John Chuckman
COMMENT ON IRAN’S ADMISSION THAT IT ACCIDENTALLY DESTROYED A UKRAINIAN AIRLINER
Iran has apologized for its terrible error, and it did so promptly. And in judging, everyone should keep in mind the terrifying pressure Iran has been put under by the United States (see footnote).
Has America apologized for any of the pain and death and destruction it has inflicted on the Middle East in recent years?
America’s Neocon Wars in the Middle East (2003 – present) have killed something like two million people, destroyed many treasured historic and religious sites, reduced millions to primitive living conditions (eg, to this day, much of Iraq’s electricity, deliberately destroyed by America in its 2003 invasion, still has not been restored), and created so many desperate refugees that Europe’s stability was threatened.
Going back before the Neocon Wars, we have the Iraq-Iran War (1980-88), an extremely bloody war facilitated by the United States to hurt Iran's revolutionary government of 1979. In that war, America shot down an Iranian civilian airliner (Iran Air Flight 655), killing 290 people.
A United States warship, the USS Vincennes, was in Iranian waters of the Strait of Hormuz and fired missiles at the plane, claiming to mistake the airliner, flying a well-established route, for a hostile plane.
The Captain of the American warship was later actually awarded a medal, the Legion of Merit.
The United States absolutely refused to apologize or pay damages for its obvious destruction of a civilian airliner.
It wasn’t until the late 1990s, as the result of a lawsuit, that the United States properly acknowledged what it had done and paid damages to survivors.
WHAT IRAN FACED AT THE TIME OF ITS MISTAKEN DOWNING OF AN AIRLINER – INDEED WHAT IT FACES STILL
Iran has been under constant threat by the Trump White House, and for no good reason since Iran has started no wars in its modern history and is recognized as complying with its treaty obligations.
Trump started by suddenly ripping-up a valid international nuclear agreement, one which had been scrupulously kept for four years. He followed that by imposing war-like sanctions which seriously hurt millions of ordinary people. Iranian assets abroad have been seized, and every effort has been made to disrupt Iran’s economy.
Trump sent fleets of warships and nuclear-capable bombers to intimidate the country. He made many public threats, including the barbaric threat to destroy Iran’s national heritage sites. Trump even once bellowed he would “obliterate” Iran’s eighty million people.
Just before the airliner’s destruction, Trump had committed a set of murders in neighboring Iraq, including the murder of an Iranian national hero, General Qasem Soleimani. Iran had been put on the highest war alert.
Sunday, January 12, 2020
JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: IRAN APOLOGIZED FOR ITS TERRIBLE MISTAKE - HOW DID THE UNITED STATES BEHAVE AFTER IT DESTROYED AN IRANIAN AIRLINER IN 1988 ? - SUMMARY OF THE IMMENSE PRESSURE THE UNITED STATES HAS PUT IRAN UNDER FOR DOING NOTHING BUT FOLLOWING THE RULES - THE DEATH AND DESTRUCTION TOLL OF AMERICA'S NEOCON WARS IN THE MIDDLE EAST
Saturday, January 11, 2020
JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: MEGHAN AND HARRY - ABOUT AS FAR AS YOU CAN TRAVEL FROM THE WEIGHTY MATTERS OF WORLD AFFAIRS
John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE INDEPENDENT
“Harry and Meghan believe they are being 'driven out' by Buckingham Palace, says friend
“Buckingham Palace denies couple were told they had no part in 'slimmed-down monarchy"
Well, talk about a tempest in a teapot.
It does seem the only forces at work here are the egos of Harry and Meghan.
A slimmed-down Royal Family is appropriate.
And it just follows that the focus should be on those near the top of the succession. After all that is what royalty is about, succession to ruling.
Fewer Royals clomping around and smiling for photos might serve to reduce the empty celebrity status that has so clung to the institution since the time of Diana.
I said "egos," but I think "ego" might be closer to the truth.
Meghan, by all accounts, has a large one. She has caused a lot of friction within the family during her comparatively brief time.
Now, she's off to Canada alone to sulk while Harry has been publicizing what the Queen had asked him to keep quiet.
Poor Harry, not a particularly able or sensible man to start with, is left half torn from both extended family and wife.
Regrettably, the matter of Meghan’s mixed racial heritage keeps being injected into press coverage, but I don’t see that plays any part here.
The idea of trimming back the Royals has been around for decades.
Now that they’re busy having so many kids, maybe it is time to do it.
Most European states who retain monarchies treat them in an entirely different way, less exalted, more like family, and not riding around in heavy gold-gilt coaches.
Family tensions caused by Meghan’s rather high-strung personality have undoubtedly played a part in getting the changes started.
Even with all the Royal Family’s ability to control much of the news about itself, enough has gotten out to give people a pretty vivid picture. Meghan has frequently made life seriously difficult for the future King and Queen, William and Kate. Kate has been reported being reduced to tears.
Why not just trim it all back, once good sturdy, dependable Elizabeth is gone, and join the 21st century?
__________________
Response to a comment on the many stories about Meghan in the Daily Mail:
Not to defend the Daily Mail, a pretty sleazy operation, but Meghan yearned for fame and attention, and she’s got it.
She perhaps only wanted the good part of the attention, but you can’t pick and choose.
If she believes she’s abused, she’s very naive.
Which wouldn’t surprise me at all. Her entire raging ambition to become a Royal does say something of the same thing.
It’s one heck of a meaningless job being a Duchess, and she had to marry Harry to get it. That’s quite a price, as we know from years of exposure to his unbalanced behavior, tantrums, and banal conversation.
Meghan also rates lots of attention because she is so strikingly beautiful. Beauty like that always attracts lots of press.
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE INDEPENDENT
“Harry and Meghan believe they are being 'driven out' by Buckingham Palace, says friend
“Buckingham Palace denies couple were told they had no part in 'slimmed-down monarchy"
Well, talk about a tempest in a teapot.
It does seem the only forces at work here are the egos of Harry and Meghan.
A slimmed-down Royal Family is appropriate.
And it just follows that the focus should be on those near the top of the succession. After all that is what royalty is about, succession to ruling.
Fewer Royals clomping around and smiling for photos might serve to reduce the empty celebrity status that has so clung to the institution since the time of Diana.
I said "egos," but I think "ego" might be closer to the truth.
Meghan, by all accounts, has a large one. She has caused a lot of friction within the family during her comparatively brief time.
Now, she's off to Canada alone to sulk while Harry has been publicizing what the Queen had asked him to keep quiet.
Poor Harry, not a particularly able or sensible man to start with, is left half torn from both extended family and wife.
Regrettably, the matter of Meghan’s mixed racial heritage keeps being injected into press coverage, but I don’t see that plays any part here.
The idea of trimming back the Royals has been around for decades.
Now that they’re busy having so many kids, maybe it is time to do it.
Most European states who retain monarchies treat them in an entirely different way, less exalted, more like family, and not riding around in heavy gold-gilt coaches.
Family tensions caused by Meghan’s rather high-strung personality have undoubtedly played a part in getting the changes started.
Even with all the Royal Family’s ability to control much of the news about itself, enough has gotten out to give people a pretty vivid picture. Meghan has frequently made life seriously difficult for the future King and Queen, William and Kate. Kate has been reported being reduced to tears.
Why not just trim it all back, once good sturdy, dependable Elizabeth is gone, and join the 21st century?
__________________
Response to a comment on the many stories about Meghan in the Daily Mail:
Not to defend the Daily Mail, a pretty sleazy operation, but Meghan yearned for fame and attention, and she’s got it.
She perhaps only wanted the good part of the attention, but you can’t pick and choose.
If she believes she’s abused, she’s very naive.
Which wouldn’t surprise me at all. Her entire raging ambition to become a Royal does say something of the same thing.
It’s one heck of a meaningless job being a Duchess, and she had to marry Harry to get it. That’s quite a price, as we know from years of exposure to his unbalanced behavior, tantrums, and banal conversation.
Meghan also rates lots of attention because she is so strikingly beautiful. Beauty like that always attracts lots of press.
JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: THE WAY RELIGIOUS DIVISIONS FLOW OVER INTO POLITICAL AND GEOPOLITICAL DIVISIONS - MUSLIM WORLD NOT UNIQUE - EUROPE'S HISTORY FOR CENTURIES WAS MARKED BY THE CATHOLIC-PROTESTANT DIVISION - AND PEOPLE OFTEN FORGET THAT "THE WEST" IS ABOUT CONTROL OF OTHER PLACES AND DIVISIONS CAN ASSIST IN THE TASK - POSTED TO AN ARTICLE REMINDING THAT MANY MIDDLE EASTERN INFLUENCES LABELLED AS "IRANIAN" ARE REALLY "SHIA"
John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY PATRICK COCKBURN IN THE UNZ REVIEW
“The West Is Still Buying into Nonsense About Iran’s Regional Influence”
I welcome Cockburn’s analysis as a needed corrective to much Western thinking, and I especially like this:
“Much the same nonsense is being uttered today about an Iranian hand being behind anything the west and its allies do not like in the Middle East. When they claim to be targeting Iran, they are in practice targeting the Shia community as a whole – a mistake for which both they and the Shia are likely to pay a high price.”
But I do think many aspects of the Middle East’s religious division are just naturally blurred into politics and geopolitics, and perhaps it is unavoidable.
I regard the Shia-Sunni divide as something akin to the Catholic-Protestant one that dominated Europe from the 16th century.
It permeated all of European politics and generated wars. There was bloodshed for a very long period in Europe, actually a bit of it extending right into the 20th century in places like Northern Ireland.
The division drove all kinds of violence in a number of European countries, including wars of succession and massacres, and it was a key part in Britain's "Glorious Revolution."
It played an important role, often now unrecognized, in America’s revolt when Britain put parts of what would become the American Midwest, then regarded as Indian Reserve lands, under the jurisdiction of Quebec Province with the Quebec Act of 1774.
America’s colonials resented the well-intentioned Act deeply, both for cutting off their opportunities to exploit those lands and for putting them under the control of “popery,” a word very much heard then in New England.
So, for Europeans, political and religious matters were largely indistinguishable and remained that way for centuries.
If you understand that history, you do not look at the Muslim world's situation as anything mysterious or unusual.
It likely reflects a basic division in human psychological make-up when we see vast religious movements divide into factions, just as people divide themselves into political factions. Indeed, in Britain’s early 18th century Parliament, there were no political parties as we know them, and when they began to emerge, they were called factions.
I think I might identify the Shia a bit with the early Protestants in that some of what they represent is regarded as revolutionary or at least upsetting to the old order.
In any event, a lot of what is said about Muslims in the West is inaccurate and self-serving.
Remember, “the West” is really a global imperial power, the United States, with loyal satraps like Britain or France scurrying along behind.
The primary interest of “the West” in the world at large is control, not understanding or cooperation.
So, the Muslim world’s natural divisions are exploited towards control.
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY PATRICK COCKBURN IN THE UNZ REVIEW
“The West Is Still Buying into Nonsense About Iran’s Regional Influence”
I welcome Cockburn’s analysis as a needed corrective to much Western thinking, and I especially like this:
“Much the same nonsense is being uttered today about an Iranian hand being behind anything the west and its allies do not like in the Middle East. When they claim to be targeting Iran, they are in practice targeting the Shia community as a whole – a mistake for which both they and the Shia are likely to pay a high price.”
But I do think many aspects of the Middle East’s religious division are just naturally blurred into politics and geopolitics, and perhaps it is unavoidable.
I regard the Shia-Sunni divide as something akin to the Catholic-Protestant one that dominated Europe from the 16th century.
It permeated all of European politics and generated wars. There was bloodshed for a very long period in Europe, actually a bit of it extending right into the 20th century in places like Northern Ireland.
The division drove all kinds of violence in a number of European countries, including wars of succession and massacres, and it was a key part in Britain's "Glorious Revolution."
It played an important role, often now unrecognized, in America’s revolt when Britain put parts of what would become the American Midwest, then regarded as Indian Reserve lands, under the jurisdiction of Quebec Province with the Quebec Act of 1774.
America’s colonials resented the well-intentioned Act deeply, both for cutting off their opportunities to exploit those lands and for putting them under the control of “popery,” a word very much heard then in New England.
So, for Europeans, political and religious matters were largely indistinguishable and remained that way for centuries.
If you understand that history, you do not look at the Muslim world's situation as anything mysterious or unusual.
It likely reflects a basic division in human psychological make-up when we see vast religious movements divide into factions, just as people divide themselves into political factions. Indeed, in Britain’s early 18th century Parliament, there were no political parties as we know them, and when they began to emerge, they were called factions.
I think I might identify the Shia a bit with the early Protestants in that some of what they represent is regarded as revolutionary or at least upsetting to the old order.
In any event, a lot of what is said about Muslims in the West is inaccurate and self-serving.
Remember, “the West” is really a global imperial power, the United States, with loyal satraps like Britain or France scurrying along behind.
The primary interest of “the West” in the world at large is control, not understanding or cooperation.
So, the Muslim world’s natural divisions are exploited towards control.
JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: ASSASSINATION IS AN ACT OF WAR AND THE ONLY REASON ANYONE WOULD THINK OTHERWISE
John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY PHILIP GIRALDI IN THE UNZ REVIEW
“America the Repugnant. Assassinating Foreign Leaders Is an Act of War”
"Assassinating Foreign Leaders Is an Act of War"
Absolutely, there is no other logical or ethical way of looking at it.
But when you function as a global imperial power, treating entire countries as pawns and putting everyone's interests after your own, it's not hard to see how you could start thinking of political murder in god-like terms of just tidying up a bit.
It's part of the sickness of empire, the near total corruption that comes with near total power.
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY PHILIP GIRALDI IN THE UNZ REVIEW
“America the Repugnant. Assassinating Foreign Leaders Is an Act of War”
"Assassinating Foreign Leaders Is an Act of War"
Absolutely, there is no other logical or ethical way of looking at it.
But when you function as a global imperial power, treating entire countries as pawns and putting everyone's interests after your own, it's not hard to see how you could start thinking of political murder in god-like terms of just tidying up a bit.
It's part of the sickness of empire, the near total corruption that comes with near total power.
Friday, January 10, 2020
JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: MORE AMERICAN OBFUSCATION ABOUT WHAT THE MURDERED IRANIAN GENERAL SOLEIMANI WAS DOING - WE KNOW EXACTLY WHAT HE WAS DOING - HE WAS EVEN TRAVELLING ON A DIPLOMATIC PASSPORT - AMERICA'S "GULF OF TONKIN INCIDENT SYNDROME" IN MATTERS OF EMPIRE
John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY JEFF SCHOGOL IN CHECKPOINT ASIA
“The Top US Military Officer: We’ll Provide Evidence of an Imminent Iranian Attack One Day”
https://www.anti-empire.com/the-top-us-military-officer-well-provide-evidence-of-an-imminent-iranian-attack-one-day/
All of the Pentagon and White House people just keep talking in circles, and that's because what they are claiming is nonsense.
We indeed know what Iran’s General Soleimani was doing, and it was something entirely different than Trump's blubbering claims about planning attacks.
He was dealing with Iran's response to a proposal from Saudi Arabia concerned with de-escalating their relations. He was even travelling on a diplomatic passport.
It was virtually the opposite kind of activity the White House claims.
Washington has never gotten away from the Gulf of Tonkin Incident kind of thinking in all its ugly imperial affairs abroad.
For those who don't recall, a phantom hostile incident in the Gulf of Tonkin off the coast of Vietnam became the basis for Lyndon Johnson's starting the massive American holocaust in Vietnam, a war in which America killed an estimated 3 million people, many of them in the most horrible fashion.
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY JEFF SCHOGOL IN CHECKPOINT ASIA
“The Top US Military Officer: We’ll Provide Evidence of an Imminent Iranian Attack One Day”
https://www.anti-empire.com/the-top-us-military-officer-well-provide-evidence-of-an-imminent-iranian-attack-one-day/
All of the Pentagon and White House people just keep talking in circles, and that's because what they are claiming is nonsense.
We indeed know what Iran’s General Soleimani was doing, and it was something entirely different than Trump's blubbering claims about planning attacks.
He was dealing with Iran's response to a proposal from Saudi Arabia concerned with de-escalating their relations. He was even travelling on a diplomatic passport.
It was virtually the opposite kind of activity the White House claims.
Washington has never gotten away from the Gulf of Tonkin Incident kind of thinking in all its ugly imperial affairs abroad.
For those who don't recall, a phantom hostile incident in the Gulf of Tonkin off the coast of Vietnam became the basis for Lyndon Johnson's starting the massive American holocaust in Vietnam, a war in which America killed an estimated 3 million people, many of them in the most horrible fashion.
JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: THE NEXT DECADE IS CHINA'S - THE MAGNIFICENT BELT AND ROAD INITIATIVE GIVES CHINA A GALAXY OF PROJECTS FOR FUTURE WORK WHILE ESTABLISHING RELATIONSHIPS AROUND THE GLOBE AND CHANGING THE WORLD'S ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY
John Chuckman
COMMENT TO AN ARTICLE BY MARTIN JACQUES IN CHECKPOINT ASIA
“This Decade Belonged to China. So Will the Next One
"The rise of China has provoked an existential crisis in the US and Europe that will last for the rest of this century"
https://www.anti-empire.com/this-decade-belonged-to-china-so-will-the-next-one/
A very good survey piece. Well written.
With the Belt and Road Initiative (the New Silk Road), China has established close relationships all over the world and has a galaxy of projects to support some economic growth for many years to come.
As well, it is as altering the world’s transportation network and economic geography in China’s favor.
The Chinese resemble skilful farmers sowing seed on many new fields, fields in some cases reclaimed from past abusive practices by the United States.
As that magnificent project proceeds, I believe the contrast between the new working-with-China experience and the former experience of working with an arrogant America in decline will become sharper and much to China's advantage.
I'm just surprised it appeared in The Guardian, a paper for which I lost all respect with its various dishonest campaigns of disinformation and propaganda - eg, Corbyn as an anti-Semite, the Skripal Affair as something genuine, extreme Russo-phobia, anti-Iran prejudice, and general tight support for American and Israeli activities in the Middle East.
For some interesting insight, read the second part of the following with its eye-opening details about American treatment of the government of Iraq, a country that has signed big new infrastructure agreements with China. The kind of American behavior discussed just couldn't provide a greater contrast with China.
https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2020/01/08/john-chuckman-comment-almost-planned-the-interim-outcome-of-trumps-stupid-assassination-of-a-national-hero-and-irans-reprisal-missile-attack-although-it-aint-over-til-its-over-eye-openi/
COMMENT TO AN ARTICLE BY MARTIN JACQUES IN CHECKPOINT ASIA
“This Decade Belonged to China. So Will the Next One
"The rise of China has provoked an existential crisis in the US and Europe that will last for the rest of this century"
https://www.anti-empire.com/this-decade-belonged-to-china-so-will-the-next-one/
A very good survey piece. Well written.
