COMMENT ON WHETHER AMERICA CAN GOVERN ITSELF
Perhaps I should have known better, but I am an old man
hoping to see some change in the horrible international arrangements I have
known all my life, so a little unrealistic optimism was perhaps to be expected.
I regret having to say that, already, the Donald Trump, who
seemed capable of at least a few large acts against the established order in
the United States, is beginning to resemble yet another version of the “same
old, same old.”
Getting embroiled with courts over a set of restrictions on
migrants is just a big, futile waste of time and resources. When you face
immense problems – pointless wars, massive refugee problems caused by those
very wars, confusion reigning over much of the planet created by your own
country’s policies of the last sixteen years, institutions like the EU
beginning to crumble, poverty still a feature of large regions of your own
country, and budgets and debt wildly out of control – it is hard to understand
how you would get so entangled in this matter.
The restrictions, temporary as they mostly are, are of no
real value to anyone, certainly not offering a meaningful addition to American
security, but they are an unnecessary hardship imposed on a relatively small
group people who already have suffered under America’s acts. And, they are
creating, let’s face it, a serious public relations setback that you simply do
not need. When you pay a large price for achieving virtually nothing, you are
making a serious mistake.
There are other unpleasant noises being heard, too. Only the
other day, Trump said something about having no choice but to become ruthless
over the War on Drugs. Did I get the words right? Ruthless? War on Drugs?
Richard Nixon clearing his throat and shaking his jowls, making pronouncements
he could never deliver on? The year 2017?
Now, if there was ever a more failed policy than the
decades-long American War on Drugs, I just don’t know what it could be. It
almost resembles Christianity’s two millennium effort to end sin. Tens and tens
of billions spent, small armies of black-clad heavily-armed police stomping on
people’s rights and crashing into homes, great havoc and violence created in
many countries – all with a complete lack of results. Hollywood and Palm Beach and
Manhattan parties remain bountifully supplied with cocaine, as I’m sure some of
Trump’s glitziest friends could readily assure him. Heroin and other hard drugs
are everywhere on America’s streets and in its alleys. So is, by the way, a
great deal of murder and mayhem over the control of the markets for those
drugs, as see with the carnage in Chicago.
Most unsettling of all are the noises being made about Iran.
A few recent statements made me think we were just right back fresh into the
Neocon Wars, almost as though Hillary Clinton had indeed won the election and
was ready to launch a new set of them. Certainly, war with Iran has the
potential for the kind of violence Hillary seemed greatly amused by in Libya,
but on a vastly greater scale. There was even a reliable report that the
American Navy came very close to boarding an Iranian merchant ship on the high
seas recently. Such an act would violate the laws governing the free use of the
seas and would simply be an act of war.
Well, if you want war, nothing is easier to achieve. A total
idiot can create war with very little effort. George Bush proved that for all
time. Only a clever statesman, one like Putin in our time, can avoid it when
the challenge is hurled into his face, as it very much was by Obama and Hillary
and their Neocon Fraternity Brothers and Sisters over at the State Department,
the kind of people who never gave a moment’s thought to how many they killed to
make some geopolitical chess move.
Speaking of Russia, I know it is early, but I can detect
almost no movement in that ominous situation created by Obama’s weakness
vis-à-vis the Neocons and other Amerika
über alles types choking the payrolls
of the Pentagon and security services. Trump’s independent-mindedness and
self-confidence, combined with his genuine outsider status, are just what
seemed to offer promise in reining-in this craziness by powerful, unaccountable
figures.
It is not encouraging that the mere rumor that Trump’s National
Security Advisor, Michael Flynn, and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak may have
discussed sanctions created a bit of a storm, the Obama-imposed sanctions being
pointless and productive only of hostility between two states which are capable
of obliterating one another. But, remember, this is America which kept
pointless, provocative sanctions in place against Cuba for half a century. The
qualities of a stubborn mule are not what you might expect to feature large in
a great power’s behavior, but it seems, in fact, they often do.
Troubling, too, is the very soft approach being taken towards
Israel, one of the world’s most demanding, hostile, and dangerous countries. Here
is the government of Israel contemptuously spitting on yet another United
Nations’ Resolution and openly stealing more land. I know the United Nations
does not enjoy high standing with Trump’s crowd, but respect for property rights
certainly does, being the bedrock of all efforts to build wealth anywhere. The
rule of law matters.
Israel is a country whose successive recent leaders have all
favored attacking Iran, all having spoken openly in favor of outright aggression.
Could there be a connection? The pending demise of the Clinton Foundation does
not appear to have brought an end to “pay for play” in American foreign policy.
The Israel Lobby, so antipathetic to America’s long-term interests and so
damaging to millions of lives in the Middle East, has to be deeply involved
here.
And where are the economies which America so desperately
requires? We hear only of vast new expenditures for an already
immensely-bloated military, of great new costs like the wall with Mexico, of
costly operations like deporting millions of illegals, of investing many
billions to ensure school choice, and so forth.
Draining the swamp was a catchy election slogan, but as we
have seen many times, the ability to get elected is quite different than the
ability to govern. Perhaps America is incapable of being sensibly governed? Too
fat and rich and wasteful and arrogant? With a capital city packed with
powerful and unaccountable officials? Truly draining the swamp would likely
mean emptying much of Washington, a place which, by the way, when it was
selected by George Washington himself as the site of the future capital, was
indeed swampy land. The fault likely goes back to the very beginning.
