That U.S. presidents keep hiring someone so tyrannical, corrupt and murderous tells you everything you need to know about the nature of U.S. foreign policy.
Elliott Abrams during an exchange with Rep. Ilhan Omar in February 2019. (C-SPAN still)
By Caitlin Johnstone
CaitlinJohnstone.com
Listen to Tim Foley reading this article.
CNN reports that President Joe Biden has nominated criminal neocon Elliott Abrams for a position on the U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy, which according to the U.S. State Department is responsible for “appraising activities intended to understand, inform, and influence foreign publics” and pays “acute attention” to the U.S. government’s official foreign propaganda arm, the U.S. Agency for Global Media.
Usually when you hear someone called a “neocon” it’s not a strictly accurate description from a technical point of view and is frequently used to just mean “warmonger.”
But Abrams is actually a proper Project for a New American Century neoconservative ideologue with deep ties to the old-school neocons of the 1970s, and has helped promote violent U.S. imperialism in Latin America and the Middle East for decades.
In addition to serving as the Trump administration’s special representative for both Iran and Venezuela (two of the nations where former President Donald Trump’s foreign policy was at its most murderous), Abrams is probably best known for confessing to his role in the criminal coverup of Iran-Contra during the Reagan administration.
CNN — notoriously reluctant to criticize either U.S. foreign policy or Democratic presidential administrations — was surprisingly critical on this point in its report on Biden’s nomination of Abrams to the position.
Biden is nominating Elliott Abrams, a war criminal evil enough that even *CNN* points out his role in leading the Iran-Contra operation and supporting US-backed genocidal massacres in Latin America https://t.co/anhCOJsU4g
— Calla (@CallaWalsh) July 4, 2023
In an article, “Biden nominates controversial former Trump-appointee to Public Diplomacy Commission,” CNN’s Jack Forrest writes:
“Elliott Abrams, who has served in three Republican administrations, most recently acted as the Trump administration’s special envoy to Iran and Venezuela where he was tasked at the time with directing the campaign to replace Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro.
The Republican insider’s long history in foreign policy is marked by a 1991 guilty plea for withholding information about the Iran-Contra affair that earned him two misdemeanor counts, two years probation and 100 hours of community service — though his crimes were later pardoned by President George H.W. Bush.
The secret Iran-Contra operation, which took place during Abrams’ time as an assistant secretary of state in the Reagan administration, involved the funding of anti-communist rebels in Nicaragua using the proceeds from weapon sales to Iran despite a congressional ban on such funding.
Again in his role under former President Ronald Reagan, Abrams was also blasted by a Human Rights Watch report for his attempts in a February 1982 Senate testimony to downplay reports of the massacre of 1,000 people by U.S.-trained-and-equipped military units in the Salvadoran town of El Mozote in December 1981 — the largest mass killing in recent Latin American history.
He insisted the numbers of reported victims were “implausible” and “lavished praise” on the military battalion behind the mass killings — stances he doubled down on when they were put on display during a 2019 House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing by Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Minnesota Democrat, who used his history in Latin American to call into question his credibility.”
When you’re so gross that even CNN is disgusted by you, you’re a special kind of gross.
As Forrest noted, this would be the fourth presidential administration that Abrams has been a part of, despite being a confessed crook and despite pushing for bloodshed at every opportunity in some of the U.S. empire’s most notorious criminal actions.
Abrams is such a cold-hearted killer that he openly admitted during a 1985 conference that the purpose of aiding the Contras in Nicaragua was “to permit people who are fighting on our side to use more violence,” and has promoted U.S. military violence against Iraq, Syria and Iran with remarkable forcefulness throughout his career.
The fact that someone so tyrannical, so corrupt and so unscrupulous keeps getting appointed to positions involved with U.S. foreign policy tells you everything you need to know about the nature of U.S. foreign policy.
It’s actually a damning indictment of our entire civilization that swamp monsters like Elliott Abrams remain esteemed members of society instead of reviled outcasts who can’t safely show their faces in public.
They should be driven from every town they try to enter and unable to secure even entry-level jobs working for minimum wage, but instead they’re employed as high-profile pundits, think tankers and political officials providing expertise on some of the most consequential matters in the world.
To paraphrase a quote often attributed to Jiddu Krishnamurti, it is no measure of health to be well-rewarded in a profoundly sick society.
Because our society is so profoundly sick, one of the fastest ways to fortune and esteem is to be as gross as Elliott Abrams. That’s how messed up you have to be inside to rise to prominence within the U.S. power structure: willing to say and do whatever needs to be said and done in order to secure the continued dominance of a global empire that is sustained by human blood.
