Ainsi parle l’Éternel à son oint, à Cyrus (…) C’est moi qui ai suscité Cyrus dans ma justice. Il rebâtira ma ville, et libérera mes captifs, sans rançon ni présents, dit l’Éternel des armées. Esaïe 45: 1-13
Là où le péché abonde, la grâce surabonde. Paul (Romains 5 : 20)
Où est le péril, croît, le salutaire aussi. Hölderlin
La vertu même devient vice, étant mal appliquée, et le vice est parfois ennobli par l’action. Frère Laurent (Roméo et Juliette, Shakespeare)
Le monde moderne n’est pas mauvais : à certains égards, il est bien trop bon. Il est rempli de vertus féroces et gâchées. Lorsqu’un dispositif religieux est brisé (comme le fut le christianisme pendant la Réforme), ce ne sont pas seulement les vices qui sont libérés. Les vices sont en effet libérés, et ils errent de par le monde en faisant des ravages ; mais les vertus le sont aussi, et elles errent plus férocement encore en faisant des ravages plus terribles. Le monde moderne est saturé des vieilles vertus chrétiennes virant à la folie. Elles ont viré à la folie parce qu’on les a isolées les unes des autres et qu’elles errent indépendamment dans la solitude. Ainsi des scientifiques se passionnent-ils pour la vérité, et leur vérité est impitoyable. Ainsi des « humanitaires » ne se soucient-ils que de la pitié, mais leur pitié (je regrette de le dire) est souvent mensongère. G.K. Chesterton
Comme une réponse, les trois slogans inscrits sur la façade blanche du ministère de la Vérité lui revinrent à l’esprit. La guerre, c’est la paix. La liberté, c’est l’esclavage. L’ignorance, c’est la force. 1984 (George Orwell)
La liberté, c’est la liberté de dire que deux et deux font quatre. Lorsque cela est accordé, le reste suit. George Orwell (1984)
Il est des idées d’une telle absurdité que seuls les intellectuels peuvent y croire. George Orwell
Les intellectuels sont portés au totalitarisme bien plus que les gens ordinaires. George Orwell
Le langage politique est destiné à rendre vraisemblables les mensonges, respectables les meurtres, et à donner l’apparence de la solidité à ce qui n’est que vent. George Orwell
Parler de liberté n’a de sens qu’à condition que ce soit la liberté de dire aux gens ce qu’ils n’ont pas envie d’entendre. George Orwell
I suppose if I had lost the war, I would have been tried as a war criminal. General Curtis LeMay
La démocratie est le pire système de gouvernement, à l’exception de tous les autres qui ont pu être expérimentés dans l’histoire. Winston Churchill (1947)
To label him a great or good or even a weak president misses the point. He was merely necessary. Herbert Parmet (Eisenhower, 1972)
Je n’avais pas pensé au président Trump comme candidat à la présidentielle jusqu’à ce qu’il devienne candidat à la présidentielle. Et dans ses premières apparitions, j’ai pensé que c’était un phénomène éphémère, mais je lui attribue un immense mérite d’avoir analysé un aspect de la situation américaine, la stratégie disponible, de l’avoir menée contre la direction de son propre parti, et de l’avoir emporté. Maintenant, son défi est d’appliquer cette même compétence à la situation internationale. (…) Donald Trump est un phénomène que les pays étrangers n’ont pas vu, cela a donc été une expérience choquante pour eux qu’il entre en fonction. En même temps, et je crois qu’il a la possibilité d’entrer dans l’histoire comme un très grand président, parce que chaque pays a maintenant deux choses à considérer. Premièrement, leur perception que le président précédent ou le président sortant a essentiellement retiré l’Amérique de la politique internationale, de sorte qu’ils ont dû faire leur propre évaluation de leurs besoins. Et, deuxièmement, voici un nouveau président qui pose beaucoup de questions inconnues. Et à cause de la combinaison du vide partiel et des nouvelles questions, on pourrait imaginer que quelque chose de remarquable et de nouveau en émerge. Je ne dis pas que ce sera le cas. Je dis que c’est une opportunité extraordinaire. (…) Je pense qu’il opère par une sorte d’instinct qui est une forme d’analyse différente de la mienne, plus académique. Mais il a soulevé un certain nombre de questions que j’estime importantes, très importantes. Et si elles sont traitées correctement, cela pourrait conduire à de bons – d’excellents résultats. Henry Kissinger (Dec. 20, 2016)
Many of the younger — they’re not so young anymore — neoconservatives have gone over to the Never Trump movement. And they are extremely angry with anybody who doesn’t share their view. But I describe myself as anti-anti Trump. While I have no great admiration for him, to put it mildly, I think she’s worse. Between the two, he’s the lesser evil. (…) I think the Iran deal is one of the most catastrophic actions that any American president has ever taken. That’s how seriously I regard it. It paves the way for Iran to get a nuclear weapon. If Iran gets a nuclear weapon, I think that we would be in great danger of seeing an outbreak of a nuclear exchange between Iran and Israel. So that alone would be enough to turn me against the Obama administration and virtually everyone who took part in it, and certainly Hillary Clinton. It overshadows everything from my point of view. (…) I’m not 100 percent sure, not even 50 percent sure. [Trump] has described it as the worst deal ever made, and he has said he would renegotiate it — and he may very well mean that. (…) I find Trump impossible to predict. I don’t think anyone knows exactly what he would do about anything. But the fact of the matter is, you’re dealing here not just with two individuals, you know, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, you’re dealing with two political parties. (…) I think there is no question that on Israel the Democrats can no longer be trusted. The liberal community, generally, and the Democratic Party, particularly, have grown increasingly unfriendly to Israel over 50 years, and it’s reached a point now where there are elements within the party who are positively hostile to Israel, and many who are simply cold and unfriendly. (…) If Trump were to be elected, he’s not an emperor, he’s just one person, and he’s got a whole party and constituency coming along with him and so does Hillary. You know, you’re not voting for king. You’re voting for a president whose powers are limited and circumscribed by the Constitution and by the other branches of government. So to me, it’s just a no-brainer. (…) While I can’t predict for you what Trump will do about anything. I can predict for you what Hillary will do about everything. (…) I think she would continue the policy of daylight between Israel and the United States that Obama inaugurated. And by the way, she played along with that completely. There was the 45-minute harangue, the chewing out she gave to Bibi at one point. So I think this distancing from Israel would continue and probably grow worse. (…) Hillary has a worse character than Donald Trump. She’s a thief and a liar and a brazen unprincipled opportunist. She has never done anything good in her entire political career. Even as a woman, she has gotten to where she is on the shoulders of her husband, not on her own merits. No, I have no respect for her whatsoever on any front. (….) That’s a long time ago, and he’s said more reassuring things since then. He’s gone out of his way in several speeches to describe Israel as our strongest ally. And I think he would no longer say that he’s neutral. But I would not bet my life on anything about Trump. I can imagine him going the opposite direction on everything that he says he’s for. (…) I once said that Trump is Pat Buchanan without the anti-Semitism. By that, I meant that he seemed to be a nativist, an isolationist, and a protectionist. Those are sort of the three pillars of the Buchanan political creed. But whereas Buchanan really believes that stuff, I don’t think Trump does. I think he’s perfectly capable of turning on a dime on each one of those issues. (…) again, I’m not saying I would confidently predict what he would do as president. I only have a sort of hunch. (…) I think the Jews will vote for Hillary. They’ll revert to their old obsession with sticking with the Democratic Party, I think. (…) Trump certainly believes in the traditional American system, I think. He has no reason not to, and when he keeps saying that he wants to ‘Make America Great Again,’ that’s not that different from what Reagan was saying, ‘Our best days lie ahead,’ and so on. (…) [Even my son] thinks that Trump is worse, and I think that Hillary is worse. He keeps trying to persuade me. He sends me things, articles, showing how bad Trump is. And I keep saying, ‘I know all this. I don’t need to be persuaded.’” Norman Podhoretz (2016)
