|
Trump's "Moderate" Defense Secretary Has Already Brought Us to the Brink of War |
 |
|
Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=44184"><span class="small">Mehdi Hasan, The Intercept</span></a>
|
|
Thursday, 02 March 2017 09:37 |
|
Hasan writes: "Did you know that the Trump administration almost went to war with Iran at the start of February?"
Defense Secretary James Mattis. (photo: Ed Jones/AFP)
Trump's "Moderate" Defense Secretary Has Already Brought Us to the Brink of War
By Mehdi Hasan, The Intercept
02 March 17
 id you know that the Trump administration almost went to war with Iran at the start of February?
Perhaps you were distracted by Gen. Michael Flynn’s resignation as national security adviser or by President Trump’s online jihad against Nordstrom. Or maybe you missed the story because the New York Times bizarrely buried it in the midst of a long piece on the turmoil and chaos inside the National Security Council. Defense Secretary James Mattis, according to the paper, had wanted the U.S. Navy to “intercept and board an Iranian ship to look for contraband weapons possibly headed to Houthi fighters in Yemen. … But the ship was in international waters in the Arabian Sea, according to two officials. Mr. Mattis ultimately decided to set the operation aside, at least for now. White House officials said that was because news of the impending operation leaked.”
Get that? It was only thanks to what Mattis’s commander in chief has called “illegal leaks” that the operation was (at least temporarily) set aside and military action between the United States and Iran was averted.
Am I exaggerating? Ask the Iranians. “Boarding an Iranian ship is a shortcut” to confrontation, says Seyyed Hossein Mousavian, former member of Iran’s National Security Council and a close ally of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. Even if a firefight in international waters were avoided, the Islamic Republic, Mousavian tells me, “would retaliate” and has “many other options for retaliation.”
Trita Parsi, head of the National Iranian American Council and author of the forthcoming book “Losing an Enemy — Obama, Iran and the Triumph of Diplomacy,” agrees. Such acts of “escalation” by the Trump administration, he tells me, “significantly increases the risk of war.”
In an administration overflowing with Iran hawks, from CIA Director Mike Pompeo (“I look forward to rolling back this disastrous deal with the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism”) to Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly (“Iran’s involvement in [Latin America] … is a matter for concern”) to former National Security Adviser Flynn (“We are officially putting Iran on notice”), some may have naively expected Mattis to be the responsible adult in the room.
The defense secretary has been lauded by politicians and pundits alike: the “scholar-warrior” (New York Daily News) and “most revered Marine in a generation” (Marine Corps Times) with “the potential to act as a restraint” (New York Times) on an impulsive commander in chief as he is “the anti-Trump” (Politico) and therefore “good news for global order” (Wall Street Journal).
So why would a retired Marine Corps general such as Mattis be willing to provoke a conflict with Tehran over a single ship? The fact is that Mattis, too, is obsessed with Iran. He has hyperbolically called the Islamic Republic “the single most enduring threat to stability and peace in the Middle East” and — in a Trump-esque descent into the world of conspiracy theories — suggested Tehran is working with ISIS. “Iran is not an enemy of ISIS,” Mattis declaimed in 2016, because “the one country in the Middle East that has not been attacked” by ISIS “is Iran. That is more than happenstance, I’m sure.”
According to the Washington Post, in the run-up to the talks over Iran’s nuclear program, “Israelis may have questioned Obama’s willingness to use force against Iran. … But they believed Mattis was serious.” The general, in his capacity as head of U.S. Central Command, even proposed launching “dead of night” airstrikes on Iranian soil in 2011, in retaliation for Tehran’s support for anti-American militias in Iraq — a proposal rejected by White House officials who were worried that it “risked starting yet another war in the Middle East.”
Mousavian is puzzled by the defense secretary’s hawkishness: “He is one of the most experienced U.S. generals and he knows … the consequences of confrontation with Iran would be tenfold what the U.S. experienced in Afghanistan and Iraq combined.”