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This article is from CaitlinJohnstone.com and re-published with permission.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
As they say, birds of the same feather flock together. Therefore, it is unsurprising that a rogue state often hires rogue individuals to fill its official positions, and to implement its nefarious global agenda.
Elliot Abrams never killed anybody
Nor did Adolf Eichmann
Nor did Henry Kissinger
Nor did Charles Manson
”War, what is it good for.” Surely.
Those higher ups – cossetted in the warmth away from the fighting – don’t actually get killed or maimed in the meat grinder of modern warfare; it is the poor bloody infantry who have to take the punishment. In ”The Memoirs of an infantry officer” written by Siegfried Sassoon (1914) was the following description.
”I am no believer in wild denunciations of the (1914) War; I am merely describing my own experiences of it; and in 1917 I was beginning to learn that life, for the majority of the population, is an unlovely struggle against unfair odds, culminating in a cheap funeral. Anyhow the German soldier lying prostrate with his head bashed in had achieved theoretical glory by dying for his country in the battle of Arras, and we who marched past him had an excellent chance of following his example.”
In George Orwell’s sour little novel ”Coming Up For Air” the same cynicism – albeit fictional – evinced the same disenchantment and a virtual hatred of the military powers-that-be all egged on by an ever pliant media. He writes. ”Why had I joined the Army? Or the million other idiots who had joined before conscription was made mandatory? Partly for a lark, party because of England my England and Britons never, never, and all that stuff. Most of the chaps I knew had forgotten all about it long before that got as far as France. The men in the trenches weren’t patriotic, didn’t hate the Kaiser, didn’t give a damn about gallant little Belgium, and the Germans raping nuns on tables (”in was always on tables, as though it always made it worse) in the Streets of Brussels.”
Like the man said: “I am sick and tired of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, for vengeance, for desolation. War is hell. ”William Tecumseh Sherman.
Between Brzezinski and Afghanistan and Bill Casey engineering Reagan past Bush in 1980 New Hampshire primary numerous countries have been on the long term chopping block. Maybe the Polish and Order of Malta are still on a religious war on Russia and Asia to add to that on Central America.
His nomination, this time by a Democrat, shows that empire is a bipartisan affair. And based on
Abrams’ past it also signals he is needed for some serious dirty work.
i don’t get it. you folks all bought into the war machine without griping. it’s been a pretty good deal for those of us on this side of the weapons. there is no government, folks. there’s a pentagon and a chief of war and those who can make the deals to keep the ‘good guys’ wealthy. that’s what we’re all in it for, right? or has there been some confusion about where your tax dollars go? get real. it’s not that mysterious and abrams is just another schlomo dredged up by henry k…as are biden and schumer. the mafioso are out and the freemasons are back in.
Folks I ran out of patience during the Obama administration.
Now I continue to be underwhelmed by some of the comments here as well as some of the posts by CN contributors. Caitlin with the utmost respect I have to point out a missed opportunity to vent by cutting this killer long , wide and deep n order to extinguish his darkest of hearts.
I’m 73 years old and I have suffered the torment of witnessing the group of men this asshole is comrades with for far too long. Abrams was born Jan 24, I was born Jan 21, 1949. Someone surely must have dropped this Idiot on his head while he was a baby.
Elliot was one year older than me when JFK was murdered, he must have been thrilled, as a fourteen year old I was mortified. Five short years later I got drafted, Elliot was in law school, you know learning to be an ‘Exceptional American Dirt Bag’, no quarter from me you lying SOB!
Caitlin this man should have went to prison, why didn’t he. The reason must be obvious now, he is on the inside alright, the inside of the Deep State home of the NEOCON. SEE JOEY BIDEN PHOTO and resume’.
This dirt bag got a pardon and feels vindicated for his part in the blood letting he personally over saw.
I often wonder how 0ld many who comment here are, curiosity born of what I consider a lack of historical institutional knowledge of how miserably defunct Elliot and his blood lusting brothers in these crimes actually were and are. These men such as Elliot are far from heros, but instead mental cases, psychopaths , one and all. Blood lusting animals and they belong to a club you don’t and never will.
This cancer on our country has almost killed it and those who are the cancer need to be excised. That will never happens as long as DOJ in it’s present form exists to let these fiends off. CIA & Co. are the cancer and DOJ feeds this cancer by ignoring the damage done to the country. Something is deathly wrong with this incestuous common law marriage.