With the Belt and Road Initiative (the New Silk Road), China has established close relationships all over the world and has a galaxy of projects to support some economic growth for many years to come.
As well, it is as altering the world’s transportation network and economic geography in China’s favor.
The Chinese resemble skilful farmers sowing seed on many new fields, fields in some cases reclaimed from past abusive practices by the United States.
As that magnificent project proceeds, I believe the contrast between the new working-with-China experience and the former experience of working with an arrogant America in decline will become sharper and much to China's advantage.
I'm just surprised it appeared in The Guardian, a paper for which I lost all respect with its various dishonest campaigns of disinformation and propaganda - eg, Corbyn as an anti-Semite, the Skripal Affair as something genuine, extreme Russo-phobia, anti-Iran prejudice, and general tight support for American and Israeli activities in the Middle East.
For some interesting insight, read the second part of the following with its eye-opening details about American treatment of the government of Iraq, a country that has signed big new infrastructure agreements with China. The kind of American behavior discussed just couldn't provide a greater contrast with China.
https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2020/01/08/john-chuckman-comment-almost-planned-the-interim-outcome-of-trumps-stupid-assassination-of-a-national-hero-and-irans-reprisal-missile-attack-although-it-aint-over-til-its-over-eye-openi/
Thursday, January 09, 2020
JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS ON TRUMP'S IRAN CRISIS - THE CONTINUING DANGER TRUMP REPRESENTS - AMERICAN IMPERIAL DECLINE - ISRAEL'S DELETERIOUS INFLUENCE - AMERICA'S DISMAL FAILURES IN THE MIDDLE EAST
John Chuckman
COMMENT - ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS ON TRUMP’S IRAN CRISIS AND AMERICAN IMPERIAL DECLINE
The American empire has overreached itself in recent decades, in places like Afghanistan and Syria and Libya and Somalia and Yemen and even in Iraq. America has basically lost all of those wars in the sense of having created enduring unstable conditions and great hostilities, not peace or stability and not democratic values. All those places are wrecks with smoldering conflicts continuing and outcomes uncertain. The Neocon Wars of the Middle East have been a disaster, but Trump is closely tuned into the Neocons. He is literally surrounded with them.
Even though America clearly won the Iraq War, a war advocated for directly by Ariel Sharon, with a victory memorialized in the blood of a million Iraqis, it was a kind of technical victory, because the key result was something completely unwanted, that is, greatly strengthening Iran as a regional power. Iraq was a war that should not have been fought, but Washington was incapable of seeing that as a result of both its imperial hubris and its vulnerability to Israel’s tireless efforts to influence. Iraq’s invasion has been called by a number of experts America’s greatest strategic blunder ever.
Just as many Israelis live in a kind of foggy fantasy of sentimental Biblical names and notions combined with efforts to recreate American middle-class urban society in a hostile environment - Ozzie and Harriet on the Desert – all floated on an immense Noah’s Flood of American subsidies, public and private, many of them do not realize the full impact of what they do in the region. They believe America is there to bail them out no matter how badly they behave towards others and create unnecessary hostilities. America can flatten Iraq. American can topple Syria. And America can topple Iran. The thinking is terribly wrong and self-indulgent and dangerous. And people subservient to the Neocons, like Trump, are immersed in it.
Trump now seems perilously close to repeating the mistake of Iraq, only on a far grander scale, with Iran. There are many powerful Israeli interests who want to see America go to war with Iran, something they realize is beyond the capacity of Israel despite its rhetoric and threats. The assassination of General Soleimani seems almost certainly to have been a trap designed for that purpose, and Trump just thoughtlessly walked into it. If Iran had not proceeded in the carefully considered way that it did, giving Trump room to slip out of the trap, and without being humiliated, we would have a big new war.
The set of events carries important lessons. First, there is the remarkable steadiness and rationality displayed by Iran’s leaders. They are responsible for avoiding a gigantic, unnecessary conflict.
Second, I think are the unmistakable signs of American imperial decline. Iraq has asked America to leave. Iran has promised new pressures for America to leave. Syria is also effectively telling the United States to leave. America has been reduced to sophomoric jokes about stealing oil, and its treatment of the Iran nuclear agreement has made its word for many close to worthless. It’s pretty hard to stay in a place where the people don’t want you and where long and costly efforts have yielded little of worth. Especially as the near-term future promises nothing but continued relative economic decline for the United States with the privileged position of the dollar gradually disappearing.
Trump has listened to Israel’s bad advice time after time. And the assassination was just the most explosive instance. You do not increase stability or security with such acts. You actually create instabilities that weren’t there before. They may not all be matters to appear in tomorrow’s headlines, but they are like new fault lines in an earthquake-prone zone.
In the end, despite all the bluster, Trump was unwilling to retaliate against Iran. Of course, Iran made it as easy as possible for him with its orchestrated missile attack, an event perhaps better described as an orchestrated missile demonstration. Trump now looks more ineffectual and less in command than ever. The only people looking to him are special interests in Israel, dangerous ones that view him as a big piñata to be poked at with sticks for gifts, and the degree to which he listens to them measures our risk of war.
Trump is likely aware that Iran holds some important cards. No, Iran cannot possibly defeat the United States in a war, but Iran has never sought a war.
Perhaps I shouldn’t speak of “cannot possibly defeat the United States.” We must never forget what the tough and resourceful people of Vietnam achieved vis-à-vis the United States. Wars can go on for very long periods of time, and sometimes a less wealthy, less complex society is able to absorb the costs and demands better than a wealthier, privileged opponent. There have been other instances of that. Note that the United States has been killing peasants for eighteen years in Afghanistan, and the Taleban still controls major parts of the country, as much or more of it than when America started.
If you invade or attack someone without a clear and powerful purpose, you are condemning yourself to an unhappy future. It’s like trying to pour concrete without a mold. And the United States has done that time after time, confident just in its arrogant sense of overwhelming superiority. It is foolish, and absolutely no one is more subject to the illusion of American superiority and exceptional status than Donald Trump.
First, a war means Iran’s hurling fleets of missiles against Israel. It has the missiles. The missiles are very capable, as has been demonstrated several times. They are highly accurate. Iran has literally thousands at its disposal. Underground bunkers packed with them. So, unavoidably, the reason for starting a war against Iran, Israel’s intense and unwarranted hostility against Iran, will result in large-scale destruction of Israel.
The effort to build a deterrence has been one of Iran’s national projects, especially after the ghastly Iraq-Iran War, 1980-88, inflicted upon it.
That deterrent capacity is why Trump wants to strip Iran of its missiles, demanding, as he does, that missile technology be added to the terms of his notion of a new nuclear agreement. But that is like asking Iran to disarm itself and doing so at gunpoint. It will not happen.
Israel makes a rather compact target, meaning a determined opponent can saturate it. Iran can accurately target most of what is worth targeting in Israel. Israel’s anti-missile defenses would be overwhelmed. Besides past incidents demonstrated those defenses fail in part even under the highly favorable circumstances of a limited number of unsophisticated missiles.
Iran can also do the same thing to a number of American bases in the region.
Places like the Saudi oil facilities and the facilities of the Strait of Hormuz could quickly be rendered totally inoperable, bringing the world’s oil economy to a desperate crisis.
Iran several times has demonstrated how resourceful it can be at unconventional or guerilla operations. Any war with the United States would see these capabilities used fully.
Those and other hard facts do make starting a war with Iran an act of madness.
But if you put yourself into a bad situation deliberately, as Trump does, madness can easily happen.
COMMENT - ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS ON TRUMP’S IRAN CRISIS AND AMERICAN IMPERIAL DECLINE
The American empire has overreached itself in recent decades, in places like Afghanistan and Syria and Libya and Somalia and Yemen and even in Iraq. America has basically lost all of those wars in the sense of having created enduring unstable conditions and great hostilities, not peace or stability and not democratic values. All those places are wrecks with smoldering conflicts continuing and outcomes uncertain. The Neocon Wars of the Middle East have been a disaster, but Trump is closely tuned into the Neocons. He is literally surrounded with them.
Even though America clearly won the Iraq War, a war advocated for directly by Ariel Sharon, with a victory memorialized in the blood of a million Iraqis, it was a kind of technical victory, because the key result was something completely unwanted, that is, greatly strengthening Iran as a regional power. Iraq was a war that should not have been fought, but Washington was incapable of seeing that as a result of both its imperial hubris and its vulnerability to Israel’s tireless efforts to influence. Iraq’s invasion has been called by a number of experts America’s greatest strategic blunder ever.
Just as many Israelis live in a kind of foggy fantasy of sentimental Biblical names and notions combined with efforts to recreate American middle-class urban society in a hostile environment - Ozzie and Harriet on the Desert – all floated on an immense Noah’s Flood of American subsidies, public and private, many of them do not realize the full impact of what they do in the region. They believe America is there to bail them out no matter how badly they behave towards others and create unnecessary hostilities. America can flatten Iraq. American can topple Syria. And America can topple Iran. The thinking is terribly wrong and self-indulgent and dangerous. And people subservient to the Neocons, like Trump, are immersed in it.
Trump now seems perilously close to repeating the mistake of Iraq, only on a far grander scale, with Iran. There are many powerful Israeli interests who want to see America go to war with Iran, something they realize is beyond the capacity of Israel despite its rhetoric and threats. The assassination of General Soleimani seems almost certainly to have been a trap designed for that purpose, and Trump just thoughtlessly walked into it. If Iran had not proceeded in the carefully considered way that it did, giving Trump room to slip out of the trap, and without being humiliated, we would have a big new war.
The set of events carries important lessons. First, there is the remarkable steadiness and rationality displayed by Iran’s leaders. They are responsible for avoiding a gigantic, unnecessary conflict.
Second, I think are the unmistakable signs of American imperial decline. Iraq has asked America to leave. Iran has promised new pressures for America to leave. Syria is also effectively telling the United States to leave. America has been reduced to sophomoric jokes about stealing oil, and its treatment of the Iran nuclear agreement has made its word for many close to worthless. It’s pretty hard to stay in a place where the people don’t want you and where long and costly efforts have yielded little of worth. Especially as the near-term future promises nothing but continued relative economic decline for the United States with the privileged position of the dollar gradually disappearing.
Trump has listened to Israel’s bad advice time after time. And the assassination was just the most explosive instance. You do not increase stability or security with such acts. You actually create instabilities that weren’t there before. They may not all be matters to appear in tomorrow’s headlines, but they are like new fault lines in an earthquake-prone zone.
In the end, despite all the bluster, Trump was unwilling to retaliate against Iran. Of course, Iran made it as easy as possible for him with its orchestrated missile attack, an event perhaps better described as an orchestrated missile demonstration. Trump now looks more ineffectual and less in command than ever. The only people looking to him are special interests in Israel, dangerous ones that view him as a big piñata to be poked at with sticks for gifts, and the degree to which he listens to them measures our risk of war.
Trump is likely aware that Iran holds some important cards. No, Iran cannot possibly defeat the United States in a war, but Iran has never sought a war.
Perhaps I shouldn’t speak of “cannot possibly defeat the United States.” We must never forget what the tough and resourceful people of Vietnam achieved vis-à-vis the United States. Wars can go on for very long periods of time, and sometimes a less wealthy, less complex society is able to absorb the costs and demands better than a wealthier, privileged opponent. There have been other instances of that. Note that the United States has been killing peasants for eighteen years in Afghanistan, and the Taleban still controls major parts of the country, as much or more of it than when America started.
If you invade or attack someone without a clear and powerful purpose, you are condemning yourself to an unhappy future. It’s like trying to pour concrete without a mold. And the United States has done that time after time, confident just in its arrogant sense of overwhelming superiority. It is foolish, and absolutely no one is more subject to the illusion of American superiority and exceptional status than Donald Trump.
First, a war means Iran’s hurling fleets of missiles against Israel. It has the missiles. The missiles are very capable, as has been demonstrated several times. They are highly accurate. Iran has literally thousands at its disposal. Underground bunkers packed with them. So, unavoidably, the reason for starting a war against Iran, Israel’s intense and unwarranted hostility against Iran, will result in large-scale destruction of Israel.
The effort to build a deterrence has been one of Iran’s national projects, especially after the ghastly Iraq-Iran War, 1980-88, inflicted upon it.
That deterrent capacity is why Trump wants to strip Iran of its missiles, demanding, as he does, that missile technology be added to the terms of his notion of a new nuclear agreement. But that is like asking Iran to disarm itself and doing so at gunpoint. It will not happen.
Israel makes a rather compact target, meaning a determined opponent can saturate it. Iran can accurately target most of what is worth targeting in Israel. Israel’s anti-missile defenses would be overwhelmed. Besides past incidents demonstrated those defenses fail in part even under the highly favorable circumstances of a limited number of unsophisticated missiles.
Iran can also do the same thing to a number of American bases in the region.
Places like the Saudi oil facilities and the facilities of the Strait of Hormuz could quickly be rendered totally inoperable, bringing the world’s oil economy to a desperate crisis.
Iran several times has demonstrated how resourceful it can be at unconventional or guerilla operations. Any war with the United States would see these capabilities used fully.
Those and other hard facts do make starting a war with Iran an act of madness.
But if you put yourself into a bad situation deliberately, as Trump does, madness can easily happen.
Wednesday, January 08, 2020
JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: ALMOST PLANNED - THE INTERIM OUTCOME OF TRUMP'S STUPID ASSASSINATION OF A NATIONAL HERO AND IRAN'S REPRISAL MISSILE ATTACK - ALTHOUGH IT AIN'T OVER 'TIL IT'S OVER - EYE-OPENING INSIDER STUFF ABOUT TRUMP'S TREATMENT OF IRAQ
John Chuckman
COMMENT ON THE OUTCOME OF IRAN’S MISSILE STRIKE - ALMOST PLANNED
Various bits of information suggest we may have an end, at least for the interim, to the crisis caused by Trump’s stupidly blundering decision to kill Iran’s General Soleimani. They suggest something which seems almost choreographed behind the scenes.
The United States was given advance warning by Iraq of the missile attack, although not provided with the names of the bases to be struck. That allowed Americans to seek safety. It would have been necessary for Iran to warn Iraq ahead since American facilities are generally contained within Iraqi military facilities.
Iran is said to have chosen its targets to avoid American casualties, and aerial photos of the damage suggest missiles with precision guidance were used. Of course, with precision missiles, results just the opposite were possible, so a message was communicated to the United States even if no one was killed.
Reports from Iran say eighty Americans were killed, but governments all make such claims when addressing their own people, especially very angry people.
It is telling that, despite an enormous volume of bluster and threats and crude words, Trump did not launch a counter-attack. He bellowed about additional sanctions, but that has become as regular with him as eating breakfast.
Iran’s President Rouhani said Americans leaving the region would be Iran’s goal in retaliation for the assassination.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Khamenei described the missile attacks as “open” and “proportional,” the kind of language used in international law and diplomacy to describe a “legal” armed response, as in self-defense.
Khamenei warned that it would not be the only response. It represented the opening of a long and quieter campaign to kick the United States out of the Middle East, with more responses coming in the weeks ahead.
SOME INTERESTING BACKGROUND INFORMATION ABOUT HOW AMERICA ACTUALLY TREATS OTHER COUNTRIES BEHIND THE SCENES WITH EYE-OPENING DETAILS OF TRUMP'S METHODS
Iraq’s Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mehdi, who has already resigned his office but serves in an interim capacity until a new appointment is made, has provided some fascinating details about recent relations between Iraq and the United States, the kind of stuff to which the public rarely is exposed.
He said that American infrastructure projects such as electricity grid destroyed in the war were deliberately being left unfinished. America invaded in 2003, and many Iraqis still suffer from the destroyed infrastructure. The United States was demanding one-half of the country’s oil revenue as the price for finishing the work.
The Prime Minister refused, and, instead, went to China and signed an agreement there to have the job finished. Trump called him and demanded he cancel the agreement with China, or Trump would see to it that huge demonstrations were launched in Iraq against the Prime Minister.
The Prime Minister again refused, and the promised huge demonstrations did appear.
Trump called again and threatened that Marine snipers on tall buildings would start targeting the crowds and Iraqi security forces. That of course was part of the technique used during the Ukraine coup of 2013-14, which began with protests and waves of shootings in Kiev’s Maidan Square.
The Prime Minister again refused Trump, but then handed in his resignation.
That is the kind of authoritative, first-hand account Americans rarely receive about the activities of their government abroad.
It is shameful. After all, the United States illegally invaded Iraq. It deliberately destroyed the infrastructure. Even in a “legal” war, it is accepted practice for a larger, more powerful victor to pay some reparations so the losing country isn’t left helpless on its back.
But here we are, seventeen years after America’s bloody invasion – in the war and surrounding events, about a million Iraqis were killed and in this once most-advanced country in the Middle East, millions were left without employment and essential services - and not only is the infrastructure still not repaired, but the President of the United States is attempting extortion around finishing it.
He then threatens the country with civil disorder and sniper killings because China has agreed to do the job on terms acceptable to Iraq, China of course, as part of its massive Belt and Road Initiation - the New Silk Road – being ready to undertake infrastructure projects almost anywhere.
Such are the dark inner workings of empire, and I doubt anyone can make a meaningful distinction between them and the former activities of Al Capone in Chicago.
Knowing Trump operates in this way, why would anyone be surprised that he would make a casual decision to kill a famous man regarded as a hero by millions and create havoc?
COMMENT ON THE OUTCOME OF IRAN’S MISSILE STRIKE - ALMOST PLANNED
Various bits of information suggest we may have an end, at least for the interim, to the crisis caused by Trump’s stupidly blundering decision to kill Iran’s General Soleimani. They suggest something which seems almost choreographed behind the scenes.
The United States was given advance warning by Iraq of the missile attack, although not provided with the names of the bases to be struck. That allowed Americans to seek safety. It would have been necessary for Iran to warn Iraq ahead since American facilities are generally contained within Iraqi military facilities.
Iran is said to have chosen its targets to avoid American casualties, and aerial photos of the damage suggest missiles with precision guidance were used. Of course, with precision missiles, results just the opposite were possible, so a message was communicated to the United States even if no one was killed.
Reports from Iran say eighty Americans were killed, but governments all make such claims when addressing their own people, especially very angry people.
It is telling that, despite an enormous volume of bluster and threats and crude words, Trump did not launch a counter-attack. He bellowed about additional sanctions, but that has become as regular with him as eating breakfast.
Iran’s President Rouhani said Americans leaving the region would be Iran’s goal in retaliation for the assassination.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Khamenei described the missile attacks as “open” and “proportional,” the kind of language used in international law and diplomacy to describe a “legal” armed response, as in self-defense.
Khamenei warned that it would not be the only response. It represented the opening of a long and quieter campaign to kick the United States out of the Middle East, with more responses coming in the weeks ahead.