Trump’s move from Queens to Manhattan was, as I understand the real estate business, a quite daring move. Maybe that was the longest journey in the world because the Manhattan real estate world is a world unto its own. The competition is very fierce, you’re dealing with many, many clever people. I think it was Tom Klingenstein who said he always thought Trump was Jewish because he fit in so well with the real-estatenicks in Manhattan, most of whom were, and are, Jewish. (…) I take it as an affectionate remark. He had the qualities that all those guys had in common, and you might have thought, other things being equal, that he was one of them. And in a certain sense he was, but not entirely. I know a few of those guys and they’re actually very impressive. You have to get permits, and you have to deal with the mob, and you have to know how to handle workers who are very recalcitrant, many of whom are thuggish. You’re in a battlefield there, so you have to know how to operate politically as well as in a managerial capacity, and how to sweet talk and also how to curse. It’s not an easy field to master.(…) I do see [Trump’s blue collar sensibility] and even before Trump—long before Trump—actually going back to when I was in the army in the 1950s, I got to know blue-collar Americans. I’m “blue collar” myself, I suppose. I’m from the working class—my father was a milk man. But in the army I got to know people from all over the country and I fell in love with Americans—they were just great! These guys were unlike anybody I had ever met in New York or in England or France. They were mostly blue-collar kids and I think Trump has, in that sense, the common touch. That’s one of the things—it may be the main thing—that explains his political success. It doesn’t explain his success in general, but his political success, yes. Also—I often explain this to people—when I was a kid, you would rather be beaten up than back away from a fight. The worst thing in the world you could be called was a sissy. And I was beaten up many times. Trump fights back. The people who say: “Oh, he shouldn’t lower himself,” “He should ignore this,” and “Why is he demeaning himself by arguing with some dopey reporter?” I think on the contrary—if you hit him, he hits back; and he is an equal opportunity counter puncher. It doesn’t matter who you are. And actually Obama, oddly enough, made the same statement: “He pulls a knife, you pull a gun.” (…) when he first appeared on the scene, I disliked him because he resembled one of the figures that I dislike most in American politics and with whom I had tangled, namely Pat Buchanan—I had tangled with him in print and I had accused him of anti-Semitism. And he came back at me, and I came back at him. And it was a real street fight. And I said to my wife: “This guy [Trump] is Buchanan without the anti-Semitism,” because he was a protectionist, a nativist, and an isolationist. And those were the three pillars of Pat Buchanan’s political philosophy. How did I know he wasn’t an anti-Semite? I don’t know—I just knew. And he certainly wasn’t and isn’t, and I don’t think he’s a racist or any of those things. (…) that’s what’s so interesting. At first, I disliked him because I thought he was a Buchananite, and then when he said that they lied us into Iraq—that put me off, because that is itself one of the big lies of the century, and no matter how often it’s been refuted and refuted decisively, it just stays alive. And when Trump committed himself to that, I thought, “well, to hell with him.” (…) So for a while I was supporting Marco Rubio and I was enthusiastic about him. As time went on, and I looked around me, however, I began to be bothered by the hatred that was building up against Trump from my soon to be new set of ex-friends. It really disgusted me. I just thought it had no objective correlative. You could think that he was unfit for office—I could understand that—but my ex-friends’ revulsion was always accompanied by attacks on the people who supported him. They called them dishonorable, or opportunists, or cowards—and this was done by people like Bret Stephens, Bill Kristol, and various others. And I took offense at that. So that inclined me to what I then became: anti-anti-Trump. By the time he finally won the nomination, I was sliding into a pro-Trump position, which has grown stronger and more passionate as time has gone on. On the question of his isolationism, he doesn’t seem to give a damn. He hires John Bolton and Mike Pompeo who, from my point of view, as a neoconservative (I call myself a “paleo-neoconservative” because I’ve been one for so long), couldn’t be better. And that’s true of many of his other cabinet appointments. He has a much better cabinet than Ronald Reagan had, and Reagan is the sacred figure in Republican hagiography. Trump is able to do that because, not only is he not dogmatic, he doesn’t operate on the basis of fixed principles. Now some people can think that’s a defect—I don’t think it’s a defect in a politician at a high level. I remember thinking to myself once on the issue of his embrace of tariffs, and some of my friends were very angry. I said to myself for the first time, “Was thou shalt not have tariffs inscribed on the tablets that Moses brought down from Sinai? Maybe Trump has something on this issue, in this particular”—and then I discovered to my total amazement that there are a hundred tariffs (I think that’s right) against America from all over the world. So the idea that we’re living in a free trade paradise was itself wrong, and in any case, there was no reason to latch onto it as a sacred dogma. And that was true of immigration. I was always pro-immigration because I’m the child of immigrants. And I thought it was unseemly of me to oppose what not only had saved my life, but had given me the best life I think I could possibly have had. I wrote a book called My Love Affair with America, and that states it accurately. So I was very reluctant to join in Trump’s skepticism about the virtues of immigration. (…) We weren’t arguing about illegal immigration. We were arguing about immigration. (…) In 1924, immigration virtually stopped and the rationale for the new policy was to give newcomers a chance to assimilate—which may or may not have been the main reason—but it probably worked. What has changed my mind about immigration now—even legal immigration—is that our culture has weakened to the point where it’s no longer attractive enough for people to want to assimilate to, and we don’t insist that they do assimilate. When I was a kid, I lived in a neighborhood that had immigrant Jews, immigrant Italians (mainly from Sicily), and immigrant blacks—that is, they had come up from the South recently. It was incidentally one of the things that made me a lifelong skeptic about integration because far from understanding each other and getting to know each other, all we did was fight. In any case, the stuff that went on in the public schools! I had an incident when I went to school at the age of five. Although I was born in Brooklyn, I was bilingual and Yiddish was in a sense my first language, so I came to school with a bit of an accent. And the story was: I was wandering around in the hall, and the teacher said: “Where are you going?” And I said: “I’m goink op de stez.” And they slapped me into a remedial speech class. Now, if anyone did that now, federal marshals would materialize out of the wall and arrest them for cultural genocide. But, of course, they did me an enormous favor. I imagine my life would have been very different if I had not been subjected to that “speech therapy,” as they called it. And parents then did not object—on the contrary, they were very humble. If the teacher thought so, and the school thought so, they must be right. That was the culture of the prewar period. You certainly wanted your children to be Americans—real Americans—even if you wanted them to hold on to their ancestral culture as well. You were free to do that on your own time and your own dime. And it worked. It worked beautifully. (…) [Back to Trump] it wasn’t a lightbulb, and it wasn’t the road to Damascus revelation. It was that as I watched the appointments he was making even at the beginning, I was astonished. And he couldn’t have been doing this by accident. So that everything he was doing by way of policy as president, belied the impression he had given to me of a Buchananite. He was the opposite of a Buchananite in practice. The fact is he was a new phenomenon. And I still to this day haven’t quite figured out how he reconciled all of this in his own head. Maybe because, as I said earlier, he was not dogmatic about things. He did what he had to do to get things done. (…) [ he didn’t have principles] okay, but he had something—he had instincts. And he knew, from my point of view, who the good guys were. Now, he made some mistakes, for example, with Secretary of State Tillerson, but so did Reagan. I used to point out to people that it took Lincoln three years to find the right generals to fight the civil war, so what did you expect from George W. Bush? In Trump’s case, most of his appointments were very good and they’ve gotten better as time’s gone on. And even the thing that I held almost sacred, and still do really, which is the need for American action abroad—interventionism—which he still says he’s against. I mean, he wants to pull out all our troops from Syria and I think it was probably Bolton who talked him out of doing it all in one stroke. Even concerning