Yesterday, I awoke to grim news that Israel is bombing Gaza yet again, killing a few hundred people, even as the U.S. targets Yemen with “precision” bombs and strikes, apparently to intimidate Iran as well—and perhaps to provoke a war, as Israeli jets escort U.S. B-52 bombers in “exercises.”
War is in the news, incessantly, with Congress sidelined and feckless as usual.
The constant drumbeat of war—the never-ending concussion of bombs in the Middle East—put me to mind of Orwell’s 1984. Nothing favors authoritarian states more than a constant state of war. If you truly want to weaken the Trump administration, reject their “warrior” and “war fighting” rhetoric and their selling of “peace through strength,” by which they mean peace through bombing and killing. Some “peace,” right? They may as well go full Orwell and declare that “war is peace” while making the Pentagon the “Ministry of Peace.”
Speaking of Orwell, and needing a break from death and mayhem, I remembered this piece that I wrote in 2018. Citizens, you had best police not only your words and actions, but the faces you make as well, especially when our Dear Leader is talking.
Written in September 2018
Facecrime!
W.J. Astore
We’re truly living in Orwellian times. A 17-year-old high school student, now known as #plaidshirtguy due to his choice of wardrobe, was removed from a Trump rally in Montana because of the faces he was making as Trump spoke. You can read all about here, and watch an interview with him at CNN.
Not surprisingly, people who stand behind Trump are selected ahead of time and told to clap and cheer. This young man did that, but he also chose to look quizzical, skeptical, and bemused at times. This is not allowed! A Trump staffer eventually intervened to remove him from the audience due to his “face crime.” To make matters worse, he was then held by the Secret Service for ten minutes, after which he was asked to leave the event.
Leave the event? For making skeptical and quizzical facial expressions?
You may recall from George Orwell’s “1984” that “Facecrime” existed. Anyone making skeptical or otherwise unacceptable faces when the Party announced bogus victories, production figures, and so forth opened himself or herself up to serious punishment.
Thanks to plaid shirt guy, we now know that facecrime has come to America. Just remember, fellow citizens, always to smile and cheer in the presence of Our Dear Leader. Unless you want to be detained and sent away — perhaps next time to the cornfield.
*From my copy of “1984”: “In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face (to look incredulous when a victory was announced, for example) was itself a punishable offense. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: facecrime, it was called.” (From the end of Chapter 5.)
As a retired U.S. military officer, I’m appalled at the notion of “peace through strength.” You may as well say “war is peace.” Peace is achieved through dialogue. Diplomacy. Engagement. A spirit of good will. It isn’t achieved by brandishing weapons while selling the same around the globe. (The U.S. dominates the global arms trade, accounting for nearly half of it.)
I’m also outraged by the ongoing militarism of this moment, whether it’s Kamala Harris celebrating military lethality and embracing the Cheneys in 2024 or the Trump crowd that embraces “warriors” and “warfighters.” The solemn tradition of the citizen-soldier has long been abandoned in the U.S., replaced as it has been by a mercenary mindset that sees war as permanent and therefore “normal,” even admirable.
Even as we’re essentially being told and sold “war is peace,” we’re also being told and sold that ethnic cleansing in Gaza is urban renewal, a prelude to a new Riviera, a new playground for the rich, even if it’s erected on the bones of millions of Palestinians. Obviously, this cleansing of genocide using the imagery of crass and vulgar tourism must be condemned in no uncertain terms.
Put colloquially, I often wonder, Dude, where’s my country?
Explore Gaza, by Mr. Fish (at Chris Hedges’ Substack)
America’s Revival Will Begin When It Finally Embraces Peace
Arguably the biggest problem in America today is that the government remains on a wartime footing. The possibility of America being a normal country in normal times, at peace, is simply never mentioned. In current politics and in the mainstream media, there is no vision of America being at peace with the world. Ever.
There is always an enemy, usually plural. Russia. China. Iran. North Korea. The inchoate threat of terror and terrorists. Islamist extremism. All these and more are cited by the “experts” in the “national security state” as requiring a military response. If some kind of peace deal is orchestrated for the Russia-Ukraine War, America and its war machine will immediately pivot to Asia. Or the Middle East. Or perhaps Africa. Or all three.
