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2.71 AVERAGE
2.71 AVERAGE
informative
slow-paced
Literally so boring. The book made no new claims or pieces of information that weren’t already on the internet. The book appears to me to be more of an esteem boost for John Bolton and a way to rectify his reputation of working for Trump by talking about how bad he was. Bolton continually sells himself to be the good guy who knew that Trump was wrong but the book ultimately comes off as narcissistic.
Bolton's self-righteous prickness blooms wildly from the very first page. Don't get intimidated by the huge page count (actually don't get intimidated by any of his priggishness), because 50%+ is footnotes and index. The entire book reads as though he expected/s to be hauled into court and he wanted to document every moment of the interactions he was accessory to. At least he can no longer try the Reagan/Bush/Trump ploy of not remembering what he did. Save time and skip the book, unless you really are a glutton for 'not me' stuff. The news outlets have already summarized the key points in the book. Even the few actual adults/professionals Trump has brought into the government are dangerous to the health of the world.
An evil soulless warmonger recounts his time in an administration that is as corrupt as it is incompetent. The book itself has no narrative, no point, just a constant boring stream of events poorly told with a singular agenda: trying to settle scores with this and previous administrations while absolving the author of all of the disasters that he directly contributed to. In a just world, he and all of his fellow enablers of a criminal president would be rotting in jail now.
informative
slow-paced
Pompous arrogant jackass writes book about a fellow pompous arrogant jackass and can't stop kissing his own ass for 500 pages. The amount of completely unnecessary detail for inconsequential things, like routine meetings, contrasted with conveniently forgotten details about Ukraine is just infuriating. This man thinks he is the smartest person on the planet and the only rational human in every situation. Just reading his perspective feels like being talked down to.
Read "A Warning" by Anonymous for a better look inside the Trump administration without all the self-aggrandizing horn tooting.
Please do not line Bolton's pockets by purchasing this book. I checked it out from the library, thank goodness.
Read "A Warning" by Anonymous for a better look inside the Trump administration without all the self-aggrandizing horn tooting.
Please do not line Bolton's pockets by purchasing this book. I checked it out from the library, thank goodness.
That was super boring and uneventful. There were no earth shattering revelations. I'll admit it, I got duped into thinking the amount of protest against this book by its subject (including lawsuits that basically froze my audiobook for months) meant that there was something between the covers worth reading. Big Nope. Although, DNF. Couldn't do it. Do not recommend.
They will never make this into a tv show or movie. All it covers is a series of failures that we’re lucky didnt turn into nuclear war or a trade version of WW3
Look, setting my political opinions aside, this was not a good book and definitely not worth my money. The biggest issue is that It. Is. So. Dry. Honestly the only reason I gave it two stars is because it somehow managed to keep my drawn in for a few days. DNFed it. If you like Trump, this book is only going to upset you. If you dislike Trump, this book is only going to bore you. Spend your money and valuable time elsewhere.
I have mixed feelings about this book, which I'll detail below:
Good things about this book- John Bolton's perspective is very unique and important overall to the narrative of the chaos inside the Trump administration. He's incredibly detailed about every single meeting and every policy plan, which I appreciate. His commentary on Trump's erratic behavior and decision making is also very clear-cut and well-stated, particularly the recurring theme of Trump equating his own personal relationships with leaders to the official relationships and alliances of the countries they represent.
Bad things about this book- Getting used to John Bolton's writing style took a long time (this is the sort of book people buy but never read, just to say they have it), and he comes across as self-important and even condescending at times. He doesn't delve very closely into his own emotions as things happen, just his rigid ideologies. This book was a great exercise in critical thinking skills and identifying prejudices and biases in the author.
Overall, this took me way too long to read. Was it worth it? Debatable. I think I learned something from this book in the end, but it took me forever to do it.
Good things about this book- John Bolton's perspective is very unique and important overall to the narrative of the chaos inside the Trump administration. He's incredibly detailed about every single meeting and every policy plan, which I appreciate. His commentary on Trump's erratic behavior and decision making is also very clear-cut and well-stated, particularly the recurring theme of Trump equating his own personal relationships with leaders to the official relationships and alliances of the countries they represent.
