Tag Archives: Mike Pompeo

Political Rants

Iraq 3.0.

Despite the occasional bleat that no one wants war and that we are not seeking conflict in the Gulf, the United States continues to move closer and closer to some kind of clash with Iran. Administration officials are blaming the Iranian government for attacks against tankers owned by nations who still do business with Iran, citing non-existent evidence of sabotage by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard – evidence contradicted by the owners of the Japanese ship that was attacked. Right wing blowhards like Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas are advocating for strikes against Iran, and this is treated as a serious policy proposal. Various spokespeople for the administration’s ever-emerging policy even raised the possibility of the U.S. providing naval escorts for commercial ships in the Gulf, modeling it on the tanker war phase of the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s.

Who says I'm blowing smoke out of my ass? It's the ship, damn it, the ship!

This last bit fascinated me. It’s so unusual for our leaders to even mention the Iran-Iraq war, I suspect largely because we had a dog in that fight … and the dog was named Saddam Hussein. (Also, one of the ships we sent to the Gulf on that particular mission was the U.S.S. Vincennes, which on July 3, 1988 shot down Iran Air flight 655, killing all 290 passengers on board, 60 of whom were children.) If this is the mark of a successful policy to be imitated, god help us. Few Americans will recall that Saddam Hussein started that war, in 1980, using chemical weapons liberally against the Iranians – weapons whose primary components were purchased from (West) Germany, I believe. One of the principal outcomes of the Iran-Iraq war was the invasion of Kuwait, subsequent Gulf War, then the 12-year strangulation and ultimate invasion of Iraq by the U.S.

This is to say that war can sometimes sound a lot simpler than it actually turns out to be. People like Mike Pompeo and John Bolton, of course, are driven by ideology and really don’t care if their war with Iran turns out to be a disaster. But aside from the very crucial questions of whether the policy is right or legal, I think it’s fair to say that this administration’s deliberate push from functional diplomacy to the brink of armed conflict is reckless and potentially catastrophic, given the current state of international affairs. We are desperately in need of action on the ensuing climate crisis, and these nutjobs are driving us into another pointless war, damn the consequences.

I strongly suggest you contact your congressional representatives and urge them to oppose this policy. The switchboard is 202-224-3121. You may also want to use the Stance app, which is very easy to use when phoning your house member and senators. Right now, it’s our best chance at heading off this madness.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Toxic inertia.

On May 7 of this year, Secretary of State Pompeo made some public remarks in Finland that certainly rank as among the most craven  ever delivered by a high government official since our founding:

“The Arctic is at the forefront of opportunity and abundance. It houses thirteen percent of the world’s undiscovered oil, thirty percent of its undiscovered gas, an abundance of uranium, rare earth minerals, gold, diamonds, and millions of square miles of untapped resources, fisheries galore. Steady reductions in sea ice are opening new passageways and new opportunities for trade. This could potentially slash the time it takes to travel between Asia and the West by as much as twenty days. Arctic sea lanes could become the 21st century Suez and Panama Canals.”

This is emblematic of the prevailing take on climate change. A catastrophic collapse of arctic ice, caused in large measure by our profit-driven obsession with fossil fuels, is seen as just another opportunity to extend the same neoliberal practices and extract the same resources that are bringing about the collapse in the first place. Nothing about consequent sea level rise, increasing atmospheric CO2, etc. Pompeo’s longtime sponsors, the Koch Brothers, must be very proud of their plump little protege.

Titanic douche ... brought to you by Koch Industries

When they’re not actively working to make things worse, the Trump administration seems bound and determined to ignore, mischaracterize, and deflect any and all evidence of the unfolding climate catastrophe we are now facing. Over the past month, we have seen a record-breaking number of tornadoes tearing through the midwest, the south, and the northeast – thirteen straight days of them as of this writing. Flooding in the midwest is out of control. Fires have ravaged California, with more to come. And still the administration continues to push its version of denialism, both rhetorically and as a mater of policy. Trump is constantly pushing out his idiotic messages about global warming being a hoax, etc. They are doubling down on deregulating particulate pollution from coal plants, limiting the time horizon on climate change research (per the head of the U.S. Geological Survey, a petroleum geologist), opening new areas to drilling and mining, and so on. It is, in many ways, a full court press.

Beyond the administration, our political culture still appears unable to rise to the level of this challenge. It is a bit like the proverbial frog in the pot of water on the stove. The water’s just lukewarm, what are you worried about? My house hasn’t been blown down by a tornado … yet.  We need a million Greta Thunbergs … as V.S. Naipaul put it in an entirely different context, a million mutinies now. It is the hard problem, but we must solve it if we are to survive as a species.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Like old times.

I don’t know if it was at the start of this week or at the end of last week, but at some point recently I wondered aloud what became of the Trump administration’s coup plan in Venezuela. It seemed to have fizzled rather badly, despite their best efforts … but then this week it sprang back to life like Frankenstein’s monster. Washington’s hand-picked maximum leader of that unfortunate country, Juan Guaido, appeared in a cell-phone video surrounded by what appears to be a handful of soldiers, declaring himself president once again. This is, of course, not a coup, we’re told, because officials of the United States government have decided that Guaido is the legitimate president of Venezuela. Nothing screams freedom more than leaders selected by the regional hegemon.

Worse than neocons. Old-school imperialists.

Naturally, our execrable National Security Advisor John Bolton and our equally fragrant Secretary of State Michael Pompeo are behaving as if whatever they say randomly just has to be true. Pompeo claimed to CNN that Maduro had a plane ready to fly to Havana, but was talked out of it by the Russians. This doesn’t appear to be anything near the truth, it will surprise you to hear. Let’s just say these gentlemen have some serious credibility issues. As ham-fisted as they are, though, it’s hard to overstate the pressure that the United States can apply to a country like Venezuela. We basically control the international financial system, and Caracas has been cut off from the banking, loans, etc., since Trump applied sanctions in 2017. They are making the economy scream, as Nixon/Kissinger did with Chile in 1973, and this could bring the roof down eventually. (See the Center for Economic and Policy Research paper on these sanctions for more.)

We know from the Iraq debacle, and other comparable debacles before and since, that craven policy makers like Bolton, Pompeo, and Elliott Abrams can break a country in half, if we let them. What they’re not so good at is putting it back together (not that possessing that particular skill would make it in any way a worthy enterprise). There’s a better than fair chance that they will succeed in crushing the Maduro government, but very likely that will not be the end of it. Venezuela may be plunged into a bloody civil conflict that could last for years, perhaps decades. Not that such an outcome would be any skin off of Bolton’s ample nose, nor Abrams’. They’ve come through their previous disasters without a scratch. That’s more than I can say for their targets.

The only thing that can stop them is us. We need to raise our voices on this now, before it’s too late.

luv u,

jp