SOME INTERESTING BACKGROUND INFORMATION ABOUT HOW AMERICA ACTUALLY TREATS OTHER COUNTRIES BEHIND THE SCENES WITH EYE-OPENING DETAILS OF TRUMP'S METHODS
Iraq’s Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mehdi, who has already resigned his office but serves in an interim capacity until a new appointment is made, has provided some fascinating details about recent relations between Iraq and the United States, the kind of stuff to which the public rarely is exposed.
He said that American infrastructure projects such as electricity grid destroyed in the war were deliberately being left unfinished. America invaded in 2003, and many Iraqis still suffer from the destroyed infrastructure. The United States was demanding one-half of the country’s oil revenue as the price for finishing the work.
The Prime Minister refused, and, instead, went to China and signed an agreement there to have the job finished. Trump called him and demanded he cancel the agreement with China, or Trump would see to it that huge demonstrations were launched in Iraq against the Prime Minister.
The Prime Minister again refused, and the promised huge demonstrations did appear.
Trump called again and threatened that Marine snipers on tall buildings would start targeting the crowds and Iraqi security forces. That of course was part of the technique used during the Ukraine coup of 2013-14, which began with protests and waves of shootings in Kiev’s Maidan Square.
The Prime Minister again refused Trump, but then handed in his resignation.
That is the kind of authoritative, first-hand account Americans rarely receive about the activities of their government abroad.
It is shameful. After all, the United States illegally invaded Iraq. It deliberately destroyed the infrastructure. Even in a “legal” war, it is accepted practice for a larger, more powerful victor to pay some reparations so the losing country isn’t left helpless on its back.
But here we are, seventeen years after America’s bloody invasion – in the war and surrounding events, about a million Iraqis were killed and in this once most-advanced country in the Middle East, millions were left without employment and essential services - and not only is the infrastructure still not repaired, but the President of the United States is attempting extortion around finishing it.
He then threatens the country with civil disorder and sniper killings because China has agreed to do the job on terms acceptable to Iraq, China of course, as part of its massive Belt and Road Initiation - the New Silk Road – being ready to undertake infrastructure projects almost anywhere.
Such are the dark inner workings of empire, and I doubt anyone can make a meaningful distinction between them and the former activities of Al Capone in Chicago.
Knowing Trump operates in this way, why would anyone be surprised that he would make a casual decision to kill a famous man regarded as a hero by millions and create havoc?
Tuesday, January 07, 2020
JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: SAUDI ARABIA AND THE UNITED STATES AND IRAN AND ISRAEL - WHAT REALLY DRIVES THIS SET OF RELATIONSHIPS? - WE NOW HAVE THE VERY OPPOSITE OF ENDING SENSELESS WARS IN THE MIDDLE EAST UNDER TRUMP'S LEADERSHIP - HE NEEDLESSLY EXPOSES US TO THE EXTREME DANGER OF THE BIGGEST WAR OF ALL THROUGH HIS TIRELESS SERVICE TO ISRAEL'S SPECIAL INTERESTS - WAS GENERAL SOLEIMANI'S ASSASSINATION AN ISRAEL SPECIAL PROJECT?
John Chuckman
EXPANSION OF A COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY CRAIG MURRAY IN CONSORTIUM NEWS
“The USA’s Slavish Saudi Allegiance Against Iran
“The assassination of a top Iranian general reflects a U.S. foreign policy tied to Saudi interests”
I like Craig Murray as a writer, but this piece comes as quite a disappointment.
It focuses on Saudi Arabia as being at the center of America's hostility towards Iran. Israel gets slight mention.
I believe Mr. Murray has put the cart before the horse.
The attention America lavishes on Saudi Arabia has much to do with Saudi Arabia's special relations with Israel, relations which have no long history. Saudi Arabia, before 9/11 was the source of a lot of hostility towards Israel, in everything from publications and speeches to support for various groups.
You find none of that now. It began to quiet down after 9/11 when the Saudi Royals realized how vulnerable they were to American invasion, a much more attractive invasion prospect than the hardscrabble land of Afghanistan. America could easily have manipulated facts like the (purported) nationalities of many of the plane hijackers (Saudi) into a reason to invade and steal the greatest quantity of oil ever stolen.
The Crown Prince took the new direction in Saudi international affairs even further. He made it his focus, recognizing opportunities for personal aggrandizement. Nothing good happens to anyone in the Middle East who does not happily support American policy, and that includes supporting America’s privileged imperial colony at the east end of the Mediterranean.
As we’ve seen in the Neocon Wars, those deemed not adequately warm towards Israel tend to get bombed and paved over.
As an interesting side note, Trump, the candidate who sensibly spoke against the wars in the Middle East, has now so completely compromised himself serving Israel’s special interests - interests often in conflict both with America’s own long-term interests and with the rule of international law - that it seems just impossible America can be extricated from the mess. Indeed, we now have the real possibility of the biggest war of all breaking out, and what has happened was completely avoidable.
Just look at Israel making no objection to the biggest arms deal in history recently between the Crown Prince and Trump. That could not have happened years ago. Israel’s influence wouldn’t have allowed the deal even to be proposed. Israel dearly loves the Crown Prince, and that has a lot to do with Trump’s smiling, back-slapping support for the tyrant.
The Crown Prince earned his bloody laurels with projects largely related to Israeli interests, projects such as the terror in Syria, with his generous support of mercenary, fake-jihadi outfits like al-Nusra and ISIS, groups whose main purpose has been to attack governments the United States and Israel wanted hurt.
Genuine jihadi types would, of course, instead be attacking Israel and the corrupt feudal princes of Saudi Arabia, but, somehow, magically, they never do.
Projects like bombing Yemen or arresting the visiting Prime Minister of Lebanon and forcing his resignation. Saudi Arabia frequently finances American schemes in the region, and I’m sure that whenever Netanyahu needs a tidy sum under the table for a dirty project, he has only to ask.
The real reason for Israel's seething, relentless hatred of Iran comes from the fact that that country, with a population the size of Germany's, is just naturally at the center of the region’s affairs and arrangements, a position Israel arrogantly regards as its rightful place. After all, it does represent the American empire, doesn’t it?
The immense blunder of America’s Iraq invasion, heavily lobbied for by Israel’s Ariel Sharon, ended up making Iran relatively even more important in the region by eliminating a strong adversary. Saddam Hussein was secular in his viewpoint. Now Iraq is dominated by the politics of a population which is about two-thirds Shia Muslim.
There are influential Israelis who would just love to see America go to war with Iran. Trump’s series of hostilities and humiliations towards Iran for more than a year does tend to work in that direction, or, at least, to create situations where a “happy” accident might happen. Wars do often happen by something being tipped over at a risky moment.
Remember, Iran was the last country listed on the secret Pentagon document General Wesley Clark spoke of seeing years ago, countries that were to be toppled in upcoming years.
The assassination of Iran’s General Soleimani is called an Israeli project by several reliable observers. There is a report that the very target coordinates for the drone were given to its operator by an Israeli. Likely Trump had very little time to make this monumentally stupid decision, having been advised that a brief window of opportunity was open.
EXPANSION OF A COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY CRAIG MURRAY IN CONSORTIUM NEWS
“The USA’s Slavish Saudi Allegiance Against Iran
“The assassination of a top Iranian general reflects a U.S. foreign policy tied to Saudi interests”
I like Craig Murray as a writer, but this piece comes as quite a disappointment.
It focuses on Saudi Arabia as being at the center of America's hostility towards Iran. Israel gets slight mention.
I believe Mr. Murray has put the cart before the horse.
The attention America lavishes on Saudi Arabia has much to do with Saudi Arabia's special relations with Israel, relations which have no long history. Saudi Arabia, before 9/11 was the source of a lot of hostility towards Israel, in everything from publications and speeches to support for various groups.
You find none of that now. It began to quiet down after 9/11 when the Saudi Royals realized how vulnerable they were to American invasion, a much more attractive invasion prospect than the hardscrabble land of Afghanistan. America could easily have manipulated facts like the (purported) nationalities of many of the plane hijackers (Saudi) into a reason to invade and steal the greatest quantity of oil ever stolen.
The Crown Prince took the new direction in Saudi international affairs even further. He made it his focus, recognizing opportunities for personal aggrandizement. Nothing good happens to anyone in the Middle East who does not happily support American policy, and that includes supporting America’s privileged imperial colony at the east end of the Mediterranean.
As we’ve seen in the Neocon Wars, those deemed not adequately warm towards Israel tend to get bombed and paved over.
As an interesting side note, Trump, the candidate who sensibly spoke against the wars in the Middle East, has now so completely compromised himself serving Israel’s special interests - interests often in conflict both with America’s own long-term interests and with the rule of international law - that it seems just impossible America can be extricated from the mess. Indeed, we now have the real possibility of the biggest war of all breaking out, and what has happened was completely avoidable.
Just look at Israel making no objection to the biggest arms deal in history recently between the Crown Prince and Trump. That could not have happened years ago. Israel’s influence wouldn’t have allowed the deal even to be proposed. Israel dearly loves the Crown Prince, and that has a lot to do with Trump’s smiling, back-slapping support for the tyrant.
The Crown Prince earned his bloody laurels with projects largely related to Israeli interests, projects such as the terror in Syria, with his generous support of mercenary, fake-jihadi outfits like al-Nusra and ISIS, groups whose main purpose has been to attack governments the United States and Israel wanted hurt.
Genuine jihadi types would, of course, instead be attacking Israel and the corrupt feudal princes of Saudi Arabia, but, somehow, magically, they never do.
Projects like bombing Yemen or arresting the visiting Prime Minister of Lebanon and forcing his resignation. Saudi Arabia frequently finances American schemes in the region, and I’m sure that whenever Netanyahu needs a tidy sum under the table for a dirty project, he has only to ask.
The real reason for Israel's seething, relentless hatred of Iran comes from the fact that that country, with a population the size of Germany's, is just naturally at the center of the region’s affairs and arrangements, a position Israel arrogantly regards as its rightful place. After all, it does represent the American empire, doesn’t it?
The immense blunder of America’s Iraq invasion, heavily lobbied for by Israel’s Ariel Sharon, ended up making Iran relatively even more important in the region by eliminating a strong adversary. Saddam Hussein was secular in his viewpoint. Now Iraq is dominated by the politics of a population which is about two-thirds Shia Muslim.
There are influential Israelis who would just love to see America go to war with Iran. Trump’s series of hostilities and humiliations towards Iran for more than a year does tend to work in that direction, or, at least, to create situations where a “happy” accident might happen. Wars do often happen by something being tipped over at a risky moment.
Remember, Iran was the last country listed on the secret Pentagon document General Wesley Clark spoke of seeing years ago, countries that were to be toppled in upcoming years.
The assassination of Iran’s General Soleimani is called an Israeli project by several reliable observers. There is a report that the very target coordinates for the drone were given to its operator by an Israeli. Likely Trump had very little time to make this monumentally stupid decision, having been advised that a brief window of opportunity was open.
Sunday, January 05, 2020
JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: AMERICA'S DISTURBING MODERN HISTORY WITH IRAN - AND NOW WE CAN ADD STATE TERROR - A FEW WORDS ON MURDERED GENERAL QASEM SOLEIMANI - IRAQ IS ORDERING THE AMERICAN MILITARY OUT - A BIG STEP IF IT CAN BE ENFORCED AGAINST THOSE STILL HAPPILY STEALING OIL IN SYRIA - PUTIN'S REACTION TO THE SET OF THREATS AGAINST IRAN WILL BE IMPORTANT
John Chuckman
EXPANSION OF COMMENTS POSTED TO AN ARTICLE ON CBC NEWS
“Iran abandons nuclear deal limits as thousands mourn general killed by U.S.”
My total sympathy is with this ancient society, one of earth’s great cradles of civilization much like China or Egypt, and a modern country which has started no wars. They are a lovely people, but they have suffered a great deal from outside interference.
Since the Revolution of 1979, ending the Shah’s government, the United States has engaged in 40 years of pure hatred against Iran, and it has taken many ugly actions along the way, including encouraging and supplying Saddam Hussein’s Iraq during the terrible long war (1980-88) inflicted upon Iran.
About a million died, including thousands from the poison gas Iraq used heavily, know-how and components having been supplied from either the United States or one of its European allies. The ruthless idea was to compensate for Iraq’s much smaller population in a war intended to punish or destroy Iran’s revolutionary government.
Please remember, the Iranian revolution happened in the historical context of an American-engineered coup, 1953, having toppled the elected government of Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh and put into place the truly brutal Shah with his SAVAK secret police. It is well documented how SAVAK would pull out the fingernails of many of its prisoners.
America supported the Shah’s government for decades. The Shah was the kind of foreign leader the Pentagon and CIA much value. He was their “man in the Middle East.” Washington has never forgiven the government of Iran for the Shah’s loss of power. Israel, too, liked the Shah and detested the new government, making many false accusations against it.
The Iranians have always avoided rushing into war. They prepare for the possibility under the immense threats they have received – and, of course, not just threats, given the Iran-Iraq War, the shoot-down of a civilian airliner by an American warship, and numerous terrorist activities from Israel - but they have not started any war.
This new American act of state terror does demand a response. It will be carefully considered and may be a while coming.
I read a good deal of foreign press, and the fact is that the General was greatly admired and regarded as a hero by millions of people in the region.
He was a serious part of defeating ISIS. The General was a genuine hero in the Iraq-launched war against Iran, and he was much admired for his work with the Quds Force, an unconventional warfare branch of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.
Millions of ordinary people regarded him as legendary. Other military figures valued his talent.
It is said that he was one of the most gifted and fearless commanders of the era. His presence inspired soldiers, and his mind was brilliant.
_______________________
The Iraqi Parliament just voted to expel the American Military
Now, we'll have to see whether the decision can be enforced.
We are dealing with a country, the United States, which takes muscular pride in behaviors like stealing Syrian oil or starving Iraqi children.
The American position in Syria is likely not sustainable without the troops based in Iraq.
It would be a great tribute to the General if his death did bring down that whole house of cards.
Remember, too, the United States killed a second important commander, the Deputy Commander of the PMU (Popular Mobilization Units), someone reporting to the Iraqi Prime Minister, as well as, previously, clusters of PMU soldiers, soldiers regarded as an integral part of Iraq’s military.
The entire set of American acts could hardly be more outrageous, and now Trump is repeating threats about bombing 52 targets in Iran, including cultural ones.
It will be interesting to watch Putin's reaction.
Russia is not a formal ally of Iran’s, but they have worked together in Syria, and there are steps he can take, steps ranging from small to large.
Supplying Iran with the extremely sophisticated S-400 anti-aircraft/anti-missile missiles plus teams of Russia trainers could be a possibility. It would protect important facilities from aerial bombardment as well as make a statement. America and Israel have reluctant respect for this weapon.
Putin does need Iran in his struggle with the United States – as does China - and cannot, I think, just let it go to American predation, as he regretfully did Libya in 2011. But he is constrained in his choices, as well as always being cautious.
EXPANSION OF COMMENTS POSTED TO AN ARTICLE ON CBC NEWS
“Iran abandons nuclear deal limits as thousands mourn general killed by U.S.”
My total sympathy is with this ancient society, one of earth’s great cradles of civilization much like China or Egypt, and a modern country which has started no wars. They are a lovely people, but they have suffered a great deal from outside interference.
Since the Revolution of 1979, ending the Shah’s government, the United States has engaged in 40 years of pure hatred against Iran, and it has taken many ugly actions along the way, including encouraging and supplying Saddam Hussein’s Iraq during the terrible long war (1980-88) inflicted upon Iran.
About a million died, including thousands from the poison gas Iraq used heavily, know-how and components having been supplied from either the United States or one of its European allies. The ruthless idea was to compensate for Iraq’s much smaller population in a war intended to punish or destroy Iran’s revolutionary government.
Please remember, the Iranian revolution happened in the historical context of an American-engineered coup, 1953, having toppled the elected government of Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh and put into place the truly brutal Shah with his SAVAK secret police. It is well documented how SAVAK would pull out the fingernails of many of its prisoners.
America supported the Shah’s government for decades. The Shah was the kind of foreign leader the Pentagon and CIA much value. He was their “man in the Middle East.” Washington has never forgiven the government of Iran for the Shah’s loss of power. Israel, too, liked the Shah and detested the new government, making many false accusations against it.
The Iranians have always avoided rushing into war. They prepare for the possibility under the immense threats they have received – and, of course, not just threats, given the Iran-Iraq War, the shoot-down of a civilian airliner by an American warship, and numerous terrorist activities from Israel - but they have not started any war.
This new American act of state terror does demand a response. It will be carefully considered and may be a while coming.
I read a good deal of foreign press, and the fact is that the General was greatly admired and regarded as a hero by millions of people in the region.
He was a serious part of defeating ISIS. The General was a genuine hero in the Iraq-launched war against Iran, and he was much admired for his work with the Quds Force, an unconventional warfare branch of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.
Millions of ordinary people regarded him as legendary. Other military figures valued his talent.
It is said that he was one of the most gifted and fearless commanders of the era. His presence inspired soldiers, and his mind was brilliant.
_______________________
The Iraqi Parliament just voted to expel the American Military
Now, we'll have to see whether the decision can be enforced.
We are dealing with a country, the United States, which takes muscular pride in behaviors like stealing Syrian oil or starving Iraqi children.
The American position in Syria is likely not sustainable without the troops based in Iraq.
It would be a great tribute to the General if his death did bring down that whole house of cards.
Remember, too, the United States killed a second important commander, the Deputy Commander of the PMU (Popular Mobilization Units), someone reporting to the Iraqi Prime Minister, as well as, previously, clusters of PMU soldiers, soldiers regarded as an integral part of Iraq’s military.
The entire set of American acts could hardly be more outrageous, and now Trump is repeating threats about bombing 52 targets in Iran, including cultural ones.
It will be interesting to watch Putin's reaction.
Russia is not a formal ally of Iran’s, but they have worked together in Syria, and there are steps he can take, steps ranging from small to large.
Supplying Iran with the extremely sophisticated S-400 anti-aircraft/anti-missile missiles plus teams of Russia trainers could be a possibility. It would protect important facilities from aerial bombardment as well as make a statement. America and Israel have reluctant respect for this weapon.
Putin does need Iran in his struggle with the United States – as does China - and cannot, I think, just let it go to American predation, as he regretfully did Libya in 2011. But he is constrained in his choices, as well as always being cautious.
Saturday, January 04, 2020
JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: "IT IS A TALE TOLD BY AN IDIOT, FULL OF SOUND AND FURY, SIGNIFYING NOTHING" - AMERICA'S RECENT ACTIONS AGAINST IRAN AND OTHER STATES - TWO DELUSIONS DRIVE AMERICA LIKE AN ENRAGED FANATIC - AND THERE IS NO ESCAPE FROM THE MANY DANGERS THEY THREATEN
John Chuckman
COMMENT ON AMERICA’S ACTIONS AGAINST IRAN AND OTHER STATES
“It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
I can’t imagine better words to describe Trump’s actions against Iran – all of them, from tearing-up the working international nuclear treaty to imposing war-like sanctions, which indeed hurt millions of children and poor people, and to threatening with warships and nuclear-capable bombers, and now to assassinating the second-most important man in the country, a national hero, a vicious act that demands a response.
