By Tom Engelhardt ( Republished wit permission of the author) Thomas M. "Tom" Engelhardt (born 1944) is an American writer and editor. He is the creator of The Nation Institute's tomdispatch.com, an online blog. He is also the co-founder of the American Empire Project and the author of the 1998 book, The End of Victory Culture: Cold War America and the Disillusioning of a Generation.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump acknowledges photographers after speaking at a campaign rally in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Thursday, February 11, 2016. (AP Photo / Gerald Herbert)
Recently, sorting through a pile of old children’s books, I came across a volume, That Makes Me Mad!, which brought back memories. Written by Steve Kroll, a long-dead friend, it focused on the eternally frustrating everyday adventures of Nina, a little girl whose life regularly meets commonplace roadblocks, at which point she always says… well, you can guess from the title! Vivid parental memories of another age instantly flooded back—of my daughter (now reading such books to her own son) sitting beside me at age 5 and hitting that repeated line with such mind-blowing, ear-crushing gusto that you knew it spoke to the everyday frustrations of her life, to what made her mad.
This article originally appeared atTomDispatch.com. To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch.com.
Three decades later, in an almost unimaginably different America, on picking up that book I suddenly realized that, whenever I follow the news online, on TV, or—and forgive me for this, but I’m 72 and still trapped in another era—on paper, I have a similarly Nina-esque urge. Only the line I’ve come up with for it is (with a tip of the hat to Steve Kroll) “You must be kidding!”
Here are a few recent examples from the world of American-style war and peace. Consider these as random illustrations, given that, in the age of Trump, just about everything that happens is out-of-this-world absurd and would serve perfectly well. If you’re in the mood, feel free to shout out that line with me as we go.
NUKING THE PLANET:
I’m sure you remember Barack Obama, the guy who entered the Oval Office pledging towork toward “a nuclear-free world.” You know, the president who traveled to Prague in 2009 to say stirringly: “So today, I state clearly and with conviction America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons…to put an end to Cold War thinking, we will reduce the role of nuclear weapons in our national security strategy, and urge others to do the same.” That same year, he was awarded the Nobel Prize largely for what he might still do, particularly in the nuclear realm. Of course, that was all so 2009!
Almost two terms in the Oval Office later, our peace president, the only one who has ever called for nuclear “abolition”—and whose administration has retired fewer weapons in our nuclear arsenal than any other in the post–Cold War era—is now presiding over the early stages of a trillion-dollar modernization of that very arsenal. (And that trillion-dollar price tag comes, of course, before the inevitable cost overruns even begin.) It includesfull-scale work on the creation of a “precision-guided” nuclear weapon with a “dial-back” lower yield option. Such a weapon would potentially bring nukes to the battlefield in a first-use way, something the United States is proudly pioneering.
And that brings me to the September 6th front-page story in The New York Times that caught my eye. Think of it as the icing on the Obama era nuclear cake. Its headline: “Obama Unlikely to Vow No First Use of Nuclear Weapons.” Admittedly, if made, such a vow could be reversed by any future president. Still, reportedly for fear that a pledge not to initiate a nuclear war would “undermine allies and embolden Russia and China…while Russia is running practice bombing runs over Europe and China is expanding its reach in the South China Sea,” the president has backed down on issuing such a vow. In translation: The only country that has ever used such weaponry will remain on the record as ready and willing to do so again without nuclear provocation, an act that, it is now believed in Washington, would create a calmer planet.
Recall that in October 2001, when the Bush administration launched its invasion of Afghanistan, the United States was bombing no other largely Islamic country. In fact, it was bombing no other country at all. Afghanistan was quickly “liberated,” the Taliban crushed, Al Qaeda put to flight, and that was that, or so it then seemed.
On September 8, almost 15 years later, The Washington Post reported that, over a single weekend and in a “flurry” of activity, the United States had dropped bombs on, or fired missiles at, six largely Islamic countries: Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, and Somalia. (And it might have been seven if the CIA hadn’t grown a little rusty when it comes to the drone strikes in Pakistan’s tribal borderlands that it’s launched repeatedly throughout these years.) In the same spirit, the president who swore he would end the US war in Iraq and, by the time he left office, do the same in Afghanistan, is now overseeing American bombing campaigns in Iraq and Syria which are loosing close to 25,000 weapons a year on those countries. Only recently, in order to facilitate the further prosecution of the longest war in our history, the president who announced that his country had ended its “combat mission” in Afghanistan in 2014, has once again deployedthe US military in a combat role and has done the same with the US Air Force. For that,B-52s (of Vietnam infamy) were returned to action there, as well as in Iraq and Syria, after a decade of retirement. In the Pentagon, military figures are now talking about “generational” war in Afghanistan—well into the 2020s.