Mattis has, in fact, been tied to some of the worst war crimes of the Iraq invasion. It was he who gave the order to attack the village of Mukaradeeb in April 2004 — a decision he would later admit took him only 30 seconds to approve — which killed 42 civilians, including 13 children, who were attending a wedding there. “I don’t have to apologize for the conduct of my men,” he told reporters.
Six months later, in November 2004, it was Mattis who planned the Marine assault on Fallujah that reduced that city to rubble, forced 200,000 residents from their homes, and resulted, according to the Red Cross, in at least 800 civilian deaths.
There’s a reason Mattis is nicknamed “Mad Dog.” There’s a reason his militant maxims — or “Mattisisms” — include telling Marines under his command in Iraq to “be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet,” and telling an audience in California: “It’s fun to shoot some people. … I like brawling.”
Is this the kind of “restraint” that we can expect from Mattis? Trump was rightly lambasted over his January raid in Yemen that led to the deaths of a U.S. Navy SEAL and at least 15 Yemeni women and children, but it was the defense secretary, joined by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who persuaded the neophyte president that the SEALs’ attack on al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula would be a “game changer.” It was the gung-ho Mattis who, according to Reuters, told Trump that he “doubted that the Obama administration would have been bold enough to try it.” And this week, we learned, it is Mattis to whom Trump wants to give free rein to launch raids, drone strikes, and hostage rescues without prior presidential approval. What could possibly go wrong?
According to Parsi, Mattis “believes the U.S. needs to have a strong hegemonic position in the Middle East,” and “if your aim is hegemony in the Middle East, Iran will be your No. 1 foe due to Tehran’s rejection of Pax Americana — even though the U.S. and Iran share a lot of common interests, such as opposition to ISIS.”
Yet even normally skeptical voices have bought into the myth of Mattis’s moderation. “I actually do think he is the closest thing we have to a ‘moderate’ in this administration,” Andrew Bacevich, a conservative military historian at Boston University and long-standing critic of U.S. defense policy, tells me. This, to misapply a line from George W. Bush, is “the soft bigotry of low expectations.” The defense secretary may not be a bigot or a crank like so many other top Trump appointees, but he could prove to be far more lethal in the long run.
Remember: It was not Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld but “moderate” Secretary of State Colin Powell — another retired general — who was tasked with selling President Bush’s Mesopotamian misadventure to the United Nations in February 2003. Who do you imagine would make a more convincing public case, on behalf of the Trump administration, for a future shooting war with Iran? The draft-dodging president or his decorated defense secretary? Ex-Breitbart boss Steve Bannon or “Warrior Monk” Mattis, who, lest we forget, 45 out of 46 Senate Democrats voted to confirm?
“War is once again on the agenda, whether by design or by accident,” warns Parsi. So don’t be fooled. Mattis is far from a sheep in hawk’s clothing; he is a hawk in hawk’s clothing. The defense secretary may once have described the three biggest threats to U.S. national security as “Iran, Iran, Iran,” but if the Trump administration ends up going to war with Iran as a result of the defense secretary’s recklessness, the three biggest threats to “stability and peace in the Middle East” may turn out to be “Mattis, Mattis, Mattis.”
 |
|
Despite Trump's Measured Speech, He Continues to Sow Division |
|
|
Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=40776"><span class="small">Dan Rather, Dan Rather's Facebook Page</span></a>
|
|
Wednesday, 01 March 2017 15:02 |
|
Rather writes: "We've seen this before. After a period of sustained chaos, Donald Trump ascends a podium, and for a moment at least, reads a relatively measured speech from a teleprompter."
Dan Rather. (photo: Rob Rich/WENN/Newscom)
Despite Trump's Measured Speech, He Continues to Sow Division
By Dan Rather, Dan Rather's Facebook Page
01 March 17
 e've seen this before. After a period of sustained chaos, Donald Trump ascends a podium, and for a moment at least, reads a relatively measured speech from a teleprompter. For the most part, in tone and temperament it is a world away from the Tweets, and the press conferences. In many ways it was standard conservative Republican fare on such topics as tax cuts, although watching Paul Ryan stand and applaud lines calling into question free trade and major spending on infrastructure shows how much the GOP elite has swung behind President Trump.
