Yesterday the Director of the US National Counterterrorism Center resigned, telling the world that he could not “in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran. Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation…” When someone as integral to the US administration’s counter-terror strategy resigns in protest over a war designed, at least in part, to tackle the threat of terrorism, it’s not only a big story – and has been treated as such by the media – it’s also obviously uncomfortable for those of us who support the war.
Cue, entirely understandably, an outpouring of comments on social media from opponents of the war using the resignation to bolster their opposition and undermine the arguments of supporters.
But I doubt that 10 per cent – it’s more likely one per cent – of those posting on social media about the resignation had even heard of Joe Kent until yesterday, let alone have the first idea about who he is and what he believes. Because the real story here isn’t that Kent has resigned. Anyone who knows who he is and what he believes should be mightily relieved that Kent no longer has any involvement in US counter-terror strategy. The real story is why he was ever appointed in the first place.
Joe Kent is a conspiracy theorist who has – let’s put it no stronger than this – ties to white nationalists and neo-Nazis. The issue that needs to be addressed isn’t why he has gone but, rather, why he was ever appointed by President Trump in the first place. In that context, one should reflect that his boss is the equally appalling Tulsi Gabbard, who behaves as if she thinks she is the Russian Ambassador to the US rather than the US Director of National Intelligence.
As for Kent: his resignation letter is the measure of the man. In the first par he produces one of the most toxic antisemitic tropes around the war, stating that “we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.” Such is the warping of Kent’s mind by this fixation that he – bizarrely even for a conspiracy theorist of Kent’s propensity – asserts that he “lost my beloved wife Shannon in a war manufactured by Israel”. But she was murdered by an ISIS
suicide bomber while she was serving in the US fight against ISIS in Syria “under President Trump’s orders”, as Kent himself put it in an article in 2020 which made no mention of Israel. Only now has he concluded, it seems, that ISIS was basically all Israel’s fault.
If you’re wondering how Kent came to be so in thrall to these antisemitic conspiracy theories, perhaps it is worth noting that he is a friend of Tucker Carlson. And he shares with Carlson and others of his ilk a deep-seated opportunism. Until 2021 Kent was a registered Democrat (having been affiliated with the Libertarian Party from 2012 to 2019). In 2020 he supported Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary and then in 2021 ran for Congress in Washington state as a Republican.
As part of his 2022 campaign he was interviewed by an avowedly fascist YouTuber who had praised Adolf Hitler as a “complicated historical figure” and engaged with white nationalists such as Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes. He sought and received endorsements from the likes of former Congressman Paul Gosar who was notorious for his links to far-right groups such as the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers. Kent also hired a member of the Proud Boys as a campaign consultant. This is all a matter of record; when he was appointed by Trump, CNN reported on Kent’s “past association with extremists” and his dealings with Nazi sympathisers and Holocaust deniers.
Now, however, all that has been conveniently ignored as Kent turns himself, ever the opportunist, into a poster boy for opponents of the Iran war. The same Joe Kent, that is, who testified before the Senate a year ago that Iran and its proxies threatened the US in the Middle East and who just three months ago was making the case on podcasts and elsewhere for how much of a threat Iran is to the US at the very time when Trump was making very clear that the US might need to go to war with Iran.
The same Joe Kent who saw back in 2020 how bad things were, when he tweeted, “We should not sit and wait for the next attack, wipe Iran's ballistic capability out and get our troops out of Iraq - they are only targets now. No US WIA/KIA is a tribute to the professionalism of our military and intel professionals not Iranian restraint.”
Opportunist, hypocrite, grifter: take your pick.
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