Meanwhile, President Obama has personally helped pioneer a new form of warfare that will not long remain a largely American possession. It involves missile-armed drones, high-tech weapons that promise a world of no-casualty conflict (for the American military and the CIA), and adds up to a permanent global killing machine for taking out terror leaders, “lieutenants,” and “militants.” Well beyond official American war zones, US drones regularly cross borders, infringing on national sovereignty throughout the Greater Middle East and parts of Africa, to assassinate anyone the president and his colleagues decide needs to die, American citizen or otherwise (plus, of course, anyone who happens to be in the vicinity). With its White House “kill list” and its “terror Tuesday” meetings, the drone program, promising “surgical” hunting-and-killing action, has blurred the line between war and peace, while being normalized in these years. A president is now not just commander-in-chief but assassin-in-chief, a role that no imaginable future president is likely to reject. Assassination, previously an illegal act, has become the heart and soul of Washington’s way of life and of a way of war that only seems to spread conflict further.
You must be kidding!
THE WELL-OILED MACHINERY OF PRIVATIZED WAR
And speaking of drones, as The New York Times reported on September 5, the US drone program does have one problem: a lack of pilots. It has ramped up quickly in these years and, in the process, the pressures on its pilots and other personnel have only grown, including post-traumatic stress over killing civilians thousands of miles away via computer screen. As a result, the Air Force has been losing those pilots fast. Fortunately, a solution is on the horizon. That service has begun filling its pilot gap by going the route of the rest of the military in these years— turning to private contractors for help. Such pilots and other personnel are, however, paid higher salaries and cost more money. The contractors, in turn, have been hiring the only available personnel around, the ones trained by… yep, you guessed it, the Air Force. The result may be an even greater drain on Air Force drone pilots eager for increased pay for grim work and… well, I think you can see just how the well-oiled machinery of privatized war is likely to work here and who’s going to pay for it.
You must be kidding!
SELLING ARMS AS IF THERE WERE NO TOMORROW:
In a recent report for the Center for International Policy, arms expert William Hartung offered a stunning figure on US arms sales to Saudi Arabia. “Since taking office in January 2009,” he wrote, “the Obama administration has offered over $115 billion worth of weapons to Saudi Arabia in 42 separate deals, more than any US administration in the history of the US-Saudi relationship. The majority of this equipment is still in the pipeline, and could tie the United States to the Saudi military for years to come.” Think about that for a moment: $115 billion for everything from small arms to tanks, combat aircraft, cluster bombs, and air-to-ground missiles (weaponry now being used to slaughter civilians in neighboring Yemen).
Of course, how else can the United States keep its near monopoly on the global arms trade and ensure that two sets of products—Hollywood movies and US weaponry —will dominate the world’s business in things that go boom in the night? It’s a record to be proud of, especially since putting every advanced weapon imaginable in the hands of the Saudis will obviously help bring peace to a roiled region of the planet. (And if you arm the Saudis, you better do no less for the Israelis, hence the mind-boggling $38 billion in military aid the Obama administration recently signed on to for the next decade, the most Washington has ever offered any country, ensuring that arms will be flying into the Middle East, literally and figuratively, for years to come.)
Blessed indeed are the peacemakers—and of course you know that by “peacemaker” I mean the classic revolverthat “won the West.”
Put another way…
You must be kidding!
THE RACE FOR THE GENERALS:
I mean, who’s got the biggest…
…list of retired generals and admirals? Does it surprise you that there are at least 198 retired commanders floating around in their golden parachutes, many undoubtedly still embedded in the military-industrial complex on corporate boards and the like, eager to enroll in the Trump and Clinton campaigns? Trump went first, releasing an “open letter” signed by 88 generals and admirals who were bravely standing up to reverse the “hollowing out of our military” and to “secure our borders, to defeat our Islamic supremacist adversaries, and restore law and order domestically.” (Partial translation: pour yet more money into our military as The Donald has promised to do.) They included such household names as Maj. Gen. Joe Arbuckle, RAdm. James H. Flatley III, and Brig. Gen. Mark D. Scraba—or, hey!, one guy you might even remember: Lt. Gen. William (“Jerry”) Boykin, the evangelical crusaderwho made the news in 2003 by claiming of a former Somali opponent, “I knew that my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God, and his was an idol.”
Somehow, those 88 Trumpian military types assumedly crawled out of “the rubble” under which, as The Donald informed us recently, the Obama administration has left the American high command. His crew, however, is undoubtedly not the “embarrassment” he refers to when talking about American generalship in these years.
Meanwhile, the Clintonites struck back with a list of 95, “including a number of 4-star generals,” many directly from under that rubble, and within the week had added 15 more to hit 110. Meanwhile, members of the intelligence community and the rest of the national security state, former presidential advisers and other officials, drum-beating neocons, and strategists of every sort from America’s disastrous wars of the last 15 yearshustled to line up behind Hillary or The Donald.
If nothing else, all of it was a reminder of the bloated size and ever-increasing centrality of the post-9/11 national-security state and the military-industrial complex that goes with it. The question is: Does it inspire you with confidence in our candidates, or leave you saying…
You must be kidding!