The President's call for economic populism is a popular instinct in the country, that I think cuts across party lines. If that was the centerpiece of his agenda, I suspect his poll numbers would be much higher. But of course there is so much more we have seen over the past several weeks that show how the most controversial rhetoric of the campaign has continued from the President in office. Tonight, Mr. Trump referenced history on many occasions, seeking to give his very unconventional administration the trappings of its place in sustained American values. There were many lines that will be seen as smoothing out the edges. But bubbling beneath the surface was still a President who is stoking division. I think the most noteworthy section, and one that history will mark, was his focus on crimes from immigrants. It is a dangerous and disingenuous strawman. Yes illegal immigrants have committed crimes. But what about the Indian worker who was just murdered in Kansas? Or the little children and teachers in Connecticut? Or African Americans in prayer in South Carolina?
Nevertheless, I think that this is a speech that will play well with the President's base. If Democrats or Independents hope that Republicans in Congress will challenge the Administration, the numerous standing ovations show how faint that expectation currently is. Democrats will read between the lines on health care, the President's language on "law and order," his framing of foreign policy. They will claim rampant disingenuity and a glaring lack of specifics. And some may sense the low rumblings of a demagogue. But that is not how most people watching speeches judge them. Overall, I think the effect was more successful than many had expected, perhaps because of the low bar of expectation.
But there is a fundamental difference between a campaign and a presidency. The first is about words and promises. The latter is about delivering. Whether President Trump and the Republicans who back him continue in a position of strength or falter in the election cycles to come will not be determined by a few lines read to a national audience. It will be measured by jobs, health care and education. It will be shaped by the general mood of the country - the level of anxiety versus safety, calmness versus chaos.
The news cycle doesn't stop. New challenges will emerge. New investigative reporting will be published. New legislation will be proposed, or it won't. And our 45th President will have to appease and persuade a volatile and engaged population in a diverse and divided nation that he is the right man for the job.
|
|
|
FOCUS: Mem Fox on Being Detained by US Immigration: 'In That Moment I Loathed America' |
|
|
Wednesday, 01 March 2017 12:54 |
|
Fox writes: "The way I was interviewed was monstrous."
Mem Fox, beloved Australian children's author. (photo: EPA)
Mem Fox on Being Detained by US Immigration: 'In That Moment I Loathed America'
By Mem Fox, Guardian UK
01 March 17
The celebrated Australian children’s author tells how on her 117th visit to the US she was suddenly at the mercy of Donald Trump’s visa regime
 was pulled out of line in the immigration queue at Los Angeles airport as I came in to the USA. Not because I was Mem Fox the writer – nobody knew that – I was just a normal person like anybody else. They thought I was working in the States and that I had come in on the wrong visa.
I was receiving an honorarium for delivering an opening keynote at a literacy conference, and because my expenses were being paid, they said: “You need to answer further questions.” So I was taken into this holding room with about 20 other people and kept there for an hour and 40 minutes, and for 15 minutes I was interrogated.
The room was like a waiting room in a hospital but a bit more grim than that. There was a notice on the wall that was far too small, saying no cellphones allowed, and anybody who did use a cellphone had someone stand in front of them and yell: “Don’t use that phone!” Everything was yelled, and everything was public, and this was the most awful thing, I heard things happening in that room happening to other people that made me ashamed to be human.
There was an Iranian woman in a wheelchair, she was about 80, wearing a little mauve cardigan, and they were yelling at her – “Arabic? Arabic?”. They screamed at her “ARABIC?” at the top of their voices, and finally she intuited what they wanted and I heard her say “Farsi”. And I thought heaven help her, she’s Iranian, what’s going to happen?
There was a woman from Taiwan, being yelled at about at about how she made her money, but she didn’t understand the question. The officer was yelling at her: “Where does your money come from, does it grow on trees? Does it fall from the sky?” It was awful.
There was no toilet, no water, and there was this woman with a baby. If I had been holed up in that room with a pouch on my chest, and a baby crying, or needing to be fed, oh God … the agony I was surrounded by in that room was like a razor blade across my heart.