Is it even possible to conceive of a more passionately destructive set of actions, unprovoked and without reason except to satisfy an urge to tell others what to do? How on earth can a nation call itself “great,” as America so frequently does, when that is how it behaves?
In what way did any of it make any part of the world’s people better off or safer? It added only pain and suffering and fear to a great many lives and created threats of war that hadn’t existed. And it hugely decreased the future capacity of the world’s nations to trust the word and good faith of the United States.
Of course, that set of acts is only the worst of a bad lot. There was the desperate attempt to topple a twice-elected government in Venezuela, going to such extremes as turning off everyone’s electricity a couple of times, blockading the country including its receipt of medical necessities, working to collapse its major industries, and literally stealing many of the country’s assets abroad.
Almost at the same time, another coup, a successful one, was staged in Bolivia, toppling a popular, elected government, one elected multiple times.
New threats and warnings were issued to Nicaragua and Cuba, both countries which have suffered horribly under past American belligerence.
A number of other horrors from the past decade go right on generating death and misery, too – misery in the broken ruins of Libya, once the best place in Africa to live with all public amenities from good water to education supplied free, misery in the never-recovered catastrophe of Iraq, in poor Yemen, and in the beautiful land of Syria plagued by paid outsiders, mercenaries, supplied with many terrible weapons, who kill and destroy on a large scale.
And everyone in Ukraine and in the rest of Europe pays a price for America’s coup there – a civil war has killed thousands, the country’s economy collapsed under an incompetent installed government, its population has seriously declined as people leave for jobs elsewhere, huge sets of war-like sanctions have cut billions in healthy trade between Europe and Russia, regular threatening military displays and large-scale exercises are conducted right on Russia’s border – these last supposedly over a Russian “invasion” of Ukraine which never occurred.
The press and political speeches are filled with threatening rhetoric and demands for big new spending on the means of destruction – all in the face of no threat and indeed a situation in Russia everyone in the West would have deliriously cheered back in the 1970s, a reasonable, temperate government ready to do business with anyone and call them “partner.” But Europe and Russia can’t do so basic and necessary a thing as buy-and-sell a commodity like natural gas without immense pressures being brought against them by the United States.
We have a vicious trade war with China, predicated on no more principle than that “We think you’ve been far too successful in your stunning rise [the rise of China being the greatest and most important human achievement of our age], and we want different arrangements which take some of that success away from you, and we’ll hit you with every sanction and tariff we can think of until you give them to us.”
That marks greatness being displayed by America?
There is not one of those activities that the world would not be better off without. Safer, more prosperous, more secure, happier, holding more optimism for the future – in other words, virtually all of the activity abroad by the United States for years represents a dead-weight loss for humanity and the community of nations. That’s quite an achievement. And the cost in dollars has been colossal.
Of course, I blame Trump, but, as I’ve said before, it certainly is not the work of just Trump, as hopeless and vicious and ignorant as he is. There have been no efforts by other branches of America’s government to halt or hinder the craziness. They are all complicit.
Please note, the candidates for the Democratic Presidential nomination, none of them except one unlikely one, even recognize this terrible problem or how to address it. So, for sure, as is usual in the costly stage shows called American elections, when it’s over, no matter which side wins, you will find the same situation prevailing. Just more rude noise and bellowing with Trump, and less without Trump.
America seeks what is not possible given its relative decline in the face of global growth and change and progress. And it seeks it fired by a burning, fanatical belief that it holds an exceptional place in God’s creation.
I fear that deadly combination of American delusions has the potential to do far greater harm than it already has.
COMMENT ON AMERICA’S ACTIONS AGAINST IRAN AND OTHER STATES
“It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
I can’t imagine better words to describe Trump’s actions against Iran – all of them, from tearing-up the working international nuclear treaty to imposing war-like sanctions, which indeed hurt millions of children and poor people, and to threatening with warships and nuclear-capable bombers, and now to assassinating the second-most important man in the country, a national hero, a vicious act that demands a response.
Is it even possible to conceive of a more passionately destructive set of actions, unprovoked and without reason except to satisfy an urge to tell others what to do? How on earth can a nation call itself “great,” as America so frequently does, when that is how it behaves?
In what way did any of it make any part of the world’s people better off or safer? It added only pain and suffering and fear to a great many lives and created threats of war that hadn’t existed. And it hugely decreased the future capacity of the world’s nations to trust the word and good faith of the United States.
Of course, that set of acts is only the worst of a bad lot. There was the desperate attempt to topple a twice-elected government in Venezuela, going to such extremes as turning off everyone’s electricity a couple of times, blockading the country including its receipt of medical necessities, working to collapse its major industries, and literally stealing many of the country’s assets abroad.
Almost at the same time, another coup, a successful one, was staged in Bolivia, toppling a popular, elected government, one elected multiple times.
New threats and warnings were issued to Nicaragua and Cuba, both countries which have suffered horribly under past American belligerence.
A number of other horrors from the past decade go right on generating death and misery, too – misery in the broken ruins of Libya, once the best place in Africa to live with all public amenities from good water to education supplied free, misery in the never-recovered catastrophe of Iraq, in poor Yemen, and in the beautiful land of Syria plagued by paid outsiders, mercenaries, supplied with many terrible weapons, who kill and destroy on a large scale.
And everyone in Ukraine and in the rest of Europe pays a price for America’s coup there – a civil war has killed thousands, the country’s economy collapsed under an incompetent installed government, its population has seriously declined as people leave for jobs elsewhere, huge sets of war-like sanctions have cut billions in healthy trade between Europe and Russia, regular threatening military displays and large-scale exercises are conducted right on Russia’s border – these last supposedly over a Russian “invasion” of Ukraine which never occurred.
The press and political speeches are filled with threatening rhetoric and demands for big new spending on the means of destruction – all in the face of no threat and indeed a situation in Russia everyone in the West would have deliriously cheered back in the 1970s, a reasonable, temperate government ready to do business with anyone and call them “partner.” But Europe and Russia can’t do so basic and necessary a thing as buy-and-sell a commodity like natural gas without immense pressures being brought against them by the United States.
We have a vicious trade war with China, predicated on no more principle than that “We think you’ve been far too successful in your stunning rise [the rise of China being the greatest and most important human achievement of our age], and we want different arrangements which take some of that success away from you, and we’ll hit you with every sanction and tariff we can think of until you give them to us.”
That marks greatness being displayed by America?
There is not one of those activities that the world would not be better off without. Safer, more prosperous, more secure, happier, holding more optimism for the future – in other words, virtually all of the activity abroad by the United States for years represents a dead-weight loss for humanity and the community of nations. That’s quite an achievement. And the cost in dollars has been colossal.
Of course, I blame Trump, but, as I’ve said before, it certainly is not the work of just Trump, as hopeless and vicious and ignorant as he is. There have been no efforts by other branches of America’s government to halt or hinder the craziness. They are all complicit.
Please note, the candidates for the Democratic Presidential nomination, none of them except one unlikely one, even recognize this terrible problem or how to address it. So, for sure, as is usual in the costly stage shows called American elections, when it’s over, no matter which side wins, you will find the same situation prevailing. Just more rude noise and bellowing with Trump, and less without Trump.
America seeks what is not possible given its relative decline in the face of global growth and change and progress. And it seeks it fired by a burning, fanatical belief that it holds an exceptional place in God’s creation.
I fear that deadly combination of American delusions has the potential to do far greater harm than it already has.
Friday, January 03, 2020
JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: TRUMP'S BEHAVIOR TOWARDS IRAN IS INSANE - BUT IT WILL NOT SPARK WAR - IRAN'S LEADERS ARE CAUTIOUS CHESS PLAYERS - PAYBACK WILL BE CAREFULLY CONSIDERED - FORTY YEARS OF OPEN AMERICAN HOSTILITIES DEMONSTRATE THAT - PERHAPS IT'S TIME FOR IRAN TO RECONSIDER NUCLEAR WEAPONS?
John Chuckman
EXPANSION OF COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY JOE LAURIA IN CONSORTIUM NEWS
“Fear of a Major Mideast War
“Fears of a major war in the Middle East exploded Thursday night with the U.S. assassination of arguably the second most powerful man in Iran” [General Qassem Soleimani]
It appears Trump has given Israel control of some portion of the American military in addition to major parts of Palestine.
This is classic Israeli extrajudicial killing, an Israeli practice for over seventy years (a recent book claimed Israel is responsible for more than 2,700 of them), but now America takes responsibility on its behalf.
Just as with the Neocon Wars, all for Israel's benefit and all done so that Israel does not have to take direct blame for the immense violence it generates in the region.
Hard to know what Trump’s thinking here is. War before an election does not seem a good idea, especially if you are a candidate who has failed so far to achieve anything of substance around past promises to reduce America’s involvement in Mideast wars.
Remember that a crucial slice of the votes that put the man into office was not from his prime political base, the “pick-up truck and Jesus” set, but from those concerned with peace and better relations with Russia.
But prodding Iran to attack could allow Trump to play commander-in-chief defending the country. And Americans just instinctively support even the worst possible presidents at war. You might call it the George Bush Effect. The frightened puppy grabbing the nearest pantleg after a loud noise.
Of course, now when it comes to campaign contributions from American Oligarchs whose chief political concern is what Israel wants, Trump’s coffers will be overflowing.
I suspect Iran will take its time and carefully plan a response, and that response may not be clear and unambiguous, and it might be multi-faceted and done over time.
The men running Iran are careful men, none of them impetuous. Chess players. The United States has more than forty years of bellowing, open hostility towards the country, and we have not seen Iran’s leaders act foolishly in all that time despite many provocations.
I do not believe Iran will be driven to war - that would be playing the Israeli-American game with Israeli-American rules.
Clandestine and hybrid efforts, that is what Iran is best at. They have serious capabilities these days, and the United States, with all its bases abroad, has great vulnerabilities.
Of course, there's also the option of Iran’s just leaving the nuclear agreement (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA) that Trump idiotically tore-up and proceeding quietly with weapons development. Iran, despite Israel’s dishonest claims, never has pursued weapons development, only efficient use of nuclear power and legitimate scientific research. Perhaps it is time to reconsider that policy
Iran has substantial deposits of uranium, and the enriched-uranium bomb is simpler to build than the plutonium bomb. Maybe there is some possibility for covert assistance from North Korea, another country treated like crap by Trump’s Washington Braintrust?
EXPANSION OF COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY JOE LAURIA IN CONSORTIUM NEWS
“Fear of a Major Mideast War
“Fears of a major war in the Middle East exploded Thursday night with the U.S. assassination of arguably the second most powerful man in Iran” [General Qassem Soleimani]
It appears Trump has given Israel control of some portion of the American military in addition to major parts of Palestine.
This is classic Israeli extrajudicial killing, an Israeli practice for over seventy years (a recent book claimed Israel is responsible for more than 2,700 of them), but now America takes responsibility on its behalf.
Just as with the Neocon Wars, all for Israel's benefit and all done so that Israel does not have to take direct blame for the immense violence it generates in the region.
Hard to know what Trump’s thinking here is. War before an election does not seem a good idea, especially if you are a candidate who has failed so far to achieve anything of substance around past promises to reduce America’s involvement in Mideast wars.
Remember that a crucial slice of the votes that put the man into office was not from his prime political base, the “pick-up truck and Jesus” set, but from those concerned with peace and better relations with Russia.
But prodding Iran to attack could allow Trump to play commander-in-chief defending the country. And Americans just instinctively support even the worst possible presidents at war. You might call it the George Bush Effect. The frightened puppy grabbing the nearest pantleg after a loud noise.
Of course, now when it comes to campaign contributions from American Oligarchs whose chief political concern is what Israel wants, Trump’s coffers will be overflowing.
I suspect Iran will take its time and carefully plan a response, and that response may not be clear and unambiguous, and it might be multi-faceted and done over time.
The men running Iran are careful men, none of them impetuous. Chess players. The United States has more than forty years of bellowing, open hostility towards the country, and we have not seen Iran’s leaders act foolishly in all that time despite many provocations.
I do not believe Iran will be driven to war - that would be playing the Israeli-American game with Israeli-American rules.
Clandestine and hybrid efforts, that is what Iran is best at. They have serious capabilities these days, and the United States, with all its bases abroad, has great vulnerabilities.
Of course, there's also the option of Iran’s just leaving the nuclear agreement (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA) that Trump idiotically tore-up and proceeding quietly with weapons development. Iran, despite Israel’s dishonest claims, never has pursued weapons development, only efficient use of nuclear power and legitimate scientific research. Perhaps it is time to reconsider that policy
Iran has substantial deposits of uranium, and the enriched-uranium bomb is simpler to build than the plutonium bomb. Maybe there is some possibility for covert assistance from North Korea, another country treated like crap by Trump’s Washington Braintrust?
Monday, December 30, 2019
JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: WHY NATIONALISM IS NOT A POSITIVE FORCE IN HUMAN AFFAIRS - AMERICA'S VERSION CALLED "PATRIOTISM" SHOULD PROVIDE A WARNING WITH ITS ALMOST RELIGIOUS NATURE AND INTOLERANCE AND READINESS TO PUT ITS LAW ABOVE EVERYONE ELSE'S - AND SOME OUTFITS IT SUPPORTS IN UKRAINE DO FRIGHTENINGLY RESEMBLE 1930s BROWNSHIRTS - THE UNPLEASANT LOYALTY OATH FOR CHILDREN - FOOTBALL AND THE NATIONAL ANTHEM
John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY PATRICK COCKBURN IN THE UNZ REVIEW
"Nationalism Is Transforming the Politics of the British Isles"
I think Patrick Cockburn is right about that, and I much regret the fact.
I do not see nationalism as a positive force in human affairs, even when it is not extreme. I am taking “nationalism” as something a little more serious than just reasonable affection for your country. It is an organizing principle, a motive for laws and policies, something associated with sets of loyalties and disloyalties, and can be even more.
Apart from other unhelpful tendencies, nationalism represents a kind of atomizing force in international affairs. At its most extreme, it represents fear and even hatred, organized fear and hatred.
I know it is highly idealistic, but I’ve always been fond of the H. G. Wells quote, “Our true nationality is mankind.”
There is a tendency for many people to treat nationalism as a kind of secular religion, one with its own tenets, rituals and demands and sacred texts.
In the United States, where it is called Patriotism – yes, it is often capitalized – we see that to an extraordinary degree.
There are a number of biblical texts scholars pore over – including the Constitution, Bill of Rights, Declaration of Independence, Federalist Papers, Washington’s Farewell Address, etc. – a host of rituals, including various salutes and recitations, some saint-like figures, including a martyr in Nathan Hale, and even a Judas Iscariot figure in Benedict Arnold. We find scholars using terms like ”present at the creation” when discussing the Constitutional Convention. The term “original intent” is used often to discuss the Supreme Court interpreting Constitutional law.
I do think the American experience with nationalism offers powerful warnings about how poisonous it can be. The country is on a new international crusade to enforce its will over others. It insists that America’s rules and laws are more important than anyone else’s rules and laws, whether those of other countries or of international organizations and treaties. All the great wars and horrors of the past reflect exactly that kind of thinking.
We are all somewhat immunized, or believe we are, through our popular culture, against the darkest extremes of nationalism Europe experienced in the 1930s. But in Ukraine today we see such extreme political organizations as the Azov Battalion and the Right Sector, resembling 1930s Brownshirts in a frightening number of details. And we should reflect on the fact that such gangs were supported by none other than the United States for its coup against an elected government in Ukraine.
ADDED NOTE ON AMERICA’S FORM OF NATIONALISM COMPLETE WITH ITS LOYALTY OATH IN SCHOOLS AND ANTHEM AT FOOTBALL GAMES
America has not just an anthem and flag and golden eagles and marching bands, but what amounts to a kind of loyalty oath, the Pledge of Allegiance, which most American school children are required to recite each morning. “Loyalty oath” is the right term owing to its origin.
Written in the 1890s - just before a huge new surge of American imperialism abroad with the Spanish-American War – the Pledge was only officially adopted in the thick of WWII, 1942, with all its accompanying fears and loyalty concerns.
No one in a free country should be expected to take a loyalty oath, much less children.
The quasi-religious nature of the Pledge is underlined by the words “under God,” added in 1954, during a national hysteria over “godless communism” and the Cold War. This in a country whose Constitution is supposed to guarantee freedom of religion, a concept which of course includes freedom from religion.
I suppose no one can make you say the Pledge, but social pressure is a powerful force. Social pressure around religious-tinged matters can become downright dangerous.
Look at the recent national turmoil in America over some football players who respectfully knelt during the playing of the national anthem as a quiet protest against police violence, a legitimate concern in a country where police on average kill three citizens each day.
Vehement arguments were made over so simple a gesture and even the President and Vice president got involved. All kinds of demands were made for punishing players.
What’s the national anthem even doing at a sports event where people pay good money to be entertained? I would be tempted to say it is the anthem which is out of place, not a respectful gesture of protest, for surely kneeling is respectful.
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY PATRICK COCKBURN IN THE UNZ REVIEW
"Nationalism Is Transforming the Politics of the British Isles"
I think Patrick Cockburn is right about that, and I much regret the fact.
I do not see nationalism as a positive force in human affairs, even when it is not extreme. I am taking “nationalism” as something a little more serious than just reasonable affection for your country. It is an organizing principle, a motive for laws and policies, something associated with sets of loyalties and disloyalties, and can be even more.
Apart from other unhelpful tendencies, nationalism represents a kind of atomizing force in international affairs. At its most extreme, it represents fear and even hatred, organized fear and hatred.
I know it is highly idealistic, but I’ve always been fond of the H. G. Wells quote, “Our true nationality is mankind.”
There is a tendency for many people to treat nationalism as a kind of secular religion, one with its own tenets, rituals and demands and sacred texts.
In the United States, where it is called Patriotism – yes, it is often capitalized – we see that to an extraordinary degree.
There are a number of biblical texts scholars pore over – including the Constitution, Bill of Rights, Declaration of Independence, Federalist Papers, Washington’s Farewell Address, etc. – a host of rituals, including various salutes and recitations, some saint-like figures, including a martyr in Nathan Hale, and even a Judas Iscariot figure in Benedict Arnold. We find scholars using terms like ”present at the creation” when discussing the Constitutional Convention. The term “original intent” is used often to discuss the Supreme Court interpreting Constitutional law.
I do think the American experience with nationalism offers powerful warnings about how poisonous it can be. The country is on a new international crusade to enforce its will over others. It insists that America’s rules and laws are more important than anyone else’s rules and laws, whether those of other countries or of international organizations and treaties. All the great wars and horrors of the past reflect exactly that kind of thinking.