I’m amazed when friends tell me they’re concerned about U.S. isolationism. Usually this concern is couched in America’s alleged withdrawal from (or even betrayal of) Europe in light of the Russia-Ukraine War. Their message to me is simple: America must keep sending weapons and intel to Ukraine until Russia and Putin are defeated, “as long as it takes.” The “it” is left undefined, but apparently “it” refers to an unqualified Ukrainian victory over Russia, followed by Ukraine’s eventual admission into NATO. Whether that “it” is even possible—whether that “it” could well lead to a nuclear exchange—doesn’t seem to matter because “We’re at war.”
I don’t know how anyone can think America will return to isolationism when the U.S. has 800 military bases globally and a vision of global reach, global power, and total dominance everywhere. And when America spends more on its military than the next ten countries combined (and most of those are U.S. allies). Dominating the globe isn’t exactly consistent with isolationism.
The problem with all the war rhetoric, the war narrative, the war framing, the warrior and lethality talk, is what it enables and facilitates, which is atrocity. Waste. Destruction. War is no way of life at all. As Ike said, the persistence of war is humanity crucifying itself on a cross of iron.
War is immensely corrosive to democracy. It is the enemy of freedom. Just listen to James Madison:
James Madison
Of all the enemies of true liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debt and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manner and of morals, engendered in both. No nation can preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare …
*****
If you’re concerned about authoritarianism, if you’re concerned about maintaining and strengthening freedom, if you’re concerned about combatting corruption and waste, if you’re concerned about America’s huge deficits, stopping war should be your number one concern.
War is a terrible thing, and a state of war enables all kinds of butchery. Just ask the indigenous peoples of America, or the peoples of Palestine today. Even genocide can be disguised as a wartime exigency, a wartime necessity. How many times throughout history has the declaration, “We’re at war!” been used to justify the most heinous crimes against humanity? Even the Nazis hid behind wartime exigency to justify the mass euthanasia of the old, the mentally ill, and other forms of “life unworthy of life” as part of the T4 program (which anticipated the Holocaust).
The true revival of America will begin when this country declares itself to be at peace with the world. Until then, precipitous decline will continue for as long as our government remains at (and continues to celebrate) war.
I recently ordered a few items from Amazon. Random stuff like a shower caddy, an iPhone case, and lamp sockets. It won’t surprise you to learn they were all “Made in China.”
I ordered some clothes from a fancy online retailer. The clothes said “Designed in California” but they were, of course, Made in China.
What is America making? What are we sending overseas? Bombs and bulldozers for the devastation and dismantlement of Gaza and other Palestinian Territories. Consider this article from Ken Klippenstein (excerpt follows), which details roughly $10 billion in “foreign aid” to Israel.
Here’s what Klippenstein had to say:
*****
While the entire news media is focused on Trump’s suspension of arms for Ukraine, the administration is arming Israel to the teeth. The nature of the bombs being sold indicates Israel’s military is preparing to continue its bombing campaigns in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen; as well as preparing for possible war with Iran.
Included in the sales are tens of thousands of controversial 2,000 lb. bombs so heavily criticized during the Gaza war for their destructive capacity, and thousands of “Hellfire” missiles that are used for targeted killings.
When I visited the Defense Security Cooperation Agency website’s section for major arms sales to see a breakdown of the weapons, I was immediately struck by the fact that five of the last six sales were to Israel.
Screenshot of DSCA’’s “Major Arms Sales” landing page
The U.S. bombs and missiles being sent to Israel, almost all made by Boeing, are included in:
2,166 GBU-39/B 250-pound Small Diameter Bombs (SDB) Increment 1.
2,800 MK 82 General Purpose, 500-pound bomb bomb bodies.
13,000 KMU-556 JDAM Guidance Kits to attach to MK-84 (2,000-pound) bomb bodies.
3,475 KMU-557 JDAM Guidance Kits to attach to BLU-109 (2,000-pound) bomb bodies.
1,004 KMU JDAM Guidance Kits to attach to 500-pound GBU-38v1 bomb bodies.
17,475 FMU-152A/B multi-function fuzes for bombs.
*****
Holy shit! Nearly thirty-six thousand 2000-pound bombs! That is 36 kilotons, roughly the equivalent of the two atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. And that’s not including the assorted 1000- and 500-pound bombs tossed into the mix.
This is an astonishing amount of ordnance for Israel to continue its ethnic cleansing campaign in Gaza and the West Bank.
