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One duty of U.S. presidents is to overthrow the governments of other nations. Trump has a compulsion to brag constantly about being the greatest and best at everything- he portrays himself the way the North Korean media describes Kim Jong-Un, the current hereditary dictator of North Korea. (Trump is probably jealous that he doesn't have an entire monopoly state media to sing his praises as Kim does, just Murdoch's Minions at Fox "News" and the various rags and other propaganda assets of the global Murdoch media empire.)
But in this primary obligation of anyone charged with being the chief manager of U.S. imperialism, Trump has a poor record so far. He's zero for one in known overthrow attempts. (Or zero for two if we count Iran.) Currently he is struggling to overthrow his first foreign government, Venezuela's, despite the help of an expert coaching staff including veteran imperialist apparatchiks John Bolton and Elliott Abrams and the hard-charging Koch Bros. creation Michael Pompeo. But Venezuela is proving a stubborn nut for the coup specialists of the U.S. to crack. And Trump has less than a year and a half left in his first term. Should he fail to win election, he may end up seriously deficient in this key metric of U.S. presidential "leadership."
It must be especially galling to Trump to be trailing behind Barack "The Drone Assassin" Obama, whom he holds in contempt and wants to prove he's better than by outdoing him in every metric. (Trump believes in White Superiority.) Obama overthrew at least two governments (that we know of) during his eight year reign: Honduras and Ukraine. Obama's predecessor George "The Dumb One" Bush also notched two "victories for freedom" in his belt, Afghanistan and Iraq, but very messily and expensively, doing so by invasions.
Bush's father invaded Panama and overthrew a dictator, Manuel Noriega, who had fallen out of favor with his U.S. imperialist masters by disobeying an order to increase the level of cooperation he was providing to the U.S. anti-Nicaraguan contra terrorist army. The cost of replacing Noriega was a bargain-basement price of only 4,000 Panamanian lives. (Mostly poor slum dwellers, who received decent burials by having their corpses thrown into mass graves and bulldozed over, in best Third Reich fashion. But that's a cheap shot. The U.S. doesn't need to take lessons from Nazis in barbarism. It has a proud tradition of massacres. Over three decades before Hitler came to power, the U.S. was slaughtering poor Filipinos and disposing of their bodies in the proper mass murder style. And speaking of eliminating pesky indigenous populations, who could forget Andrew Jackson's memorable Trail of Tears death march for native Americans?)
Bush the Elder however squandered the chance to overthrow Saddam Hussein of Iraq, supposedly at the behest of other Arab dictators- an oversight his son would remedy a little over a decade later.
Nixon infamously unleashed the CIA and U.S. military on Chile to destroy democracy there in a campaign of economic warfare, subversion, and terrorism that lasted from 1970-1973. He also destabilized Laos and Cambodia with savage bombing campaigns that led to collapses there and the coming to power in Cambodia of the murderously psychopathic Khmer Rouge.
Lyndon Johnson arranged the overthrow of civilian democracies in Brazil and Greece and their replacement with proper fascist military dictatorships. He was also forced to invade the Dominican Republic when the dumb natives there, failing to understand now democracy works, elected the wrong person president and the U.S. had to clean up their mess by overthrowing him. (Hey maybe those white supremacists have a point about dark-skinned people being unable to govern themselves. as Jared Kushner just opined about Palestinians.)
John F. Kennedy gave a green light to a military coup in Vietnam against U.S. puppet dictator Diem, who just wasn't cutting the mustard in suppressing the national aspirations of the Vietnamese people. Tragically, he failed to overthrow Castro, one of his fatal failures that led to his assassination by the CIA, with the complicity of the U.S. military, the FBI, Dallas police, and after the fact especially "the" media.
Dwight David Eisenhower, "hero" of world war two, in later years hero of peaceniks because of a couple of sentences in his farewell address warning "don't get the military-industrial complex getcha!"- this from a guy who greatly expanded that complex and created a nuclear weapons arsenal of thousands of genocidal weapons- knew how to overthrow a democratic government or two- actually at least two, Iran (1953) and Guatemala (1954), each democracy replaced by two of the most savagely murderous regimes in the world since 1945. (A quarter of a million of the citizens in each of these lands murdered by the U.S.-installed regimes.)
But presidential duties don't just consist in overthrowing governments. Presidents are also obligated to safeguard client dictators. Jimmy Carter "allowed" the overthrow of two very vicious and infamous dictators who were "friends" of the U.S.: the "Shah" (King) of Iran, and Anastasio Somoza of Nicaragua. Thus he spoiled Eisenhower's legacy in Iran, from the perspective of U.S. imperialists. These failures are the real but unstated reason "the" media turned on him with a vengeance in the election year of 1980, and hailed the racist fascist Ronald Reagan. Carter was smeared as a weakling who was attacked by a rabbit while canoeing. (Such juvenile mockery is actually a standard tool in the propaganda toolbox of U.S. media.)
Fortunately for Trump, as much as Democrats and their media allies (and the secret police apparatus that has worked assiduously to undermine Trump- all support Trump wholeheartedly in his valiant attempt to overthrow the Venezuelan government. And Trump's imperialist hitman John Bolton has public announced that Nicaragua and Cuba are also in line for "regime change." Trump is already tightening the screws on Cuba, ending tourist travel there permitted under an educational exemption. (The anti-Cuba and anti-Venezuela campaigns are pet projects of Florida GOP Senator Marco Rubio, a loathsome slimy fanatic.)
One thing you can be sure of: Trump's imperialist subversion and aggression will NOT be used by Democrats to attack him in the presidential campaign of 2020. Most of the declared candidates have either been silent on these matters or supportive of U.S. imperialist criminality, and the few exceptions are mild in their criticisms.