We are all somewhat immunized, or believe we are, through our popular culture, against the darkest extremes of nationalism Europe experienced in the 1930s. But in Ukraine today we see such extreme political organizations as the Azov Battalion and the Right Sector, resembling 1930s Brownshirts in a frightening number of details. And we should reflect on the fact that such gangs were supported by none other than the United States for its coup against an elected government in Ukraine.
ADDED NOTE ON AMERICA’S FORM OF NATIONALISM COMPLETE WITH ITS LOYALTY OATH IN SCHOOLS AND ANTHEM AT FOOTBALL GAMES
America has not just an anthem and flag and golden eagles and marching bands, but what amounts to a kind of loyalty oath, the Pledge of Allegiance, which most American school children are required to recite each morning. “Loyalty oath” is the right term owing to its origin.
Written in the 1890s - just before a huge new surge of American imperialism abroad with the Spanish-American War – the Pledge was only officially adopted in the thick of WWII, 1942, with all its accompanying fears and loyalty concerns.
No one in a free country should be expected to take a loyalty oath, much less children.
The quasi-religious nature of the Pledge is underlined by the words “under God,” added in 1954, during a national hysteria over “godless communism” and the Cold War. This in a country whose Constitution is supposed to guarantee freedom of religion, a concept which of course includes freedom from religion.
I suppose no one can make you say the Pledge, but social pressure is a powerful force. Social pressure around religious-tinged matters can become downright dangerous.
Look at the recent national turmoil in America over some football players who respectfully knelt during the playing of the national anthem as a quiet protest against police violence, a legitimate concern in a country where police on average kill three citizens each day.
Vehement arguments were made over so simple a gesture and even the President and Vice president got involved. All kinds of demands were made for punishing players.
What’s the national anthem even doing at a sports event where people pay good money to be entertained? I would be tempted to say it is the anthem which is out of place, not a respectful gesture of protest, for surely kneeling is respectful.
Sunday, December 29, 2019
JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: WHEN FACTS AND LOGIC NO LONGER MATTER - HOW AMERICA'S POWER ESTABLISHMENT WORKS AT HOME AND ABROAD - WHY IT CANNOT BE CHANGED BY AMERICANS - CHANGE IS COMING THOUGH - FROM OUTSIDE - RESPONSE TO AN ARTICLE BY THE LATE ROBERT PARRY
John Chuckman
EXPANSION OF A COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY THE LATE ROBERT PARRY REPUBLISHED IN CONSORTIUM NEWS
“An apology & Explanation, Two Years On”
https://consortiumnews.com/2019/12/29/an-apology-and-explanation-two-years-on/
“Facts and logic no longer mattered. It was a case of using whatever you had to diminish and destroy your opponent.”
Indeed.
And I think that reflects the general decline and corruption of the United States’ establishment. The observations are not just things found in the country’s politics or journalism.
Look at the long record abroad of wars and coups, killing millions and serving no good purpose, plus all the lying and hypocrisy required to support them.
Are they the handiwork of a sound, productive society? Of enlightened leadership? Of strong national values? Respect for the rule of law?
America's establishment – which consists of both political parties plus their financial supporters and the corporate press plus other institutional helpers - really no longer has a lot worth saying to anyone.
It does pretty much as it pleases with little regard for the bulk of American citizens and none at all for the other 95% of humanity.
Only the existence of a small number of other fairly powerful states prevents it becoming completely tyrannical.
It is a global version of what the French Aristocracy was in the late 18th century, an era of immense privilege and abuse.
Any notions of dedication to democratic ideals are fanciful. People with that kind of power don’t give it up, either through elections or principled acts.
And agencies like the Pentagon and the CIA and the FBI operate under principles the polar opposite of democracy. The more pervasive and powerful they are in a society, the less it can possibly be democratic.
America’s establishment serves a plutocracy, the people who pay its bills.
At home, it runs an elaborate and costly political system which has some appearance of democracy but with a basic unspoken rule that most of the establishment and all of the plutocratic corporations and individuals cannot be replaced or adversely affected.
There is a corollary rule that indeed nothing in the society is to be greatly changed.
But in its imperial efforts abroad – its wars, its coups, its sanctioning, its threatening – even that pretence of democracy is dropped.
How can you be democratic and treat countless millions and their governments as though they were your property? Perhaps the attitude that you can is a holdover from America’s long years of slavery?
The parties impose empire on the world and shovel money at destructive, completely anti-democratic institutions like the Pentagon and CIA and FBI who are their willing helpers.
Change will only come with decline and replacement by new global arrangements whose sketchy outlines already are to be seen.
EXPANSION OF A COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY THE LATE ROBERT PARRY REPUBLISHED IN CONSORTIUM NEWS
“An apology & Explanation, Two Years On”
https://consortiumnews.com/2019/12/29/an-apology-and-explanation-two-years-on/
“Facts and logic no longer mattered. It was a case of using whatever you had to diminish and destroy your opponent.”
Indeed.
And I think that reflects the general decline and corruption of the United States’ establishment. The observations are not just things found in the country’s politics or journalism.
Look at the long record abroad of wars and coups, killing millions and serving no good purpose, plus all the lying and hypocrisy required to support them.
Are they the handiwork of a sound, productive society? Of enlightened leadership? Of strong national values? Respect for the rule of law?
America's establishment – which consists of both political parties plus their financial supporters and the corporate press plus other institutional helpers - really no longer has a lot worth saying to anyone.
It does pretty much as it pleases with little regard for the bulk of American citizens and none at all for the other 95% of humanity.
Only the existence of a small number of other fairly powerful states prevents it becoming completely tyrannical.
It is a global version of what the French Aristocracy was in the late 18th century, an era of immense privilege and abuse.
Any notions of dedication to democratic ideals are fanciful. People with that kind of power don’t give it up, either through elections or principled acts.
And agencies like the Pentagon and the CIA and the FBI operate under principles the polar opposite of democracy. The more pervasive and powerful they are in a society, the less it can possibly be democratic.
America’s establishment serves a plutocracy, the people who pay its bills.
At home, it runs an elaborate and costly political system which has some appearance of democracy but with a basic unspoken rule that most of the establishment and all of the plutocratic corporations and individuals cannot be replaced or adversely affected.
There is a corollary rule that indeed nothing in the society is to be greatly changed.
But in its imperial efforts abroad – its wars, its coups, its sanctioning, its threatening – even that pretence of democracy is dropped.
How can you be democratic and treat countless millions and their governments as though they were your property? Perhaps the attitude that you can is a holdover from America’s long years of slavery?
The parties impose empire on the world and shovel money at destructive, completely anti-democratic institutions like the Pentagon and CIA and FBI who are their willing helpers.
Change will only come with decline and replacement by new global arrangements whose sketchy outlines already are to be seen.
JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: NOTES ON THE INSANITY GRIPPING THE UNITED STATES - RUSSO-PHOBIA AND MEANINGLESS WARS - WITH THOUGHTS ON THE NATURE OF PROPAGANDA
John Chuckman
NOTES ON THE INSANITY GRIPPING THE UNITED STATES – RUSSOPHOBIA AND MEANINGLESS WARS WITH THOUGHTS ON THE NATURE OF PROPAGANDA
[Note to readers: this is a collection of thoughts loosely related to the title above rather than a finished essay]
In all American mainline publications, you will find Russo-phobia. It comes in many forms and variations, just as is always the case with propaganda and disinformation.
That sense of its being vaguely “everywhere” should serve as a warning for what is a universal characteristic of a certain kind of propaganda. Call it synthetic gossip.
Such propaganda follows the logic of big advertisers who want you to be as continuously aware of their products as it is possible to make you. That is why the Internet now is plagued by advertising, a longstanding reality of print and broadcast journalism and we see “product placement” in the films we pay to see.
That warning largely goes unheeded, just as for most people advertising saturating everything is just taken for granted as part of the atmosphere, part of the air they breathe.
And being “part of the air everyone breathes” has its real effects. In the early days of television, when advertising began to appear in everyone’s living room, often by the deceptively open and honest face of the star or host of a show, it quickly became apparent how powerful its effects were. Companies noted immediate jumps in sales of advertised products.
It had been so for radio, too, with its intimacy of a friendly, attractive voice listened to closely by families from the comfort of their living-room couches and armchairs, especially at certain evening hours.
But television was even more so with a friendly or sympathetic famous face seen glowing in a dimly-lighted room, almost a form of enchantment. A great deal of early television advertising was of the form of a program’s host or star taking a minute from the work of the program to talk to you directly about something he or she especially liked. Neighborly. Chatty. Cozy.
The approach is no longer “cozy” - Arthur Godfrey or Rod Serling or Bob Cummings taking a moment from his show to focus on you with a friendly word of recommendation - because American society in large part has moved on from “cozy.”
Part of the impact of post-early television technology has been to atomize and de-centralize society, each member of a family, for example, focusing on his or her own interests through various “media’ and devices.
A trace of the early form of personal advertising has survived in the endorsements now so widely used in every written or image format from labels to boxes. Companies pay such people great sums of money for lending their influence with fans or followers to the company’s interest of selling its product.
Advertising works as a form of suggestion in the human mind, and as with suggestion, not everyone is equally susceptible, but virtually everyone is to some degree. That’s why advertising works and why companies spend countless billions of dollars every year to place their “suggestions” “out there,” ideally in forms and in places where the most susceptible population will be exposed.
Propaganda and disinformation work exactly the same way. It is naïve to believe, as I am sure most Americans very much believed during the height of the Cold War, that only in authoritarian states is propaganda used on the people of a country. That belief was itself a suggestion constantly reinforced in television shows, movies, and in magazines and newspapers. It was inescapable.
Over the decades, advertising and propaganda have grown not just in volume but in sophistication and complexity. There is still some room for the simplistic stuff of an earlier time, but the dark arts have largely moved on.
The ideal is to plant a “targeted” suggestion in your mind, one targeted to appeal to your tastes and preferences because such suggestions are the most powerful. And ideally, that is accomplished in a manner so that you are really not aware of what is even taking place.
That is part of why we have in our daily-living environment something almost resembling a cosmic storm among the stars, a storm of cosmic rays and particles of every description bombarding everything entering a region.
That’s a pretty good description of Russo-phobia in the United States. It isn’t just in political speeches, it isn’t just in government and political publications, nor is it only in newspaper articles and television programs, it is virtually everywhere in one form or another, including just the word choices writers and speakers make and the attitudes they strike.
It is the contemporary sophisticated descendent of such rather clumsy propaganda as a television series, “I Led Three Lives” in the 1950s, or “The FBI” of the late 1960s, each episode of which had a brief personal anti-communist message at the end from J. Edgar Hoover himself.
Such shows were only one of countless ways that the “Soviet menace” was made almost tangible inside America. Politicians speeches, newspaper and broadcast story selection and emphasis and editorials kept fueling the fires.
I vividly remember, near the real start of Lyndon Johnson’s Vietnam War, a local newspaper in Chicago, and certainly not the most conservative one, having an editorial with a big bold headline, “The Reds are at the Gates!” That was likely 1964.
Even the assassination of John Kennedy was employed in the cause. Books and articles suggesting Russia was directly or indirectly involved, or that Russian-supported Cuba was, appeared for many years after his death, another measure of the size and intensity of historical anti-Russian activities.
Those suggestions were interesting because the assassination was almost certainly about the opposite of those claims and suggestions. It was about ending Kennedy’s efforts to form new communications with, and policies towards, the Soviet Union and Cuba.
In the case of Cuba, during the early 1960s, an entire industry had become established in the United States to promote hostility and war.
The CIA and FBI had massive investments in everything from radio and newspaper propaganda to gun-running operations, the training of private armies, the writing of manuals, the regular mounting of a range of terrorist operations against Cuba, plus many other activities right down to relationships with mafia interests who were offended by events in Cuba and keen to display their patriotism through cooperation with agencies like CIA and FBI.
All of it was supported by the vast resources of the State Department and other agencies and departments of government. I think few Americans today, younger ones anyway, are aware of the scale of the enterprise. Well, Kennedy very much got in its way, and it was unquestionably elements of that enterprise who killed him.
I do not mean to diverge into the 1960s or the assassination, a subject of great past interest to me.
I’m only touching on the massive legacy of anti-Russian feelings and notions fixed into the very fabric of the country. It still helps support any new anti-Russian initiatives. That always includes the Pentagon and CIA and FBI – it’s just their gut institutional instinct – but it also very much includes American political interests, and from both parties, each party’s emphasis varying over time.
In America it often takes a very long time for the public consensus to reach a conclusion about something you might think should have been apparent fairly early.
But when the establishment sets its mind to doing something, it is virtually impossible to stop it. And it has so many avenues for influencing people and keeping them confused – from corporate newspapers and broadcasters and hack writers and speakers at many institutions to virtually the entire national political establishment of both parties.
Since America is so much less a democracy than many recognize, it really isn’t necessary to fool all the people all the time. Far from it. And the flow of “information” from establishment sources is constant, virtually around the clock. It becomes part of the air you breathe.
Besides, Americans work very hard, and many have little time for becoming informed about such matters as, say, foreign affairs. If they have to trust someone with the idea of truth, it will tend to be the establishment voices easily accessed.
Most hardworking people at any level have little time or inclination to search for and assess different sources of information, as independent or foreign ones. And, truth be told, there are relatively few solid independent voices out there despite the apparent crush we can see on the Internet.
Apart from outfits on the Internet that now function virtually as agents for the establishment – outfits like Facebook, Wikipedia, or Google - the establishment has a good many inauthentic “independent” publications that it keeps going. The CIA always followed that practice with magazines and news sources during the Cold War, and it does still with sites many believe are independent voices.
Major Western European news sources today – as in Britain, France, or Germany – are in virtual lockstep with their American counterparts. If you think the Washington Post is biased - and it is, heavily – try The Guardian or BBC. They are often toe-scrunchingly insincere.
At the higher end of the employment scale in America, up-and-coming corporate and large professional office types work long hours, ten and twelve hours a day is not unusual, and often more than five days a week. It’s just expected of them. It keeps you looking like someone suitable for promotion. And the competition of others looking for promotions reinforces the discipline. When you do get home, there’s all those middle-class obligations, from the kids’ sports teams or music recitals or meetings at school to walking the dog or attending a service club meeting.
At the low end of the employment scale, millions of Americans must work more than one job just to make a go of things. Or, many jobs demand unusual hours and days. On public transit, for example, pretty good-paying working-class jobs, it is common to have “swing shifts,” where you are responsible for two periods each day. Yes, the hours between are free, but they are often effectively not very useful with not enough time to travel home and do anything substantial. These realities of everyday American economic life are I think not widely appreciated abroad.
For all its reputation for individualism, too, the United States in many matters exhibits very little of it. It is a remarkably lockstep society at a certain social level, the level that counts in influencing anything. I’ve never quite understood where that reputation for individualism, as touted in movies or novels, comes from.
The Vietnam War was a decade-long killing spree in defense of an artificially created rump state, South Vietnam, which for its entire existence was run by dictators. Although run by dictators, Americans were steadily given vague assurances that they were fighting for the values of American democracy.
The rump state served almost exclusively the economic and geopolitical interests of the United States. It served as a toehold in Southeast Asia, a kind of colony, a base for American corporations to market their wares. A pied-a-terre for the CIA. Those were the only American values ever really being served.
The big fighting got started not too long after the flimsiest of excuses, the so-called Gulf of Tonkin incident in the summer of 1964. It was a non-event, even as described in the news at the time, and later we learned it was truly a non-event with virtually nothing having happened.
But it’s the kind of thing we’ve seen in so many other places since, and notably in Syria where non-existent poison gas attacks, supposedly by the government, gave America the excuse to hurl fleets of cruise missiles at people it wanted to hurt anyway, the Syrian Army.
Of course, it was the presence of non-existent “weapons of mass destruction” that gave America the excuse to invade Iraq, destroying one of the most advanced societies in the Arab world and ultimately killing about a million people with all the violent aftermath included.
The destruction of Iraq’s basic facilities was so thorough that all these years later many in Iraq do not have dependable drinking water and electricity. The term “Shock and Awe” was coined by the public relations flacks at the Pentagon for the opening massive, overwhelming destruction, a term which gives some idea of the intensity and one, by the way, with clear bloodlines to Hitler’s concept of “Blitzkrieg” (lightning war).
Once America got into heavy fighting in a protracted war, Vietnam became many other things, including a testing ground for new methods of mass killing, an important part of a supply chain into North America for hard drugs, a laboratory for mass CIA terror tactics attempting to influence a population, and a place of endless lies.
While not all the details were apparent to anyone at the start, enough was understood by a good many to question the United States ever seriously entering the war. John Kennedy, who was inclined not to get involved beyond the level of a significant body of military advisors, was replaced by perhaps the most corrupt and ruthless man ever to become President, Lyndon Johnson, who had his chance to be a “war president,” and he wasted very little time getting things moving.
Today, we have among other wars, the war in Afghanistan. The pointlessness of the war in Afghanistan – that 18 years of bombing peasants and strafing wedding parties – was apparent to a good many from the start. I wrote a number of essays on the subject.
At the time of the invasion, I felt it was just a brute need for some kind of vengeance over 9/11, even if they didn’t know who to take vengeance on. I could imagine certain Americans sitting at bars across the country doing a lot of elbow-pumping and hooting and yelling at the first broadcasts of bombs dropping in Afghanistan, something resembling a scene from a big football game.
But the Taliban were not terrorists, the Taliban had nothing to do with 9/11. They are not pleasant people, but that is common enough in poor places where people earn hardscrabble livings. And I think my original view remains valid.
Recent revelations by The Washington Post (which to a certainty reflect someone in high places leaking for political purposes, not the investigative thoroughness of a newspaper which always doggedly supports America’s wars with the same enthusiasm as the late John McCain) tell us that even inside the military, no one understood why the United States was fighting in Afghanistan.
Yet America still fights there.
And will be still after Trump makes his election-campaign withdrawal, whose size is said to amount to a fraction of the troops.
NOTES ON THE INSANITY GRIPPING THE UNITED STATES – RUSSOPHOBIA AND MEANINGLESS WARS WITH THOUGHTS ON THE NATURE OF PROPAGANDA
[Note to readers: this is a collection of thoughts loosely related to the title above rather than a finished essay]
In all American mainline publications, you will find Russo-phobia. It comes in many forms and variations, just as is always the case with propaganda and disinformation.
That sense of its being vaguely “everywhere” should serve as a warning for what is a universal characteristic of a certain kind of propaganda. Call it synthetic gossip.
Such propaganda follows the logic of big advertisers who want you to be as continuously aware of their products as it is possible to make you. That is why the Internet now is plagued by advertising, a longstanding reality of print and broadcast journalism and we see “product placement” in the films we pay to see.
That warning largely goes unheeded, just as for most people advertising saturating everything is just taken for granted as part of the atmosphere, part of the air they breathe.