If a person was born before ~1950-52 they get no pass from me for not knowing what men like Elliot Abrahms stand for. Can you say authoritarianism, don’t take my word for it, they are bad people who would revel in governing us all with an iron hand. They obviously love the sight and smell of fresh blood.
How and why does this continue? For starters the US Congress is terrified of these bloody bastards, CIA has it’s ways read THE SEASON OF INQUIRY REVISITED B Lock K. Johnson. Johnson was a special assistant to Sen Church during the Church and Pike hearings of the middle 1970’s. Committees that investigated the wrong doing activities of Americas spy agencies.
In the book Lock describes who the intelligence community twisted arms and intimidated committee members by making it clear anyone who didn’t cooperate with the intelligence agencies wishes might lose “favorite contact status” with said agencies.
For the sake of Dog-ma that was 50 years ago.
By the way ‘nice job’ goes out to JonnyJames.
One last thought for Caitlin, I do realize my standards are pretty low considering my struggle with the written word. So I tend to take liberties with my comments many others might not. You are and will continue to be one of my favorites who contribute here.
Elliot Abrams is a waste of oxygen and a totally lost human soul!
Thanks CN
My 2c: I don’t think I can vote again for Biden.
This is an abominable appointment by him.
It reminds me of no action by any leader to the Reuters murders on the collateral video. Why hasn’t Biden or any prior “respected” leader gone after those hideous heinous pilots/gunners/executioners acting on behalf of the U.S. government? Why?
Lastly, why can’t we do a major write-in for the only possible Presidential candidate around? Bernie Sanders
I’m disgusted. Horrible. Somebody do something; stop this monster and shake Biden into taking prompt correction on this.
Disgusting.
Slithers out from under his rock again.
“Abrams is the author of several books on foreign policy and related subjects, including Undue Process, Security and Sacrifice, and the controversial Faith or Fear: How Jews Can Survive in a Christian America. In Faith or Fear, Abrams wrote, “Outside the land of Israel, there can be no doubt that Jews, faithful to the covenant between God and Abraham, are to stand apart from the nation in which they live.” He says that this should not imply disloyalty to America or any other country where Jews live outside of Israel, but that Jews must be loyal to Israel because they “are in a permanent covenant with God and with the land of Israel and its people.””– jewishvirtuallibrary.org/elliot-abrams
Curious if Abrams’ family is from Eastern Europe like seemingly all the “bright lights” in our think tanks and State Department (and the UK’s Boris Johnson and Canada’s Chrystia Freeland). Abrams married into Norman Podhoretz’s family, neocons who hailed from Galicia. These people seem bent of vengeance for mistreatment of their families a century or two ago. Maybe it takes that mindset to understand Eastern Europe today (but does not represent the values of most Americans)?
The Biden White House is getting to be just like home for all of these right-wing Reagan/Cheney types. I’m sure Vicky Nuland will bake him a cake to welcome him back to the clubhouse.
Democrats, making sure the legacy of Dick Cheney is not forgotten. I’m guessing that John Bolton is now deciding whether to submit a resume. He’d fit right in with the old team.
I say we round ’em all up. shove ’em into one of the fucking Space Shield transport trains and shoot them into space. Maybe one of the god damned ‘payloads’ will blow the assholes to smithereens!
Ever notice how these ultra authoritarians wear their dark deeds on their faces like badges?
Could barely get past his dracule countenance to read the article.
Somebody ought to name a big hunk of deadly metal weaponry after him. Or maybe just a small tool. Elliot Axehead.
Yea, we get it. These neocon ideologues have been strung together since the early ‘90’s, at least. What, did someone think that Bido was somehow an exception to the rule? Fat chance.
Besides facial expressions that exude pure malice, there’s also the manic-looking grinning & yukking it up for no apparent reason, along with the open-mouthed, vacuous yet creepy cackle. (see H.C.)
Thanks a lot, CN. Now I’ve got a serious case of John Fahey’s “On Doing An Evil Deed Blues”.
The Arsenal of Oligarchy disporting themselves again by rubbing their veneration of criminality, violence, and power in your face. Elliott is in place simply to make the ugly admixture of thugs in positions above him look a lot better. And even small-time operators like Ms. Omar benefit.
It is interesting to note that the dregs of American society are quite openly on display. Come and have a gawp at the neo-cons! Rather like a visit to the zoo – the monkey house in particular. Believe it or not these guys are REAL. Not that they are the only ones. Their British transatlantic cousins run them a near second status. But it is difficult to believe which is worse. Maybe the CIA or maybe MI6. Both an an abominations. To cite 2 examples below.