When I was called to be interviewed I was rereading a novel from 40 years ago – thank God I had a novel. It was The Red and the Black by Stendhal – a 19th century novel keeps you quiet on a long flight, and is great in a crisis – and I was buried in it and didn’t hear my name called. And a woman in front of me said: “They are calling for Fox.” I didn’t know which booth to go to, then suddenly there was a man in front of me, heaving with weaponry, standing with his legs apart yelling: “No, not there, here!” I apologised politely and said I’d been buried in my book and he said: “What do you expect me to do, stand here while you finish it?” – very loudly and with shocking insolence.
The way I was interviewed was monstrous. If only they had been able to look into my suitcase and see my books. The irony! I had a copy of my new book I’m Australian, Too – it’s about immigration and welcoming people to live in a happy country. I am all about inclusivity, humanity and the oneness of the humans of the world; it’s the theme of my life. I also had a copy of my book Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes. I told him I had all these inclusive books of mine in my bag, and he yelled at me: “I can read!”
He was less than half my age – I don’t look 70 but I don’t look 60 either, I’m an older woman – and I was standing the whole time. The belligerence and violence of it was really terrifying. I had to hold the heel of my right hand to my heart to stop it beating so hard.
They were not apologetic at any point. When they discovered that one of Australia’s official gifts to Prince George was Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes, he held out his hand and said: “It’s been a pleasure to meet you, Ms Fox.” I was close to collapse, very close to fainting, and this nearly broke me – it was the creepiest thing of all.
I had been upright, dignified, cool and polite, and this was so cruelly unexpected, so appalling, that he should say it was a pleasure. It couldn’t have been a pleasure for him to treat me like that, unless he was a psychopath.
In that moment I loathed America. I loathed the entire country. And it was my 117th visit to the country so I know that most people are very generous and warm-hearted. They have been wonderful to me over the years. I got over that hatred within a day or two. But this is not the way to win friends, to do this to someone who is Australian when we have supported them in every damn war. It’s absolutely outrageous.
Later in the hotel room I was shaking like a leaf. I rang my friend, my American editor and bawled and bawled, and she told me to write it all down, and I wrote for two hours. I fell asleep thinking I would sleep for eight hours but I woke up an hour and a half later just sobbing. I had been sobbing in my sleep. It was very traumatic.
After I got back to Australia I had an apology from the American embassy. I was very impressed, they were very comforting, and I’ve had so many messages of support from Americans and American authors.
I am a human being, so I do understand that these people might not be well-trained, but they now have carte blanche to be as horrible and belligerent as they want. They’ve gone mad – they’ve got all the power that they want but they don’t have the training.
They made me feel like such a crushed, mashed, hopeless old lady and I am a feisty, strong, articulated English speaker. I kept thinking that if this were happening to me, a person who is white, articulate, educated and fluent in English, what on earth is happening to people who don’t have my power?
That’s the heartbreak of it. Remember, I wasn’t pulled out because I’m some kind of revolutionary activist, but my God, I am now. I am on the frontline. If we don’t stand up and shout, good sense and good will not prevail, and my voice will be one of the loudest.
That’s what it has taught me. I thought I was an activist before, but this has turned me into a revolutionary. I’m not letting it happen here. Instead of crying and being sad and sitting on a couch, I am going to write to politicians. I am going to call. I am going to write to newspapers. I am going to get on the radio. I will not be quiet. No more passive behaviour. Hear me roar.
|
|
FOCUS: Trump Repeats Campaign Promises in Speech to Congress - but That Doesn't Turn Them Into Achievements |
|
|
Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=6853"><span class="small">Frank Rich, New York Magazine</span></a>
|
|
Wednesday, 01 March 2017 11:38 |
|
Rich writes: "It was the same old Trump swill served up in perfumed linguistic packaging and presented in a far fancier setting in an effort to retool his image after more than a month of bombast, chaos, and dysfunction in his White House."