CONFLICTS OF INTEREST AND ACCESS TO THE OVAL OFFICE:
Let’s put aside a possible preemptive $25,000 bribe to Florida’s attorney general from the Donald J. Trump Foundation to prevent an investigation of a scam operation, Trump “University.” If that “donation” to a political action committee does turn out to have been a bribe, no one should be surprised, given that The Donald has long been a walking Ponzi scheme. Thanks to a recent superb investigative report by Kurt Eichenwald of Newsweek, consider instead what it might mean for him to enter the Oval Office when it comes to conflicts of interest and the “national security” of the country. Eichenwald concludes that Trump would be “the most conflicted president in American history,” since the Trump Organization has “deep ties to global financiers, foreign politicians, and even criminals” in both allied and enemy countries. Almost any foreign policy decision he might make could hurt or enrich his own businesses. There would, in essence, be no way to divest himself and his family from the international Trump branding machine. (Think Trump U. writ large.) And you hardly need ask yourself whether The Donald would “act in the interests of the United States or his wallet,” given his prior single-minded pursuit of self-enrichment.
So much for conflicts of interest, what about access? That, of course, brings up the Clintons, who, between 2001 and the moment Hillary announced her candidacy for president, managed to take in $153 million dollars (yes, that is not a misprint) for a combined 729 speeches at an average fee of $210,795. That includes Hillary’s 20-minute speech to eBay’s Women’s Initiative Network Summit in March 2015 for a reported$315,000 just a month before she made her announcement. It’s obviously not Hillary’s (or Bill’s) golden words that corporate executives truly care about and are willing to pay the big bucks for, but the hope of accessibility to both a past and a possible future president. After all, in the world of business, no one ever thinks they’re paying good money for nothing.
Do I need to say more than…
You must be kidding!
Of course, I could go on. I could bring up a Congress seemingly incapable of passing a bill to fund a government effort to prevent the Zika virus from spreading wildly in parts of this country. (You must be kidding!) I could discuss how the media fell face first into an SUV—NBC Nightly News, which I watch, used the video of Hillary Clinton stumbling and almost falling into that van, by my rough count, 15 times over four nights—and what it tells us about news “coverage” these days. (You must be kidding!) I could start in on the constant polls that flood our lives by confessing that I’m an addict and plan on joining Pollers Anonymous on November 9, and then consider what it means to have such polls, and polls of polls, inundate us daily, teaching us about favorable/unfavorable splits, and offering endlessly varying snapshots of how we might or might not vote and which of us might or might not do it day so long before we ever hit a voting booth. (You must be kidding!) Or I could bring up the way, after five years of assiduous “research,” Donald Trump grudgingly acknowledged that Barack Obama was born in the United States and then essentially blamed the birther movement on Hillary Clinton. (You must be kidding!)
I could, in other words, continue welcoming you into an increasingly bizarre American landscape of war and peace (without a Tolstoy in sight).
Still, enough is enough, don’t you think? So let me stop here and, just for the hell of it, join me one last time in chanting: You must be kidding!
By Tom Engelhardt ( Republished wit permission of the author) Thomas M. "Tom" Engelhardt (born 1944) is an American writer and editor. He is the creator of The Nation Institute's tomdispatch.com, an online blog. He is also the co-founder of the American Empire Project and the author of the 1998 book, The End of Victory Culture: Cold War America and the Disillusioning of a Generation.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump acknowledges photographers after speaking at a campaign rally in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Thursday, February 11, 2016. (AP Photo / Gerald Herbert)
Recently, sorting through a pile of old children’s books, I came across a volume, That Makes Me Mad!, which brought back memories. Written by Steve Kroll, a long-dead friend, it focused on the eternally frustrating everyday adventures of Nina, a little girl whose life regularly meets commonplace roadblocks, at which point she always says… well, you can guess from the title! Vivid parental memories of another age instantly flooded back—of my daughter (now reading such books to her own son) sitting beside me at age 5 and hitting that repeated line with such mind-blowing, ear-crushing gusto that you knew it spoke to the everyday frustrations of her life, to what made her mad.
This article originally appeared atTomDispatch.com. To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch.com.
Three decades later, in an almost unimaginably different America, on picking up that book I suddenly realized that, whenever I follow the news online, on TV, or—and forgive me for this, but I’m 72 and still trapped in another era—on paper, I have a similarly Nina-esque urge. Only the line I’ve come up with for it is (with a tip of the hat to Steve Kroll) “You must be kidding!”
Here are a few recent examples from the world of American-style war and peace. Consider these as random illustrations, given that, in the age of Trump, just about everything that happens is out-of-this-world absurd and would serve perfectly well. If you’re in the mood, feel free to shout out that line with me as we go.
NUKING THE PLANET:
I’m sure you remember Barack Obama, the guy who entered the Oval Office pledging towork toward “a nuclear-free world.” You know, the president who traveled to Prague in 2009 to say stirringly: “So today, I state clearly and with conviction America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons…to put an end to Cold War thinking, we will reduce the role of nuclear weapons in our national security strategy, and urge others to do the same.” That same year, he was awarded the Nobel Prize largely for what he might still do, particularly in the nuclear realm. Of course, that was all so 2009!