Bad things about this book- Getting used to John Bolton's writing style took a long time (this is the sort of book people buy but never read, just to say they have it), and he comes across as self-important and even condescending at times. He doesn't delve very closely into his own emotions as things happen, just his rigid ideologies. This book was a great exercise in critical thinking skills and identifying prejudices and biases in the author.
Overall, this took me way too long to read. Was it worth it? Debatable. I think I learned something from this book in the end, but it took me forever to do it.
I don't really know where to begin with this work. So I'll just begin.
I wanted to find out how much of the administrations claim of "classified material" was actually released by Bolton. First I need to make so explanations. I was an Electronic Countermeasures (ECM) specialist for 23 years of my Air Force (AF) career. I am familiar with classification guides. My job in the AF is and will always be classified Secret. Hughs Hall at Keesler Air Force Base is building that is really a vault with rooms that are also safes with safes inside these rooms with the classified technical orders inside the safes. This why my technical training. On the job the same. Buildings that are vaults with workspace and safes. I'v read classification guides a few times. Also, "Classified". Classified gets every ones panties in a bunch, but most people don't really know what this word means. Classified, from an ECM's troops position, Secret will cause grave damage to the U.S.. Top Secret usually, but not always, followed by SCI, Specialty Compartmentalization Intelligence, will cause grave and irreparable harm to the U.S..Then there is EEFI's Essential Elements of Friendly information, may cause harm to the U.S. EEFI's are things like return dates for troop rotations. These are things that may or may not our service members killed or injured. For example, back in 1997 I was deployed to Al Jabber Air Base in Saudi Arabia. two day before we due to rotate the Security Forces found on a tip from the Saudi's Security Force two SA - 7 missile and a firing hide at the end of the runway. The target was our rotation 747 and Al-Qaeda would have gotten around 400 of us maintainers and pilots. Why did Al-Qaeda try? They intercepted one or more calls from maintainers, pilots, supply troops that said, " Hey honey I'll be home next Tuesday." No rocket science in the math needed to get the date of our departure. In 1997 our rotation information was "classified" secret. What did DOD do about this information?
No one wanted to Courts Martial troops who had told mom, wife, or kids when they would be home so, that type of information was changed from Secret to EEFI's in 2000. This information was/is usually troop rotations, individual unit strengths, divisions about how the service will do the job that leak out of Thurs three O'Clock meetings etc. Nothing that in a week or two will be useless to our enemies. Is this information worth protecting, Yes. Is it well protected by individual service members, kind of. Is the releases of this information to friends and loved ones worth the Courts Martial, NO. What did Bolton release?
Bolton released 25 + EEFi's and about the same of what I would call the POTUS being a five year old We have one instance of TS and three Secret. Read the book and see if you can find them. That was why I read this work. Now for what I thought.
John Bolton is an arrogant individual who believes in only one idea, Conflict and war are good. He very much reminds me of the German Officer portrayed in Henry Fonda's movie "Battle of the Bulge". Strictly looking to start a fight with the lives of U.S. service members on the line. And there are times when our POTUS is thinking the same also comes out in this work. I'm going to go into some thoughts on Bolton and the GOP's foreign strategy that I disagree with and why his pressing on these issues is dangerous to out right dumb. Lets start with the GOP's and Bolton's Iran strategy.
