Tag: Israel

The Israeli Attack on the USS Liberty in 1967

Liberty threatened, then and now

BILL ASTORE

MAY 10, 2025

As a teenager in the late 1970s, I read about Israel’s “Six-Day War” in 1967. The account I read was sympathetic toward Israel, respecting the audacity of its sneak attack on the Egyptian and Syrian air forces and its Blitzkrieg in the Sinai. But it also mentioned the Israeli attack on a U.S. Navy ship, the USS Liberty, a signals intelligence ship that was monitoring the war in international waters. The Israeli air and sea attack killed 34 crew members aboard the Liberty and wounded another 173. The ship, heavily damaged, never sailed again and was later sold as scrap.

The USS Liberty, post-attack

The Israeli government claimed the attack was unintentional and a mistake. There’s plenty of evidence to suggest the story is far more complicated. Yet I was thinking this morning about how the Trump administrations’s strenuous attempt to criminalize critical speech vis-à-vis Israel is yet another assault on liberty. Once again, the ship of liberty is endangered in the U.S., yet the U.S. government is content to look the other way, or even to collaborate with the attackers.

Let me be clear: Those Americans who criticize Israel for its actions in Gaza are exercising their liberty. We are free to speak, and indeed we should speak freely on crimes against humanity, for that is what ethnic cleansing in Gaza is: a crime against humanity.

Yet the U.S. government, which essentially agreed to look the other way in response to Israel’s attack on the USS Liberty in 1967, is now looking the other way as free speech in America is suppressed, or even twisting denunciations of Israel’s war crimes in Gaza as anti-Semitic hate speech.

Liberty is something precious, and we as Americans are supposed to admire and applaud Patrick Henry and his sentiment from 250 years ago: “Give me liberty or give me death!”

If we as Americans have the right to criticize our own government, which we do, we certainly have the right to criticize foreign governments, including, of course, Israel. Yet, judging by U.S. mainstream media coverage and the words of government spokespeople, American citizens actually have less scope to criticize Israel than any other country, including their own.

Liberty attacked and abridged is liberty denied. How long before liberty itself in America, rocketed and strafed and torpedoed, is decommissioned and sold for scrap, just as the USS Liberty was? 

Addendum: There are many books and videos about Israel’s attack on the USS Libertyand what was *really* behind it. I’m not an expert on the subject, but the official story of a regrettable “mistake” is decidedly fishy. Wikipedia does a decent job of summarizing a complex subject. Here’s an excerpt to ponder:

Some intelligence and military officials dispute Israel’s explanation.[79] Dean Rusk, U.S. Secretary of State at the time of the incident, wrote:

I was never satisfied with the Israeli explanation. Their sustained attack to disable and sink Liberty precluded an assault by accident or some trigger-happy local commander. Through diplomatic channels we refused to accept their explanations. I didn’t believe them then, and I don’t believe them to this day. The attack was outrageous.[80]

More “War” in Gaza

It’s not an invasion, it’s a “forceful entry”

BILL ASTORE

MAY 06, 2025

It’s rather amazing how the New York Times covers ethnic cleansing and genocide in Gaza. Today’s NYT features an article (in my email newsfeed) that talks about the “war” on Hamas and identifies the key issue as the hostages and their return. From this article, you’d never know Gaza has been reduced to rubble in a bombing campaign equivalent to seven Hiroshima atomic bombs. You’d never know that more than 60,000 Palestinians have been killed, but that the likely number of killed is probably twice or three times that. You’d never know the Israeli government’s plan is to kill or push out all the Palestinians in Gaza, a “final solution” to the Gaza problem. You’d never know the main victims of Israel’s “war” have been innocent women and children in Gaza.

And while the NYT does mention starvation and the spread of diseases, it provides no estimate for the number of Palestinians killed as a result of Israel’s blockade.

Also, the NYT mentions that Israeli’s latest invasion may endanger the hostages. Nothing is said about endangering the lives of Palestinians in Gaza. Basically, all those who live in Gaza are treated as Hamas, as terrorists, who must either be killed or removed.

This is your “paper of record,” America, with all the news that’s fit to print.