Almost two terms in the Oval Office later, our peace president, the only one who has ever called for nuclear “abolition”—and whose administration has retired fewer weapons in our nuclear arsenal than any other in the post–Cold War era—is now presiding over the early stages of a trillion-dollar modernization of that very arsenal. (And that trillion-dollar price tag comes, of course, before the inevitable cost overruns even begin.) It includesfull-scale work on the creation of a “precision-guided” nuclear weapon with a “dial-back” lower yield option. Such a weapon would potentially bring nukes to the battlefield in a first-use way, something the United States is proudly pioneering.
And that brings me to the September 6th front-page story in The New York Times that caught my eye. Think of it as the icing on the Obama era nuclear cake. Its headline: “Obama Unlikely to Vow No First Use of Nuclear Weapons.” Admittedly, if made, such a vow could be reversed by any future president. Still, reportedly for fear that a pledge not to initiate a nuclear war would “undermine allies and embolden Russia and China…while Russia is running practice bombing runs over Europe and China is expanding its reach in the South China Sea,” the president has backed down on issuing such a vow. In translation: The only country that has ever used such weaponry will remain on the record as ready and willing to do so again without nuclear provocation, an act that, it is now believed in Washington, would create a calmer planet.
Recall that in October 2001, when the Bush administration launched its invasion of Afghanistan, the United States was bombing no other largely Islamic country. In fact, it was bombing no other country at all. Afghanistan was quickly “liberated,” the Taliban crushed, Al Qaeda put to flight, and that was that, or so it then seemed.
On September 8, almost 15 years later, The Washington Post reported that, over a single weekend and in a “flurry” of activity, the United States had dropped bombs on, or fired missiles at, six largely Islamic countries: Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, and Somalia. (And it might have been seven if the CIA hadn’t grown a little rusty when it comes to the drone strikes in Pakistan’s tribal borderlands that it’s launched repeatedly throughout these years.) In the same spirit, the president who swore he would end the US war in Iraq and, by the time he left office, do the same in Afghanistan, is now overseeing American bombing campaigns in Iraq and Syria which are loosing close to 25,000 weapons a year on those countries. Only recently, in order to facilitate the further prosecution of the longest war in our history, the president who announced that his country had ended its “combat mission” in Afghanistan in 2014, has once again deployedthe US military in a combat role and has done the same with the US Air Force. For that,B-52s (of Vietnam infamy) were returned to action there, as well as in Iraq and Syria, after a decade of retirement. In the Pentagon, military figures are now talking about “generational” war in Afghanistan—well into the 2020s.
Meanwhile, President Obama has personally helped pioneer a new form of warfare that will not long remain a largely American possession. It involves missile-armed drones, high-tech weapons that promise a world of no-casualty conflict (for the American military and the CIA), and adds up to a permanent global killing machine for taking out terror leaders, “lieutenants,” and “militants.” Well beyond official American war zones, US drones regularly cross borders, infringing on national sovereignty throughout the Greater Middle East and parts of Africa, to assassinate anyone the president and his colleagues decide needs to die, American citizen or otherwise (plus, of course, anyone who happens to be in the vicinity). With its White House “kill list” and its “terror Tuesday” meetings, the drone program, promising “surgical” hunting-and-killing action, has blurred the line between war and peace, while being normalized in these years. A president is now not just commander-in-chief but assassin-in-chief, a role that no imaginable future president is likely to reject. Assassination, previously an illegal act, has become the heart and soul of Washington’s way of life and of a way of war that only seems to spread conflict further.
You must be kidding!
THE WELL-OILED MACHINERY OF PRIVATIZED WAR
And speaking of drones, as The New York Times reported on September 5, the US drone program does have one problem: a lack of pilots. It has ramped up quickly in these years and, in the process, the pressures on its pilots and other personnel have only grown, including post-traumatic stress over killing civilians thousands of miles away via computer screen. As a result, the Air Force has been losing those pilots fast. Fortunately, a solution is on the horizon. That service has begun filling its pilot gap by going the route of the rest of the military in these years— turning to private contractors for help. Such pilots and other personnel are, however, paid higher salaries and cost more money. The contractors, in turn, have been hiring the only available personnel around, the ones trained by… yep, you guessed it, the Air Force. The result may be an even greater drain on Air Force drone pilots eager for increased pay for grim work and… well, I think you can see just how the well-oiled machinery of privatized war is likely to work here and who’s going to pay for it.
You must be kidding!
SELLING ARMS AS IF THERE WERE NO TOMORROW:
In a recent report for the Center for International Policy, arms expert William Hartung offered a stunning figure on US arms sales to Saudi Arabia. “Since taking office in January 2009,” he wrote, “the Obama administration has offered over $115 billion worth of weapons to Saudi Arabia in 42 separate deals, more than any US administration in the history of the US-Saudi relationship. The majority of this equipment is still in the pipeline, and could tie the United States to the Saudi military for years to come.” Think about that for a moment: $115 billion for everything from small arms to tanks, combat aircraft, cluster bombs, and air-to-ground missiles (weaponry now being used to slaughter civilians in neighboring Yemen).