Bolton wanted Trump to get out of the Iran nuclear deal. He and Trump both said it was a bad deal for the world. That sanctions had to be put in place to get regime change in Iran so that they would stop trying to develop nuclear weapons. Stop right there. Why does the U.S. want regime change in Iran? One Iran owns 26% of the world known oil reserves and the U.S. want's unrestricted access to these oil fields. This was one of the Top two reasons to invade Iraq. Get the oil for Exxon/Mobile and we have seen how that has worked out. Top reason was to get rid of Saddam Hussein. I digress. Bolton even states in this work that he is NOT a fan of "Nation Building", but wants that regime to change. These two positions a diametrically opposed. If U.S. efforts lead to regime change and that regime is not to our liking what do we do then? This is the problem we have with Iran. The U.S. continually makes deals with Iran and then after the U.S. has what we want we break the deal. Under Reagan it was Iran - Contra, for the invasion of Afghanistan Bush 43 cut a deal with Tehran to use Iranian troops with U.S. special Forces to form a pincer movement on Kabul from the West coming out of Iran. (Read:Inside Central Asia: A political and cultural history of Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkey, and Iran) What did Tehran get; added to the Axis of Evil and the liberal government fell shortly after. Replaced with hard liners. The Revolutionary Guard outed Reagan to do the same thing replace a liberal government with a more conservative one. And, two years ago the liberal government was replace by a more hard line government after we left the Nuclear deal. One other note that Bolton fails to make.
Both Bolton and the POTUS have continually said since 2016 the Iran deal was a bad deal. But they never told us why? When they did hint at the why it was "The deal doesn't include missiles." OK but if the deal doesn't include missiles then roll you sleeves up, get in a room, and make a missile deal. This idea never occurred to this administration. An administration that prides itself on the POTUS ability to get a deal done. A point also brought up in this book that although the POTUS prides himself on his deal making ability not very many deals have been done in the arena of foreign affairs by this administration. And, those that have been done have all been minor successes or built on former frameworks that only really needed to be tweaked to catch up from the deals original inception, NAFTA. Bolton points out that the POTUS inability to focus on any given idea for more than a minute is extremely hard. This inability to focus means that he has NO business inside a negotiation with any foreign power, including the Taliban, more later. He does not even have the ability to stick to the best interest of the countries that his advisors have written out for him when talking to foreign officials. Going back to why not make a better treaty on nuclear weapons? Why not start the work on missiles? Why is the only answer the GOP, POTUS, Republican Congressmen and Senators, the press when dealing with Iran be regime change?
Why do Republicans hate Iran and keep doing diplomacy that ends up with a hard line anti-U.S., anti - Israel, pro-Russia and China government? Here I go into speculation: I believe that the GOP is trying to keep Iran from achieving a liberal government because the Revolutionary Guard outed Reagan in Iran - Contra and got McFarland. Poindexter, Weinberger, Casey and Meese 18 month to three year jail terms for various laws that were broken to make Iran - Contra work. Since the fall of the Shah the U.S. has a war like version of Iran, but if you look just a bit deeper you find that "Reading Lolita In Tehran" is not necessarily true. Read "Reading something other than Lolita in Tehran" or either of Greg Mortenson's books, Iran is mentioned in both as removing various death to Mortenson Fatwa's. Why would a country that hates the U.S. as much as the GOP say do that? Or read Remaking Women: Feminism and Modernity in the Middle East, Do Muslim Women Need Saving, or Inside Central Asia: A political and cultural history of Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkey, and Iran, these are just a few of the works that will change your mind or make you think outside of GOP measures about Iran. (Note: for more feel free to look at my read page.) The question really is why is the GOP still hung up on what happened 34 years ago. Time to move on people and start to work with the liberalizing movement inside Iran. Bolton only see's a country that will make nuclear weapons and kill the U.S. or Israel. In Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare by Garth Porter we find out that in 1979 when the Ayatollah Khomeini came to power the first thing he did was issue a Fatwa that read, and I paraphrase, The Islamic Republic of Iran will not build or use any weapons of mass destruction. Now on the face of this OK they will break this Fatwa any time they like. But, they Have Not even during the Iran Iraq war they refrained from using gas or biological weapons against Saddam Hussein. The Iranians never even brought up canisters of chlorine to release when the weather blew east to west. Iran also lost by some estimate six million people to gas attacks alone and they never retaliated, not once. How long before the U.S. goes nuclear after the first whiff of mustard gas? SO who has shown more restraint? have the Iranians interfered with freedom of the seas?