In the atrocity stakes the American neo-cons pulled ahead when they massacred the unfortunate souls of Mi Lay. But the British at an earlier time actually went even better in India. In the town of Amritsar the British commander-in-chief, a certain Colonel Dyer, was persuaded to open fire was opened on a crowd of unarmed Indians in a public square in Amritsar, and to continue firing into the backs until his ammunition had run out, killing at least 380 and wounding 1,200.00. All in a days work for the neo-con ultras.
I think that the most appropriate terms in this connexion would be Barbarians. This is the world we live in and is to be described as such.
”And what rough beast, its hour come round at last
Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born.”
W.B.Yeats – ”The Second Coming.”
Check out the 17 October 1961 government massacre in Paris.
Estimated death toll: 200-300.
So Abrams is yet another Neo-Con monster that works in high office who is responsible for mass-murdering civilians in multiple countries. How is it that this piece of detritus can still be at liberty and hold positions of power? Monsters like him then have the temerity to lambast foreign leaders and their treatment of civilians and human rights. Maybe it’s because the Neo-Cons believe & then try to follow the barbaric atrocities in the Old Testament as justification for their actions?
How can the head of this ‘Hydra’ be cut off before it takes us all to a nuclear Armageddon? The Hydra is well hidden from view and so it can lurk in the shadows of power. The corrupted MSM won’t reveal it because they are now owned by it. It simply has too much power & control, information is everything as some might say.
It’s sad and desperate but sometimes I think the only way the world will be rid of this evil is via a helping hand from Mother Nature, another Chicxulub event would do the trick just nicely.
“Return of a Disgraced Neocon”
Is there any other kind?
The US government is a murderous entity in just about every aspect of its existence from its inception to the present, both domestically and internationally. The vast majority of its citizens are ignorant minions who blindly support mass murder and mayhem in the name of righteousness and exceptionalism. It comes as no surprise that Abrams will be welcomed by most of our war criminal supporting congress.
Put Pompeo on that list of criminals. They both should be chained at the ankle and fed to the buzzards.
Shit always flows to the top…
Another superb piece by Caitline that is timely and relevant to the times. But the problem of our age has for long been not just the American domestic “swamp monsters” but also the string of lucratively-linked “swamp-donkeys” emplaced as political elites across much of the rest of the world who unfailingly endorse, rubber-stamp and even help ratify and carry forward America’s stupid bloody imperialism in every world-regions ! So, merely scapegoating swamp monsters shouldn’t allow swamp donkeys to drift away scot-free !
I’m paraphrasing, but I think this is what Bob Dylan said on the afternoon of JFK’s assassination: “it’s like they’re saying we don’t get a choice anymore.” I think that’s what Biden is now proving, and has been proving his entire career. But he has plenty of help. The madness of our time is the inability to see beyond the endgame of assured destruction. Remember the 80’s? “He who dies with the most toys wins.” The death instinct is our only available Gospel of deliverance. Of course, you might eventually get to fly to Mars and escape it all….
Thank you Caitlin Johnstone for high lighting this.
He’s not orange so it’s ok i guess
This should prove once and for all that there really is no difference between Republicans and Democrats. They both drink from the same poisoned trough, eat from the same rotted table, and breathe the same putrid air. Abrams’s appointment embodies this political rot.
Perhaps we have the logic backwards in the funding contras with cocaine sales in the US. Perhaps we just conscripted drug cartels as freedom fighters with freedom from drug enforcement. Maybe related to Afghanistan and Vietnam wars too. The freedoms they fought for then get revoked as in Noriega and Columbia then for military occupation there for drug interdiction..
It seems that there is no bottom to the gutter that the US has chosen to inhabit. Torture, rape, pillage, countenancing war criminals, aggressive war in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, depleted uranium, and now cluster munitions. We will ultimately be made to pay for all this.
I agree with you, of course, about the horrific re-apparition of the ghostly Elliot Abrams, however I think that the clip of Congresswoman
Omar showed her to be a poor rhetorical adversary. She indulged in rather shoddy theatrics, with her poor english frustrating an even poorer plan of attack which allowed for Abrams’ escape. A prosecutor, she is not. Why did nobody else stand up to him and call him a “war criminal?”
That was very astute questioning by Rep. Ilhan Omar. Apparently Elliot Abrams believes that it is unfair to be subjected to comments that show him in a bad light. If the allegations were false he could have said so, and not taken the line that because he was under attack he would refuse to answer any further questions.