President Trump, of course, has the full support of most Democrats in sending this stockpile of destruction to Israel. Call it bipartisan genocidal enablement.
America sure is an “exceptional” nation. No nation is better at bombing others—or supplying the bombs for others like Israel to do so—then flattening what remains with “Made in USA” bulldozers.
Honestly, I wish my country made shower caddies, iPhone cases, and lamp sockets instead of bombs and bulldozers. Don’t you?
The Disastrous Oval Office Meeting Between Trump and Zelensky
It’s never a good idea to bite the hand that feeds you. In effect, that’s what President Zelensky did yesterday in a contentious meeting with President Trump and Vice President Vance.
Bloodbath? Showdown? Blow-up? Or a rare example of backroom brawling in plain sight?
My email this morning featured many takes on the meeting from the media. Here are a few choice words: Showdown. Dispute. Debacle. Blow-up. Botched visit. Bloodbath. Feud.
It must have been strange for Zelensky. He’s used to coming to DC and getting his way. Of being feted and fawned over. Who does he think he is, Bibi Netanyahu? Bibi has AIPAC and Congress behind him, and lord knows who and what else. Zelensky, to borrow from Trump, doesn’t have those cards. His hand is weaker and he didn’t play it well.
Matt Taibbi has an article on the meeting with a full (if imperfect) transcript. Check it out here. Taibbi is generally critical of Zelensky; the historian Timothy Snyder is critical of the “inhospitable” and “indecent” Trump/Vance. Check out Snyder’s video here.
As I watched the video from the Oval Office, and heard Zelensky’s complaints, I almost thought he was going to break out his rendition of the Streisand/Diamond duet, “You don’t bring me flowers anymore,” except with new lyrics:
You don’t send me weapons anymore.
Joking aside, it’s rare when you see backroom brawling in the open. These meetings before the press are usually so staged, so vapid, and often so dishonest that it was refreshing to see something unscripted, spontaneous, and impassioned.
Here, I recall Winston Churchill’s quip that “There is only one thing worse than fighting with allies, and that is fighting without them.” Zelensky may find that he’s lost his most powerful ally; then again, perhaps he believed he’d already lost Trump/Vance, thus he seized his chance to be defiant and to go out strong.
I don’t know. It takes a clever man to play a weak hand well and a lucky one to win with it. And I don’t think Zelensky is either clever or lucky enough here.
I recently read the book, “Generals Die in Bed,” a classic account of World War I. In terms of combat between Ukraine and Russia, there are serious echoes of WW1 with trench warfare and needless death on a massive scale.
There are few things dumber and more wasteful than trench warfare (Ukraine, from the New York Times)
Far too often, war is glorified when it is really colossal waste. As Dwight D. Eisenhower said, war is to be hated. So, short of abject capitulation to a tyrant, I support efforts to end wars. Stop the waste. Stop the hate. Find a way to live together in peace. The alternative, perpetual war, is too terrible to contemplate.
Diplomacy can be pursued without abandoning Ukraine or betraying NATO. Certainly, Ukraine should be a party to the negotiations. The war is being fought on their turf. They have bled, as has Russia.
But: All wars must end. The trick is ending them in a way that doesn’t generate future wars. That was the greatest tragedy of World War I: that its ending and the botched settlement led almost inexorably to World War II and an even greater bloodletting.
Here’s the rub: Ever since 9/11, indeed ever since World War II, almost without exception, America has ALWAYS been at war. And it hasn’t gone well, has it? (Except for the arms makers and the Cheney neocon crowd.) Isn’t it time we worked for peace?
Far too often, America’s worst enemy hasn’t been Putin or China or some other bogeyman. It’s been the enemy within. And I don’t mean the “red menace” or the “woke” crowd. I mean the enemy that is threat inflation. The enemy that is incessant warfare in unnecessary wars of choice, which drives deficit spending, and which is reinforced by lies.
How many times have we heard of bomber gaps, missile gaps, falling dominoes in Asia, WMD in Iraq, etc., that turned out not to be true, but which were used to justify massive military spending and (especially in Southeast Asia) drove horrendous casualties? Yes, the MICIMATT is powerful, but why are Americans so easy to scare? Why are we so fearful when this country’s geographic position is so enviably strong and defensible? It’s not like Putin’s on our northern border: friendly Canadians are there! (Even if they boo our National Anthem at hockey games.)