Of course, how else can the United States keep its near monopoly on the global arms trade and ensure that two sets of products—Hollywood movies and US weaponry —will dominate the world’s business in things that go boom in the night? It’s a record to be proud of, especially since putting every advanced weapon imaginable in the hands of the Saudis will obviously help bring peace to a roiled region of the planet. (And if you arm the Saudis, you better do no less for the Israelis, hence the mind-boggling $38 billion in military aid the Obama administration recently signed on to for the next decade, the most Washington has ever offered any country, ensuring that arms will be flying into the Middle East, literally and figuratively, for years to come.)
Blessed indeed are the peacemakers—and of course you know that by “peacemaker” I mean the classic revolverthat “won the West.”
Put another way…
You must be kidding!
THE RACE FOR THE GENERALS:
I mean, who’s got the biggest…
…list of retired generals and admirals? Does it surprise you that there are at least 198 retired commanders floating around in their golden parachutes, many undoubtedly still embedded in the military-industrial complex on corporate boards and the like, eager to enroll in the Trump and Clinton campaigns? Trump went first, releasing an “open letter” signed by 88 generals and admirals who were bravely standing up to reverse the “hollowing out of our military” and to “secure our borders, to defeat our Islamic supremacist adversaries, and restore law and order domestically.” (Partial translation: pour yet more money into our military as The Donald has promised to do.) They included such household names as Maj. Gen. Joe Arbuckle, RAdm. James H. Flatley III, and Brig. Gen. Mark D. Scraba—or, hey!, one guy you might even remember: Lt. Gen. William (“Jerry”) Boykin, the evangelical crusaderwho made the news in 2003 by claiming of a former Somali opponent, “I knew that my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God, and his was an idol.”
Somehow, those 88 Trumpian military types assumedly crawled out of “the rubble” under which, as The Donald informed us recently, the Obama administration has left the American high command. His crew, however, is undoubtedly not the “embarrassment” he refers to when talking about American generalship in these years.
Meanwhile, the Clintonites struck back with a list of 95, “including a number of 4-star generals,” many directly from under that rubble, and within the week had added 15 more to hit 110. Meanwhile, members of the intelligence community and the rest of the national security state, former presidential advisers and other officials, drum-beating neocons, and strategists of every sort from America’s disastrous wars of the last 15 yearshustled to line up behind Hillary or The Donald.
If nothing else, all of it was a reminder of the bloated size and ever-increasing centrality of the post-9/11 national-security state and the military-industrial complex that goes with it. The question is: Does it inspire you with confidence in our candidates, or leave you saying…
You must be kidding!
CONFLICTS OF INTEREST AND ACCESS TO THE OVAL OFFICE:
Let’s put aside a possible preemptive $25,000 bribe to Florida’s attorney general from the Donald J. Trump Foundation to prevent an investigation of a scam operation, Trump “University.” If that “donation” to a political action committee does turn out to have been a bribe, no one should be surprised, given that The Donald has long been a walking Ponzi scheme. Thanks to a recent superb investigative report by Kurt Eichenwald of Newsweek, consider instead what it might mean for him to enter the Oval Office when it comes to conflicts of interest and the “national security” of the country. Eichenwald concludes that Trump would be “the most conflicted president in American history,” since the Trump Organization has “deep ties to global financiers, foreign politicians, and even criminals” in both allied and enemy countries. Almost any foreign policy decision he might make could hurt or enrich his own businesses. There would, in essence, be no way to divest himself and his family from the international Trump branding machine. (Think Trump U. writ large.) And you hardly need ask yourself whether The Donald would “act in the interests of the United States or his wallet,” given his prior single-minded pursuit of self-enrichment.
So much for conflicts of interest, what about access? That, of course, brings up the Clintons, who, between 2001 and the moment Hillary announced her candidacy for president, managed to take in $153 million dollars (yes, that is not a misprint) for a combined 729 speeches at an average fee of $210,795. That includes Hillary’s 20-minute speech to eBay’s Women’s Initiative Network Summit in March 2015 for a reported$315,000 just a month before she made her announcement. It’s obviously not Hillary’s (or Bill’s) golden words that corporate executives truly care about and are willing to pay the big bucks for, but the hope of accessibility to both a past and a possible future president. After all, in the world of business, no one ever thinks they’re paying good money for nothing.
Do I need to say more than…
You must be kidding!
Of course, I could go on. I could bring up a Congress seemingly incapable of passing a bill to fund a government effort to prevent the Zika virus from spreading wildly in parts of this country. (You must be kidding!) I could discuss how the media fell face first into an SUV—NBC Nightly News, which I watch, used the video of Hillary Clinton stumbling and almost falling into that van, by my rough count, 15 times over four nights—and what it tells us about news “coverage” these days. (You must be kidding!) I could start in on the constant polls that flood our lives by confessing that I’m an addict and plan on joining Pollers Anonymous on November 9, and then consider what it means to have such polls, and polls of polls, inundate us daily, teaching us about favorable/unfavorable splits, and offering endlessly varying snapshots of how we might or might not vote and which of us might or might not do it day so long before we ever hit a voting booth. (You must be kidding!) Or I could bring up the way, after five years of assiduous “research,” Donald Trump grudgingly acknowledged that Barack Obama was born in the United States and then essentially blamed the birther movement on Hillary Clinton. (You must be kidding!)