interventionism, I began to rethink. I found my mind opening to possibilities that hadn’t been there before. And in this case it was a matter of acknowledging changing circumstances rather than philosophical or theoretical changes. (…) [As to Iraq] I am intransigent on Iraq. I think it was the right thing to do at the time. I’ve even gone so far as to say Bush would have deserved to be impeached if he had not gone in. Every intelligence agency in the world said that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction—nuclear weapons, actually—every one of his own intelligence agencies said so. Saddam himself said so. Especially after 9/11, there was almost no good reason not to go in. The administration had gone through all the diplomatic kabuki, which I always knew wouldn’t work. It’s inconceivable that they could have been lying. Who would be stupid enough to lie when you’re going to be exposed in a week? It’s ridiculous! Nobody was lying, except Saddam. (…) I still feel it was the right thing to do and the story’s not over yet, by the way. I mean, it’s assumed Iraq is a disaster and Iran is taking over—that’s not quite true. Many Iraqis are trying to resist Iran. I’m told that Baghdad has become what Beirut used to be—full of cafés and nightlife and traffic jams and liveliness; and they had a decent election. (…) [About democratizing Iraq] I know, it’s as if the effort to democratize was somehow ignoble instead of just misplaced. I mean, let me put it this way, we obviously did a bad job of the occupation and we are not an imperial power despite what the Left says. We’re not good at it. Although, in the case of Germany, Japan, and Korea, we’ve stationed troops there for 50 years. If you’re going to do it, you need to be prepared to do what is necessary when it’s over—when you’ve won. And we were not prepared. Many mistakes were made, and the will to see it through to the end was absent. So that I agree to. But my hope was not that we could have an election and overnight everything would be fine, but that we could clear the ground a bit in which seeds of democratization could be planted. That was what I used to call “draining the swamp.” And that swamp, we knew, was the swamp in which terrorism festered. So it seemed to me to make sense as a policy. (…) [Trump] was against what he called stupid wars or unnecessary wars. But I think that, again, he’s willing to be flexible under certain circumstances. I think that if we were hit by any of those people, he would respond with a hydrogen bomb. (…) some of [my ex-friends] have gone so far as to make me wonder whether they’ve lost their minds altogether. I didn’t object to their opposition to Trump. There was a case to be made, and they made it—okay. Of course, they had no reasonable alternative. A couple of them voted for Hillary, which I think would have been far worse for the country than anything Trump could have done. But, basically, I think we’re all in a state of confusion as to what’s going on. Tom Klingenstein has made a brilliant effort to explain it, in terms that haven’t really been used before. He says that our domestic politics has erupted into a kind of war between patriotism and multiculturalism, and he draws out the implications of that war very well. I might put it in different terms—love of America versus hatred of America. But it’s the same idea. We find ourselves in a domestic, or civil, war almost. In 1969-70, we neocons analyzed the international situation in a similar way, behind a clarifying idea that had a serious impact because it was both simple and sufficiently complex in its implications. I had by then become alienated from my long-term friend Hannah Arendt, whose book The Origins of Totalitarianism had had an enormous effect on me. Although she had become an ex-friend, her book’s argument still inspired me, and I think a lot of other people, to fight. And that argument was that the Soviet Union was an evil, moral and political, comparable to Nazi Germany. As we had fought to defend the West in World War II from the evil coming from, as it were, the Right, so we had to fight it coming from the Left in the Cold War, which I liked to call World War III. (And I’ve tried to say since 9/11, we have to fight an evil coming from the 7th century in what amounts to World War IV—but that name hasn’t caught on.) But the important point is we offered a wholehearted, full-throated defense of America. Not merely a defense, but a celebration, which is what I thought it deserved, nothing less. It was like rediscovering America—its virtues, its values, and how precious the heritage we had been born to was, and how it was, in effect, worth dying for. And that had a refreshing impact, I think, because that’s how most people felt. But all they had heard—though nothing compared to now—was that America was terrible. It was the greatest danger to peace in the world, it was born in racism, and genocide, and committed every conceivable crime. And then when new crimes were invented like sexism and Islamophobia, we were guilty of those, too. (…) one of the Soviet officials, after the fall of the Soviet Union, actually put it correctly when he said: “You’ve lost your enemy.” And that’s, I think, the largest cause. (…) the external threat inspired us, but it also gave rise to a new appreciation of what we were fighting for—not just against. I was a Democrat, you know, by heritage, and in 1972 I helped found a movement called, “The Coalition for a Democratic Majority,” which was an effort to save the Democratic Party from the McGovernites who had taken it over. We knew exactly what was wrong, but it metastasized. The long march through the institutions, as the Maoists called it, was more successful than I would have anticipated. The anti-Americanism became so powerful that there was virtually nothing to stop it. Even back then I once said, and it’s truer now: this country is like a warrior tribe which sends all its children to a pacifist monk to be educated. And after a while—it took 20 or 40 years—but little by little it turned out that Antonio Gramsci—the Communist theoretician who said that the culture is where the power is, not the economy—turned out to be right; and little by little the anti-Americanism made its way all the way down to kindergarten, practically. And there was no effective counterattack. I’m not sure why. I mean, some of us tried, but we didn’t get very far. (…) The crack I make these days is that the Left thinks that the Constitution is unconstitutional. When Barack Obama said, “We are five days away from fundamentally transforming this country,” well it wasn’t five days, but he was for once telling the truth. He knew what he was doing. I’ve always said that Obama, from his own point of view, was a very successful president. I wrote a piece about that in the Wall Street Journal which surprised a lot of people. Far from being a failure, within the constraints of what is still the democratic political system, he had done about as much as you possibly could to transform the country into something like a social democracy. The term “social democrat,” however, used to be an honorable one. It designated people on the Left who were anti-Communist, who believed in democracy, but who thought that certain socialist measures could make the world more equitable. Now it’s become a euphemism for something that is hard to distinguish from Communism. And I would say the same thing about anti-Zionism. I gave a talk to a meeting of the American Jewish Committee, which was then the publisher of Commentary, two years or so after the Six Day War. And I said what’s happened since that war is that anti-Semitism has migrated from the Right, which was its traditional home, to the Left, where it is getting a more and more hospitable reception. And people walked out on the talk, I mean, literally just got up. These were all Jews, you understand. Today, anti-Semitism, under the cover of anti-Zionism, has established itself much more firmly in the Democratic Party than I could ever have predicted, which is beyond appalling. The Democrats were unable to pass a House resolution condemning anti-Semitism, for example, which is confirmation of the Gramscian victory. I think they are anti-American—that’s what I would call them. They’ve become anti-American. (…) some of them say they’re pro-socialism, but most of them don’t know what they’re talking about. They ought to visit a British hospital or a Canadian hospital once in a while to see what Medicare for All comes down to. They don’t know what they’re for. I mean, the interesting thing about this whole leftist movement that started in the ’60s is how different it is from the Left of the ’30s. The Left of the ’30s had a positive alternative in mind—what they thought was positive—namely, the Soviet Union. So America was bad; Soviet Union, good. Turn America into the Soviet Union and everything is fine. The Left of the ’60s knew that the Soviet Union was flawed because its crimes that had been exposed, so they never had a well-defined alternative. One day it was Castro, the next day Mao, the next