The world is becoming multipolar again, which doesn’t mean it has to be a scarier place. A multipolar world could be a more stable one if U.S. leaders could just back off on their goal of dominating everything everywhere all at once.
The idea of full-spectrum dominance and America as a global hegemon at any price must give way to an irenic and ecumenical view of the world. The American religion of violent militarism and prideful exceptionalism is simply too expensive to sustain.
When the ship of state is slowly slipping under the waves, it’s not wise to steer closer to more icebergs. Let’s work to save our ship of state first.
My latest article at TomDispatch (below) was written before President Trump’s most recent commitment to end the Russia-Ukraine War while cutting Pentagon spending in a big way (up to 50%, he said; even a 10% cut would be a minor miracle in DC).
Even as Trump makes positive moves in favor of peace and lower spending on wars and weapons, he continues to advance a madman’s theory of Gaza as a new Riviera (without Palestinians, of course) while gobbling up places like Greenland and the Panama Canal. A man, a plan, a canal, Panama. Trump is a palindrome of sorts. Whether read forward or backward, it’s always all about TRUMP.
Greenland! Canada! The Panama Canal! The Gulf of America! Gaza!
Manifest Destiny Gets a Reboot Under President Donald Trump
A few years ago, I came across an old book at an estate sale. Its title caught my eye: “Our New Possessions.” Its cover featured the Statue of Liberty against stylized stars and stripes. What were those “new possessions”? The cover made it quite clear: Cuba, Hawaii, the Philippines, and Puerto Rico. The subtitle made it even clearer: “A graphic account, descriptive and historical, of the tropic islands of the sea which have fallen under our sway, their cities, peoples, and commerce, natural resources and the opportunities they offer to Americans.” What a mouthful! I’m still impressed with the notion that “tropical” peoples falling “under our sway” offered real Americans amazing opportunities, as did our (whoops — I meant their) lands. Consider that Manifest Destiny at its boldest, imperialism unapologetically being celebrated as a new basis for burgeoning American greatness.
The year that imperial celebration was published — 1898 — won’t surprise students of U.S. history. America had just won its splendid little imperial war with Spain, an old empire very much in the “decline and fall” stage of a rich, long, and rapacious history. And just then red-blooded Americans like “Rough Rider” Teddy Roosevelt were emerging as the inheritors of the conquistador tradition of an often murderously swashbuckling Spanish Empire.
Of course, freedom-loving Americans were supposed to know better than to follow in the tradition of “old world” imperial exploitation. Nevertheless, cheerleaders and mentors like storyteller Rudyard Kipling were then urging Americans to embrace Europe’s civilizing mission, to take up “the white man’s burden,” to spread enlightenment and civilization to the benighted darker-skinned peoples of the tropics. Yet to cite just one example, U.S. troops dispatched to the Philippines on their “civilizing” mission quickly resorted to widespread murder and torture, methods of “pacification” that might even have made Spanish inquisitors blush. That grim reality wasn’t lost on Mark Twain and other critics who spoke out against imperialism, American-style, with its murderous suppression of Filipino “guerrillas” and bottomless hypocrisy about its “civilizing” motives.
After his exposure to “enlightened” all-American empire-building, retired Major General Smedley Butler, twice awarded the Medal of Honor, would bluntly write in the 1930s of war as a “racket” and insist his long career as a Marine had been spent largely in the service of “gangster” capitalism. Now there was a plain-speaking American hero.
And speaking of plain-speaking, or perhaps plain-boasting, I suggest that we think of Donald Trump as America’s retro president from 1898. Isn’t it time, America, to reach for our destiny once again? Isn’t it time for more tropical (and Arctic) peoples to be put “under our sway”? Greenland! Canada! The Panama Canal! These and other regions of the globe offer Donald Trump’s America so many “opportunities.” And if we can’t occupy an area like the Gulf of Mexico, the least we can do is rebrand it the Gulf of America! A lexigraphic “mission accomplished” moment bought with no casualties, which sure beats the calamitous wars of George W. Bush and Barack Obama in this century!