Here’s what appeared in my news feed from the NYT. Judge for yourself:

WAR RETURNS TO GAZA

A plume of dark smoke rises over a Gaza neighborhood in ruins.

After an Israeli airstrike in Gaza on Saturday. Amir Cohen/Reuters

Over the weekend, Israel decided to call in military reservists and escalate the war in the Gaza Strip again.

The news reflects a sharp turn of events. Earlier this year, Israel and Hamas agreed to a cease-fire. That deal held for months, during which Israel halted operations in Gaza and Hamas handed over some Israeli hostages. But the cease-fire ended in March. Now, it seems the war is truly returning.

Why escalate now?

Israel has pressured Hamas to return all of the remaining hostages, especially the 24 who officials believe are still alive. Officials also say that Hamas must disarm as part of any future deal. But Hamas has refused. Before it makes further concessions, it wants the war over and Israel out of Gaza.

Israel hopes escalation will get Hamas to capitulate and return all of the hostages — while giving its troops a chance to destroy the group’s remaining infrastructure.

What is Israel’s plan?

The generals are calling up tens of thousands of reservists to expand operations in Gaza. They plan to occupy the region, forcibly relocate Palestinians in affected areas and oversee aid distribution.

Israel has blocked all aid, including food and medicine, from entering the territory for more than two months. (Some aid workers are accused of participating in the Oct. 7 attacks, The Times explained, and a lawsuit claims that Hamas skimmed $1 billion in U.N. aid. But the blockade has led to starvation and the spread of diseases, as The Times documented.) With direct control, Israel says, it will allow distribution to resume.

Will the plan work?

Israeli leaders say that military pressure secured the release of hostages before. They hope to replicate that success. Critics argue that Israel has by now exhausted its ability to pressure Hamas with force. They worry more fighting will put the surviving hostages at risk. — German Lopez

Related: Israel’s prime minister said the country was “on the eve of a forceful entry to Gaza.”

A Grim Reminder About Gaza

W.J. Astore

100 Kilotons Is Roughly Seven Hiroshimas

The annihilation of Gaza is staggering.

Israel has dropped more than 100,000 tons of bombs on Gaza. That’s 100+ kilotons. The Hiroshima bomb was roughly 15 kilotons. That means the small area of Gaza has been punished by bombing that is the equivalent in explosive force to seven Hiroshimas.

More than 60,000 Palestinians in Gaza are confirmed dead; the actual number of dead may be twice or three times that number. The number of wounded is likely more than 100,000. (Who can say, exactly, given the level of destruction and disruption in Gaza?)

How is this level of destruction in any way justifiable or defensible?

Gaza is already almost destroyed. The Israeli government’s intent is clear: after rendering Gaza uninhabitable, the Palestinians remaining there will be pushed out, displaced, removed. Or they will die, in place, from more bombing as well as starvation and disease.

The U.S. government has enabled this by supplying Israel all the bombs it needs to pulverize Gaza. The U.S. government has also provided diplomatic cover as well as military protection as Israel implements its final solution to the Gaza question.

Some claim this isn’t genocide because Israel isn’t marching Palestinians to gas chambers. But there are many forms of genocide, many ways to kill massive numbers of people.

In The History and Sociology on Genocide (1990), Frank Chalk and Kurt Jonassohn define genocide as “a form of one-sided mass killing in which a state or other authority intends to destroy a group, as that group and membership in it are defined by the perpetrator.”

One-sided mass killing: yes.

Intent to destroy a group: yes.

Gaza and its people are being destroyed before our very eyes. A large part of the effort is being funded directly or indirectly by U.S. taxpayers. Yet we are told it is all the fault of Hamas. That Hamas is making the Israeli government kill and wound hundreds of thousands of people.

One thing is certain: The Israeli government couldn’t perpetrate this genocide without massive military support from the United States.

Perhaps one day, as Omar El Akkad wrote, “everyone will have always been against this” [the ongoing genocide in Gaza]. The question remains: Why now are so many, especially in the Israeli and U.S. governments, still eagerly perpetrating and defending this?