Since the U.S. backed out of the nuclear deal yes on several occasions. But Bolton again makes a critical error in his writing when he says that the U.S. should also back out of the 1992 U.N. Law of the Sea Convention. Mr. Bolton the U.S. never signed the 1992 convention. One of three nations that have not signed, the other two; North Korea, and Iran. SO the U.S. is not bound by the convention and can not withdraw from the convention. And, he was running the NSA. Maybe it was just missed in the editorial process? I understand that many in the GOP are not well read on foreign affairs and that many in the GOP don't know the difference between Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia , Yemen, Oman, or the Stans. But if we want real peace in the Middle East and South West Asia we need people who understand how the Arabs, Persians, Pashtun's, Khazaks etc think not just about today but going forward and we need this U.S. thinking to come in clean with out preconceived ideas about what they need from us and what we want from them. The biggest issue with Iran the GOP has is that they still want Iran to be as it was under the Shah, a docile state that Exxon, BP, Shell, and Mobil can use and rape for it's raw materials. And that is the LAST thing that the Iranians are going to allow.
The next issues I have are with Bolton's assessment of Afghanistan. Since Bolton has lead the Afghanistan issue until his resignation I see him as dead wrong on the issue. Also this administrations handling of Afghanistan has, on a good day, been inept. The first issue Bolton ignores is that this administration started to negotiate with terrorists and he said nothing. This nation since the mid 50's and the first airplane hijackings has had a policy of NO NEGOTIATIONS WITH TERRORISTS. What did the Trump and by definition the GOP do upon entering office? They started negotiations with the Taliban. Why in the name of all that is Holy did Bolton NOT try to stop these negotiations? Bolton correctly points out that the Taliban will not adhere to any withdraw plans that are made on paper. This was most recently shown when the Taliban walked into a maternity Hospital and killed 17 pregnant women and midwifes and wounded 23 including a three minute old baby. These are the people we are negotiating with. Also as pointed out in "The Story Tellers Daughter" , the Taliban on the local level are illiterate in both Pashtun and Arabic. Just ask any Muslim and they will tell you that reading the Qur'an in translation is not near as effective as reading in the original Arabic. But the Taliban Imams can't read either a Pashtun translation or the original Arabic. If the local Imams are illiterate and really make it up as they go along how intelligent are the ruling classes? How much reading can the ruling Taliban Imams do? How much of technical international treaty workings can the U.S. expect them to understand, even if they did choose to obey the treaty? SO why didn't Bolton try to stop the POTUS from allowing these negotiations to continue?
In many parts of this book Bolton complains that the first year of Trump was a situation with Obama hold overs that did not have the best interests of Trump or the Nation first in mind. Then he cam along and saved our Foreign Policy from total disaster at the hands of the incompetents that Trump put in key places also saving the POTUS from grave embarrassment. Bolton starts by complaining about all the "adults" that surrounded the Baby POTUS and ends up painting himself and Pompenno as two of the few adults in the room. That now the room is totally filled with POTUS toadies and he is glad of that as this administration needs to fail so that a "Strong" leader can come forward. His epilogue is fascinating.
The epilogue is a justification of why he did not go before Congress and testify in the impeachment hearings. He accuses the Democrats of malpractice. The accusation of malpractice shows how foolish Bolton is. Impeachment attaches jeopardy to the proceedings. With a Republican Senate President Trump could go into Times Square at Six O'clock on a Friday, grab any women, rape, and kill her, have this on video from a hundred cameras and the Senate would still not impeach him. Since Impeachment attaches jeopardy impeaching on all of the POTUS misdeeds, from election tampering by the Russians to his excessive use of force against protesters in Lafayette Park, to his abuse of power in asking China to help him win another term, detailed in this book, to the rest of this list the impeachment was done perfectly. Nancy Pelosi knew impeachment would fail along party lines in the Senate and with the exception of Mit Rommney, she was right. If the Democrats had attached jeopardy then after this election or in 2024 the Attorney General would not be able to prosecute Trump on the election fraud and Russian interference, on China's interference, and the host of other things that this administration has done.SO from Bolton thinking himself the smartest guy in the room he sure does lack imagination when it come out on how to get the terrible people Trump has appointed and the POTUS himself out of the countries way. And for the Democrats that is a good thing.