And being “part of the air everyone breathes” has its real effects. In the early days of television, when advertising began to appear in everyone’s living room, often by the deceptively open and honest face of the star or host of a show, it quickly became apparent how powerful its effects were. Companies noted immediate jumps in sales of advertised products.
It had been so for radio, too, with its intimacy of a friendly, attractive voice listened to closely by families from the comfort of their living-room couches and armchairs, especially at certain evening hours.
But television was even more so with a friendly or sympathetic famous face seen glowing in a dimly-lighted room, almost a form of enchantment. A great deal of early television advertising was of the form of a program’s host or star taking a minute from the work of the program to talk to you directly about something he or she especially liked. Neighborly. Chatty. Cozy.
The approach is no longer “cozy” - Arthur Godfrey or Rod Serling or Bob Cummings taking a moment from his show to focus on you with a friendly word of recommendation - because American society in large part has moved on from “cozy.”
Part of the impact of post-early television technology has been to atomize and de-centralize society, each member of a family, for example, focusing on his or her own interests through various “media’ and devices.
A trace of the early form of personal advertising has survived in the endorsements now so widely used in every written or image format from labels to boxes. Companies pay such people great sums of money for lending their influence with fans or followers to the company’s interest of selling its product.
Advertising works as a form of suggestion in the human mind, and as with suggestion, not everyone is equally susceptible, but virtually everyone is to some degree. That’s why advertising works and why companies spend countless billions of dollars every year to place their “suggestions” “out there,” ideally in forms and in places where the most susceptible population will be exposed.
Propaganda and disinformation work exactly the same way. It is naïve to believe, as I am sure most Americans very much believed during the height of the Cold War, that only in authoritarian states is propaganda used on the people of a country. That belief was itself a suggestion constantly reinforced in television shows, movies, and in magazines and newspapers. It was inescapable.
Over the decades, advertising and propaganda have grown not just in volume but in sophistication and complexity. There is still some room for the simplistic stuff of an earlier time, but the dark arts have largely moved on.
The ideal is to plant a “targeted” suggestion in your mind, one targeted to appeal to your tastes and preferences because such suggestions are the most powerful. And ideally, that is accomplished in a manner so that you are really not aware of what is even taking place.
That is part of why we have in our daily-living environment something almost resembling a cosmic storm among the stars, a storm of cosmic rays and particles of every description bombarding everything entering a region.
That’s a pretty good description of Russo-phobia in the United States. It isn’t just in political speeches, it isn’t just in government and political publications, nor is it only in newspaper articles and television programs, it is virtually everywhere in one form or another, including just the word choices writers and speakers make and the attitudes they strike.
It is the contemporary sophisticated descendent of such rather clumsy propaganda as a television series, “I Led Three Lives” in the 1950s, or “The FBI” of the late 1960s, each episode of which had a brief personal anti-communist message at the end from J. Edgar Hoover himself.
Such shows were only one of countless ways that the “Soviet menace” was made almost tangible inside America. Politicians speeches, newspaper and broadcast story selection and emphasis and editorials kept fueling the fires.
I vividly remember, near the real start of Lyndon Johnson’s Vietnam War, a local newspaper in Chicago, and certainly not the most conservative one, having an editorial with a big bold headline, “The Reds are at the Gates!” That was likely 1964.
Even the assassination of John Kennedy was employed in the cause. Books and articles suggesting Russia was directly or indirectly involved, or that Russian-supported Cuba was, appeared for many years after his death, another measure of the size and intensity of historical anti-Russian activities.
Those suggestions were interesting because the assassination was almost certainly about the opposite of those claims and suggestions. It was about ending Kennedy’s efforts to form new communications with, and policies towards, the Soviet Union and Cuba.
In the case of Cuba, during the early 1960s, an entire industry had become established in the United States to promote hostility and war.
The CIA and FBI had massive investments in everything from radio and newspaper propaganda to gun-running operations, the training of private armies, the writing of manuals, the regular mounting of a range of terrorist operations against Cuba, plus many other activities right down to relationships with mafia interests who were offended by events in Cuba and keen to display their patriotism through cooperation with agencies like CIA and FBI.
All of it was supported by the vast resources of the State Department and other agencies and departments of government. I think few Americans today, younger ones anyway, are aware of the scale of the enterprise. Well, Kennedy very much got in its way, and it was unquestionably elements of that enterprise who killed him.
I do not mean to diverge into the 1960s or the assassination, a subject of great past interest to me.
I’m only touching on the massive legacy of anti-Russian feelings and notions fixed into the very fabric of the country. It still helps support any new anti-Russian initiatives. That always includes the Pentagon and CIA and FBI – it’s just their gut institutional instinct – but it also very much includes American political interests, and from both parties, each party’s emphasis varying over time.
In America it often takes a very long time for the public consensus to reach a conclusion about something you might think should have been apparent fairly early.
But when the establishment sets its mind to doing something, it is virtually impossible to stop it. And it has so many avenues for influencing people and keeping them confused – from corporate newspapers and broadcasters and hack writers and speakers at many institutions to virtually the entire national political establishment of both parties.
Since America is so much less a democracy than many recognize, it really isn’t necessary to fool all the people all the time. Far from it. And the flow of “information” from establishment sources is constant, virtually around the clock. It becomes part of the air you breathe.
Besides, Americans work very hard, and many have little time for becoming informed about such matters as, say, foreign affairs. If they have to trust someone with the idea of truth, it will tend to be the establishment voices easily accessed.
Most hardworking people at any level have little time or inclination to search for and assess different sources of information, as independent or foreign ones. And, truth be told, there are relatively few solid independent voices out there despite the apparent crush we can see on the Internet.
Apart from outfits on the Internet that now function virtually as agents for the establishment – outfits like Facebook, Wikipedia, or Google - the establishment has a good many inauthentic “independent” publications that it keeps going. The CIA always followed that practice with magazines and news sources during the Cold War, and it does still with sites many believe are independent voices.
Major Western European news sources today – as in Britain, France, or Germany – are in virtual lockstep with their American counterparts. If you think the Washington Post is biased - and it is, heavily – try The Guardian or BBC. They are often toe-scrunchingly insincere.
At the higher end of the employment scale in America, up-and-coming corporate and large professional office types work long hours, ten and twelve hours a day is not unusual, and often more than five days a week. It’s just expected of them. It keeps you looking like someone suitable for promotion. And the competition of others looking for promotions reinforces the discipline. When you do get home, there’s all those middle-class obligations, from the kids’ sports teams or music recitals or meetings at school to walking the dog or attending a service club meeting.
At the low end of the employment scale, millions of Americans must work more than one job just to make a go of things. Or, many jobs demand unusual hours and days. On public transit, for example, pretty good-paying working-class jobs, it is common to have “swing shifts,” where you are responsible for two periods each day. Yes, the hours between are free, but they are often effectively not very useful with not enough time to travel home and do anything substantial. These realities of everyday American economic life are I think not widely appreciated abroad.
For all its reputation for individualism, too, the United States in many matters exhibits very little of it. It is a remarkably lockstep society at a certain social level, the level that counts in influencing anything. I’ve never quite understood where that reputation for individualism, as touted in movies or novels, comes from.
The Vietnam War was a decade-long killing spree in defense of an artificially created rump state, South Vietnam, which for its entire existence was run by dictators. Although run by dictators, Americans were steadily given vague assurances that they were fighting for the values of American democracy.
The rump state served almost exclusively the economic and geopolitical interests of the United States. It served as a toehold in Southeast Asia, a kind of colony, a base for American corporations to market their wares. A pied-a-terre for the CIA. Those were the only American values ever really being served.
The big fighting got started not too long after the flimsiest of excuses, the so-called Gulf of Tonkin incident in the summer of 1964. It was a non-event, even as described in the news at the time, and later we learned it was truly a non-event with virtually nothing having happened.
But it’s the kind of thing we’ve seen in so many other places since, and notably in Syria where non-existent poison gas attacks, supposedly by the government, gave America the excuse to hurl fleets of cruise missiles at people it wanted to hurt anyway, the Syrian Army.
Of course, it was the presence of non-existent “weapons of mass destruction” that gave America the excuse to invade Iraq, destroying one of the most advanced societies in the Arab world and ultimately killing about a million people with all the violent aftermath included.
The destruction of Iraq’s basic facilities was so thorough that all these years later many in Iraq do not have dependable drinking water and electricity. The term “Shock and Awe” was coined by the public relations flacks at the Pentagon for the opening massive, overwhelming destruction, a term which gives some idea of the intensity and one, by the way, with clear bloodlines to Hitler’s concept of “Blitzkrieg” (lightning war).
Once America got into heavy fighting in a protracted war, Vietnam became many other things, including a testing ground for new methods of mass killing, an important part of a supply chain into North America for hard drugs, a laboratory for mass CIA terror tactics attempting to influence a population, and a place of endless lies.
While not all the details were apparent to anyone at the start, enough was understood by a good many to question the United States ever seriously entering the war. John Kennedy, who was inclined not to get involved beyond the level of a significant body of military advisors, was replaced by perhaps the most corrupt and ruthless man ever to become President, Lyndon Johnson, who had his chance to be a “war president,” and he wasted very little time getting things moving.
Today, we have among other wars, the war in Afghanistan. The pointlessness of the war in Afghanistan – that 18 years of bombing peasants and strafing wedding parties – was apparent to a good many from the start. I wrote a number of essays on the subject.
At the time of the invasion, I felt it was just a brute need for some kind of vengeance over 9/11, even if they didn’t know who to take vengeance on. I could imagine certain Americans sitting at bars across the country doing a lot of elbow-pumping and hooting and yelling at the first broadcasts of bombs dropping in Afghanistan, something resembling a scene from a big football game.
But the Taliban were not terrorists, the Taliban had nothing to do with 9/11. They are not pleasant people, but that is common enough in poor places where people earn hardscrabble livings. And I think my original view remains valid.
Recent revelations by The Washington Post (which to a certainty reflect someone in high places leaking for political purposes, not the investigative thoroughness of a newspaper which always doggedly supports America’s wars with the same enthusiasm as the late John McCain) tell us that even inside the military, no one understood why the United States was fighting in Afghanistan.
Yet America still fights there.
And will be still after Trump makes his election-campaign withdrawal, whose size is said to amount to a fraction of the troops.
Saturday, December 28, 2019
JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: THOUGHTS RAISED BY A STEPHEN F. COHEN ARTICLE - RUSSO-PHOBIA AND IMPEACHMENT - TRUMP AND PUTIN AND THE AMERICAN ESTABLISHMENT - THE REAL PROBLEM IN AMERICA THAT SUCCESS OR FAILURE OF IMPEACHMENT CANNOT POSSIBLY SORT OUT
John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY STEPHEN F. COHEN IN THE UNZ REVIEW
“How Impeachment Is Escalating the New US-Russian Cold War”
"Putin wants stability and partners."
A truer statement could not be made.
What is remarkable is that so many prominent Americans could say the opposite.
Of course, if a powerful country is guided by blindness, the risks are clear and they are enormous.
Yet relatively few in America seem to care.
I depart from Cohen’s view that the leadership of Trump – combined with that of Putin - could make a difference. Despite a few early encouraging words about Russia, I just do not see where Trump has provided any leadership.
Putin is a remarkable statesman, but he is in no position to overcome an American establishment hell-bent on opposing every reasonable effort. That’s part of why so much of his attention has been turned toward Asia and the larger world.
Trump’s early encouraging words about Russia only provided a target for America’s Russo-phobia mania, a condition always present in gigantic, self-perpetuating, and scarcely-scrutinized bureaucracies like CIA and the FBI, but something also seized upon since the election by the Democratic Party both to explain its loss and to intimidate future voters.
Induced chaos is nothing new as a means used to gain power. The CIA uses it in virtually all of its coups abroad. So, it should come as no surprise that there are forces, privileged establishment interests, ready to employ the same approach inside the United States, so comfortable have they grown with it.
The trouble is that Trump is simply not a real leader. He is a bully towards opponents and towards the entire world in matters of trade and military policy, but that is not leadership. He himself represents just another form of chaos.
That is the United States’ real problem. It has no leadership, in either party or in the major “organs” of the state, only a pretty ugly class of people – corrupt, privileged, arrogant - who influence the direction of events and feel entitled to tell others how to run their affairs.
The situation very much reflects America’s general relative decline, much resembling that of a decayed once-great merchant family, as a new order in world affairs prepares to make its debut.
I tend to doubt the impeachment will succeed, despite my views that what Trump did very much is inappropriate and that impeachment in America is largely a political act.
But if that proves to be the case, it is no great mercy for the county or the world. It means four more years of a poor leader making great bellowing claims about nothing.
The Democrats, too, are bereft of real leadership in the candidates for the nomination. Some of them are almost ridiculous, much like figures in current popular culture, and none of those with any chance opposes imperial wars and hostility towards Russia.
However, the Democrats, in holding up the indictment (the articles of impeachment), are very much looking for added elements, as those likely to come from scrutiny of Trump’s financial and tax records, should access to them be gained. He is an unscrupulous man, and I have little doubt those records could provide rich veins of impeachment material.
They are likely also looking to other potential high-level insider witnesses to Trump’s shady methods, potential witnesses whom Trump dismissed at various points.
Well, even were the impeachment to succeed, the only gain would be an end to Trump’s glaring, half-lunatic faces and ugly-kid complaining and bellowing. There are no meaningful likely alternatives in the Democratic Party.
On Putin, readers may enjoy:
https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2019/08/06/john-chuckman-comment-china-russia-and-the-united-states-in-the-21st-century-some-difficult-and-dangerous-times-ahead-as-the-world-now-rapidly-evolves-in-ways-america-rejects/
https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2019/03/05/john-chuckman-comment-reflections-on-putin-as-a-leader-and-on-the-world-situation-in-which-he-works/
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY STEPHEN F. COHEN IN THE UNZ REVIEW
“How Impeachment Is Escalating the New US-Russian Cold War”
"Putin wants stability and partners."
A truer statement could not be made.
What is remarkable is that so many prominent Americans could say the opposite.
Of course, if a powerful country is guided by blindness, the risks are clear and they are enormous.
Yet relatively few in America seem to care.
I depart from Cohen’s view that the leadership of Trump – combined with that of Putin - could make a difference. Despite a few early encouraging words about Russia, I just do not see where Trump has provided any leadership.
Putin is a remarkable statesman, but he is in no position to overcome an American establishment hell-bent on opposing every reasonable effort. That’s part of why so much of his attention has been turned toward Asia and the larger world.
Trump’s early encouraging words about Russia only provided a target for America’s Russo-phobia mania, a condition always present in gigantic, self-perpetuating, and scarcely-scrutinized bureaucracies like CIA and the FBI, but something also seized upon since the election by the Democratic Party both to explain its loss and to intimidate future voters.
Induced chaos is nothing new as a means used to gain power. The CIA uses it in virtually all of its coups abroad. So, it should come as no surprise that there are forces, privileged establishment interests, ready to employ the same approach inside the United States, so comfortable have they grown with it.
The trouble is that Trump is simply not a real leader. He is a bully towards opponents and towards the entire world in matters of trade and military policy, but that is not leadership. He himself represents just another form of chaos.
That is the United States’ real problem. It has no leadership, in either party or in the major “organs” of the state, only a pretty ugly class of people – corrupt, privileged, arrogant - who influence the direction of events and feel entitled to tell others how to run their affairs.
The situation very much reflects America’s general relative decline, much resembling that of a decayed once-great merchant family, as a new order in world affairs prepares to make its debut.
I tend to doubt the impeachment will succeed, despite my views that what Trump did very much is inappropriate and that impeachment in America is largely a political act.
But if that proves to be the case, it is no great mercy for the county or the world. It means four more years of a poor leader making great bellowing claims about nothing.
The Democrats, too, are bereft of real leadership in the candidates for the nomination. Some of them are almost ridiculous, much like figures in current popular culture, and none of those with any chance opposes imperial wars and hostility towards Russia.
However, the Democrats, in holding up the indictment (the articles of impeachment), are very much looking for added elements, as those likely to come from scrutiny of Trump’s financial and tax records, should access to them be gained. He is an unscrupulous man, and I have little doubt those records could provide rich veins of impeachment material.
They are likely also looking to other potential high-level insider witnesses to Trump’s shady methods, potential witnesses whom Trump dismissed at various points.
Well, even were the impeachment to succeed, the only gain would be an end to Trump’s glaring, half-lunatic faces and ugly-kid complaining and bellowing. There are no meaningful likely alternatives in the Democratic Party.
On Putin, readers may enjoy:
https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2019/08/06/john-chuckman-comment-china-russia-and-the-united-states-in-the-21st-century-some-difficult-and-dangerous-times-ahead-as-the-world-now-rapidly-evolves-in-ways-america-rejects/
https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2019/03/05/john-chuckman-comment-reflections-on-putin-as-a-leader-and-on-the-world-situation-in-which-he-works/
Friday, December 27, 2019
JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: "THOSE WHOM THE GODS WISH TO DESTROY THEY FIRST MAKE MAD" - TEXTBOOK EXAMPLE BOTH OF JOURNALISM BENT TO PROPAGANDA AND THE ABSURD LENGTHS TO WHICH AMERICA'S WITCH-HUNT RUSSO-PHOBIA IS TAKEN - MONTY PYTHON TAKES ON THE RUSSIAN NAVY
John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY KATE NG IN THE INDEPENDENT
“British warship scrambles to respond to Russian vessel moving into Channel”
“'Leaving our families at this time of year is especially difficult, but national security doesn’t stop for Christmas,' says ship's commanding officer”
What a truly ridiculous article.
"Scrambles to respond"
"Especially hard this time of year"
"Tireless efforts"
This was a training ship full of young Russian cadets on a training exercise in a body of water everyone on the planet is entitled to freely enter.
They represent about the same "threat level" as a big gathering of Boy Scouts.
I don't know about the Royal Navy's efforts this way historically, but no one would have considered such an event worth reporting before Russo-phobia.
Russo-phobia manufactured and promoted ceaselessly by the United States.
And I guess editors at The Independent feel they must do their loyal bit.
You might call the incident, "Monty Python Takes on The Russian Navy."
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY KATE NG IN THE INDEPENDENT
“British warship scrambles to respond to Russian vessel moving into Channel”
“'Leaving our families at this time of year is especially difficult, but national security doesn’t stop for Christmas,' says ship's commanding officer”
What a truly ridiculous article.
"Scrambles to respond"
"Especially hard this time of year"
"Tireless efforts"
This was a training ship full of young Russian cadets on a training exercise in a body of water everyone on the planet is entitled to freely enter.
They represent about the same "threat level" as a big gathering of Boy Scouts.
I don't know about the Royal Navy's efforts this way historically, but no one would have considered such an event worth reporting before Russo-phobia.
Russo-phobia manufactured and promoted ceaselessly by the United States.
And I guess editors at The Independent feel they must do their loyal bit.
