Amidst all the noise surrounding the mishandling of North Korea, Donald Trump has managed to get another swipe in at Iran and the treaty Obama negotiated with them. This writer really can’t understand why our presidents love to attack Iran. Sure their ayatollahs love to make speeches against America but that’s just religious/political rhetoric. It’s common knowledge that the Iranian people love America, despite the fact that we have often given them the short end of the stick and have rarely kept our word or lived up to our promises to them.
Most of our politicians have continued to live the big lie that Iran is the biggest exporter of terrorism in the world when everyone who can read or write knows that Saudi Arabia holds that title. Of course Trump loves the Saudis despite their involvement in 911. Just this year he made a deal to sell them $110 million in new weapons and we all know he hungers after their oil. Trump loves oil like most serious drinkers love good Scotch. This leads him to overlook the fact that Iran not Saudi Arabia has been our closest Middle Eastern ally in the fight against ISIS.
But to be fair, Trump is not the only U.S. President to e pounding the table for war in either North Korea or Iran or even possibly in Venezuela. We have a long and very expensive history of war in places like Vietnam, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia and Libya. None of them, however, seems to paint us in such a sleazy light as Iran. Sure we attacked many of them for no reason, especially Iraq and Afghanistan but our subversive history with Iran shows us to be nothing but greedy pigs that operate at the behest of our corporate CEOs rather than our citizen’s needs.
By now, everyone who can read knows how the disintegration of what had been a good relationship with Iran began to dissolve when in 1953 we, along with the Brits, over threw the democratically elected government of Mohammad Mossadegh to install the dictatorial, Shah Pahlavi. We came up short in 1979 when the Iranians rose up and led by their religious fanatic leader the Ayatollah, threw out the Shah and denounced America for his unfortunate reign. But still we didn’t learn our lesson and so we supported Iraq in a war of aggression against Iran in the early Reagan years and added trade and financial sanctions that still are in place.
To make matters worse we went on to betray the people of Iran in 2009 when we egged them on in their revolution against he Ayatollahs and then abandoned them to the dungeons of the secret police. For some, unknown reason, they still seem to love us.
Yes we do have a quasi-legitimate reason to oppose Iran and it’s policy of support of Hezbollah and Hamas, a pair of militant groups that have caused a lot of trouble in the Middle East. Both those groups earn our enmity through their attacks on Israeli treatment of Palestinians. This is one of those situations where it’s very hard to figure out who’s right and who’s wrong with both side having dipped their toes into some pretty barbaric actions.
Taking all of the above into consideration, it comes down to the fact that we shouldn’t be taking sides, either for or against Iran, Iraq or Israel in their conflicts, until the opposing parties learn that there is no ultimate victory, only accommodation in the service of peace. Since none of the Middle Eastern parties can seem to understand that we will not be going to war for their ends, it seems that peace in the region is a hopeless goal . Those nations that are on the outside looking in, and who have already been involved in Middle Eastern chaos, nations like the U.S, Russia, Britain and France should, by now, have learned their lesson and hopefully, despite the nutcase we have in the White House, we will manage to stay out of any further Middle Eastern turmoil.
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Donald Trump and Newt Gingrich both tweeted that 66% of the people in West Virginia back Trump while 5% of the people in Washington do. So why did Robert Mueller impound a grand jury in Washington?
The answer seems pretty simple. He couldn’t find twenty-one people in West Virginia who could read.
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It’s interesting after the violence in Charlottesville this past weekend, that when Trump finally got on the tube he had neither the balls nor the intelligence to point his finger in the right direction. Yes he condemned the violence but couldn’t resist saying “on many sides,” indicating that he wasn’t condemning the racist right that brought the violence to that small southern city which was trying to rid their park of the statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee.
Look, Trump has made it abundantly clear from the birther beginning of his campaign, that he seeks these racists and bigots as his base. That’s why white supremacists and neo-Nazis felt emboldened to invade this city. They understand that Trump, in his refusal to condemn them for their disgusting behavior, in his bringing Bannon and his bigoted Brietbart crew into the White House and in his refusal to condemn David Duke, is just saying, “It’s okay guys. I’m with you.”
Those who can rad and know enough to listen have always known that Donald Trump is a bigot and a racist. Starting with the Birther crap all the way through his refusal to condemn David Duke, the Klan leader who has been a model for the worst elements of American society. The alt right groups that profess bigotry and racism have always existed in this country, lurking in the shadows, but now under the administration of Donald Trump they have emerged into the daylight dragging their putrid philosophies with them and allowing them to spoil anything they touch.
The skinheads, the Klan, the neo-Nazis and the rest of the Brietbart bigots have been inspired by Trump’s wrongful actions to think that they now represent some important segment of the American public. But they’re wrong. They represent only themselves. They stand for all that is wrong with this country. Their bigotry is topped only by their ignorance and cowardice.