If you want a read that will tell you how totally dysfunctional our administration from the Oval Office on down and that will show you why, this book is a must. Just be ready to gag occasionally as Bolton spews is narrow minded thoughts about foreign affairs.
I wanted to find out how much of the administrations claim of "classified material" was actually released by Bolton. First I need to make so explanations. I was an Electronic Countermeasures (ECM) specialist for 23 years of my Air Force (AF) career. I am familiar with classification guides. My job in the AF is and will always be classified Secret. Hughs Hall at Keesler Air Force Base is building that is really a vault with rooms that are also safes with safes inside these rooms with the classified technical orders inside the safes. This why my technical training. On the job the same. Buildings that are vaults with workspace and safes. I'v read classification guides a few times. Also, "Classified". Classified gets every ones panties in a bunch, but most people don't really know what this word means. Classified, from an ECM's troops position, Secret will cause grave damage to the U.S.. Top Secret usually, but not always, followed by SCI, Specialty Compartmentalization Intelligence, will cause grave and irreparable harm to the U.S..Then there is EEFI's Essential Elements of Friendly information, may cause harm to the U.S. EEFI's are things like return dates for troop rotations. These are things that may or may not our service members killed or injured. For example, back in 1997 I was deployed to Al Jabber Air Base in Saudi Arabia. two day before we due to rotate the Security Forces found on a tip from the Saudi's Security Force two SA - 7 missile and a firing hide at the end of the runway. The target was our rotation 747 and Al-Qaeda would have gotten around 400 of us maintainers and pilots. Why did Al-Qaeda try? They intercepted one or more calls from maintainers, pilots, supply troops that said, " Hey honey I'll be home next Tuesday." No rocket science in the math needed to get the date of our departure. In 1997 our rotation information was "classified" secret. What did DOD do about this information?
No one wanted to Courts Martial troops who had told mom, wife, or kids when they would be home so, that type of information was changed from Secret to EEFI's in 2000. This information was/is usually troop rotations, individual unit strengths, divisions about how the service will do the job that leak out of Thurs three O'Clock meetings etc. Nothing that in a week or two will be useless to our enemies. Is this information worth protecting, Yes. Is it well protected by individual service members, kind of. Is the releases of this information to friends and loved ones worth the Courts Martial, NO. What did Bolton release?
Bolton released 25 + EEFi's and about the same of what I would call the POTUS being a five year old We have one instance of TS and three Secret. Read the book and see if you can find them. That was why I read this work. Now for what I thought.
John Bolton is an arrogant individual who believes in only one idea, Conflict and war are good. He very much reminds me of the German Officer portrayed in Henry Fonda's movie "Battle of the Bulge". Strictly looking to start a fight with the lives of U.S. service members on the line. And there are times when our POTUS is thinking the same also comes out in this work. I'm going to go into some thoughts on Bolton and the GOP's foreign strategy that I disagree with and why his pressing on these issues is dangerous to out right dumb. Lets start with the GOP's and Bolton's Iran strategy.
Bolton wanted Trump to get out of the Iran nuclear deal. He and Trump both said it was a bad deal for the world. That sanctions had to be put in place to get regime change in Iran so that they would stop trying to develop nuclear weapons. Stop right there. Why does the U.S. want regime change in Iran? One Iran owns 26% of the world known oil reserves and the U.S. want's unrestricted access to these oil fields. This was one of the Top two reasons to invade Iraq. Get the oil for Exxon/Mobile and we have seen how that has worked out. Top reason was to get rid of Saddam Hussein. I digress. Bolton even states in this work that he is NOT a fan of "Nation Building", but wants that regime to change. These two positions a diametrically opposed. If U.S. efforts lead to regime change and that regime is not to our liking what do we do then? This is the problem we have with Iran. The U.S. continually makes deals with Iran and then after the U.S. has what we want we break the deal. Under Reagan it was Iran - Contra, for the invasion of Afghanistan Bush 43 cut a deal with Tehran to use Iranian troops with U.S. special Forces to form a pincer movement on Kabul from the West coming out of Iran. (Read:Inside Central Asia: A political and cultural history of Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkey, and Iran) What did Tehran get; added to the Axis of Evil and the liberal government fell shortly after. Replaced with hard liners. The Revolutionary Guard outed Reagan to do the same thing replace a liberal government with a more conservative one. And, two years ago the liberal government was replace by a more hard line government after we left the Nuclear deal. One other note that Bolton fails to make.