I could, in other words, continue welcoming you into an increasingly bizarre American landscape of war and peace (without a Tolstoy in sight).
Still, enough is enough, don’t you think? So let me stop here and, just for the hell of it, join me one last time in chanting: You must be kidding!
A 23-kiloton nuclear weapon explodes on April 18, 1953 at the U.S. military's Nevada Test Site. | National Nuclear Security Administration
The next U.S. president faces immense global challenges, all of which will impact domestic policy and the American people.
They include a growing crisis of wealth extremes, long-term stagnation of the global capitalist economy, resource depletion, terrorism, escalating tensions with Russia, immigration and refugee crises, pro-business trade pacts, and numerous hotspots – including the Syrian civil war. Above all, there are the looming existential crises of climate change and the growing nuclear danger.
Change is accelerating. We live in a multi-polar world with the U.S. a descending power, the European Union in crisis, and China and other trading blocs and alliances ascending.
While Wall Street and transnational capital dominate U.S. foreign policy, it is an arena of struggle of contending influences and forces, including U.S. public opinion.
Trump policy: chaotic, isolationist, dangerous
There are stark differences between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump on nearly every issue. While some describe Clinton as a “hawk” and Trump as a “dove,” in reality, on every score Trump poses an immense danger to humanity and nature. The foreign policy establishment and officials from past Democratic andRepublican administrations are nearly universal in their opposition to Trump, characterizing him as unfit and dangerous.
Trump’s foreign policy approach totally lacks coherence. His advisors are an eclectic collection of right-wingers, kooks, and extremists. Some have no foreign policy experience whatsoever, including two advisinghim on Israel and Palestine – Jason Dov Greenblatt, a real estate attorney, and David Friedman, a bankruptcy expert.
At least one, Walid Phares, is a prominent commentator on Fox News as a Middle East and terrorism expert. Two others feel Sharia law poses a dire domestic threat, and at least one has re-tweeted anti-Semitic posts. One suggested President Obama is a Muslim.
Add to the mix Trump campaign CEO Stephen K. Bannon, the Breitbart News extremist and mouthpiece of the fascist alt-right, who would push a foreign policy geared to paranoia, conspiracy of an “elite global cabal,” and white supremacy.
When added up, a Trump foreign policy would be more chaotic, impulsive, unpredictable, disruptive, and lead to more dangerous tensions and conflicts, including the possibility of nuclear war. Imagine a brooding Trump awake in the wee hours of the morning fuming over some perceived slight by a foreign leader. Instead of sending a hate-filled tweet, he may order a nuclear strike.
Trump advocates open violations of international law (use of torture including water boarding and killing families of suspected terrorists) and abrogation of treaties and agreements (e.g. Paris Climate Agreement, the Iran Nuclear Deal, and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty). His policy agenda focuses on what Trump calls the battle against “radical Islamic terrorism.” He sees the “Muslim world at war with the West”.
Trump’s initial call to ban Muslims from immigrating has now morphed into a policy of “extreme vetting,” but it is still fanning Islamophobia at home and anti-American sentiments in the Middle East creating fertile soil for future terror attacks.
And this would be the first time a businessman with his own far-flung global financial empire would be president, creating many serious conflicts of interest. For example, many suspect Trump is hiding business ties with Russia, which would explain his attitude toward Putin and his dismissal of Russian hacking of DNC emails and apparent efforts to manipulate the U.S. elections.
The Trump Organization is an “enterprise with deep ties to global financiers, foreign politicians and even criminals,” writes Kurt Eichenwald in Newsweek. “If Donald Trump wins this election and his company is not immediately shut down or forever severed from the Trump family, the foreign policy of the United States of America could well be for sale.”
“America First” policy
Trump advocates an “America First” foreign policy, akin to the 1940’s right-wing isolationism pushed by figures like Charles Lindbergh and other Nazi sympathizers. He draws much of his plan verbatim from the right-wing Heritage Foundation, which centers on restoring U.S. economic and military domination.
Trump calls for the abrogation of important treaties and global agreements and takes a hostile stance toward the United Nations, reminiscent of the Bush administration. During a foreign policy speech in Philadelphia, Trump called for a massive military buildup including expanding the number of U.S. Army troops by 50,000, additional Marine battalions, Navy ships and submarines and Air Force combat aircraft, modernization of missile defense, and strengthening cyber security. The estimated additional cost would be $450 billion over 10 years.
Trump vows to defeat what he terms “radical Islamic terrorism” with a “secret plan.” But he also says, once elected, he would command his generals to draft a plan to destroy ISIS that includes sending U.S. combat troops.