There are not two sides to the violence in Charlottesville; as Rich Lowery, editor of the National Review, an avowed Right Wing rag, would have us believe. Lowery tried to make the case for equivalency on Meet the Press and he was dead wrong. He was trying to say that anti- Nazi violence was just as bad as pro-Nazi violence and that they are both the same. This is not true. The white supremacist crazies that came to Charlottesville came carrying guns and dressed in suspiciously real military gear. They came looking for a violent result. The demonstrators who came to oppose them were not armed and though they may have instigated some of the fights. They were there to protest hate and racism. They had the good cause.
One of the things that have always made this writer proud of being a graduate of Notre Dame University is the event in that university’s history when ND students raced to the South Bend train station to protest arrivals in South Bend to a KKK Klavern. When the KKK members would not leave town the students beat the living crap out of them and forced them back on the trains.
That is what was happening yesterday in Charlottesville. If our president doesn’t see the wrong in these neo-Nazis it is because he doesn’t want to. It’s because he embraces their cause. Just look at the bunch of alt-Right thugs he has installed in the White House at taxpayers expense. It starts with Steve Bannon former editor of the Nazi leaning Brietbart organization. Along with Bannon there is Sebastian Gorka who parades around proudly displaying his fathers Nazi organization pin. Michael Anton and Steve Miller both fascist white supremacists advise Trump. These are Trump’s hires. It’s no wonder that he refuses to deny them. Trump is a Nazi and anyone who tries t tell you different just isn’t paying attention.
I watched Alex Castellanos on This Week as he ambled on about how we’re all responsible for the bigotry and racism that is now running rampant in this country and all I could think was, as the judge said; ”Bullshit, $10, next case.” We are not all responsible for the crap being put forth by white supremacists and our President. The propagators of this despicable philosophy are the ones responsible. We have lived up to our responsibilities on how to live as Americans and they have not, so they are to be condemned and those who try to spread the blame, even onto the victims, is just full of shit. There are undoubtedly more elegant and erudite ways to say that but saying that they are full of shit just seems to best fill the bill.
Finally, not to be ignored, Trump’s ambiguous statement of blanket condemnation, made it clear that he backs the bigoted, racist element in this country, that it is indeed his base and that he, like them, has no idea what it really means to be an American.
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Anthony Scaramucci was on This Week, in a very surprising interview with George Stephanopoulos. This was certainly not the wild man that presented himself to the American public when Trump appointed him as White House Communications Director. This was a thoughtful, erudite, well-spoken man who unlike anyone else in the Trump administration accepted responsibility for what he had done and said it, while still professing loyalty and admiration for the President. At the time of his craziness, this writer had wondered aloud, how someone like the Mooch had ever achieved success in the business world. After seeing this interview it’s quite obvious.
We may be better off without the Mooch but maybe we would have benefitted if this version of him has been the one that had the Communications Director job he was fired from.
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H.R. McMaster in a series of interviews showed this week that he is a thoughtful, intelligent man with his feet planted firmly on the ground of international problems. He spoke intelligently about North Korea and Venezuela as well as Charlottesville, VA. It was clear that he wanted to clean up many of Trump’s gaffs but he was careful to do it in a way that never hurt his credibility or his position in the White House.
As the White House war between Bannon and McMaster escalates it becomes clearer and clearer that the nation will benefit from a McMaster victory, especially after this weeks catastrophe in Charlottesville which was, at least partially inspired by Bannon’s, Brietbart rhetoric.
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Leon Panetta was on the tube again speaking about strong leadership and how it was time for this President to display it in relation to both the crisis in North Korea and the rise of the alt-Right at home. Panetta understands the difference between strength and noise just as he understands that Trump blows a lot of steam but doesn’t show any actual strength. Threatening other countries isn’t what strength is about. Having the will to do the right thing, often the difficult thing when everyone is against you is what strength is really about and so far we haven’t seen Trump do anything for the right reasons since he took office.
Wanting to pass any healthcare bill just so you can say you passed a bill isn’t the right reason. Wanting to build an unnecessary wall just to fulfill a campaign promise isn’t the right reason to build a wall. Clamping down on immigration because you know it will revitalize your bigoted base isn’t the right reason to limit immigration especially when we need more of it. Rattling a sword at North Korea, when it’s obvious that there is a much better way to get them to do what we want, just because you think it will make you seem like a strong man when it actually makes you look like a fool is not the right way to get anything done.
We have a President who is almost completely non-functional in the job to which he has been elected. He came to the White House with tools developed in his former trade but now he finds that bullying, bribery and bankruptcy don’t work in the White House and he is all but paralyzed. When that happens to a bully who is really a coward all that it generates is bluster and Trump is so full of that, he threatens to explode at any second. Panetta sees this and calls Trump on it. He extends his message to Trump’s failure to call the situation in Virginia the same way.
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The most entertaining piece of television this weekend was watching Chuck Todd ask H.R. McMaster three separate times in a row if he could get along with Steve Bannon in the White House and seeing McMaster answer all three times, using advanced Washington speak, with a different and well thought out reply, all meaning NO, without ever saying “No. I want to squash him like the bug he is.”