Department of Offense

W.J. Astore

The U.S. Military Is a Global Strike Force

Officially, the U.S. has the DOD, the department of defense. But when was the last time the U.S. military was primarily oriented toward defense of the CONUS? (CONUS is a military acronym for continental United States.)

My old service, the U.S. Air Force, is far more open about its true aims. It boasts assertively of “global reach, global power” and notably of “global strike.” Not to be outdone, the U.S. Navy has “carrier strike groups,” what used to be termed carrier task forces when they fought real battles in World War II.

Here’s a recent official description: “A Carrier Strike Group (CSG) is a highly powerful, self-contained naval force, capable of projecting power globally, with an aircraft carrier as its core, supported by cruisers, destroyers, submarines, and an air wing, making it a formidable force capable of striking targets 1,000 miles away.”

Doesn’t sound defensive, does it? And of course the U.S. Marines are defined as “expeditionary” forces that are “forward-deployed” for all sorts of expected “contingencies” overseas.

The U.S. military is not about defense. It’s about “full-spectrum dominance.” That means dominance of the land, sea, air, space, cyber, information in all its forms, indeed just about any realm you can think of. No other military, moreover, divides the world into global commands (CENTCOM, AFRICOM, etc.) for the application of U.S. military power. This is not about defending America. It’s about dominating the world. Such a grandiose vision of defense dominance is partly what drives colossal Pentagon budgets that are climbing toward a trillion dollars a year.

SecDef Pete Hegseth, always talking warrior-tough (Doug Mills/NYT)

Consider here the recent kerfuffle about leaked U.S. strike plans for Yemen, which were inadvertently shared with the editor-in-chief at The Atlantic. Here’s an excerpt from those plans:

From Secretary of Defense Offense Pete Hegseth

  • “1215et: F-18s LAUNCH (1st strike package)”
  • “1345: ‘Trigger Based’ F-18 1st Strike Window Starts (Target Terrorist is @ his Known Location so SHOULD BE ON TIME – also, Strike Drones Launch (MQ-9s)”
  • “1410: More F-18s LAUNCH (2nd strike package)”
  • “1415: Strike Drones on Target (THIS IS WHEN THE FIRST BOMBS WILL DEFINITELY DROP, pending earlier ‘Trigger Based’ targets)”
  • “1536 F-18 2nd Strike Starts – also, first sea-based Tomahawks launched.”
  • “MORE TO FOLLOW (per timeline)”
  • “We are currently clean on OPSEC.”
  • “Godspeed to our Warriors.”

Note the repetition of the word “strike” and the closing prayer to America’s “warriors.” And ask yourself: Is this truly what national defense should look like? Prayerful appeals to “warriors” as they strike weak and poor countries thousands of miles away in undeclared (and therefore unconstitutional) wars?

Going Full Orwell

W.J. Astore

War Is Peace!

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!

plaidshirtguy

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.)

Bombs and Bulldozers Are Us

W.J. Astore

More Weapons to Israel to Power a Genocide

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:

  • February 28 sale worth $2.04 billion, including:
    • 35,529 MK 84 (general purpose) or BLU-117 (hardened) 2,000-pound bomb bodies (or combination of both).
    • 4,000 I-2000 (hardened) 2,000 lb. advanced penetrator warheads for 2,000-pound bomb bodies.
  • February 28 sale worth $675.7 million, including:
    • 201 MK 83 MOD 4/MOD 5 general purpose 1,000-pound bomb bodies.
    • 4,799 newer BLU-110A/B General Purpose 1,000-pound bomb bodies.
    • 1,500 KMU-559C/B Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) anti-jam enhanced GPS guidance kits to attach to MK 83 bomb bodies.
    • 3,500 KMU-559J/B JDAM guidance kits to attach to MK 83 bomb bodies.
  • February 7 sale worth $660 million, including:
    • 3,000 AGM-114 Hellfire Air-to-Ground Missiles, aircraft, helicopter and drone carried, used to attack vehicles and individuals.
  • February 7 sale worth $6.75 billion, including:
    • 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?

Gaza as the New Riviera–But Not For Palestinians

W.J. Astore

Trump’s Fantastical “Takeover” Vision

FEB 05, 2025

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?