Like Clinton, Trump says he advocates a “no-fly zone” in Syria, but in the vice presidential debate Oct. 5, his running mate Mike Pence went further and indicated a Trump administration would take military action against the Syrian government, putting the U.S. in direct conflict with Russia. Trump denied this during the Oct. 9 presidential debate.
During a speech in Youngstown, Trump called for taking complete control of Iraq’s oil supplies in violation of the Geneva Conventions, a move that would also require redeployment of a vast U.S. occupation force.
http://stephendarorionthewww.blogspot.co.il/2016/09/benjamen-netanyahus-key-wing-men-one_30.html The Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu'knows Israel needs a US president who is measured, consistent and credible, all qualities Trump lacks.Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's key Wing Men and key partners ,Naftali Bennett leader of Bayit Hayehudi party and Education Minister, Aryeh Deri leader of the Shas Party and Interior Ministry . Avigdor Lieberman leader of Yisrael Beiteinu and Defense Minister and Moshe Kachlon, leader of Kulanu Party Finance Minister,one and all prefer Hillary Clinton for the 45th President of the USA ..... now even more than in June 2016. Furthermore both Yair Lapid of Yesh Atid and Bougie Herzog of Zionist Union have also repeatedly expressed preference for A Clinton administration over a Trump one that is riddled with uncertainty and an inner circle of known anti Semites like Steve Bannon who is on a leave of absence as CEO of Breitbart News with ties to ex Klu Klax Klan head David Duke and the worst anti semitic elements of the Alt Right.
He also sees the U.S. relationship with Israel as pivotal. But many, including in the U.S. Jewish community, have become alarmed with the takeover of Trump’s campaign by the alt-right, white supremacists, and anti-Semitic elements.
Greenblatt and Friedman are right-wing extremists who favor deeper ties to the Netanyahu government. A Trump administration would radically redefine relations with Israel and Palestine. Trump promises to recognize Jerusalem as the undivided capital of Israel, provoking a confrontation with Palestinians who also regard it as their historic capital. But Netanyahu;s wingmen One and all prefer a Clinton administration for the next 8 years.
The Republican Party platform also dropped support for a two-state solution. This would green light expansion of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank and their ultimate annexation. Palestinians would be forced into a Greater Israel, radically heightening tensions throughout the Middle East and inevitably provoking a radical escalation of the conflict. The long term change in land ownership in Israel where land in and around Jewish Settlements is transferred to that Settlement for development devoid of Government or external influence or politicking will ensure that Settlements increase in size as demand for new housing in their Settlements warrants building new housing. The Clinton campaign also have released 'talking points' that indicate that a Clinton Administration would ;manage ' the Palestinian - Israeli Quagmire rather than impose a solution until the mindset of Palestinians is no longer that any solution to this century old problem is devoid of Jews in the Middle East.
In addition, Trump wants to scuttle the Iran Nuclear Deal and re-impose sanctions. The position of right-wing religious clerics would be strengthened if that happened, and Iran might then resume its nuclear weapons program. It could lead to Israel taking military action against Iran.
Nuclear policy: why can’t we use ‘em?
Trump’s stance on nuclear weapons is a muddle and alarming. He talks of nuclear weapons as dangerous, but says he’s “not taking any card off the table.” He cavalierly says he wouldn’t rule out use of tactical nuclear weapons against ISIS and would be deliberately unpredictable in ordering their deployment.
“They’re hearing a guy run for president talk about using nuclear weapons. Nobody wants to hear that,” saidNBC Hardball host Chris Matthews. To which Trump responds, “Then why do we make ‘em?”
The campaign had to deny reports that Trump “had repeatedly asked an international foreign policy expert why the U.S. couldn’t use nuclear weapons.”
Abrogating the Iran Nuclear Deal and Trump’s call for Japan, South Korea, and even Saudi Arabia to develop their own nuclear weapons would undermine the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act, greatly increasing the global nuclear danger.
As former missile launch officer Bruce Blair wrote, “Mr. Trump is seemingly blind to the importance of restraint in nuclear decision making. He shows no humility toward the civilization-ending destructiveness of nuclear weapons, and offhandedly entertains their use.”
Immigration, Cuba, and the Americas
“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best,” Trump said in June 2015 when launching his campaign. “They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with them. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.”
He went on to say, “It’s coming from more than Mexico… It’s coming from all over South and Latin America.” Trump’s racist scapegoating of Mexicans and Latin Americans and his call to build a border wall and deport 15 million undocumented immigrants has inflamed anger and anti-American sentiments everywhere south of the border.
Such a plan is fantasy but its mere advocacy has created bitter animosities and unleashed racism, discrimination, and violence against Latinos. In an about face, Trump is now pledging to reverse the historic process of normalization with Cuba initiated by the Obama administration, in the hopes of winning Florida.
