as an existential threat to their business model, to their livelihoods and relevance. If we have a leader who prefers to avoid wars by cutting deals, then the American people won’t be forced to subsidize the MIC corporations, and individuals like Mark Esper and John Bolton will be rendered obsolete, as they should be.