Now, here’s what I appreciate about Trump: the transparent nature of his greed. He doesn’t shroud American imperialism in happy talk. He says it just like they did in 1898. It’s about resources and profits. As the dedication page to that old book from 1898 put it: “To all Americans who go a-pioneering in our new possessions and to the people who are there before them.” Oh, and pay no attention to that “before” caveat. We Americans clearly came first then and, at least to Donald Trump, come first now, and — yes! — we come to rule. The world is our possession and our beneficence will certainly serve the peoples who were there before us in Greenland or anywhere else (the “hellhole” of Gaza included), even if we have to torture or kill them in the process of winning their hearts and minds.
It’s 1900 Again in America
My point is this: Donald Trump doesn’t want to return America to the 1950s, when men were men and women were, as the awful joke then went, “barefoot, pregnant, in the kitchen.” No, he wants to return this country (and the world) to 1900, when America was unapologetically and nakedly grabbing everything it could. To put it in his brand of “locker room” language, Trump wants to grab Mother Earth by the pussy, because when you’re rich and powerful, when you’re a “star,” you can do anything.
It’s white (male) hunter all over again. Think Teddy Roosevelt and all those animals he manfully slaughtered on safari. Today, we might even add white (female) hunter, considering that Kristi Noem, the new director of homeland security, infamously shot her own dog in a gravel pit because she couldn’t train it to behave. It’s an America where men are men again, women are women, and trans people are simply defined out of existence while simultaneously being forced out of the U.S. military.
To replace the “yellow journalism” of newspaperman William Randolph Hearst in that age, think of the corporate-owned media networks of today, with billionaire owners like Jeff Bezos showing due deference to you know who. For the robber barons of that age, substitute men like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg (to name only the two most famous billionaires of our moment) along with Bezos and their billionaire tech bros. It’s a new gilded age, a new age of smash and grab, where the rich get richer and the poor poorer, where the strong do what they will and the weak suffer as they must.
Of course, it’s highly doubtful Trump can convince Canada to become the 51st state. Denmark doesn’t seem remotely interested in selling Greenland to America and the Panamanians aren’t eager to return their canal to all-American interlopers and occupiers. Even the “Gulf of America” remains the Gulf of Mexico to the other peoples of the Western Hemisphere. But perhaps Trump and Musk can team up to plant the American flag on Mars!
Yet, while Trump may fail when it comes to any of these specific imperial designs, he’s already succeeding, famously so, where it really matters. With all his imperial blather about Greenland, Gaza, and the like, what he’s really conquering and colonizing is our minds. The man and his ideas are now everywhere. Whatever else you can say about Trump, you can’t get rid of him, especially in the mainstream media which he uses so effectively to trumpet (pun intended) his expansionist agenda.
Yes, Trump is normalizing imperial conquest (again); yes, naked exploitation is unapologetically “destiny” (again). It’s “drill, baby, drill” and party like it’s 1900, since ideas about global warming due to fossil-fuel production and consumption simply didn’t exist in that age. It’s so retro chic to be chauvinistically selfish, to loot openly, even to commit or enable atrocities under the cover of humanitarian concerns. (Think of Gaza and Trump’s recent open call for cleansing the region of Palestinians to make way for their “betters,” the Israelis, to enjoy peace and a “beautiful” seaside location.)
Regression, thy name be Trump. Unabashed greed and unbridled hypocrisy are selling points once again. Protectionist tariffs are “great” again. Immigrants, black- and brown-skinned ones naturally, are depicted as endangering America’s way of life. Time to get rid of as many “illegals” as we can. Deport them! Jail them in Cuba! America is for Americans!
A Global Military Makes It All Possible
President Teddy Roosevelt was a big fan of the U.S. Navy’s Great White Fleet, the 16 battleships, painted white, that he sent around the world in 1907. He used it to intimidate recalcitrant powers and impress them with America’s growing might and reach. Though the U.S. wasn’t quite a military superpower yet, it was already an economic one, and combining military persuasion with economic prowess was an effective tactic to get other countries to toe Washington’s line.
Today’s U.S. military is quite obviously a global one, an imperial one bent on total dominance of everything: land, sea, air, space, cyberspace, information, narrative. You name it and our military and its partners in what Ray McGovern calls the MICIMATT (which includes industry, Congress, intelligence, the media, academe, and think tanks) conspire to seize, occupy, control, and otherwise dominate. Small wonder that Trump and his operatives within what might be thought of as the Mondial Imperial State have continued a tradition of seeking ever greater budgets for the Pentagon, more and more weapons sales, and the unending construction of new military bases. Contraction in this highly militarized version of disaster imperialism is never an option (until, of course, it becomes one). Only growth is to be allowed, commensurate with seemingly bottomless appetites.