day Zimbabwe, I mean, they kept shifting—as long as it wasn’t America. Their real passion was to destroy America and the assumption was that anything that came out of those ruins would be better than the existing evil. That was the mentality—there was never an alternative and there still isn’t. So Bernie Sanders, who honeymooned in the Soviet Union—I mean, I don’t know him personally, but I have relatives who resemble him; I know him in my bones—and he’s an old Stalinist if there ever was one. Things have gone so haywire, he was able to revive the totally discredited idea of socialism, and others were so ignorant that they picked it up. As for attitudes toward America, I believe that Howard Zinn’s relentlessly anti-American People’s History of the United States sells something like 130,000 copies a year, and it’s a main text for the study of American History in the high schools and in grade schools. So, we have miseducated a whole generation, two generations by now, about almost everything. (…) The only way I know out of this is to fight it intellectually, which sounds weak. But the fact that Trump was elected is a kind of miracle. I now believe he’s an unworthy vessel chosen by God to save us from the evil on the Left. And he’s not the first unworthy vessel chosen by God. There was King David who was very bad—I mean he had a guy murdered so he could sleep with his wife, among other things. And then there was King Solomon who was considered virtuous enough—more than his father—to build the temple, and then desecrated it with pagan altars; but he was nevertheless considered a great ancestor. So there are precedents for these unworthy vessels, and Trump, with all his vices, has the necessary virtues and strength to fight the fight that needs to be fought. And if he doesn’t win in 2020, I would despair of the future. I have 13 grandchildren and 12 great grandchildren, and they are hostages to fortune. So I don’t have the luxury of not caring what’s going to happen after I’m gone. (…) His virtues are the virtues of the street kids of Brooklyn. You don’t back away from a fight and you fight to win. That’s one of the things that the Americans who love him, love him for—that he’s willing to fight, not willing but eager to fight. And that’s the main virtue and all the rest stem from, as Klingenstein says, his love of America. I mean, Trump loves America. He thinks it’s great or could be made great again. Eric Holder, former attorney general, said, “When was it ever great?” And Michelle Obama says that the first time she was ever proud of her country was when Obama won. (…) Mainly they think [Trump]’s unfit to be president for all the obvious reasons—that he disgraces the office. I mean, I would say Bill Clinton disgraced the office. I was in England at Cambridge University when Harry Truman was president, and there were Americans there who were ashamed of the fact that somebody like Harry Truman was president. (…) [A haberdasher] and no college degree. And, of course, Andrew Jackson encountered some of that animosity. There’s snobbery in it and there’s genuine, you might say, aesthetic revulsion. It’s more than disagreements about policy, because the fact of the matter is they have few grounds for disagreement about policy. I mean, I’ve known Bill Kristol all his life, and I like him. But I must say I’m shocked by his saying that if it comes to the deep state versus Trump, he’ll take the deep state. You know, I was raised to believe that the last thing in the world you defend is your own, and I am proud to have overcome that education. I think the first thing in the world you defend is your own, especially when it’s under siege both from without and within. So the conservative elite has allowed its worst features—its sense of superiority—to overcome its intellectual powers, let’s put it that way. I don’t know how else to explain this. (…) I often quote and I have always believed in Bill Buckley’s notorious declaration that he would rather be governed by the first 2,000 names in the Boston telephone book than by the faculty of Harvard University. That’s what I call intelligent populism. And Trump is Exhibit A of the truth of that proposition. Norman Podhoretz (2019)
Sir Andrew … told me he knew a former MI6 officer by the name of Christopher Steele, who had been commissioned to investigate connections between the Trump campaign and Russian agents as well as potentially compromising information about the President-elect that Putin allegedly possessed. Steele had prepared a report that Wood had not read and conceded was mostly raw, unverified intelligence, but that the author strongly believed merited a thorough examination by counterintelligence experts. Steele was a respected professional, Wood assured us, who had good Russian contacts and long experience collecting and analyzing intelligence on the Kremlin. (…) I was skeptical that Trump or his aides had actively cooperated with Russia’s interference. And I certainly did not want to believe that the Kremlin could have acquired kompromat on an American President. (…) Our impromptu meeting felt charged with a strange intensity. No one wise-cracked to lighten the mood. We spoke in lowered voices. The room was dimly lit, and the atmosphere was eerie. It all seemed too strange a scenario to believe at first, but even a remote risk that the President of the United States might be vulnerable to Russian extortion had to be investigated. (…) The allegations were disturbing, but I had no idea which if any were true. I could not independently verify any of it, and so I did what any American who cares about our nation’s security should have done. I put the dossier in my office safe, called the office of the director of the FBI, Jim Comey, and asked for a meeting. (…) I did what duty demanded I do, anyone who disagrees with his decision can ‘go to hell’. John McCain
The late Sen. John McCain provided intimate details of how he obtained the infamous so-called Steele dossier in his 2018 book, ‘The Restless Wave.’ The Republican senator was attending an annual security conference in Halifax, Nova Scotia shortly after the presidential election in November 2016 when retired a British diplomat approached him. According to McCain, he didn’t recall ever having a previous conversation with Sir Andrew Wood, but may have met him before in passing. Chris Brose, a staff member on the Senate Armed Services Committee, and David Kramer, a former assistant secretary of state with Russian expertise, joined McCain and Wood in a room off the main conference hall. After discussing Russian election interference for a few minutes, Wood explained why he’d approached McCain in the first place. ‘He told me he knew a former MI6 officer by the name of Christopher Steele, who had been commissioned to investigate connections between the Trump campaign and Russian agents as well as potentially compromising information about the President-elect that [Russian President Vladimir] Putin allegedly possessed,’ McCain wrote. Wood told McCain that Steele had compiled a report, while careful to note the information was unverified, which the former British spy « strongly believed merited a thorough examination by counterintelligence experts.’ ‘Our impromptu meeting felt charged with a strange intensity,’ McCain wrote. ‘No one wise-cracked to lighten the mood. We spoke in lowered voices. The room was dimly lit, and the atmosphere was eerie.’ It all seemed ‘too strange a scenario to believe » at first, he wrote, but the six-term senator felt that ‘even a remote risk that the President of the United States might be vulnerable to Russian extortion had to be investigated.’ After further discussion, the group agreed to send Kramer to London to meet Steele. When Kramer returned from the meeting and told McCain that Steele seemed to be a reputable source, the Republican senator agreed to receive a copy of the dossier. ‘The allegations were disturbing, but I had no idea which if any were true,’ McCain said. ‘I could not independently verify any of it, and so I did what any American who cares about our nation’s security should have done. I put the dossier in my office safe, called the office of the director of the FBI, Jim Comey, and asked for a meeting.’ McCain ultimately turned the dossier over to Comey in a meeting on December 9, 2016 that he said lasted about 10 minutes. ‘I did what duty demanded I do, » McCain wrote, adding that anyone who disagrees with his decision can « go to hell.’ The Trump-Russia dossier alleges the Kremlin has been « cultivating, supporting, and assisting » Trump for years under the watchful eye of Putin. The most salacious allegation claims Trump once paid Russian prostitutes to perform sexual acts in front of him that involved urination in a Moscow hotel. Trump has dismissed the dossier as ‘fake’ and ‘phony.’ In general, the concern surrounding the dossier is that, if it were all true, the Russian government could have enough incriminating evidence on Trump to make him vulnerable to blackmail, though the president has fervently pushed back against this perception. Some details within the dossier have been verified, but much of it remains unconfirmed. With that said, it continues to be one of the most controversial topics of conversation regarding the Trump campaign’s alleged collusion with Russia. McCain wrote that he suspects Wood approached him about the Steele dossier because he has been such a persistent, staunch critic of Putin over the years, and that he would « take their concerns seriously.’ The Arizona senator’s last book, which he co-wrote with Mark Salter, came out in May 2018. Business insider
