Tag Archives: Netanyahu

Political Rants

Who would you sanction?

We have had Cuba, Iran, and North Korea under sanction for decades; Venezuela under sanction for a number of years now.  These examples are all for political reasons, of course. In the cases of Cuba and Iran, we dole out punishment for the unforgivable crime of “stealing” something quite valuable from us … specifically, Cuba and Iran. With North Korea, it’s basically get-back for their not having lost the Korean war after we reduced their country to rubble in the early 1950s. It was the same situation with Vietnam for a couple of decades, before we half-forgave them for what we did to them. (Not a typo.)

If, of course, we didn’t have a craven foreign policy, who would we call out? I have a few candidates.

Balsonaro’s Brazil. Make no mistake – the reason why there have been more than 70,000 fires in the Amazon this year is because this clown fascist has been encouraging ranchers, miners, loggers, and soybean farmers to clear this irreplaceable resource for further exploitation. Balsonaro is similar to Trump in as much as he represents all of the worst tendencies of his nation, rolled up into one big greasy ball. A sane U.S. foreign policy would oppose this mad regime with every tool in the toolbox, support the freeing of Lula and the aspirations of Brazil’s workers and landless peasants.

Great candidates (for sanctions)

Modi’s India. The BJP Hindu nationalists are flexing their muscles after their electoral win, with Modi at the helm. In the Indian administered sector of Kashmir,  they are engaged in a massive shutdown of free speech and free expression. Modi has cut the region off from the rest of the world and is arresting dissidents, harassing Muslims, and basically encouraging his Hindu nationalist followers to reek havoc on the majority Muslim community. A sane U.S. foreign policy would take issue with this in a big way. It just astounds me the degree to which this story is being ignored in America. If India were an official enemy, you would hear no end of this.

Netanyahu’s Israel. The Israelis are, once again, dropping bombs on people they don’t like, attacking targets in two locations in Lebanon – Beiruit area and the Bekaa Valley (see Rami Khouri’s article in The New Arab). They also bombed a Hezbollah arms depot in Iraq and a purported Iranian position in Syria. They are throwing gasoline on a burning fire and getting away with it. I am convinced that they do not want to fight a conventional war with either Hezbollah or Iran. They want us to fight it.  This, and countless offenses against Palestinians, should carry a substantial cost in terms of U.S. aid … if we had a sane foreign policy.

That’s a big if, regardless of who wins the presidency next year. But I would sooner go with a Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren in the driver’s seat than the current ass-clown.

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jp

Political Rants

Fear and favor.

The Trump Administration almost gleefully declared Iran’s Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization this week, setting a new precedent in this overtly imperial practice of terror designation by applying it to a branch of the armed forces of a sovereign nation. The first question that came to my mind was, did Trump do this at this particular moment as a last-minute favor to Netanyahu or as a sop to his buddy Mohammed bin Salman? Only Trump’s hairdresser knows for sure.

Not that the president’s penchant for prioritizing his personal interests is the sole motivation here. As the execrable Pompeo said, this is part of their strategy of placing “maximum pressure” on Iran, another step toward making military conflict with the Islamic Republic all but inevitable. Trita Parsi pointed out on Democracy Now! that one of the most serious effects of this decision would be to forestall any future opportunity to reduce the level of confrontation with Iran by effectively criminalizing any contact with large swaths of the Iranian government or civil society. It will also make reconciliation far more politically costly for future, hopefully more sane American leaders, while strengthening the hardliners in Iran. This strikes many as ironic, but it isn’t, really – this is similar to what the Bush II administration did with Mohammed Khatami. Republican presidents in particular much prefer hot-headed Iranian leaders like Ahmadinejad because they’re easy to demonize. This policy practically guarantees another hot head in Teheran.

The neocon lobe of Trump's tiny brain.

The frankly laughable Pompeo took the occasion of his announcement to rattle through a litany of Iran’s terroristic offenses over the decades, such as the bombing of the Marine barracks in Lebanon in 1983, carried out by a nascent Hezbollah. Naturally, every action taken by Hezbollah is attributed to Iran, but just to focus on this one example – in 1983, the U.S. was supporting Saddam Hussein in his then 3-year-old invasion of Iran, a conflict that killed upwards of 900,000 Iranians over eight years. Hezbollah had risen in opposition to the invasion of Lebanon by Israel, which was essentially supported by the United States. Say what you like about the bombing, we were not simply minding our own business in those days. Add to that the fact that we worked with British intelligence to bomb a mosque in Lebanon around that time, and then ask … who’s the terrorist?

One thing to remember with the Trump administration: there’s the personal venality and self-dealing of Trump himself, and then there’s the craven policies of the institutional Republican party. Often those things intersect in toxic ways, and I think this terror designation is one of those instances.

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Political Rants

Consequences had.

Elections have consequences, as they say, and few weeks have provided better evidence of that nostrum than this past one. The pullout from the Iran deal (JCPOA) is the most obvious example. Trump has been threatening this since his first Nuremberg rally on the campaign trail two years ago, and he made good on the threat, shredding what was the positive centerpiece of Obama’s foreign policy legacy (the negative one being Libya). It feels very much like this is simple get back on Trump’s part – there’s no way in hell that he ever read even the preamble of the JCPOA; his drive to kill the deal was part of his determination to undo the previous eight years, and he put another nail in that coffin this week.

Trump signs off on another delusion.The Sharpie ink was barely dry on Trump’s memorandum to leave the JCPOA before Israel began threatening more action against Iran and Syria. Just the previous week, an official had threatened a decapitation raid on Syria if Assad would not stop hosting Iranians. Now they are firing missiles at “Iranian” targets in Syria supposedly to protect Israelis in the Israeli-occupied Syrian Golan Heights. The Trump administration, of course, is reflexively supporting Israel in this, but it’s obvious what’s happening here. Netanyahu and his allies are turning up the heat on Iran in order to provoke a larger than usual response; this in the hopes of triggering a sizable American military attack on Iranian forces in Syria or on Iran itself.

Now that all of the pieces of this toxic policy are in place, the situation is deteriorating quite rapidly. Make no mistake – Trump has zero understanding of the geopolitical or regional issues surrounding the JCPOA. His determination to destroy the deal can be summed up in three words: Obama made it. Like the five-year-old he truly is, he is trying – and largely succeeding – to jump up and down on everything his predecessor accomplished over the previous eight years. But the people around Trump – Bolton, Pompeo, Haley, and others – are more ideologically driven on this issue. They are, in essence, driving Trump around like a little tin car. They have the same destination in view, but for different reasons – conflict and perhaps an effort towards regime change in Iran.

The question facing us now is, are we as a nation willing to go there? If we are not, then we need to stand up now and make our voices heard. We need to elect members of Congress who will work to prevent this odious war plan. And we need to do it before it’s too late.

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jp