One example: newly appointed Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and his Project 2025 supporters argue that U.S. military spending should equal 5% of America’s gross domestic product (GDP). With this country’s GDP sitting just under $29 trillion in 2024, that would drive an imperial war budget of $1.45 trillion instead of the nearly $900 billion in this year’s Pentagon budget. For Hegseth & Co., the U.S. military is all about warfighting (and wars, if nothing else, are expensive), so it must embrace and hone its warrior mystique. It matters to him and his like not at all that, since 9/11, if not before then, the U.S. military has honed its warfighting identity in disastrous wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and elsewhere.
Another example. Just before I retired from the U.S. military in 2005, I learned of efforts to create a new military command with sub-Saharan Africa as its focus. At first, it seemed like a joke. How was Africa directly related to U.S. national security? Whence the threat? Of course, Africa as a threat wasn’t the issue. It was Africa as an arena for U.S. economic exploitation, just as it had been for European countries like Belgium, England, France, and Germany circa 1900, most infamously in the Congo, later exposed as the “heart of darkness” at the center of a European imperialism that would contribute to the tensions leading to the eruption of World War I in 1914. Two years after I retired, the U.S. military did indeed form Africa Command (AFRICOM) as its latest combatant command. Today, every sector of the globe has been accounted for by various commands within the Pentagon assigned to four-star generals and admirals, each in his or her own way as powerful as, once upon a time, the proconsuls of the Roman Empire.
With all of this as background, in his own mind at least, Donald Trump doth bestride the world like a colossus. What backs him up is a Republican vision (shared by most Democrats) of an imperial military (theoretically) unchallengeable in all domains. And whether the United States spends $1.45 trillion or a mere $900 billion annually on it, count on this: in the years to come, that military will be used in, most likely, the stupidest and most violent ways imaginable.
How Long Before the Next World War?
If you buy the conceit that Donald Trump is taking America back to 1900, it suggests a likely starting point for the next world war roughly 10 to 15 years in our future. Ever-increasing military spending; calls for mobilization and a return of the draft; talk of enervating national decline that could allegedly be reversed by an embrace of a new warrior mystique; viewing all competition as zero-sum games that America must win and countries like China must lose: these could act collectively to create conditions similar to 1914 — a tinderbox of tensions just waiting for the right spark to set the world aflame.
The critical difference, of course, is nuclear weapons. Though World War I wasn’t the “war to end all wars,” a World War III fought between the U.S. and its allies and China and/or Russia and their allies promises to be that “last” war. There’s nothing like a few dozen thermonuclear weapons to settle accounts — as in ending most life on Planet Earth.
In an age of weapons of mass destruction and their widespread “modernization,” jaw-jaw, as in compromise and cooperation through conversation, is the only sane choice when war-war looms. Dominance through destruction must give way to détente through dialogue. Can the Trump administration advance progress toward peace instead of letting us regress into war?
Mr. President, here’s the real art of the deal. Rather than turning the calendar back to 1900, your goal should be to turn the atomic clock back to several hours (if not days or weeks) before midnight. That clock currently sits at a perilous 89 seconds to midnight, or global nuclear war. With every fiber of your being, your goal should be to guarantee that it will never strike that ungodly hour.
For surely, even the most deluded strong man shouldn’t wish his manifest destiny to be ruling over an empire of the dead.
Will Tulsi Gabbard “shrink the bloated bureaucracy” in DC?
Former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard is America’s Director of National Intelligence. Here’s a part of the ceremony, with President Trump’s introduction:
What struck me in watching the short ceremony was Trump’s words about “the threat of a warmongering military-industrial complex.” Bold words indeed, as well as his call for Tulsi Gabbard to “shrink the bloated bureaucracy” in DC.
In her brief remarks, Tulsi mentioned an almost forbidden word in DC: peace. She mentioned war as an absolute last resort rather than the first action selected by the “warmongering” (Trump’s word) military-industrial complex. I find that remarkable as well as encouraging.
There are many reasons why I like Tulsi as DNI, but the biggest one is this: She has President Trump’s respect. He likes her. Meaning he’ll listen to her when she briefs him on a daily basis about the threats facing America and the options he has to address those threats.