How can evangelicals support Donald Trump? That question continues to befuddle and exasperate liberals. How, they wonder, can a man who is twice divorced, a serial liar, a shameless boaster (including about alleged sexual assault) and an unrepentant xenophobe earn the enthusiastic backing of so many devout Christians? About 80% of evangelicals voted for Trump in 2016; according to a recent poll, almost 70% of white evangelicals approve of how he has handled the presidency – far more than any other religious group. To most Democrats, such support seems a case of blatant hypocrisy and political cynicism. Since Trump is delivering on matters such as abortion, the supreme court and moving the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, conservative Christians are evidently willing to overlook the president’s moral failings. In embracing such a one-dimensional explanation, however, liberals risk falling into the same trap as they did in 2016, when their scorn for evangelicals fed evangelicals’ anger and resentment, contributing to Trump’s huge margin among this group. Bill Maher fell into this trap during a biting six-minute polemic he delivered on his television show in early March. Evangelicals, he said, “needed to solve this little problem” – they want to support a Republican president, but this particular one “happens to be the least Christian person ever”. “How to square the circle?” he asked. “Say that Trump is like King Cyrus.” According to Isaiah 45, God used the non-believer Cyrus as a vessel for his will; many evangelicals today believe that God is similarly using the less-than-perfect Trump to achieve Christian aims. But Trump isn’t a vessel for God’s will, Maher said, and Cyrus “wasn’t a fat, orange-haired, conscience-less scumbag”. Trump’s supporters “don’t care”, he ventured, because “that’s religion. The more it doesn’t make sense the better, because it proves your faith.” Maher portrayed evangelical Christians as a dim-witted group willing to make the most ludicrous theological leaps to advance their agenda. As I watched, I tried to imagine how evangelicals would view this routine. I think they would see a secular elitist eager to assert what he considers his superior intelligence. They would certainly sense his contempt for the many millions of Americans who believe fervently in God, revere the Bible and see Trump as representing their interests. Maher’s diatribe reminded me of a pro-Trump acquaintance from Ohio who now lives in Manhattan and who says that New York liberals are among the most intolerant people he has ever met. Liberals have good cause to decry the ideology of conservative Christians, given their relentless assault on abortion rights, same-sex marriage, transgender rights and climate science. But the disdain for Christians common among the credentialed class can only add to the sense of alienation and marginalization among evangelicals. Many evangelicals feel themselves to be under siege. In a 2016 survey, 41% said it was becoming more difficult to be an evangelical. And many conservative Christians see the national news media as unrelievedly hostile to them. Most media coverage of evangelicals falls into a few predictable categories. One is the exotic and titillating – stories of ministers who come out as transgender, or stories of evangelical sexual hypocrisies. Another favorite subject is progressive evangelicals who challenge the Christian establishment. (…) In 2016, [ the Times’ Nicholas Kristof,] wrote a column criticizing the pervasive discrimination toward Christians in liberal circles. He quoted Jonathan Walton, a black evangelical and professor of Christian morals at Harvard, who compared the common condescension toward evangelicals to that directed at racial minorities, with both seen as “politically unsophisticated, lacking education, angry, bitter, emotional, poor”. Strangely, the group most overlooked by the press is the people in the pews. It would be refreshing for more reporters to travel through the Bible belt and talk to ordinary churchgoers about their faith and values, hopes and struggles. Such reporting would no doubt show that the world of American Christianity is far more varied and complex than is generally thought. It would reveal, for instance, a subtle but important distinction between the Christian right and evangelicals in general, who tend to be less political (though still largely conservative). This kind of deep reporting would probably also highlight the enduring power of a key tenet of the founder of Protestantism. “Faith, not works,” was Martin Luther’s watchword. In his view, it is faith in Christ that truly matters. If one believes in Christ, then one will feel driven to do good works, but such works are always secondary. Trump’s own misdeeds are thus not central; what he stands for – the defense of Christian interests and values – is. Luther also preached the doctrine of original sin, which holds that all humans are tainted by Adam’s transgression in the Garden of Eden and so remain innately prone to pride, anger, lust, vengeance and other failings. Many evangelicals have themselves struggled with divorce, broken families, addiction and abuse. We are thus all sinners – the president included. (…) I can hear the reactions of some readers to this column: Enough! Enough trying to understand a group that helped put such a noxious man in the White House. Yet such a reaction is both ungenerous and shortsighted. Liberals take pride in their empathy for “the other” and their efforts to understand the perspective of groups different from themselves. They should apply that principle to evangelicals. If liberals continue to scoff, they risk reinforcing the rage of evangelicals – and their support for Trump. Michael Massing
To adopt for a moment the language of the center-left, the “populist cancer” is not at all limited to the Visegrád Group. Above all, the arguments used in Austria, in Poland, in Italy, and in Sweden are exactly the same. One of the constants in Europe’s long history is the struggle against Islam; today, that struggle has simply returned to the foreground. (…) Trump is pursuing and amplifying the policy of disengagement initiated by Obama; this is very good news for the rest of the world. (…) But what’s most remarkable about the new American policies is certainly the country’s position on trade, and there Trump has been like a healthy breath of fresh air; you’ve really done well to elect a president with origins in what is called “civil society.” President Trump tears up treaties and trade agreements when he thinks it was wrong to sign them. He’s right about that; leaders must know how to use the cooling-off period and withdraw from bad deals. Unlike free-market liberals (who are, in their way, as fanatical as communists), President Trump doesn’t consider global free trade the be-all and end-all of human progress. When free trade favors American interests, President Trump is in favor of free trade; in the contrary case, he finds old-fashioned protectionist measures entirely appropriate. President Trump was elected to safeguard the interests of American workers; he’s safeguarding the interests of American workers. During the past fifty years in France, one would have wished to come upon this sort of attitude more often. President Trump doesn’t like the European Union; he thinks we don’t have a lot in common, especially not “values”; and I call this fortunate, because, what values? “Human rights”? Seriously? He’d rather negotiate directly with individual countries, and I believe this would actually be preferable; I don’t think that strength necessarily proceeds from union. It’s my belief that we in Europe have neither a common language, nor common values, nor common interests, that, in a word, Europe doesn’t exist, and that it will never constitute a people or support a possible democracy (see the etymology of the term), simply because it doesn’t want to constitute a people. In short, Europe is just a dumb idea that has gradually turned into a bad dream, from which we shall eventually wake up. And in his hopes for a “United States of Europe,” an obvious reference to the United States, Victor Hugo only gave further proof of his grandiloquence and his stupidity; it always does me a bit of good to criticize Victor Hugo. Logically enough, President Trump was pleased about Brexit. Logically enough, so was I; my sole regret was that the British had once again shown themselves to be more courageous than us in the face of empire. The British get on my nerves, but their courage