John Chuckman
EXPANSION OF COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY JOHN KIRIAKOU IN CONSORTIUM NEWS
“Giving Trump Carte Blanche for War. A little-noticed Senate bill would give Donald Trump blanket permission to launch wars in violation of the Constitution”
America has violated its Constitution many times.
So, I suppose one shouldn't be surprised by this direct assault on one of its basic structural concepts.
The trouble is that words written on pieces of parchment kept in a museum are in reality protection from nothing, any more than a Rosary held in your hand against a gang of thugs with guns coming after you.
Power is power, no matter how it is granted, and democracies are just as capable of abuse as any other form of government, and they frequently act to remind us of the fact.
It just requires determined people in positions of power, and a general population that is relatively powerless and quiescent.
And on top of that, America, of course, isn't a democracy and never has been. Many Founders viewed the word "democracy" the way J Edgar Hoover viewed the word "communism" a century and a half later.
But now what little pretense is left of America’s being a somewhat-democratic republic is disappearing before our eyes, and I don’t mean with just this bill. America is being transformed into an armed plutocracy. Congressmen and Senators creating this kind of just-plainly illegal legislation are its servants.
To see this, reflect on the last national election. Two abominable candidates, a polluted sea of private money buying everything, and out-and-out fraud in getting a nomination. And the outcome, no matter who won, could change almost nothing that mattered, just as it was intended it should change almost nothing.
We have a plutocracy armed with vast armies of soldiers and spies and police forces.
Nothing is less a friend to democratic principles than the military, outfits like the CIA, police forces, and wealthy privileged people.
If you think I’m exaggerating, just consider that all of Trump’s lawlessness and warlike threats towards Iran - with side threats against anyone else, even close allies, daring to oppose him - is the handiwork of a single immensely wealthy man, Sheldon Adelson, who I’m sure promises large resources for Trump’s re-election campaign if he just “takes care of Iran.”
Never mind Iran’s 80 million people or the fact that it has never started a conflict. It stands in the way of Israel’s total domination of the region, and that other truly unbalanced and dangerous man, a close friend and beneficiary of Sheldon Adelson’s, Israel’s Netanyahu, just hates it, so it must be ruthlessly dealt with.
Giving a man of Trump’s proven poor judgment the power to start a war is frightening.
