Tag Archives: Mike Pompeo

Usual Rubbish

Tragedy, then farce.

The Trump administration has been pushing the sale of nuclear reactors to Saudi Arabia, according to a report from the House Government Oversight Committee, now functional once again since the Democratic takeover of that body. Some pretty good reporting on this from ProPublica suggests, predictably, that Trump’s family would benefit materially from such an arrangement, in the form of lucrative Saudi contracts for the now bankrupt nuclear plant designer Westinghouse, which has garnered Trump friend Tom Barrack as a major investor. ( I believe the consortium is eyeing Jared Kushner’s 666 building for office space.) Barrack wants to be part of a crackpot “Marshall Plan” for the Middle East that will involve building dozens of nuclear reactors in Saudi. What could possibly go wrong?

Well, the same things that have gone wrong on previous occasions when we have moved in this direction. Oh, yes … we have been here before, though perhaps without the craven self-dealing that Trump adds to virtually every initiative. In the 1960s, we were pushing the “atoms for peace” program, and at one point we were working with the British to help Iran (under the Shah) develop nuclear weapons – this according to longtime Labor party leader the late Tony Benn. In the late 1980s, George H.W. Bush was planning to send nuclear scientists over to Iraq for talks with Saddam Hussein’s government. And we have, of course, looked the other way with regard to Israel’s nuclear program, which remains unacknowledged, even though it continues to affect regional politics.

Now, there are historical and institutional reasons why our relationship with Saudi Arabia is unlikely to go south in a way similar to our little imperial dance with Iraq or Iran. But it’s hard to predict what will happen to any despotic regime. I’m sure back in the 1960s U.S. policymakers thought Iran would remain within the fold for the long term. My sense is that on this issue, like other foreign policy issues, Trump is being driven around like a little toy car by his advisors. People like Bolton, Pompeo, and Elliott Abrams work their strategies through people like Trump, who has little or no interest in international politics and is really only focused on what is best for him, his children, his son in law, his cronies. In a place like Saudi, they can all get what they want even if their goals are divergent from one another.

We live in dangerous times, to be sure. There’s nothing more dangerous than a useful idiot.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Warever.

John Bolton and Mike Pompeo made the rounds of every American president’s favorite region this past week, on behalf of their grizzly leader. The press story was that they were explaining the administration’s plan for withdrawal from Syria; really, this will be a much more gradual process than the president promised over the holidays to howls of protest from the national security talking heads. Of course, it’s a case of Trump doing a potentially positive thing in a really ham-handed fashion and for all the wrong reasons. So naturally he had to walk it back. Not the promise of “The Wall”, you understand … just the more recent promise of total withdrawal from Syria. And partial withdrawal Afghanistan.

Only ever right for the wrong reasons.I’ll believe it when I see it. The U.S. presidency has evolved to a point of foreign policy cravenness that pulling all troops out of any conflict, no matter how pointless or long-winded, is simply not an option. And before someone reminds me, yes, we do still have troops in Europe, Japan, and South Korea after more than 70 years. It’s basically the same dynamic. Pull the troops out and they’ll say you’re weak. No president, particularly not the current one, can willingly swallow that accusation. And so it continues – occupations stretching out to the vanishing point, burning up uncounted billions of defense dollars (and I really mean uncounted) and staking our young people out in hopeless situations that no application of military power can solve.

In essence, we are trapped in the box that was constructed in the wake of the Vietnam war. The so-called “Vietnam Syndrome” that George H.W. Bush declared cured in 1991 had two major components. One was a quite reasonable public distaste for foreign wars and military interventions, developed quite independently of articulate elite opinion, which almost universally supported the aims of our murderous adventure in Indochina. The second piece was a reluctance on the part of elected officials to institute conscription. Draft registration has been in effect since it was reestablished in 1980, but no draft has been declared since the end of the Vietnam War and none is likely to be. The reason is simple: politicians are unwilling to ask for that level of sacrifice from the American public. There’s no conscription because that would make presidents, senators, and congressmembers unpopular – period.

That’s what drives these endless wars. We are not compelled to fight, and our wars are financed on the U.S. Treasury’s credit card, so we don’t have to pay extra taxes, either.  So if you’re wondering why we still have our all-volunteer army in Afghanistan, that’s basically why. Start drafting people (or even taxing people) and it would be over in six months, tops.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Rattling sabres.

The knives were out for Iran again this week … not that that’s all that different from other weeks in America. Trump dropped an open threat on Twitter, his preferred channel for delivering such messaging. I know he’s never read it, but his little all-cap tweet is a blatant violation of Article 2 (principle 4) of the U.N. Charter, which, ratified by the U.S., is the supreme law of the land:

All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.

Trump being diplomaticOf course, this principle gets violated all the time without consequence, particularly by our own leaders and those of our allied nations. Not sure how, exactly, this prohibition made its way into this document back in the day when the United States was the sole remaining power and the first-ever superpower in world history. We had an enormous hand in erecting this international order, putting ourselves at the very top of the global power structure in as much as we were the only nation to have emerged from the ravages of World War II stronger than before. Why would we include this principle only to violate it consistently for the next seventy years?

My point, I guess, is that this reckless sabre rattling is nothing new. What’s new is the fool in command. Trump is offensive in every manner you can name. I think he particularly grates on me because I’ve always hated reality television, and that more than anything else defines his public persona. After decades of avoiding reality shows like the plague, my fellow Americans elected a reality star president of the United States, and he is now doing his level best to turn our very reality into reality television. Now we not only have to watch the lousy show every day – we are bit players in the freaking show! From my perspective, it’s like drinking a pint of urine the moment you get out of bed in the morning. Pleasant.

What’s worse than that, though, is the empire crap. Posers like Pompeo and Bolton will use Trump to get their beloved war with Iran. That – and not so much the reality show BS – is what we need to concentrate our energy on.

luv u,

jp