By Walt Zlotow
Marco Rubio is America’s 72nd Secretary of State – the first being John Jay in 1789. While serving as the President’s top foreign affairs advisor, overseeing diplomatic missions, managing international relations, promoting human rights, Job One for every Secretary of State is to champion peace, not war.
Predecessors in this prestigious post include Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, Daniel Webster and William Jennings Bryan.
What an as astonishing cast of noble Secretaries that Rubio could have chosen from to respond to Trump’s decision to blow up Iran and now possibly the world economy. Reports indicate Rubio argued against the invasion, not on moral grounds (it was a criminal war), but on practical grounds it would fail. When Trump brushed asides Rubio’s concerns and pulled the trigger, dutiful Rubio hopped off the Peace Train and grabbed a First Class seat on Trump’s War Train.
Once started, Rubio offered one of the most disingenuous, disgusting rationales for war in American history. Rubio said the US had to attack Iran first. Why? Because we knew Israel was going to attack Iran and if they did, Iran would attack their best buddy America. By attacking first, the US would suffer less casualties. Of course, Rubio omitted that all along the US and Israel planned a one-two sucker punch on Iran while in peace negotiations with them.
Rubio sadly followed up on what till then had been the worst precedent in US history of a Secretary of State, abdicating his job responsibility of promoting peace to support his President’s rush to criminal war. On February 5, 2003, George W. Bush’ Secretary of State Colin Powell shamelessly told the UN a blizzard of lies that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (WMD), intended to use them, and time was running out for the world to stop them. Forty-four days later Bush launched his war that Powell, with his enormous but fake credibility, made possible. The belief was, “If Colin Powell says war is necessary, then war it is.”
Alas, Rubio should have gone back 88 years earlier than Powell’s disgrace to channel instead predecessor William Jennings Bryan. On June 9, 1915, President Woodrow Wilson’s Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan resigned. After the British liner Lusitania was sunk May 7, Bryan sent Germany a conciliatory note requesting restraint and high level diplomacy to keep the European war from drawing in the US. Bryan was mindful Germany neither attacked nor threatened America far across its Atlantic mote. Wilson was furious and penned a much stronger note that Bryan refused to sign out of conscience, resigning instead.
Bryan’s principled plea for peace did not prevent Wilson’s declaration of war on Germany 22 months later. But had Rubio bluntly told Trump he would resign and go public with his opposition to a clearly unwinnable war, Trump might have pulled back from the catastrophe he’s unleashed.
It took two and a half years for Colin Powell to admit his perfidy in enabling America’s horrific Iran war that killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and over 5,000 US and allied troops.
“I, of course, regret the U.N. speech that I gave, which became the prominent presentation of our case. I never saw evidence to suggest a connection between the September 11, 2001 terror attacks in the United States and the Saddam regime. I’m the one who presented it on behalf of the United States to the world, and (it) will always be a blot on my record. It was painful. It’s painful now.”
Don’t expect Marco Rubio to ever apologize for helping bring on what will likely become the most disastrous war in America’s 250 years. Rubio has been a fervent, lifelong promoter of senseless, endless US wars and US exceptionalism. He has always demonstrated the exact opposite of what a decent, peace promoting Secretary of State should be.
Until Rubio signed off the Iran war and championed its necessity to “save American lives,” Colin Powell ranked dead last of Secretaries of State. With Rubio’s capitulation to criminal war on Iran, Powell moves up one spot to make way for the worst… Marco Rubio.
Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition Glen Ellyn IL
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Entry #1176 in the record-book of American egregious actions, all birthed from the festering swamp of hubris, paranoia, aggression, rah, rah rah-ism, political differences, an inability to live and let live, a poisonous and, for the rest of the planet, tragic relationship with the military-industrial complex despite Eisenhower’s prescient words of caution, along with the structural and elemental racism given that the targets of the military are always brown or black or yellow-skinned peoples who speak languages other than English. The cabal of sycophants, nut jobs, semi-lunatics, psychopaths et al. who surround the mad president and action his every whim bring disgrace upon themselves along with their country at large.
What will it take to bring this nightmare to a close?