Trump addresses Congress on Tuesday night. (photo: Getty Images)
Trump Repeats Campaign Promises in Speech to Congress - but That Doesn't Turn Them Into Achievements
By Frank Rich, New York Magazine
01 March 17
Most weeks, New York Magazine writer-at-large Frank Rich speaks with contributor Alex Carp about the biggest stories in politics and culture. Today: President Trump’s first address to a joint session of Congress.
 new president’s first address to a joint session of Congress is typically a chance to show how campaign promises will become a policy agenda, something that’s been notoriously tricky for the Trump administration so far. Did the speech leave things any clearer?
Not at all. It was the same old Trump swill served up in perfumed linguistic packaging and presented in a far fancier setting in an effort to retool his image after more than a month of bombast, chaos, and dysfunction in his White House. The litany of promises he recited are the same ones he’s made from the get-go — the repeal and replacement of Obamacare with better health care for everyone, a massive retooling of America’s infrastructure, an end to terrorism and the drug epidemic, tax cuts for everyone, a renaissance in coal mining, not to mention the Great Wall — with no explanation of how he will achieve any of them, what they will cost, who will pay, and what’s in any fine print (or even medium print). Endlessly regurgitating your campaign promises does not turn them into achievements. And they are unlikely to be realized anytime soon given that Trump knows nothing about governance and believes that basically you can run the country by tweeting, holding rallies, issuing executive orders, and pretending that the other two branches of government don’t exist.
Nonetheless, there were already signs that the press would be grading on a very high curve. An ABC News correspondent, Jonathan Karl, tweeted early on that we were watching Trump “at his most presidential.” That’s true. Trump wasn’t yelling and was rarely improvising, choosing instead to read a written speech that told us it was unifying and poetic, in case we didn’t get it: “A message of unity and strength … deeply delivered from my heart.” (If it were in fact deeply delivered from his heart, he wouldn’t have to provide his own rave review of his performance.) I think Glenn Thrush of the Times got it exactly right when he tweeted: “For any other president this would be a boring, laundry list speech. For Trump – amazing, responsible, detailed, united, presidential.” Brian Williams of MSNBC went even further, noting the “soaring rhetoric at the end.” His colleague Joe Scarborough could be found on the floor of the House applauding Trump before he even started to speak.
After all, Trump actually began by mentioning Black History Month, decrying anti-Semitism, and referring briefly and obliquely to last weekend’s murder of Indian immigrants in Kansas City. There’s unity for you. And you want specifics? Well, some CEOs told him that they will create “tens of thousands of new jobs.” You can take that to the bank, surely. Best of all, our president promised us that “everything’s that broken can be fixed.” Problem(s) solved.
I am sure Trump’s base loved it, but for other viewers most of it will disappear from memory fast, perhaps even as you are reading this — with a single exception. Trump took one big risk in this speech, which was to politicize the death of the U.S. Navy SEAL William “Ryan” Owens, who was killed in last month’s botched Yemen raid, by showcasing his widow, Carryn, understandably in tears as she watched from her seat in the balcony. Owens’s father has called the raid a “stupid mission.” It has been reported to be a failure that also killed a score or so of civilians, including young children, while yielding no significant intelligence, according to an NBC News scoop this week.
But clearly Trump feels that reports of the mission’s failure are fake news. He doubled down on his previous claims that it was “a highly successful raid” and said that his secretary of Defense, James Mattis, had tonight confirmed that claim. Official and further journalistic investigations will tell us whether Trump is telling the truth or not, and whether Mattis’s sterling reputation for probity has now been sullied.
In any case, there’s no way of proving Trump’s related claim, his jocular, self-congratulatory assertion that his salute to Ryan’s heroism “broke a record” for applause. For sheer tastelessness, however, it is in a class by itself.
|
|
ne of my best friends from college was down here as a guest of the DNC this weekend. She is a fine daughter of Eastern European immigrants, born and bred in Chicago, and recently retired after decades of doing god's work as a public defender in Cook County, where there is plenty of work for that sort of thing. On Friday, she was assigned to something called The Ethnics Caucus. Neither one of us was real sure what that meant, except, maybe, it meant white people who didn't come from California. God, I love the Democrats.