Both Bolton and the POTUS have continually said since 2016 the Iran deal was a bad deal. But they never told us why? When they did hint at the why it was "The deal doesn't include missiles." OK but if the deal doesn't include missiles then roll you sleeves up, get in a room, and make a missile deal. This idea never occurred to this administration. An administration that prides itself on the POTUS ability to get a deal done. A point also brought up in this book that although the POTUS prides himself on his deal making ability not very many deals have been done in the arena of foreign affairs by this administration. And, those that have been done have all been minor successes or built on former frameworks that only really needed to be tweaked to catch up from the deals original inception, NAFTA. Bolton points out that the POTUS inability to focus on any given idea for more than a minute is extremely hard. This inability to focus means that he has NO business inside a negotiation with any foreign power, including the Taliban, more later. He does not even have the ability to stick to the best interest of the countries that his advisors have written out for him when talking to foreign officials. Going back to why not make a better treaty on nuclear weapons? Why not start the work on missiles? Why is the only answer the GOP, POTUS, Republican Congressmen and Senators, the press when dealing with Iran be regime change?
Why do Republicans hate Iran and keep doing diplomacy that ends up with a hard line anti-U.S., anti - Israel, pro-Russia and China government? Here I go into speculation: I believe that the GOP is trying to keep Iran from achieving a liberal government because the Revolutionary Guard outed Reagan in Iran - Contra and got McFarland. Poindexter, Weinberger, Casey and Meese 18 month to three year jail terms for various laws that were broken to make Iran - Contra work. Since the fall of the Shah the U.S. has a war like version of Iran, but if you look just a bit deeper you find that "Reading Lolita In Tehran" is not necessarily true. Read "Reading something other than Lolita in Tehran" or either of Greg Mortenson's books, Iran is mentioned in both as removing various death to Mortenson Fatwa's. Why would a country that hates the U.S. as much as the GOP say do that? Or read Remaking Women: Feminism and Modernity in the Middle East, Do Muslim Women Need Saving, or Inside Central Asia: A political and cultural history of Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkey, and Iran, these are just a few of the works that will change your mind or make you think outside of GOP measures about Iran. (Note: for more feel free to look at my read page.) The question really is why is the GOP still hung up on what happened 34 years ago. Time to move on people and start to work with the liberalizing movement inside Iran. Bolton only see's a country that will make nuclear weapons and kill the U.S. or Israel. In Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare by Garth Porter we find out that in 1979 when the Ayatollah Khomeini came to power the first thing he did was issue a Fatwa that read, and I paraphrase, The Islamic Republic of Iran will not build or use any weapons of mass destruction. Now on the face of this OK they will break this Fatwa any time they like. But, they Have Not even during the Iran Iraq war they refrained from using gas or biological weapons against Saddam Hussein. The Iranians never even brought up canisters of chlorine to release when the weather blew east to west. Iran also lost by some estimate six million people to gas attacks alone and they never retaliated, not once. How long before the U.S. goes nuclear after the first whiff of mustard gas? SO who has shown more restraint? have the Iranians interfered with freedom of the seas?