cannot be denied. President Trump doesn’t consider Vladimir Putin an unworthy negotiating partner; neither do I. I don’t believe Russia has been assigned the role of humankind’s universal guide—my admiration for Dostoevsky doesn’t extend that far—but I admire the persistence of orthodoxy in its own lands, I think Roman Catholicism would do well to take inspiration from it, and I believe that the “ecumenical dialogue” could be usefully limited to a dialogue with the Orthodox Church (Christianity is not only a “religion of the Book,” as is too quickly said; it’s also, and perhaps above all, a religion of the Incarnation). I’m painfully aware that the Great Schism of 1054 was, for Christian Europe, the beginning of the end; but on the other hand, I believe that the end is never certain until it arrives. It seems that President Trump has even managed to tame the North Korean madman; I found this feat positively classy. It seems that President Trump recently declared, “You know what I am? I’m a nationalist!” Me too, precisely so. Nationalists can talk to one another; with internationalists, oddly enough, talking doesn’t work so well. France should leave NATO, but maybe such a step will become pointless if lack of operational funding causes NATO to disappear on its own. That would be one less thing to worry about, and a new reason to sing the praises of President Trump. In summary, President Trump seems to me to be one of the best American presidents I’ve ever seen. On the personal level, he is, of course, pretty repulsive. If he consorted with a porn star, that’s not a problem, who gives a shit, but making fun of handicapped people is bad behavior. With an equivalent agenda, an authentic Christian conservative—which is to say, an honorable and moral person—would have been better for America. But maybe it could happen next time, or the time after that, if you insist on keeping Trump. In six years, Ted Cruz will still be comparatively young, and surely there are other outstanding Christian conservatives. You’ll be a little less competitive, but you’ll rediscover the joy of living within the borders of your magnificent country, practicing honesty and virtue. (…) China will scale back its overweening ambitions. This outcome will be the hardest to achieve, but in the end, China will limit its aspirations, and India will do the same. China has never been a global imperialist power, nor has India—unlike the United States, their military aims are local. Their economic aims, it’s true, are global. They have some economic revenge to take, they’re taking it at the moment, which is indeed a matter of some concern; Donald Trump is quite right to not let himself be pushed around. But in the end, their contentiousness will subside, their growth rate will subside. All this will take place within one human lifetime. You have to get used to the idea, worthy American people: in the final analysis, maybe Donald Trump will have been a necessary ordeal for you. Michel Houellebecq
Sur un plan personnel, Trump est bien sûr assez repoussant, notamment pour s’être moqué des handicapés lors d’un meeting électoral fin 2015. Avec un programme équivalent, un conservateur authentiquement chrétien – une personne honorable et morale – aurait été mieux pour l’Amérique. En attendant, autant vous habituer à l’idée: en dernière analyse, peut-être que Trump aura été une épreuve nécessaire pour vous. Michel Houellebecq
Comment les évangéliques peuvent-ils soutenir Donald Trump? Cette question continue de brouiller et d’exaspérer les progressistes. Comment, se demandent-ils, un homme qui est divorcé deux fois, un menteur en série, un fanfaron éhonté (y compris au sujet d’une agression sexuelle présumée) et un xénophobe impénitent peut-il obtenir le soutien enthousiaste de tant de chrétiens dévots? Environ 80% des évangéliques ont voté pour Trump en 2016; selon un récent sondage, près de 70% des évangéliques blancs approuvent la façon dont il a géré la présidence – bien plus que tout autre groupe religieux. Pour la plupart des démocrates, un tel soutien semble être un cas d’hypocrisie flagrante et de cynisme politique. Étant donné que Trump se prononce sur des questions telles que l’avortement, la Cour suprême et le déplacement de l’ambassade américaine en Israël à Jérusalem, les chrétiens conservateurs sont évidemment prêts à ignorer les défauts moraux du président. Cependant, en adoptant une telle explication unidimensionnelle, les libéraux risquent de tomber dans le même piège qu’en 2016, lorsque leur mépris pour les évangéliques a nourri la colère et le ressentiment des évangéliques, contribuant à l’énorme marge de Trump parmi ce groupe. Bill Maher est tombé dans ce piège dans la diatribe mordante de six minutes qu’il a prononcée lors de son émission de télévision début mars. Les évangéliques, a-t-il dit, « devaient résoudre ce petit problème » – ils veulent soutenir un président républicain, mais celui-ci « se trouve être le moins chrétien de tous les temps ». « Comment résoudre cette quadrature du cercle? », a-t-il demandé. « Dire que Trump est comme le roi Cyrus. » Selon Ésaïe 45, Dieu a utilisé le non-croyant Cyrus comme véhicule de sa volonté; de nombreux évangéliques croient aujourd’hui que Dieu utilise de la même manière un Trump moins que parfait pour atteindre les objectifs chrétiens. Mais Trump n’est pas un vaisseau pour la volonté de Dieu, a déclaré Maher, et Cyrus « n’était pas un nul gras, aux cheveux orange et sans conscience ». Les partisans de Trump « ne s’en soucient pas », s’est-il aventuré, parce que « c’est la religion. Moins cela a de sens, mieux c’est, car cela prouve votre foi. »Maher a dépeint les chrétiens évangéliques comme un groupe humble disposé à faire les sauts théologiques les plus ridicules pour faire avancer leur programme. Pendant que je regardais, j’ai essayé d’imaginer comment les évangéliques verraient cette routine. Je pense qu’ils verraient un élitiste laïc désireux d’affirmer ce qu’il considère comme son intelligence supérieure. Ils ressentiraient certainement son mépris pour les millions d’Américains qui croient ardemment en Dieu, vénèrent la Bible et considèrent Trump comme représentant leurs intérêts. La diatribe de Maher m’a rappelé une connaissance pro-Trump de l’Ohio qui vit maintenant à Manhattan et qui dit que les libéraux de New York sont parmi les personnes les plus intolérantes qu’il ait jamais rencontrées. Les libéraux ont de bonnes raisons de dénoncer l’idéologie des chrétiens conservateurs, étant donné leur assaut incessant contre les droits à l’avortement, le mariage homosexuel, les droits des transgenres et la science du climat. Mais le mépris pour les chrétiens, commun à la classe diplômée, ne peut qu’ajouter au sentiment d’aliénation et de marginalisation des évangéliques. De nombreux évangéliques se sentent assiégés. Dans une enquête de 2016, 41% ont déclaré qu’il devenait plus difficile d’être évangélique. Et de nombreux chrétiens conservateurs considèrent les médias nationaux comme hostiles à leur égard. La plupart des reportages médiatiques sur les évangéliques se répartissent en quelques catégories prévisibles. L’une est les histoires exotiques et émouvantes – des histoires de pasteurs qui se révèlent transgenres, ou des histoires d’hypocrisies sexuelles évangéliques. Un autre sujet de prédilection est celui des évangélistes progressistes qui défient l’establishment chrétien. (…) En 2016, [léditorialiste du NYT Nicholas Kristof] a écrit une chronique critiquant la discrimination omniprésente envers les chrétiens dans les milieux de gauche. Il a cité Jonathan Walton, un évangélique noir et professeur de morale chrétienne à Harvard, qui a comparé la condescendance commune envers les évangéliques à celle dirigée contre les minorités raciales, les deux étant considérées comme «politiquement peu sophistiquées, manquant d’éducation, en colère, amères, émotionnelles, pauvres». Étrangement, le groupe le plus négligé par la presse est celui des blancs. Il serait rafraîchissant que davantage de journalistes parcourent la « Bible belt » et parlent aux fidèles ordinaires de leur foi et de leurs valeurs, de leurs espoirs et de leurs luttes. De tels reportages montreraient sans aucun doute que le monde du christianisme américain est beaucoup plus varié et complexe qu’on ne le pense généralement. Cela révélerait, par exemple, une distinction subtile mais importante entre la droite chrétienne et les évangéliques en général, qui ont tendance à être moins politiques (quoique encore largement conservateurs). Ce genre de reportage approfondi mettrait probablement également en évidence le pouvoir durable d’un principe clé du fondateur du protestantisme.«La foi, pas les œuvres», était le mot d’ordre de Martin Luther. Selon lui, c’est la foi en Christ qui compte vraiment. Si l’on croit en Christ, on se sent poussé à faire de bonnes œuvres, mais ces œuvres sont toujours secondaires. Les propres manquements de Trump ne sont donc pas centraux; mais c’est ce qu’il représente – la défense des intérêts et des valeurs chrétiennes – qui l’est. Luther a également prêché la doctrine du péché originel, selon laquelle tous les humains sont entachés par la transgression d’Adam dans le jardin d’Eden et restent donc naturellement enclins à l’orgueil, la colère, la luxure, la vengeance et d’autres défauts. De nombreux évangéliques ont eux-mêmes lutté contre le divorce, la rupture dans leurs familles, la toxicomanie et les abus. Nous sommes donc tous pécheurs – y compris le président. (…) J’entends les réactions de certains lecteurs à cette chronique: Il y en assez d’essayer de comprendre un groupe qui a permis l’arrivée d’un homme aussi nocif à la Maison Blanche. Pourtant, une telle réaction est à la fois peu généreuse et à courte vue. Les libéraux sont fiers de leur empathie pour ‘l’autre’ et de leurs efforts pour comprendre la perspective de groupes différents d’eux. Ils devraient appliquer ce principe aux évangéliques. Si la gauche continue ses moqueries, elle risque de renforcer la rage des évangéliques – et leur soutien à Trump. » Michael Massing