Don Henley, “Gimme What You Got” (1989)

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.”

Great album. Check it out.

Cap Guns versus Bazookas

W.J. Astore

The “War” between Hamas and Israel

If one side is armed with cap guns and the other with bazookas, would we call that a “war” between roughly equal powers?

I thought of this as I turned to Antiwar.com to see that President Biden has approved yet another massive arms shipment to Israel, to the tune of $8 billion. Here’s the report:

The sale includes AIM-120C-8 AMRAAM air-to-air missiles, Hellfire AGM-114 missiles, 155 MM artillery rounds, small-diameter bombs, JDAM kits, and 500-pound bombs. Many of these munitions have been used by Israel during its campaign of extermination in Gaza, including in attacks on civilian targets.

In June, CNN reported that Israel used US small-diameter bombs in an attack on a school that killed 40 civilians. In October, The Washington Post noted, “The Biden administration has received nearly 500 reports alleging Israel used U.S.-supplied weapons for attacks that caused unnecessary harm to civilians in the Gaza Strip.”

Remember when human rights used to matter (just a little bit)? Remember when genocide was considered morally reprehensible—a murderous wrong? The U.S. government simply ignores human rights except when they advance a particular agenda. And genocide? It’s OK when it’s couched as Israel doing it in the cause of “defending” its “right to exist.”

If your “right to exist” involves denying millions of others their right to exist, have you not bought that “right” with blood money?

Of course, we’re all told by the “experts” that the situation in the Middle East is immensely complicated. Certainly, the history of the region is complex. But what’s happening there today to the Palestinians isn’t complex. In Israel, Zionism has run amuck as Israel grabs land, water, oil and gas rights, indeed everything it can, in the cause of creating a Greater Israel. It just doesn’t matter to most Israelis, and the U.S. government as well, that two million Palestinians will be killed, wounded, or displaced. Might makes right here, accentuated by media spin and government propaganda.

Speaking of the Middle East, I watched a superb documentary recently: “This Is Not a Movie: Robert Fisk and the Politics of Truth.” I highly recommend it. Fisk was a foreign affairs journalist for The Independent. When I lived in Britain from 1992 to 1995, I used to read his articles in that paper. He lived in Beirut and covered the Middle East, ultimately spending forty years living in and writing about the region. The documentary follows him on assignment, demonstrating what a principled and brave man he was. Fisk did journalism the old fashioned way: he got out among the people, he journeyed to the front lines, he saw the dead bodies from massacres (indeed, in one horrific moment, he was forced to climb over a “barricade” of dead bodies, a nightmarish moment for him, as one would expect).

There are very few journalists like Fisk left today. A truth-seeker, he was unafraid to criticize the powerful when they deserved it. He always sought to understand what was happening through knowledge gleaned at firsthand, carrying his trusty notebook and a pen or pencil.

Check out the documentary on Fisk. You’ll learn a lot and be inspired by a man of considerable courage and unimpeachable integrity

Explore the “Nuances” of Genocide in Gaza

W.J. Astore

The New York Times Does It Again

DEC 22, 2024

I caught this headline in the morning send-out for the New York Times:

It Can Be Lonely to Have a Middle-of-the Road Opinion on the Middle East

Some college students and faculty members are seeking space for nuanced perspectives on the Israel-Hamas war on deeply divided campuses.

See, it’s a “war” between Israel and Hamas, and what’s really needed here is “space” for “nuanced perspectives.”

Don’t you want to have “a middle of the road opinion” on genocide in Gaza? Don’t you want to explore all the “nuances” of Israel’s ongoing destruction of Gaza, where the death toll is likely to have reached 200,000 and counting? (Or not counting, since apparently Palestinian deaths don’t count for much.)

Here are some “nuances”: As Chris Hedges recently noted, the genocide in Gaza resembles that of Armenians during World War I. It’s happening in the open, unlike the Holocaust which the Nazis tried to hide, yet not enough people, especially in the West, are seeking to stop it.

In fact, the U.S. government is deeply complicit in the genocide in Gaza, arming Israel and providing military and diplomatic cover at a cost of scores of billions of dollars (when you factor in maintaining two carrier strike groups in the region as well as all the weapons shipments to Israel).