Since the U.S. backed out of the nuclear deal yes on several occasions. But Bolton again makes a critical error in his writing when he says that the U.S. should also back out of the 1992 U.N. Law of the Sea Convention. Mr. Bolton the U.S. never signed the 1992 convention. One of three nations that have not signed, the other two; North Korea, and Iran. SO the U.S. is not bound by the convention and can not withdraw from the convention. And, he was running the NSA. Maybe it was just missed in the editorial process? I understand that many in the GOP are not well read on foreign affairs and that many in the GOP don't know the difference between Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia , Yemen, Oman, or the Stans. But if we want real peace in the Middle East and South West Asia we need people who understand how the Arabs, Persians, Pashtun's, Khazaks etc think not just about today but going forward and we need this U.S. thinking to come in clean with out preconceived ideas about what they need from us and what we want from them. The biggest issue with Iran the GOP has is that they still want Iran to be as it was under the Shah, a docile state that Exxon, BP, Shell, and Mobil can use and rape for it's raw materials. And that is the LAST thing that the Iranians are going to allow.
The next issues I have are with Bolton's assessment of Afghanistan. Since Bolton has lead the Afghanistan issue until his resignation I see him as dead wrong on the issue. Also this administrations handling of Afghanistan has, on a good day, been inept. The first issue Bolton ignores is that this administration started to negotiate with terrorists and he said nothing. This nation since the mid 50's and the first airplane hijackings has had a policy of NO NEGOTIATIONS WITH TERRORISTS. What did the Trump and by definition the GOP do upon entering office? They started negotiations with the Taliban. Why in the name of all that is Holy did Bolton NOT try to stop these negotiations? Bolton correctly points out that the Taliban will not adhere to any withdraw plans that are made on paper. This was most recently shown when the Taliban walked into a maternity Hospital and killed 17 pregnant women and midwifes and wounded 23 including a three minute old baby. These are the people we are negotiating with. Also as pointed out in "The Story Tellers Daughter" , the Taliban on the local level are illiterate in both Pashtun and Arabic. Just ask any Muslim and they will tell you that reading the Qur'an in translation is not near as effective as reading in the original Arabic. But the Taliban Imams can't read either a Pashtun translation or the original Arabic. If the local Imams are illiterate and really make it up as they go along how intelligent are the ruling classes? How much reading can the ruling Taliban Imams do? How much of technical international treaty workings can the U.S. expect them to understand, even if they did choose to obey the treaty? SO why didn't Bolton try to stop the POTUS from allowing these negotiations to continue?
In many parts of this book Bolton complains that the first year of Trump was a situation with Obama hold overs that did not have the best interests of Trump or the Nation first in mind. Then he cam along and saved our Foreign Policy from total disaster at the hands of the incompetents that Trump put in key places also saving the POTUS from grave embarrassment. Bolton starts by complaining about all the "adults" that surrounded the Baby POTUS and ends up painting himself and Pompenno as two of the few adults in the room. That now the room is totally filled with POTUS toadies and he is glad of that as this administration needs to fail so that a "Strong" leader can come forward. His epilogue is fascinating.
The epilogue is a justification of why he did not go before Congress and testify in the impeachment hearings. He accuses the Democrats of malpractice. The accusation of malpractice shows how foolish Bolton is. Impeachment attaches jeopardy to the proceedings. With a Republican Senate President Trump could go into Times Square at Six O'clock on a Friday, grab any women, rape, and kill her, have this on video from a hundred cameras and the Senate would still not impeach him. Since Impeachment attaches jeopardy impeaching on all of the POTUS misdeeds, from election tampering by the Russians to his excessive use of force against protesters in Lafayette Park, to his abuse of power in asking China to help him win another term, detailed in this book, to the rest of this list the impeachment was done perfectly. Nancy Pelosi knew impeachment would fail along party lines in the Senate and with the exception of Mit Rommney, she was right. If the Democrats had attached jeopardy then after this election or in 2024 the Attorney General would not be able to prosecute Trump on the election fraud and Russian interference, on China's interference, and the host of other things that this administration has done.SO from Bolton thinking himself the smartest guy in the room he sure does lack imagination when it come out on how to get the terrible people Trump has appointed and the POTUS himself out of the countries way. And for the Democrats that is a good thing.
If you want a read that will tell you how totally dysfunctional our administration from the Oval Office on down and that will show you why, this book is a must. Just be ready to gag occasionally as Bolton spews is narrow minded thoughts about foreign affairs.