Sur les plans géographique, culturel et social, il existe bien des points communs entre les situations françaises et américaines, à commencer par le déclassement de la classe moyenne. C’est « l’Amérique périphérique » qui a voté Trump, celle des territoires désindustrialisés et ruraux qui est aussi celle des ouvriers, employés, travailleurs indépendants ou paysans. Ceux qui étaient hier au cœur de la machine économique en sont aujourd’hui bannis. Le parallèle avec la situation américaine existe aussi sur le plan culturel, nous avons adopté un modèle économique mondialisé. Fort logiquement, nous devons affronter les conséquences de ce modèle économique mondialisé : l’ouvrier – hier à gauche –, le paysan – hier à droite –, l’employé – à gauche et à droite – ont aujourd’hui une perception commune des effets de la mondialisation et rompent avec ceux qui n’ont pas su les protéger. La France est en train de dngevenir une société américaine, il n’y a aucune raison pour que l’on échappe aux effets indésirables du modèle. (…) Dans l’ensemble des pays développés, le modèle mondialisé produit la même contestation. Elle émane des mêmes territoires (Amérique périphérique, France périphérique, Angleterre périphérique… ) et de catégories qui constituaient hier la classe moyenne, largement perdue de vue par le monde d’en haut. (…) Faire passer les classes moyennes et populaires pour « réactionnaires », « fascisées », « pétinisées » est très pratique. Cela permet d’éviter de se poser des questions cruciales. Lorsque l’on diagnostique quelqu’un comme fasciste, la priorité devient de le rééduquer, pas de s’interroger sur l’organisation économique du territoire où il vit. L’antifascisme est une arme de classe. Pasolini expliquait déjà dans ses Écrits corsaires que depuis que la gauche a adopté l’économie de marché, il ne lui reste qu’une chose à faire pour garder sa posture de gauche : lutter contre un fascisme qui n’existe pas. C’est exactement ce qui est en train de se passer. Christophe Guilluy
Madame Hidalgo persécute l’artisan qui roule dans une vieille camionnette, mais elle rêve d’attirer toujours plus de touristes dont les autocars font trembler les pavés parisiens, elle veut une ville verte et cycliste pour accueillir des foules livrées par Airbus. Bref, elle psalmodie avec la même conviction l’urgence écologique et l’impératif touristique, ce qui est à hurler de rire. (…) On ne cesse de nous rappeler que la planète n’est pas renouvelable, mais les vieilles pierres, les églises, les temples ne le sont pas non plus. Il est tout de même curieux qu’on trouve normal de pénaliser un travailleur qui n’a pas les moyens de se payer une voiture propre mais qu’on refuse toute mesure de restriction touristique au prétexte que les classes moyennes brésiliennes ou indiennes ont aussi le droit de visiter Chambord. Du reste, cet argument est d’une rare hypocrisie: si nous nous mettons en quatre pour recevoir le touriste, même modeste, ce n’est évidemment pas par esprit démocratique mais parce que, pauvre ou pas, nous pourrons le soulager de quelques devises. Rassurez-vous, je ne prétends pas qu’il faudrait interdire le tourisme, mais au moins le réguler. On somme les Chinois de modérer leurs émissions de carbone, pourquoi serait-il intolérable de leur demander de réduire leurs voyages? Alors oui, peut-être faudra-t-il à l’avenir attendre plus longtemps et payer plus cher pour visiter nos monuments. Mais si on ne restreint pas les flux, ces générations futures pour lesquelles on nous demande de changer nos habitudes n’auront plus rien à visiter. (…) On a (…) vendu la mobilité, la flexibilité, la désaffiliation comme des idéaux à des classes populaires ou moyennes qui non seulement n’ont pas les moyens financiers et culturels de passer leur vie à sauter les frontières ou à s’installer ailleurs que dans l’endroit où ils ont acheté une maison invendable, mais qui, en plus, semblent assez largement rétives aux beautés du nomadisme. (…) Le tourisme éthique et citoyen inventé par les marchands de voyages et le «guide du Roublard» (encore Muray) n’étaient pas mal non plus. Encore une fois, le tourisme écologique est un oxymore. Ou pour le dire autrement, une vaste blague. Cependant, aujourd’hui, certains écolos (et les technos du ministère) rêvent de «valoriser» la nature et d’en faire à son tour un patrimoine touristique bien plus profitable que l’élevage qui occupe actuellement les déserts français. Les promoteurs de ce Yellowstone à la française, sur lequel Causeur publie une enquête, aimeraient donc se débarrasser du pastoralisme, cette activité humaine ancestrale, pour implanter des loups et des ours. Le calcul est simple: des touristes fortunés susceptibles de payer pour voir des prédateurs, il y en a beaucoup, alors que ces éleveurs nous coûtent un pognon de dingue. En somme, cette écologie de l’ensauvagement lutte contre l’homme et pour le touriste. (…) Je ne me moque nullement de ces bénéfices, je me désole que nous acceptions de n’être plus qu’un pays où on vient passer ses vacances ou, pire encore, un pays qu’on traverse pour aller en Italie ou en Espagne. Nous sommes fiers de notre médaille d’or du nombre de touristes mais ce chiffre masque le fait que beaucoup ne dépensent chez nous que le prix de deux pleins et de trois sandwiches. Par ailleurs, on oublie toujours, quand on parle des recettes du tourisme, de compter le coût des nuisances qu’il occasionne et des investissements qu’il nécessite, dont une partie notable est à la charge de la collectivité. Cela dit, je ne me désole pas que des milliards d’étrangers rêvent de visiter Paris, je me désole du fait que «la ville de demain», comme dit la maire, soit d’abord conçue pour eux et si peu pour ceux qui y vivent. Et aussi que nous renoncions à être une grande nation industrielle pour être la première destination touristique du monde. Comme si nous n’avions plus rien d’autre à vendre que notre passé débité en visites guidées et produits dérivés. (…) Quand Paris a «gagné» les JO, – contre personne car il n’y avait pas d’autres candidats – nous avons été les seuls à dénoncer cette catastrophe. On nous disait: vous n’aimez rien, ce sera formidable pour la ville, la grande fête du sport, et tout ce baratin. Plus l’échéance approche et plus on se rend compte que ce sera, comme toujours, la grande fête du business, de la pub, de la vente de bière, de la fête obligatoire et du bruit. Paris va se transformer en ville-sandwich mais joue les vertueuses en refusant Total, un peu comme une prostituée qui refuserait les hommes mariés. Et je ne vous parle même pas des retards dans les chantiers et des dépassements de budget qui s’annoncent. Dans quatre ans, tous ceux qui nous sommaient hier de nous enthousiasmer hurleront au scandale. (…) Muray était un prophète, il a deviné toutes les potentialités diaboliques et comiques de notre époque sans autre et sans ailleurs bien avant qu’elles soient accomplies. Autant dire que les occasions de lui rendre hommage ne manquent pas. Il est impossible de comprendre ce qui se joue dans l’arraisonnement touristique du monde sans le lire. Elisabeth Lévy
I don’t believe only in reproductive freedom, I believe in reproductive justice. And what that means is just because a woman, or let’s also not forget someone in the trans community — a trans female — is poor, doesn’t mean they shouldn’t exercise that right to choose. So I absolutely would cover that right to have an abortion. Julian Castro
Let me just be very clear: we have to have a secure border. But I am in favor of saying that we’re not going to treat people who are undocumented [and] cross the borders as criminals, that is correct. What we cannot do is have any more policy like we have under this current president that is about inhumane conduct, that is about putting babies in cages, that is about separating children from their parents and we have got to have policy that is about passing comprehensive immigration reform with a pathway toward citizenship. I would not make it punishable by jail. It should be a civil enforcement issue, but not a criminal enforcement issue. Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.)