You might call the incident, "Monty Python Takes on The Russian Navy."
JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: VARIOUS THOUGHTS ON THE FUTURE OF AIRCRAFT CARRIERS - ALREADY NEW TECHNOLOGIES CHALLENGE THEIR USEFULNESS IN TRADITIONAL ROLES - SOME COMMENTATORS HAVE DECLARED THEM VIRTUALLY OBSOLETE AND AS OFFERING ONLY DRAMATIC HIGH-VALUE TARGETS
John Chuckman
EXPANSION OF A COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY THE SAKER IN CHECKPOINT ASIA
“It’s Time for Russian Carrier Ambitions to Sail Into the Sunset
“If carriers are obsolete that goes double for Russia”
I didn't know there were any "Russian carrier ambitions."
The Kuznetsov [a Soviet era carrier, Russia’s only remaining one] does appear to have been effectively sidelined already.
Since it had been sitting around, Russia was going to upgrade it so long as the job wasn’t too costly.
But it is hard to see the cautious and pragmatic Putin spending on the costly new dry dock now required, owing to the sinking of the old one, to work on a dated ship.
That is not his style. It might well be useful for other ships, but its great size is determined by the old carrier.
Anyway, America and China have very different purposes for their carriers.
America uses them all over the world as tools of intimidation. And they do make impressive sights in distant lands.
And it thinks it must have platforms to work in places like the South China Sea. It of course always has Israel on its mind, too. And Iran is an obsession.
It should be noted that during the last big flare-up Trump generated against Iran, an American aircraft carrier was kept a few hundred miles from Iran’s coast, which is lined with that country’s own anti-ship missile. I don’t think the effectiveness of that missile is known, but Iran has demonstrated the accuracy and effectiveness of a couple of its other missiles.
The latest, most sophisticated anti-ship missiles – those of Russia and China, certainly – do make that American use of carriers a risky business now, although not all weapons systems reach the international arms market.
I do believe there is an element in Pentagon and American Naval thinking a little resembling that of the Polish Army of 1939, not wanting to give up on its splendid-looking cavalry.
America likes to use the term "power projection," although there is something almost 19th century British imperial in the term. Well, what do you know, American indeed has a global empire?
China likely thinks in terms of perhaps eventually having to use force on Taiwan. At any rate, it will be prepared, and Taiwan’s just knowing that encourages caution in its behavior.
China’s artificial island bases in the South China Sea, complete with runways and defensive missiles, actually somewhat resemble a permanently at-sea carrier fleet.
Nobody knows better than China the vulnerabilities of such capital ships today. They do have one of the most destructive missiles for use against them, a missile with which they’ve lined a good part of their coast.
Yet they still see enough useful purpose in carriers to build new ones. I believe they’re planning a total of about half a dozen. The next one, their third, is to have an electromagnetic catapult for the planes rather than the European-style ski ramp.
Since Russia is far, far more reluctant about being in the power-projection business than America, I'm not sure there is a good role for these immensely costly ships. Just their crews are on the order of 3 to 5,000 trained men who must be fed and housed and doctored at sea, and they require escort ships.
Putin wants a good decade or so for Russia to grow economically in peace, and he believes he has assured that with the new hypersonic and other hi-tech weapons. He even cut the military’s budget, something America’s press and politicians seem reluctant to mention while they’re busy hyping the Russian threat.
The role of these ships, whoever uses them, is likely to change with new sophisticated drones. Stealthy drones will be used both against carriers, as spotters for certain kinds of anti-ship missiles, and be used by them. You can haul more drones than fighter planes, and you don’t need quite the same crews.
EXPANSION OF A COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY THE SAKER IN CHECKPOINT ASIA
“It’s Time for Russian Carrier Ambitions to Sail Into the Sunset
“If carriers are obsolete that goes double for Russia”
I didn't know there were any "Russian carrier ambitions."
The Kuznetsov [a Soviet era carrier, Russia’s only remaining one] does appear to have been effectively sidelined already.
Since it had been sitting around, Russia was going to upgrade it so long as the job wasn’t too costly.
But it is hard to see the cautious and pragmatic Putin spending on the costly new dry dock now required, owing to the sinking of the old one, to work on a dated ship.
That is not his style. It might well be useful for other ships, but its great size is determined by the old carrier.
Anyway, America and China have very different purposes for their carriers.
America uses them all over the world as tools of intimidation. And they do make impressive sights in distant lands.
And it thinks it must have platforms to work in places like the South China Sea. It of course always has Israel on its mind, too. And Iran is an obsession.
It should be noted that during the last big flare-up Trump generated against Iran, an American aircraft carrier was kept a few hundred miles from Iran’s coast, which is lined with that country’s own anti-ship missile. I don’t think the effectiveness of that missile is known, but Iran has demonstrated the accuracy and effectiveness of a couple of its other missiles.
The latest, most sophisticated anti-ship missiles – those of Russia and China, certainly – do make that American use of carriers a risky business now, although not all weapons systems reach the international arms market.
I do believe there is an element in Pentagon and American Naval thinking a little resembling that of the Polish Army of 1939, not wanting to give up on its splendid-looking cavalry.
America likes to use the term "power projection," although there is something almost 19th century British imperial in the term. Well, what do you know, American indeed has a global empire?
China likely thinks in terms of perhaps eventually having to use force on Taiwan. At any rate, it will be prepared, and Taiwan’s just knowing that encourages caution in its behavior.
China’s artificial island bases in the South China Sea, complete with runways and defensive missiles, actually somewhat resemble a permanently at-sea carrier fleet.
Nobody knows better than China the vulnerabilities of such capital ships today. They do have one of the most destructive missiles for use against them, a missile with which they’ve lined a good part of their coast.
Yet they still see enough useful purpose in carriers to build new ones. I believe they’re planning a total of about half a dozen. The next one, their third, is to have an electromagnetic catapult for the planes rather than the European-style ski ramp.
Since Russia is far, far more reluctant about being in the power-projection business than America, I'm not sure there is a good role for these immensely costly ships. Just their crews are on the order of 3 to 5,000 trained men who must be fed and housed and doctored at sea, and they require escort ships.
Putin wants a good decade or so for Russia to grow economically in peace, and he believes he has assured that with the new hypersonic and other hi-tech weapons. He even cut the military’s budget, something America’s press and politicians seem reluctant to mention while they’re busy hyping the Russian threat.
The role of these ships, whoever uses them, is likely to change with new sophisticated drones. Stealthy drones will be used both against carriers, as spotters for certain kinds of anti-ship missiles, and be used by them. You can haul more drones than fighter planes, and you don’t need quite the same crews.
Thursday, December 26, 2019
JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: TRUMP'S INHERENT BELLIGERENT AND ARGUMENTATIVE CHARACTER - THE ARTICLE TO WHICH THIS RESPONDS CLAIMS THE CAMPAIGN-FINANCE SYSTEM IS RESPONSIBLE FOR HIS FAILURE TO PURSUE PEACE - WHAT IS REVEALED BY TRUMP'S APPROACH TO TRADE - PUTTING THE LIE TO THOSE WHO CLAIM OTHERS FRUSTRATE HIM FROM SEEKING PEACE
John Chuckman
EXPANSION OF A COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY ELI CLIFTON IN CHECKPOINT ASIA
“Trump Stuck Between Campaign Promise to End Wars and His Hawkish Megadonors
“The purchase price of the entire US democracy? A modest $250 million”
I find this a rather feeble effort to defend Trump on war and violence. A kind of "if only" or "the devil made me do it" approach. Not convincing.
The case against Trump is much stronger than the writer makes it. I actually find it overwhelming.
Yes, money dominates American politics. The Supreme Court has ruled "money is free speech,” a Supreme Court all of whose members were appointed over time by politicians who themselves benefitted from money-driven politics.
I've written very pointedly on the topic, as here:
https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2018/07/22/john-chuckman-comment-how-american-politics-really-work-why-there-are-terrible-candidates-and-constant-wars-and-peoples-problems-are-ignored-why-heroes-like-julian-assange-are-persecuted-and-r/
A man who was genuinely driven by motives for peace and important changes in the world would have managed to do something to make them manifest, but Trump has not, not at all. Just a few little public affairs gestures here and there.
For a start, he might seek political money from other quarters. Everyone knows from the outset the price, in terms of conflict in the Middle East, of taking large sums from Sheldon Adelson or the other American Oligarchs cited (Paul Singer and Bernard Marcus), but Trump keeps going back to the same well. If his intentions were sincere enough, he might just find other sources of campaign money.
At worst, a dedicated man might settle on becoming a one-term president who had achieved something worthy rather than a two-term yes-man.
When weighing the worth of his earlier campaign words, it helps to recall other things Trump has said in his time on the world’s stage, things outside the sphere of war and peace, and to reflect on his approach to them. I believe the exercise is revealing.
The best start is in his signature slogan of, “make America great again.” What this goal really is about is doing something literally impossible, turning back the clock to the 1950s, to the time of “the American Dream.” The notion is nothing but day dreams and patriotic hot air. It is ignorance passing for ideas. But it is a goal Trump now pursues fiercely with dangerous rhetoric and activity.
What we actually see is a man ripping to shreds the world’s international legal and organizational structure – the infrastructure, if you will, of world trade and economics – and working hard to steal value in trade from others, much as he stole oil from Syria.
His effort literally is founded on a notion that world trade is a zero-sum game – that is, that it is an activity, like holding oil fields, where either one party or another is in possession. Besides being an inherently aggressive notion, it is just plain wrong.
Trade is not like that at all, something any elementary textbook in economics can readily explain. The wider trade expands, the wealthier the group of participants in that trade becomes. There are synergies which make the whole greater than the sum of its parts.
Just look at the world’s largest free-trade bloc, the European Union. Despite its many problems, especially political ones, there are always nations lined up either to join it or to form associations with it, and that is so because there are inherent great economic strengths in such arrangements.
Trump’s effort is founded on still another notion, and that is that America should always be on top, always be first – in effect, that America is somehow exceptional or entitled or blessed beyond others. There is no rational basis for such a view. It is a form of religious belief or superstition, sometimes bordering on hysteria.
The nations of the world do not and cannot accept religious convictions or superstitions as a basis for trade and commerce. Indeed, I think it easy to see how dangerous it can be, injecting that into what should be rational arrangements and well-intentioned efforts.
In Trump, we have a kind of contemporary Don Quixote figure, one with rhetoric as outlandish as his dyed-orange hair, charging at windmills as though they were dragons. Only his activity isn’t funny or touching, as were the antics of Don Quixote. And he isn’t a character in a story, he is real, and he is damaging things everywhere.
In all international economic and trade matters, too, we have to keep in mind the immense military power of the Pentagon and how easy it is for nations arguing and threatening over trade to slip into something else.
America’s Founding Fathers were not wrong about the inherent dangers of standing armies. Historians can cite many examples of wars having been the result, at least in good part, just of the existence of large standing armies. WWI, a great pointless bloodbath, was a powerful example, and it led directly to WWII, an even greater bloodbath.
And on that point, Trump’s position is unmistakable. Huge and increasing resources are to go for an already bloated Pentagon. It certainly is not the view of a man concerned with peace, but it is not the view either of a man seriously concerned with international trade and economics.
We all ultimately will be poorer by virtue of Trump’s efforts. The only reason I believe he is not stopped by America’s establishment is that they see his effort as war by another means, war to assure America’s “full-spectrum dominance” as the official Pentagon “mission statement” goes.
Many of Trump’s acts in the economic and trade sphere do represent just another kind of war, further evidence of Trump’s extremely belligerent personal impulses.
Nothing ever issues from Trump’s mouth about competitiveness or efficiency or hard work or improved management or reduction of colossal, unproductive American waste (such as the military-security complex itself which helps drive destructive empire abroad) or about smarter government.
Nothing about infrastructure, much of which in America is in terrible shape, or about improving education or the sad state of great swathes of America’s cities with tens of millions of people trying to survive on next-to nothing. Nothing for sure about the damning inequalities of wealth and power that America’s taxation and imperial system of government have generated, inequalities which tend to act in self-reinforcing ways through the political dominance of those with great means.
Just as there is never a word about all the other societies now striving to share a place in the sun as America enjoyed for so long after WWII. America’s relative decline in the world, say, since the 1950s has nothing to do with others taking anything from it.
It is about others rising, some with new and better ways of doing things, and it is about America’s habits and expectations from a unique golden era having rendered it in many ways uncompetitive. It is also about such titanically wasteful enterprises as the Pentagon and CIA consuming resources, redirecting them away from investments in new and better ways to do things, and supporting an entire class of privileged, unproductive people who believe they have a right to determine the fates of other nations.
It is that same sense of exceptionalism and entitlement we see in Trump. The blind leading the blind, really.
That postwar result wasn’t the outcome of zany plans like Trump’s “make America great” or of religious beliefs in America’s exceptionalism and entitlement. It represented the sheer good fortunes of war with America left standing, its industries humming, behind the defensive walls of two vast oceans, relatively unscathed while competitors and potential competitors were flattened.
Photos of Germany or Japan or China or Russia in the 1940s searingly tell the tale. Many cities, the centers of most human enterprise, had been reduced to rubble with armies of ghost-like refugees wandering through them.
The nations now striving towards their places in the sun are not stealing. They are not warring. They are competing and working hard and smart, something a great deal of America has forgotten how to do. Trump thinks he brings unique enterprise and leadership through belligerence and threats and sanctions. His thinking just could not be more wrong.
__________________________
Here are recent, related words about war and peace and Trump:
https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2019/12/23/john-chuckman-comment-yet-another-right-wing-writer-tries-portraying-trump-as-a-peace-oriented-president-this-time-in-the-context-of-his-impeachment/
EXPANSION OF A COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY ELI CLIFTON IN CHECKPOINT ASIA
“Trump Stuck Between Campaign Promise to End Wars and His Hawkish Megadonors
“The purchase price of the entire US democracy? A modest $250 million”
I find this a rather feeble effort to defend Trump on war and violence. A kind of "if only" or "the devil made me do it" approach. Not convincing.
The case against Trump is much stronger than the writer makes it. I actually find it overwhelming.
Yes, money dominates American politics. The Supreme Court has ruled "money is free speech,” a Supreme Court all of whose members were appointed over time by politicians who themselves benefitted from money-driven politics.
I've written very pointedly on the topic, as here:
https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2018/07/22/john-chuckman-comment-how-american-politics-really-work-why-there-are-terrible-candidates-and-constant-wars-and-peoples-problems-are-ignored-why-heroes-like-julian-assange-are-persecuted-and-r/
A man who was genuinely driven by motives for peace and important changes in the world would have managed to do something to make them manifest, but Trump has not, not at all. Just a few little public affairs gestures here and there.
For a start, he might seek political money from other quarters. Everyone knows from the outset the price, in terms of conflict in the Middle East, of taking large sums from Sheldon Adelson or the other American Oligarchs cited (Paul Singer and Bernard Marcus), but Trump keeps going back to the same well. If his intentions were sincere enough, he might just find other sources of campaign money.
At worst, a dedicated man might settle on becoming a one-term president who had achieved something worthy rather than a two-term yes-man.
When weighing the worth of his earlier campaign words, it helps to recall other things Trump has said in his time on the world’s stage, things outside the sphere of war and peace, and to reflect on his approach to them. I believe the exercise is revealing.
The best start is in his signature slogan of, “make America great again.” What this goal really is about is doing something literally impossible, turning back the clock to the 1950s, to the time of “the American Dream.” The notion is nothing but day dreams and patriotic hot air. It is ignorance passing for ideas. But it is a goal Trump now pursues fiercely with dangerous rhetoric and activity.
What we actually see is a man ripping to shreds the world’s international legal and organizational structure – the infrastructure, if you will, of world trade and economics – and working hard to steal value in trade from others, much as he stole oil from Syria.
His effort literally is founded on a notion that world trade is a zero-sum game – that is, that it is an activity, like holding oil fields, where either one party or another is in possession. Besides being an inherently aggressive notion, it is just plain wrong.
Trade is not like that at all, something any elementary textbook in economics can readily explain. The wider trade expands, the wealthier the group of participants in that trade becomes. There are synergies which make the whole greater than the sum of its parts.
Just look at the world’s largest free-trade bloc, the European Union. Despite its many problems, especially political ones, there are always nations lined up either to join it or to form associations with it, and that is so because there are inherent great economic strengths in such arrangements.
Trump’s effort is founded on still another notion, and that is that America should always be on top, always be first – in effect, that America is somehow exceptional or entitled or blessed beyond others. There is no rational basis for such a view. It is a form of religious belief or superstition, sometimes bordering on hysteria.
The nations of the world do not and cannot accept religious convictions or superstitions as a basis for trade and commerce. Indeed, I think it easy to see how dangerous it can be, injecting that into what should be rational arrangements and well-intentioned efforts.
In Trump, we have a kind of contemporary Don Quixote figure, one with rhetoric as outlandish as his dyed-orange hair, charging at windmills as though they were dragons. Only his activity isn’t funny or touching, as were the antics of Don Quixote. And he isn’t a character in a story, he is real, and he is damaging things everywhere.
In all international economic and trade matters, too, we have to keep in mind the immense military power of the Pentagon and how easy it is for nations arguing and threatening over trade to slip into something else.
America’s Founding Fathers were not wrong about the inherent dangers of standing armies. Historians can cite many examples of wars having been the result, at least in good part, just of the existence of large standing armies. WWI, a great pointless bloodbath, was a powerful example, and it led directly to WWII, an even greater bloodbath.
And on that point, Trump’s position is unmistakable. Huge and increasing resources are to go for an already bloated Pentagon. It certainly is not the view of a man concerned with peace, but it is not the view either of a man seriously concerned with international trade and economics.
We all ultimately will be poorer by virtue of Trump’s efforts. The only reason I believe he is not stopped by America’s establishment is that they see his effort as war by another means, war to assure America’s “full-spectrum dominance” as the official Pentagon “mission statement” goes.
Many of Trump’s acts in the economic and trade sphere do represent just another kind of war, further evidence of Trump’s extremely belligerent personal impulses.
Nothing ever issues from Trump’s mouth about competitiveness or efficiency or hard work or improved management or reduction of colossal, unproductive American waste (such as the military-security complex itself which helps drive destructive empire abroad) or about smarter government.
Nothing about infrastructure, much of which in America is in terrible shape, or about improving education or the sad state of great swathes of America’s cities with tens of millions of people trying to survive on next-to nothing. Nothing for sure about the damning inequalities of wealth and power that America’s taxation and imperial system of government have generated, inequalities which tend to act in self-reinforcing ways through the political dominance of those with great means.
Just as there is never a word about all the other societies now striving to share a place in the sun as America enjoyed for so long after WWII. America’s relative decline in the world, say, since the 1950s has nothing to do with others taking anything from it.
