Posts
After the U.S. establishment has pretty much blamed Iran for a drone and cruise missile attack on a Saudi Arabian petroleum processing facility last weekend, and Trump blustered that the U.S. was "locked and loaded," (a firearms term meaning ready to fire), and the always belligerent Secretary of State Michael "Spawn of the Koch Brothers" Pompeo spent every day furiously spewing invective against Iran, the military response ordered by Trump is pretty restrained. More U.S. forces are being rushed to the area, but in an explicitly defensive role- to try and intercept any future aerial attacks on Saudi Arabia.
We should not attribute this to any pacifism on Trump's part. It is strictly his own personal self-interest that guides his decisions here, as in all matters. The truth is, outside of the lairs of the ruling elite in the capital city of the empire, Washington, D.C., and the digs of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City, and places like the arch-reactionary Hoover Institute at Stanford University in California, pretty much everyone else in the U.S. is against more U.S. wars. Even Trump's nationalistic base is opposed. Why? The Iraq war is the answer. The American public was duped (most of them) by a gigantic propaganda campaign by the regime of Bush the Younger and the corporate media that was a pack of putrid lies from start to finish. That illegal aggression fractured Iraq and produced a chaotic situation, eventually leading to a near-takeover of the country by ISIS, an Islamofascist entity more fanatical, ruthless, and murderous than Al-Qaeda.
In a sense it was a repeat of history, but not as farce, but a repetition of tragedy. Woodrow Wilson lured the public into World War I on false pretenses, and after that war the U.S. public was revolted by the idea of ever fighting another war in Europe- so strong was the revulsion that until the Japanese Empire bombed Pearl Harbor and Adolf Hitler declared war on the U.S., very few in the U.S. saw a reason to get involved against the Axis Powers that were running wild. There were even Congressional hearings targeting war profiteers.
The same thing happened after the Iraq invasion and occupation fiasco. Plus there is a seemingly endless war in Afghanistan. The U.S. has been at war for the 18 years since the arranged "attack" of 9/11/01.
If Trump's base thirsted for Iranian blood, you can bet Trump would feed them some. But fortunately they don't. So no aggressive military response (which would be the "normal" U.S. reaction to such a "challenge") coupled with tightening the economic noose around Iran's neck.
So how is that like Nixon going to China? Simple. Because the Democratics always have to prove they're "tough," whereas it is taken for granted that the Republicans are, the Democrats cannot be "soft on communism" (or "terrorism" or whatever), as Republicans habitually accuse them of being. The Democrats have the political albatross of "Liberalism" hung around their necks, an epithet that connotes softness, weakness, appeasement. (Including appeasing poor people with crumbs, which the GOP- Gang Of Plunderers- would cut off entirely.)
Thus it required a Republican, and one with a long record of being "tough on communism" going back to 1949 (Nixon was so "tough" that he painted his Democratic opponents for House of Representatives and later for U.S. Senate as "pink" and "red," and won) to "open" to China, that is, to stop refusing to recognize the fact that the party of Mao ruled the country, not the fascist Nationalist Party of Chiang Kai-Shek, the general/warlord exiled with his gang to the island of Formosa (Taiwan). In other words, only the Republican Party felt politically able to behave rationally.
It is the same with Trump and Iran. He is able to resist the pressure from the pro-war bloc, including inside the Party. A Democrat would at least have a much harder time doing so.
So Trump is avoiding a ruinous war. He saw how the Iraq war harmed the Bush presidency. Although since the invasion was in 2003 and Bush ran for reelection in 2004, the shit hadn't really hit the fan yet. As it was, the GOP stole the 2004 election by stealing Ohio, without whose Electoral College votes Bush would have lost to fellow Skull and Bonesman John Kerry. (Skull and Bones is a secret society for rich Yale University students who were born into the ruling class of the U.S.) Trump needs, above all else, to win reelection next year, so he can run out the clock of the statute of limitations on various criminal charges he is vulnerable to.
We should not attribute this to any pacifism on Trump's part. It is strictly his own personal self-interest that guides his decisions here, as in all matters. The truth is, outside of the lairs of the ruling elite in the capital city of the empire, Washington, D.C., and the digs of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City, and places like the arch-reactionary Hoover Institute at Stanford University in California, pretty much everyone else in the U.S. is against more U.S. wars. Even Trump's nationalistic base is opposed. Why? The Iraq war is the answer. The American public was duped (most of them) by a gigantic propaganda campaign by the regime of Bush the Younger and the corporate media that was a pack of putrid lies from start to finish. That illegal aggression fractured Iraq and produced a chaotic situation, eventually leading to a near-takeover of the country by ISIS, an Islamofascist entity more fanatical, ruthless, and murderous than Al-Qaeda.
In a sense it was a repeat of history, but not as farce, but a repetition of tragedy. Woodrow Wilson lured the public into World War I on false pretenses, and after that war the U.S. public was revolted by the idea of ever fighting another war in Europe- so strong was the revulsion that until the Japanese Empire bombed Pearl Harbor and Adolf Hitler declared war on the U.S., very few in the U.S. saw a reason to get involved against the Axis Powers that were running wild. There were even Congressional hearings targeting war profiteers.
The same thing happened after the Iraq invasion and occupation fiasco. Plus there is a seemingly endless war in Afghanistan. The U.S. has been at war for the 18 years since the arranged "attack" of 9/11/01.
If Trump's base thirsted for Iranian blood, you can bet Trump would feed them some. But fortunately they don't. So no aggressive military response (which would be the "normal" U.S. reaction to such a "challenge") coupled with tightening the economic noose around Iran's neck.
So how is that like Nixon going to China? Simple. Because the Democratics always have to prove they're "tough," whereas it is taken for granted that the Republicans are, the Democrats cannot be "soft on communism" (or "terrorism" or whatever), as Republicans habitually accuse them of being. The Democrats have the political albatross of "Liberalism" hung around their necks, an epithet that connotes softness, weakness, appeasement. (Including appeasing poor people with crumbs, which the GOP- Gang Of Plunderers- would cut off entirely.)
Thus it required a Republican, and one with a long record of being "tough on communism" going back to 1949 (Nixon was so "tough" that he painted his Democratic opponents for House of Representatives and later for U.S. Senate as "pink" and "red," and won) to "open" to China, that is, to stop refusing to recognize the fact that the party of Mao ruled the country, not the fascist Nationalist Party of Chiang Kai-Shek, the general/warlord exiled with his gang to the island of Formosa (Taiwan). In other words, only the Republican Party felt politically able to behave rationally.
It is the same with Trump and Iran. He is able to resist the pressure from the pro-war bloc, including inside the Party. A Democrat would at least have a much harder time doing so.
So Trump is avoiding a ruinous war. He saw how the Iraq war harmed the Bush presidency. Although since the invasion was in 2003 and Bush ran for reelection in 2004, the shit hadn't really hit the fan yet. As it was, the GOP stole the 2004 election by stealing Ohio, without whose Electoral College votes Bush would have lost to fellow Skull and Bonesman John Kerry. (Skull and Bones is a secret society for rich Yale University students who were born into the ruling class of the U.S.) Trump needs, above all else, to win reelection next year, so he can run out the clock of the statute of limitations on various criminal charges he is vulnerable to.
The Crafty Emperor Alienates Not His Base
No comments:
Post a Comment