The intent is obvious: the creation of a Greater Israel in which Gaza and the West Bank cease to exist as lands for a Palestinian state. The “nuance” here is a “no-state solution,” as Palestinians are killed or forced from their land in the name of Israel’s “right to exist.” The fall of the Syrian government, meanwhile, sees Israel expanding into the Golan Heights and beyond, also in the name of protecting Israel.

It’s a land grab, a water grab, a gas reserves grab, a power grab, all for Israel and its big brother, the USA. It’s an illustration of Thucydides’ lesson that “The strong do what they will; the weak suffer what they must.” Israel, supported wholeheartedly by the U.S. government, is strong; the Palestinians (and now the Syrians) are weak; so the latter suffer.

The New York Times article suggests I should be looking for “middle ground” here, but I have news for them: Israel has already seized and occupied it.

Trump and the Warmongers

W.J. Astore

More Bombs for Bibi to Kill Babies

Trump and the war hawks. Or war sluts. Or war pigs. I thought about all three of these. Then I thought: Why insult hawks, sluts, or pigs?

Marco Rubio and Mike Waltz, seeing enemies everywhere while wearing their red power ties

Donald Trump is forming his cabinet by rounding up the usual warmongers. In 2016, he gathered the generals, men like James Mattis and John Kelly. This time around, he’s tapping people like Marco Rubio. “Little Marco” as Secretary of State, a man who’s rarely met a war he didn’t like. For Secretary of Defense he’s nominated Pete Hegseth, whose main concern seems to be waging a war on “woke” generals. One thing is certain: Rubio and Hegseth won’t challenge the military-industrial complex. They will feed it … and feed it again.

Other nominations include Elise Stefanik, a rabid Zionist, as UN ambassador, along with Mike Huckabee, a pro-Israel evangelical who believes in the “end times,” as U.S. ambassador to Israel. Trump may trump Biden as being more slavishly pro-Israel. “Bombs for Bibi to kill babies” should be their motto.

Kristi Noem, who shot and killed her own dog because she couldn’t train it, will run Homeland Security. (If you work for DHS, it might be a good idea to watch your back, or at least to avoid being alone with Noem at a gravel pit.) Mike Waltz will be the National Security Advisor; here’s how Caitlin Johnstone describes him:

Waltz is a warmongering freak. Journalist Michael Tracey has been filling up his Twitter page since the announcement with examples of Waltz’s insane hawkishness, including his support for letting Ukraine use US weapons to strike deep into Russian territory, criticizing Biden for not escalating aggressively enoughin Ukraine, advocating bombing Iran, opposing the US military withdrawal from Afghanistan, and naming Iran, North Korea, China, Russia and Venezuela as “on the march” against the United States toward global conflict. The mainstream press are calling Waltz a “China hawk”, but from the look of things he’s a war-horny hawk toward all the official enemies of the United States. 

Once again, Trump isn’t draining the swamp. He’s filling it with warmongers and Zionists who are even more extreme than the warmongers and Zionists of the Biden administration. 

Of course, the fundamental problem is that Republicans want to boost military spending even higher than Biden and Harris have.  Republicans are “all in” on revamping the nuclear triad, for example, which is likely to cost $2 trillion factoring in the usual cost overruns.

It’s possible Trump/Vance will be more likely to pursue diplomacy with Russia; perhaps the war in Ukraine will finally stumble to an end. But the imperial vision remains, aggravated perhaps by a war within to expel “illegal” immigrants, together with a coup within the military against “woke” officers.

That sounds pessimistic.  If I’m being optimistic, perhaps Trump can have a “Nixon goes to China” moment.  Trump can sell virtually anything to his followers. He is also driven by ego.  Maybe there’s a way to drive him toward peace, dangling the carrot of a Nobel Peace Prize for him.  Trump loves accolades, and if he could be influenced to stop throwing all of America’s chips into the Pentagon, that would be a good thing.

But, if personnel is policy, America had better prepare for more war, catastrophically so, even as more bombs are sent to Bibi to kill babies. There’s certainly nothing “woke” about that.