In his first term as president, Trump was notorious for not caring much about his daily intelligence briefing. Tulsi will change that—and that and her commitment to military action as a last resort is again highly encouraging.
Now it’s take and take and takeover, takeover It’s all take and never give All these trumped up towers They’re just golden showers Where are people supposed to live?
Yesterday, President Trump said the U.S. would take over the redevelopment of the devastated Gaza Strip (destroyed mostly by bombs, shells, and bullets made in the USA), turning it into a “new Riviera,” not for the Palestinians, obviously, but for Israelis.
To borrow from Don Henley, Where are the Palestinians supposed to live? Not in Gaza, where their presence would interfere with Zionism as well as Israeli desires to control profits from offshore gas fields. Roughly 1.8 million Palestinians are simply supposed to leave the Gaza “hellhole” (Trump’s descriptor), after which a lot of men with briefcases (and bulldozers) will move in to turn Gaza into a paradise on earth, free of Palestinian “savages” (a word I’ve seen employed often online, and obviously one that echoes how the white man saw Native Americans, whose land was ruthlessly stolen from them as well).
So, where will be the Palestinian “reservation”? Trump has floated Egypt and Jordan, but both countries have expressed no enthusiasm for this scheme. Greenland, maybe?
Trump has the virtue of saying the quiet part out loud. There will be no Palestinian state, no two-state solution. There will be one state, Greater Israel, with Palestinians either killed or ethnically cleansed from their lands. This was the policy of the Biden administration, even if that administration gave lip service to a two-state solution. Trump just states it plainly, like a mafia don intoning: “It’s nothing personal—it’s strictly business.”
Congress, which is owned by AIPAC, may grouse a bit about Trump’s terminology, but look for most members to rubber-stamp this plan, if one can call it that.
I suppose Trump’s admirers might say he’s cut the Gordian knot here—that peace in the region will only be attained when Israel is completely dominant and Palestinians are simply gone for good—but something tells me the fantastical new Riviera in Gaza is another manifestation of “trumped up towers.”
A friend of mine sent along a typical militarized think-tank article and asked for my comments. Here’s the title, with a link:
Moneyball Military: An Affordable, Achievable, and Capable Alternative to Deter China
It was published by the Hoover Institution out of “liberal” Stanford University.
“Moneyball” is a baseball term, the idea being that smaller market (and budget) teams can compete with larger teams (like the LA Dodgers or NY Yankees) by being smarter, by using metrics and stats to identify “cheap” but good players as well as more effective tactics to win ballgames. Check out the movie with the same title starring Brad Pitt.
Brad Pitt in “Moneyball.” But war, especially a land war in Asia, isn’t a game.
The “Moneyball Military” article basically argues the U.S. military must become more innovative, more responsive, more nimble, more flexible, etc., to meet the challenge of China. What articles like this one never suggest is diplomacy and the pursuit of PEACE. They never suggest that major cuts can be made to the Pentagon budget because the U.S. is fundamentally safe from invasion. They usually argue instead for more Pentagon spending, only “smarter.”
Why does the U.S. “need” 800 military bases around the globe? Why does it “need” to dominate the global trade in arms? Why has the U.S. wasted $10 trillion on unwinnable wars and conflicts (Iraq, Afghanistan, the GWOT, et al.) since 9/11? Why is China, a major U.S. trading partner and holder of U.S. debt, seen as an “enemy”?
These are questions that aren’t raised in think-tank articles like this one.
If you believe the polls, the U.S. is allegedly a Christian nation. Is there a worse sin than killing other humans in massive numbers? How do we stop doing this? Didn’t Christ say “Blessed are the peacemakers”? Why is the U.S. ennobling and saluting the warmakers instead? Why are we always envisioning wars with other peoples?
Again, is China really America’s enemy? Is China really planning to invade Taiwan? If so, wouldn’t diplomacy be a far smarter way of addressing this rather than a land war in Asia?
When one encounters think-tank articles like this one, one would be wise to remember Ray McGovern’s acronym, MICIMATT, which rightly includes these think tanks among the powerful entities that form America’s military-industrial-congressional complex.
When it comes to a land war in Asia, there is no smart way to “moneyball” it. The smart thing to do is to not play “ball” at all.
Bracing Views 