It is about others rising, some with new and better ways of doing things, and it is about America’s habits and expectations from a unique golden era having rendered it in many ways uncompetitive. It is also about such titanically wasteful enterprises as the Pentagon and CIA consuming resources, redirecting them away from investments in new and better ways to do things, and supporting an entire class of privileged, unproductive people who believe they have a right to determine the fates of other nations.
It is that same sense of exceptionalism and entitlement we see in Trump. The blind leading the blind, really.
That postwar result wasn’t the outcome of zany plans like Trump’s “make America great” or of religious beliefs in America’s exceptionalism and entitlement. It represented the sheer good fortunes of war with America left standing, its industries humming, behind the defensive walls of two vast oceans, relatively unscathed while competitors and potential competitors were flattened.
Photos of Germany or Japan or China or Russia in the 1940s searingly tell the tale. Many cities, the centers of most human enterprise, had been reduced to rubble with armies of ghost-like refugees wandering through them.
The nations now striving towards their places in the sun are not stealing. They are not warring. They are competing and working hard and smart, something a great deal of America has forgotten how to do. Trump thinks he brings unique enterprise and leadership through belligerence and threats and sanctions. His thinking just could not be more wrong.
__________________________
Here are recent, related words about war and peace and Trump:
https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2019/12/23/john-chuckman-comment-yet-another-right-wing-writer-tries-portraying-trump-as-a-peace-oriented-president-this-time-in-the-context-of-his-impeachment/
Tuesday, December 24, 2019
JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: DONALD TRUMP AND THE EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANS - A GREAT POLITICAL MYSTERY - AN EXPLORATION FROM SOMEONE WHO ONCE, LONG AGO, WAS PART OF THAT COMMUNITY
John Chuckman
COMMENT ON TRUMP AND THE EVANGELICALS
One of the great political mysteries of our time is the substantial support Trump enjoys among America’s Christian Evangelicals.
Here surely, by almost any measure, is one of the most openly irreligious men ever to be President, and I don’t mean just through the fact that he has no membership in any church. He doesn’t show a flicker of the sometimes-strong personal faith that characterizes some religious people who are not associated with a church, as was very much the case for Abraham Lincoln.
Even more, he has a long public record of deeply offensive language and lying. He is an undependable colleague, having betrayed many in positions of trust and responsibility around him in just a few short years at the White House and even an undependable marriage partner, if we are to believe many witnesses.
His whole approach to world affairs as President might be said to be an extension of the same characteristics. His completely ignoring matters like murder and theft from “friends” like Saudi Arabia and Israel is pretty spectacular testimony. He enthusiastically smiles and shakes hands with the murderous tyrant of Saudi Arabia.
Old friends and allies, to say nothing of others, all over the globe have been upset and even shocked by some of his sudden demands and seeming lack of concern for keeping the good faith of the United States in many matters, especially where important international treaties are concerned.
His has been a record of tearing up or tossing away treaty after treaty in everything from arms control to international trade and regulation. Years of patient work by thousands of conscientious and intelligent people engaged in an effort to construct some necessary architecture for world affairs tossed as though it were toilet paper.
He does seem to believe that if he personally considers a new demand appropriate, then it is, ipso facto, appropriate and even beneficial to the United States, and the rest of the world must simply accept that. Nothing, of course, could be further from the truth or more dangerous as an approach to matters affecting earth’s entire seven billion people, all of them being equally in the eyes of traditional Christian faith, God’s children.
Of course, Jesus, as he is portrayed in the New Testament and revered by hundreds of millions of Christians, tells the world that he has come to bring a new law to human affairs, and it is a new law entirely eschewing Trump’s concepts and values. It is, moreover, quite importantly, a law universal in its application with no exceptions for personal or special interests. None.
I’m going to confess to the fact that as a boy I was raised an Evangelical Christian, a Baptist. Our church accepted the Bible literally as the Word of God. Indeed, the Bible was often referred to as “God’s Word.” The Church practiced Baptism in the fashion of John the Baptist as a declaration of one’s faith and as a bond to the community of fellow Christians.
One of the characteristics I knew in my then-fellow Christians was a fairly strong bias for demonstrating your faith through deeds rather than just words. It was the bias of the Apostle Paul. I wouldn’t say that it was universal, but it was very common.
And that is what is so mystifying. How can people with that kind of bias – one I tend still to regard as sound whether we are talking of Christianity or any other matter, deeds say more than words – in their views support a man who demonstrates in everything virtually the opposite?
We have the controversy over a recent article in “Christianity Today,” a publication founded by the late Billy Graham, noted Baptist evangelist and one I heard preach as a boy, that called Trump, quite accurately I think, a "grossly immoral character." Well, the best part of two hundred Evangelical leaders have strongly objected.
What can I say? The editorial in “Christianity Today” itself took long enough coming given Trump’s public behavior. Calling that magazine, as Trump and his faithful do, "far left" is pretty close to ridiculous. The traditional concerns of Christian Evangelicals are concerns about issues of Christianity, not any form of politics. God’s laws always are placed higher than humanity’s laws. The words of Jesus, as we have them in the new Testament, couldn’t be clearer on the subject.
There may be differences on the relative importance of various matters to the Christian community, but there really can be no confusion between matters in general of Christianity and pure visceral politics. The distinctions are blindingly apparent. Christians are enjoined in the New Testament to avoid and ignore the “ungodly,” to avoid being “unequally yoked.”
Yet here we have many leaders in their communities using “Christianity” as a kind of cloak for political bias, and very much political bias in favor of a man of thoroughly amoral character. It actually much resembles the traditional Catholic Church’s efforts, say in the 1950s and 1960s, to protect priests who have grievously harmed parishioners with unacceptable sexual practices.
I am not sure that I understand, although it is clear that these leaders and their communities see in Trump things important enough to simply ignore all traditional Christian values such as honesty and loyalty and decency.
It does seem to be the story of America in general, starting with the likes of Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Paine and arriving at the likes of George Bush and Bill Clinton and Barack Obama and Donald Trump.
It’s a huge journey, but how easily and effortlessly it has been carried out. Of course, many or most Americans deny the journey has taken place, insist that sacred honors and human rights still count uppermost in America, but that’s a little like thinking quill pens and parchment still give force to laws.
While I am no longer a Christian, having left the church in my late teens, I unavoidably carry something of that rather powerful emotional legacy, enough to recognize in Donald Trump a man completely alien to it.
COMMENT ON TRUMP AND THE EVANGELICALS
One of the great political mysteries of our time is the substantial support Trump enjoys among America’s Christian Evangelicals.
Here surely, by almost any measure, is one of the most openly irreligious men ever to be President, and I don’t mean just through the fact that he has no membership in any church. He doesn’t show a flicker of the sometimes-strong personal faith that characterizes some religious people who are not associated with a church, as was very much the case for Abraham Lincoln.
Even more, he has a long public record of deeply offensive language and lying. He is an undependable colleague, having betrayed many in positions of trust and responsibility around him in just a few short years at the White House and even an undependable marriage partner, if we are to believe many witnesses.
His whole approach to world affairs as President might be said to be an extension of the same characteristics. His completely ignoring matters like murder and theft from “friends” like Saudi Arabia and Israel is pretty spectacular testimony. He enthusiastically smiles and shakes hands with the murderous tyrant of Saudi Arabia.
Old friends and allies, to say nothing of others, all over the globe have been upset and even shocked by some of his sudden demands and seeming lack of concern for keeping the good faith of the United States in many matters, especially where important international treaties are concerned.
His has been a record of tearing up or tossing away treaty after treaty in everything from arms control to international trade and regulation. Years of patient work by thousands of conscientious and intelligent people engaged in an effort to construct some necessary architecture for world affairs tossed as though it were toilet paper.
He does seem to believe that if he personally considers a new demand appropriate, then it is, ipso facto, appropriate and even beneficial to the United States, and the rest of the world must simply accept that. Nothing, of course, could be further from the truth or more dangerous as an approach to matters affecting earth’s entire seven billion people, all of them being equally in the eyes of traditional Christian faith, God’s children.
Of course, Jesus, as he is portrayed in the New Testament and revered by hundreds of millions of Christians, tells the world that he has come to bring a new law to human affairs, and it is a new law entirely eschewing Trump’s concepts and values. It is, moreover, quite importantly, a law universal in its application with no exceptions for personal or special interests. None.
I’m going to confess to the fact that as a boy I was raised an Evangelical Christian, a Baptist. Our church accepted the Bible literally as the Word of God. Indeed, the Bible was often referred to as “God’s Word.” The Church practiced Baptism in the fashion of John the Baptist as a declaration of one’s faith and as a bond to the community of fellow Christians.
One of the characteristics I knew in my then-fellow Christians was a fairly strong bias for demonstrating your faith through deeds rather than just words. It was the bias of the Apostle Paul. I wouldn’t say that it was universal, but it was very common.
And that is what is so mystifying. How can people with that kind of bias – one I tend still to regard as sound whether we are talking of Christianity or any other matter, deeds say more than words – in their views support a man who demonstrates in everything virtually the opposite?
We have the controversy over a recent article in “Christianity Today,” a publication founded by the late Billy Graham, noted Baptist evangelist and one I heard preach as a boy, that called Trump, quite accurately I think, a "grossly immoral character." Well, the best part of two hundred Evangelical leaders have strongly objected.
What can I say? The editorial in “Christianity Today” itself took long enough coming given Trump’s public behavior. Calling that magazine, as Trump and his faithful do, "far left" is pretty close to ridiculous. The traditional concerns of Christian Evangelicals are concerns about issues of Christianity, not any form of politics. God’s laws always are placed higher than humanity’s laws. The words of Jesus, as we have them in the new Testament, couldn’t be clearer on the subject.
There may be differences on the relative importance of various matters to the Christian community, but there really can be no confusion between matters in general of Christianity and pure visceral politics. The distinctions are blindingly apparent. Christians are enjoined in the New Testament to avoid and ignore the “ungodly,” to avoid being “unequally yoked.”
Yet here we have many leaders in their communities using “Christianity” as a kind of cloak for political bias, and very much political bias in favor of a man of thoroughly amoral character. It actually much resembles the traditional Catholic Church’s efforts, say in the 1950s and 1960s, to protect priests who have grievously harmed parishioners with unacceptable sexual practices.
I am not sure that I understand, although it is clear that these leaders and their communities see in Trump things important enough to simply ignore all traditional Christian values such as honesty and loyalty and decency.
It does seem to be the story of America in general, starting with the likes of Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Paine and arriving at the likes of George Bush and Bill Clinton and Barack Obama and Donald Trump.
It’s a huge journey, but how easily and effortlessly it has been carried out. Of course, many or most Americans deny the journey has taken place, insist that sacred honors and human rights still count uppermost in America, but that’s a little like thinking quill pens and parchment still give force to laws.
While I am no longer a Christian, having left the church in my late teens, I unavoidably carry something of that rather powerful emotional legacy, enough to recognize in Donald Trump a man completely alien to it.
Monday, December 23, 2019
JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: YET ANOTHER RIGHT-WING WRITER TRIES PORTRAYING TRUMP AS A PEACE-ORIENTED PRESIDENT - THIS TIME IN THE CONTEXT OF HIS IMPEACHMENT - I OFFER A FAIRLY COMPREHENSIVE LIST OF TRUMP'S EFFORTS FOR "PEACE"
John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY W JAMES ANTLE III IN THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE (AND QUICKLY REMOVED BY EDITOR)
“A Hawkish Impeachment
“Democrats have inadvertently supplied the template for undermining a future antiwar president”
Sorry, I see nothing genuinely anti-war about Trump.
I wish it were otherwise, but it is not, and I am someone who closely follows world affairs through many information sources.
In the beginning, despite the bad taste his personality left in the mouth, I supported him for exactly the reasons of decreasing war and improving relations with Russia.
He has done nothing worth mentioning towards either goal.
I know he has a powerful establishment warning and telling him not to do this or that, but still he makes himself out as tough guy, a rather foul-mouthed one, one who can stand up to anyone, so where are his results?
He has given away, with no legal authority, a good part of Palestine to the most war-mongering government on earth.
He has started new severe hostilities with the government of Iran, a government which threatened no one and is widely known to have met its every obligation under the nuclear agreement Trump arbitrarily tore up, an act again in favor of the world’s most belligerent government.
He has launched war-like sanctions against Iran, causing its innocent people great deprivation and harm, and he accompanied these with serious military threats – the movement of fleets and nuclear bombers – and he even used the indefensible word, “obliterate,” towards Iran’s 80 million people.
He appointed some of the most belligerent men in America to high posts – Elliott Abrams, John Bolton, and Mike Pompeo – from which they did little but threaten and lie.
He has almost turned sanctions and tariffs into a new form of war.
He overthrew an elected government in Bolivia and tried exactly the same in Venezuela, causing great harm to millions of ordinary citizens. He has also stolen Venezuela’s assets abroad, just as he’s stolen Syria’s oil, and laid a deadly blockade causing much hardship for millions.
He completely supports the government of Israel’s unrelenting oppression of millions of Palestinians, never saying a word about matters like the outright ambush killing of several hundred in Gaza.
He loyally supports a murderer Crown Prince. His own CIA Director told him the Prince was responsible for Khashoggi’s grisly murder, but Trump just smiles broadly and is photographed shaking hands with the man, and sells him literally tens of billions of dollars in weapons, certainly a tool for peace in the region, as we see with the killing of thousands of women and children in Yemen.
The favored Prince has also been busy on the home front with violent attacks on Shia Muslim minorities and a huge increase in executions, including even the execution of teenagers.
Trump never says a word against the mass killer running Egypt either. It just happens that Israel is rather fond of Field Marshall el Sisi just as it is of Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince. Israel’s government likes Arab neighbors who suppress their people.
Trump’s antics in Syria have been close to absurd. He bombed people a couple of times on the basis of clearly falsified chemical-weapons incidents. He withdrew in the northeast only to reoccupy with armored strength Syria’s oil fields, making sophomoric jokes about liking to steal oil. Of course, what he’s really doing is accommodating Israel yet again, to weaken Syria for its postwar rebuilding.
The War in Afghanistan has been a disgrace from the beginning, and Trump still has yet to do one real thing to end it. He talks of a withdrawal, but this reportedly involves a rather small fraction of the American troops there who have done nothing but kill peasants for eighteen years. It’s a cheap gimmick for his election. Not a genuine policy.
Trump of course has threatened many others, from North Korea to Nicaragua and Cuba.
He has continued running tanks up against the Russian border in Europe. He destroyed the INF Treaty, an important part of the international architecture for peace in Europe. He has worked tirelessly to militarize space with the creation of a new branch of America’s military, the so-called Space Force.
This is an anti-war President? You sure could have fooled me.
He has been killing and bombing and threatening and sanctioning for all of his three years. Indeed, with sanctions, he has almost created a new form of hybrid warfare, and he’s using it against almost everyone, traditional friends and opponents, creating animosities and instabilities that could easily break out into new wars.
On the nature of Trump's impeachment, see this just posted:
https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2019/12/21/john-chuckman-comment-further-thoughts-on-trumps-impeachment-and-the-extreme-divisions-now-characterizing-american-society/
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY W JAMES ANTLE III IN THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE (AND QUICKLY REMOVED BY EDITOR)
“A Hawkish Impeachment
“Democrats have inadvertently supplied the template for undermining a future antiwar president”
Sorry, I see nothing genuinely anti-war about Trump.
I wish it were otherwise, but it is not, and I am someone who closely follows world affairs through many information sources.
In the beginning, despite the bad taste his personality left in the mouth, I supported him for exactly the reasons of decreasing war and improving relations with Russia.
He has done nothing worth mentioning towards either goal.
I know he has a powerful establishment warning and telling him not to do this or that, but still he makes himself out as tough guy, a rather foul-mouthed one, one who can stand up to anyone, so where are his results?
He has given away, with no legal authority, a good part of Palestine to the most war-mongering government on earth.
He has started new severe hostilities with the government of Iran, a government which threatened no one and is widely known to have met its every obligation under the nuclear agreement Trump arbitrarily tore up, an act again in favor of the world’s most belligerent government.
He has launched war-like sanctions against Iran, causing its innocent people great deprivation and harm, and he accompanied these with serious military threats – the movement of fleets and nuclear bombers – and he even used the indefensible word, “obliterate,” towards Iran’s 80 million people.
He appointed some of the most belligerent men in America to high posts – Elliott Abrams, John Bolton, and Mike Pompeo – from which they did little but threaten and lie.
He has almost turned sanctions and tariffs into a new form of war.
He overthrew an elected government in Bolivia and tried exactly the same in Venezuela, causing great harm to millions of ordinary citizens. He has also stolen Venezuela’s assets abroad, just as he’s stolen Syria’s oil, and laid a deadly blockade causing much hardship for millions.
He completely supports the government of Israel’s unrelenting oppression of millions of Palestinians, never saying a word about matters like the outright ambush killing of several hundred in Gaza.
He loyally supports a murderer Crown Prince. His own CIA Director told him the Prince was responsible for Khashoggi’s grisly murder, but Trump just smiles broadly and is photographed shaking hands with the man, and sells him literally tens of billions of dollars in weapons, certainly a tool for peace in the region, as we see with the killing of thousands of women and children in Yemen.
The favored Prince has also been busy on the home front with violent attacks on Shia Muslim minorities and a huge increase in executions, including even the execution of teenagers.
Trump never says a word against the mass killer running Egypt either. It just happens that Israel is rather fond of Field Marshall el Sisi just as it is of Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince. Israel’s government likes Arab neighbors who suppress their people.
Trump’s antics in Syria have been close to absurd. He bombed people a couple of times on the basis of clearly falsified chemical-weapons incidents. He withdrew in the northeast only to reoccupy with armored strength Syria’s oil fields, making sophomoric jokes about liking to steal oil. Of course, what he’s really doing is accommodating Israel yet again, to weaken Syria for its postwar rebuilding.
The War in Afghanistan has been a disgrace from the beginning, and Trump still has yet to do one real thing to end it. He talks of a withdrawal, but this reportedly involves a rather small fraction of the American troops there who have done nothing but kill peasants for eighteen years. It’s a cheap gimmick for his election. Not a genuine policy.
Trump of course has threatened many others, from North Korea to Nicaragua and Cuba.
He has continued running tanks up against the Russian border in Europe. He destroyed the INF Treaty, an important part of the international architecture for peace in Europe. He has worked tirelessly to militarize space with the creation of a new branch of America’s military, the so-called Space Force.
This is an anti-war President? You sure could have fooled me.
He has been killing and bombing and threatening and sanctioning for all of his three years. Indeed, with sanctions, he has almost created a new form of hybrid warfare, and he’s using it against almost everyone, traditional friends and opponents, creating animosities and instabilities that could easily break out into new wars.
On the nature of Trump's impeachment, see this just posted:
https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2019/12/21/john-chuckman-comment-further-thoughts-on-trumps-impeachment-and-the-extreme-divisions-now-characterizing-american-society/
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