Courtesy of The Real News Network, the following exchange, beginning with an excerpt of Donald Trump being interviewed on FoxNews:
DONALD TRUMP: “…don’t kid yourself. You do have a military-industrial-complex. They do like war. You know, in Syria with the caliphate—So I wipe out 100 percent of the caliphate. I say I want to bring our troops back home. The place went crazy, but if it was up to them, they’d bring thousands of soldiers in. They never want to leave. They always want to fight. No, I don’t want to fight.”
SHARMINI PERIES: All right, Larry. He says that he is being pressured by the military-industrial-complex here, being very frank. He says no, he doesn’t want to fight against Iran. Your thoughts on this?
COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON: I think Donald Trump is showing, again, the nature of his mercurial character. I do not think this president wants war. I think he is personally and institutionally, if you will, in his position as president, opposed to great powers doing stupid wars. He said that. He’s opposed to catastrophic, stupid wars like the war in 2003 that we started with Iraq. He’s opposed to this kind of frittering away of American power. He’s got other people around him though, that in his inattention to detail, are doing things— people like John Bolton, people like Elliott Abrams with respect to Venezuela, and so forth. These people are doing things that Trump, I think, in his heart of hearts is opposed to. I don’t think this is a president who wants war. I can criticize him for all manner of other things, but I do not think he wants war.
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[My comment: Reading William S. Douglass’s JFK and the Unspeakable, it’s hard not to see the present situation as somewhat analogous: Like JFK, who also communicated privately with his Russian counterpart, Trump is surrounded by a mob of warmongering lunatics with whom he regularly clashes. Maybe it’s time to fire John Bolton, Mr. Trump, before he gets us into another catastrophic war.]