We should devoutly hope for a failed presidency. That is what's best for humanity.
But in this primary obligation of anyone charged with being the chief manager of U.S. imperialism, Trump has a poor record so far. He's zero for one in known overthrow attempts. (Or zero for two if we count Iran.) Currently he is struggling to overthrow his first foreign government, Venezuela's, despite the help of an expert coaching staff including veteran imperialist apparatchiks John Bolton and Elliott Abrams and the hard-charging Koch Bros. creation Michael Pompeo. But Venezuela is proving a stubborn nut for the coup specialists of the U.S. to crack. And Trump has less than a year and a half left in his first term. Should he fail to win election, he may end up seriously deficient in this key metric of U.S. presidential "leadership."
It must be especially galling to Trump to be trailing behind Barack "The Drone Assassin" Obama, whom he holds in contempt and wants to prove he's better than by outdoing him in every metric. (Trump believes in White Superiority.) Obama overthrew at least two governments (that we know of) during his eight year reign: Honduras and Ukraine. Obama's predecessor George "The Dumb One" Bush also notched two "victories for freedom" in his belt, Afghanistan and Iraq, but very messily and expensively, doing so by invasions.
Bush's father invaded Panama and overthrew a dictator, Manuel Noriega, who had fallen out of favor with his U.S. imperialist masters by disobeying an order to increase the level of cooperation he was providing to the U.S. anti-Nicaraguan contra terrorist army. The cost of replacing Noriega was a bargain-basement price of only 4,000 Panamanian lives. (Mostly poor slum dwellers, who received decent burials by having their corpses thrown into mass graves and bulldozed over, in best Third Reich fashion. But that's a cheap shot. The U.S. doesn't need to take lessons from Nazis in barbarism. It has a proud tradition of massacres. Over three decades before Hitler came to power, the U.S. was slaughtering poor Filipinos and disposing of their bodies in the proper mass murder style. And speaking of eliminating pesky indigenous populations, who could forget Andrew Jackson's memorable Trail of Tears death march for native Americans?)
Bush the Elder however squandered the chance to overthrow Saddam Hussein of Iraq, supposedly at the behest of other Arab dictators- an oversight his son would remedy a little over a decade later.
Nixon infamously unleashed the CIA and U.S. military on Chile to destroy democracy there in a campaign of economic warfare, subversion, and terrorism that lasted from 1970-1973. He also destabilized Laos and Cambodia with savage bombing campaigns that led to collapses there and the coming to power in Cambodia of the murderously psychopathic Khmer Rouge.
Lyndon Johnson arranged the overthrow of civilian democracies in Brazil and Greece and their replacement with proper fascist military dictatorships. He was also forced to invade the Dominican Republic when the dumb natives there, failing to understand now democracy works, elected the wrong person president and the U.S. had to clean up their mess by overthrowing him. (Hey maybe those white supremacists have a point about dark-skinned people being unable to govern themselves. as Jared Kushner just opined about Palestinians.)
John F. Kennedy gave a green light to a military coup in Vietnam against U.S. puppet dictator Diem, who just wasn't cutting the mustard in suppressing the national aspirations of the Vietnamese people. Tragically, he failed to overthrow Castro, one of his fatal failures that led to his assassination by the CIA, with the complicity of the U.S. military, the FBI, Dallas police, and after the fact especially "the" media.
Dwight David Eisenhower, "hero" of world war two, in later years hero of peaceniks because of a couple of sentences in his farewell address warning "don't get the military-industrial complex getcha!"- this from a guy who greatly expanded that complex and created a nuclear weapons arsenal of thousands of genocidal weapons- knew how to overthrow a democratic government or two- actually at least two, Iran (1953) and Guatemala (1954), each democracy replaced by two of the most savagely murderous regimes in the world since 1945. (A quarter of a million of the citizens in each of these lands murdered by the U.S.-installed regimes.)
But presidential duties don't just consist in overthrowing governments. Presidents are also obligated to safeguard client dictators. Jimmy Carter "allowed" the overthrow of two very vicious and infamous dictators who were "friends" of the U.S.: the "Shah" (King) of Iran, and Anastasio Somoza of Nicaragua. Thus he spoiled Eisenhower's legacy in Iran, from the perspective of U.S. imperialists. These failures are the real but unstated reason "the" media turned on him with a vengeance in the election year of 1980, and hailed the racist fascist Ronald Reagan. Carter was smeared as a weakling who was attacked by a rabbit while canoeing. (Such juvenile mockery is actually a standard tool in the propaganda toolbox of U.S. media.)
Fortunately for Trump, as much as Democrats and their media allies (and the secret police apparatus that has worked assiduously to undermine Trump- all support Trump wholeheartedly in his valiant attempt to overthrow the Venezuelan government. And Trump's imperialist hitman John Bolton has public announced that Nicaragua and Cuba are also in line for "regime change." Trump is already tightening the screws on Cuba, ending tourist travel there permitted under an educational exemption. (The anti-Cuba and anti-Venezuela campaigns are pet projects of Florida GOP Senator Marco Rubio, a loathsome slimy fanatic.)
One thing you can be sure of: Trump's imperialist subversion and aggression will NOT be used by Democrats to attack him in the presidential campaign of 2020. Most of the declared candidates have either been silent on these matters or supportive of U.S. imperialist criminality, and the few exceptions are mild in their criticisms.
We should devoutly hope for a failed presidency. That is what's best for humanity.
Better Step Up Your Game, Fella! Don't You Want To Go Down In History As "Best President Ever"?
Trump is Gunning for Venezuela.
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