Action on climate crisis
Trump calls global warming a hoax invented by the Chinese. He vows to withdraw the U.S. from the historic Paris Agreement on climate change, signed by 197 parties, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Recently, in an unprecedented open letter, 375 scientists including 30 Nobel laureates warned of the danger of electing Trump. They are alarmed he would imperil the Paris Agreement and increase the existential threat to life on Earth.
Trump vows to repeal Obama policies curbing emissions through the Clean Air Act and radically ramp up production of coal. Achieving this pledge is highly debatable given the economics of fossil fuels as the cost of green technology plummets.
All in all, a Trump presidency would leave the world in a far more dangerous and precarious place.
Clinton – more hawkish?
Overall Clinton is likely to continue the broad framework of the Obama foreign policy, including his “pivot” to Asia, with emphasis on diplomacy and multilateralism.
Clinton will uphold the Iran Nuclear Deal and normalization of relations with Cuba and pursuing immigration reform with a path to citizenship. She has spoken out against any ban on Muslims.
Clinton has also vowed to uphold the Paris climate agreement and build on the Obama administration’s achievements to curb greenhouse gas emissions. The environmental and climate plan in the Democratic Party platform is the strongest ever.
While many observers think Clinton will be to the right of Obama on foreign policy as an exponent of “liberal interventionism,” and some on the left describe her as a “warmonger” or “hawk,” there are others who are less certain.
Clinton’s history as U.S Senator and Secretary of State would indicate she favors a more interventionist foreign policy. This assessment is based on her vote on the Iraq war, support for the Iraq troop surge, intervention in Libya, and her role in the Ukraine and Honduras coups. Her policy team is studded with “liberal interventionists.” And she will likely, unfortunately, continue the drone policy.
But Clinton’s history also shows she has been responsive to public pressure, including during the primary battle with Sen. Bernie Sanders. She will face new realities both global and domestic, including shifts in public opinion, all of which make her approach a little uncertain.
As Stephen Wall wrote recently in Foreign Policy, Clinton’s primary aim must be to consolidate her domestic support, which entails addressing slow economic growth, jobs, and wages. With severe budgetary limitations, the priority would be a large-scale infrastructure project.
The last thing Clinton wants is to get bogged down in a costly quagmire at the outset of her administration. And at this point, the American people are war-weary and divided on any military action – especially one involving deployment of U.S. troops to any of the global hotspots.
The New York Times also reported Clinton has expressed doubts about going forward with a $1 trillion nuclear weapons modernization program initiated by the Obama administration, something the president is apparently also reconsidering. She would kill a pet project of the Pentagon – the nuclear-tipped cruise missile.
Middle East and Syria – dangerous flashpoint
A Clinton administration is sure to keep the U.S. deeply entrenched in the Middle East. While she has ruled out sending ground forces, Clinton has called for increasing aid to Arab and Kurdish forces battling ISIS.
The foreign policy establishment is exerting intense pressure to ramp up direct U.S. involvement in Syria. Serious concerns have been raised with Clinton’s call for a “no-fly zone.” Implementing a “no-fly zone” would place the U.S. in direct conflict with Russia and the Assad government since ISIS has no air force. It would require a larger U.S. military commitment.
The disastrous outcome of the intervention in Libya looms large. Deeper involvement in Syria could have a similar result. Syria is in much deeper crisis, opposition forces to the Assad government are entangled with Al-Qaeda and other terrorist outfits, and Russia has deepened its involvement. Mass migration across Europe would only intensify.
It appears there will be little change in the approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. While Clinton supports a two-state solution, she has so far not outlined a clear path to achieve this. She and the Democratic Party platform refused to call for “an end to occupations and illegal settlements” in Palestinian territories. The recent U.S.-Israeli $38 billion agreement makes it harder to reverse the path to an “apartheid” state.
Return to the Cold War?
U.S. policy has historically been to encircle and contain Russia (and the Soviet Union before that), including through NATO expansion. This is colliding with Russia’s efforts to expand its own sphere of influence, perhaps evidenced in the apparent involvement in hacking emails and the open support for Trump by Putin and his oligarch allies. The next administration will inherit an increasingly tense relationship.
Trump’s relationship with Russia is based on business and corruption. Clinton has had experience with negotiating the New START treaty but also had a hand in the coup in the Ukraine.
There are many pressures to return to a Cold War-style adversarial relationship, which Clinton will have to resist. The American people, including the peace movement will have to pressure for a diplomatic solution to whatever crises arises.
Action by the people
Any substantive change in domestic and foreign policy begins by blocking Trump from the presidency and breaking the GOP majorities in Congress. The present electoral coalition united behind Clinton will have to continue post-election to fight to implement the Democratic Party platform – the most progressive ever – including a massive infrastructure project.
But it will take a broader intervention of the American people, bigger movements, and higher levels of mass consciousness and a changed composition of Congress to dislodge Wall Street and the military industrial complex from their domination of U.S. foreign policy.
Only then will it be possible to advance a radical new demilitarized foreign policy marked by peaceful relations, respect for sovereignty, equitable and mutually beneficial trade, special assistance to developing countries, and sustainable development.