I sensed that Mr. Abrams felt a certain lèse majesté about being subject to the interrogation.
When you are a key player in the MIC you know that you will be protected by very powerful forces.
Tacitas: “To robbery, slaughter, plunder, they give the lying name of empire; they make a solitude and call it peace.”
Zelenskiy is corrupt, mendacious, and greedy which makes him the preferred US-NAYOYO collaborator.
John Kenneth Galbraith, “The modern Conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.”
Washington now and always, makes collaborators of the most corrupt, violent human rights abusers. Recently, US trained military yahoos committed 9 coups in West Africa. Of course, military coups are cheaper than honestly negotiating Oil & Gas rights with responsible, democratically elected, popularly supported leadership. ‘Los Zetas’, Mexico’s worst narco gang were trained and armed by US ‘special forces’. Honduras, where democracy was recently restored after a US-OAS coup installed a president and family now facing decades in US prisons for drug trafficking. El Salvador, where ex-President Cristiani is facing murder charges for the executions of 6 Catholic priests, housekeeper and her young daughter, who advocated for negotiations and peace.
GFW Hegel, The Philosophy of History, “What experience and history teaches us is that people and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it.”
These most recent examples US war crimes and human rights abuses don’t cover Vietnam, Indonesia, South Korea, Chile and every other Latin American country. Haiti, where they recently paid France the last compensation instalment for freeing themselves from slavery in 1804. Operation Gladio, post-WWII CIA support for the first Bandera Nazi war criminals, the Middle East, and any country seeking actual democracy stand as warnings.
Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, “…nobody now gives the United States any respect, apart from a handful of fascist Brits and that simpering little whore Tony Blair.”
Bruce Cockburn – Call it Democracy – Russian — hxxps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUBvIUtL0LU
Another example of a Deep Stater who is a member of a club, as George Carlin would say “and you ain’t in it”. The club is very, very forgiving, and once you’re in, you’re in for life. Intentions, not results, are what matter to club members.
Three Cheers for Caitlin! She has hit on another of the fundamental flaws of American and Western governments. They hire partisan ideologues who tell them what they want to hear not what they should be hearing. Little wonder the whole system becomes a neoliberal/neocon echo chamber.
America has some of the world’s best economists, political scientists, and historians, but they don’t get to influence government. The gap between what politicians and say and do and what the best academics say and write is inexcusable.
Politics is more than ever the triumph of treachery over common sense.
America is listening to all the wrong voices and ignoring their best sages.
The silence of the Dems on this appointment is deafening. That this unrepentant mass murderer is still a part of the Washington establishment speaks volumes as Caitlin points out, about the nature of the continued reliance of terror against innocent people whose governments resist US domination. Anyone in congress who doesn’t speak out forcefully against this appointment is complicit in this ghoul’s murderous legacy and whatever he manages to do from here on out. He belongs in prison.
The true Biden keeps oozing out. Despised him then and despise him now.
The most amoral, inappropriate, criminal candidates need apply for foreign policy jobs in US gov. think tanks, or elite academic institutions.
As Caitlin points out, these characters are recycled from both D and R regimes to continue long-term US foreign policy. Abrams, Nuland, Bolton, etc etc. It does not matter which Puppet Emperor sits in the imperial palace. It is not possible to “vote” against the interests of the oligarchy, because both “political parties” represent the oligarchy.
It is refreshing to read well-informed, honest reporting on the most serious issues we face. Meanwhile, the “compatible left” (CIA term) over at CounterPunch post their daily one-sided justification for providing more weapons to Ukraine by Howie Hawkins, no less. The co-opted “labor leader” and Green party leader is really a Greenwashed warmonger apologist for oligarchy. He attacks Code Pink, Ben Cohen and others. Like the photo of Abrams above, the article made me retch. The Hypocrisy Meter broke: it doesn’t go to 11
Thanks for mentioning that. I know that Jill Stein and Margaret Flowers (also Green Party leaders) don’t share Howie Hawkins’s opinion.
Gargamel is back
That’s an interesting analogy. I had a theory years ago about the Smurfs as an embodiment of Nazi society, and Gargamel is the prototypical Jew. People thought I was crazy, saying it just a kids’ show and to stop reading more into it. Not that I’m a fan of Abrams because he’s an awful person.
It’s strictly an observation, I’m sure, of an uncanny physical resemblance, combined with the fact that they’re both evil-actors. I came here to post the exact same comment.