I’ve been to that facility, where they talk about cages. That facility was built under President Obama under (Homeland Security) Secretary Jeh Johnson. I was there because I was there when it was built. The kids are being house in the same facility built under the Obama administration.’ If you want to call them cages, call them cages. But if the left wants to call them cages and the Democrats want to call them cages then they have to accept the fact that they were built and funded in FY 2015. It’s chain link dividers that keeps children separate from unrelated adults. It’s about protecting children. Thomas Homan (Obama’s executive associate director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement)
Ne fermez pas les portes à ceux qui frappent. Le monde des migrants et des réfugiés est la croix de l’humanité. Pape François
Des associations comme SOS Méditerranée et Sea Watch nous honorent et nous obligent face à l’inertie des gouvernements européens. Carola Rackete et Pia Klemp sont les emblèmes de ce combat, porteuses des valeurs européennes auxquelles la Ville de Paris appelle une nouvelle fois notre continent à rester fidèle. Patrick Klugman (adjoint à la maire de Paris chargé des Relations internationales)
L’Eglise est dans son rôle quand elle fait preuve de compassion et de charité pour les plus vulnérables. Elle sort de ses fonctions quand elle fait de la politique, par son opposition aux Etats qui entendent contrôler leurs frontières. Une chose est d’aider des migrants qui risquent la mort. Une autre est de rester indifférent aux peuples d’Europe qui voient l’immigration de masse comme une force potentielle de déstabilisation de leur civilisation fatiguée. François se comporte comme s’il avait déjà tiré un trait sur la vieille Europe infertile et décadente, pour lui préférer la plus prolifique clientèle du tiers-monde. Et se plaçant en chef de file des humanitaires, sans manifester de curiosité particulière pour leurs arrangements avec les passeurs en Méditerranée, le Pape est en train de transformer l’Eglise catholique en une super-ONG à la George Soros. Il est également en train de vider de sa substance le subtil message religieux, qui s’adresse à chaque croyant soucieux de sa rédemption, au profit de lourds slogans humanitaires culpabilisant les Etats. Le plus grave est que François ne semble pas vouloir mesurer la force conquérante de l’islam au contact de l’Occident, et la faiblesse de l’Europe oublieuse de ses propres racines. Le cardinal Robert Sarah remarque avec justesse : « L’Europe veut s’ouvrir à toutes les cultures – ce qui peut être louable et source de richesse – et à toutes les religions du monde, mais elle ne s’aime plus« . Le pape, non plus, n’aime pas l’Europe. Ivan Rioufol
Arrêtée par la police italienne, le capitaine du bateau Sea Watch, Carola Rackete, semble être devenue l’héroïne de toute une gauche européenne dont l’activisme humanitaire et victimiste pro-migrants sert en réalité une idéologie anti-nationale, anti-frontières et viscéralement hostile à la civilisation européenne-occidentale assimilée au Mal et dont les « fautes » passées et présentes ne pourraient être expiées qu’en acceptant l’auto-submersion migratoire et islamique… Rappelons que le Sea-Watch 3, navire de 600 tonnes battant pavillon hollandais et cofinancé par les fonds de George Soros et autres riches contributeurs, a non seulement « récupéré » des migrants illégaux acheminés par des passeurs nord-africains, ce qui est en soi un viol de la loi, mais a délibérément forcé le blocus des eaux territoriales italiennes, donc violé la souveraineté de ce pays. De ce fait, son capitaine, l’Allemande Carola Rackete, va être présentée à un juge en début de semaine, à Agrigente, dans le sud de la Sicile, puis répondra des faits « d’aide à l’immigration clandestine » (punie de prison par la loi italienne et le « décret-sécurité » (decreto-sicurezza) du gouvernement / Ligue (5 étoiles de Rome), puis de « résistance à un bateau de guerre ». Quant aux 42 migrants clandestins de la Sea Watch 3 débarqués après l’arrestation de la capitaine-activiste allemande (11 migrants plus « vulnérables » avaient déjà été débarqués légalement), ils ont fini par débarquer à Lampedusa après que la France, l’Allemagne, le Portugal, le Luxembourg et la Finlande ont accepté un plan de répartition visant à en accueillir chacun quelques-uns. (…) Pendant ce temps, des petites embarcations moins identifiables et qui ne font pas la une des médias continuent d’arriver chaque jour à Lampedusa et au sud d’Agrigente (200 ces derniers jours). Et d’autres navires affrétés par des ONG pro-migrants continuent de défier les autorités italiennes ou d’autres pays (Malte, Espagne, Grèce, etc.) dans l’indifférence générale et en violation banalisée de la loi et du principe de protection des frontières. On peut citer par exemple l’ONG espagnole Proactiva open arms, qui patrouille au large de la Libye malgré la menace d’une amende de 200 000 à 900 000 euros brandie par les autorités espagnoles. « Si je dois payer par la prison ou par une amende le fait de sauver les vies de quelques personnes, je le ferais », a d’ailleurs assuré Oscar Camps, fondateur de l’ONG. Utilisant la même rhétorique de « résistance » et de « désobéissance civile » face à une autorité étatique « répressive », Carola Rackette expliquait elle aussi au Spiegel, quelques jours seulement avant d’accoster à Lampedusa : « Si nous ne sommes pas acquittés par un tribunal, nous le serons dans les livres d’histoire. » (…) La stratégie d’intimidation psychologique des ONG et lobbies subversifs pro-migrants consiste en fait à adopter une rhétorique victimaire et hautement culpabilisatrice qui a pour but de faire passer pour des horribles racistes / fascistes les défenseurs des frontières et des lois sécuritaires pourtant démocratiquement adoptées. Carola Rackete a ainsi déclaré au journal italien La Repubblica : « J’ai la peau blanche, j’ai grandi dans un pays riche, j’ai le bon passeport, j’ai pu faire trois universités différentes et j’ai fini mes études à 23 ans. Mon obligation morale est d’aider les gens qui n’ont pas bénéficié des mêmes conditions que moi (…). Les pauvres, ils ne se sentent pas bienvenus, imaginez leur souffrance (…), j’ai voulu accoster de force car beaucoup risquaient de se suicider sur la bateau et étaient en danger depuis 17 jours d’immobilisation ». (…) Très fier de lui et de son « coup », Chris Grodotzki, le président de l’ONG Sea Watch, se réjouit que « dans toute l’Europe, Carole est devenue un symbole. Nous n’avons jamais reçu autant de dons », indiquant qu’en Italie une cagnotte a recueilli dimanche 400 000 euros. Samedi, en Allemagne, deux stars de la télévision, Jan Böhmermann et Klaas Heufer-Umlauf, ont lancé quant à eux une cagnotte et 500 000 euros ont été récoltés en moins de vingt-quatre heures. En fait, l’aide aux migrants clandestins est une activité lucrative pour les ONG, et pas seulement pour les passeurs et les établissements payés pour offrir le gîte et l’accueil avec les deniers publics. (…) D’après Matteo Salvini, Carola Rackete serait une « criminelle » qui aurait tenté de « tuer des membres des forces de l’ordre italienne ». Il est vrai que la vedette de la Guarda della Finanza, (12 mètres), très légère, n’aurait pas résisté au choc du navire de la Sea Watch (600 tonnes) si elle ne s’était pas retirée. Inculpée par le procureur d’Agrigente, la capitaine de la Sea Watch risque jusqu’à dix ans de prison pour « résistance ou violence envers un navire de guerre ». En fait, bien moins que dans de nombreux autres pays du monde, y compris démocratiques comme l’Australie, les Etats-Unis ou la Hongrie. Le procureur d’Agrigente, Luigi Patronaggio, qui est pourtant connu pour ne pas être du tout favorable à la Ligue de Matteo Salvini, a d’ailleurs qualifié le geste de Carola Rackete de « violence inadmissible » et placé la capitaine du navire humanitaire aux « arrêts domiciliaires » (contrôle judiciaire avec assignation à résidence), avant le lancement d’une procédure de flagrant délit. L’intéressée a répondu via le Corriere della Sera, en affirmant que « ce n’était pas un acte de violence, seulement de désobéissance ». (…) Depuis, de Rome à Berlin, et au sein de toute la gauche et l’extrême-gauche européenne, « Carola » est devenue une nouvelle « héroïne de la désobéissance civile », le concept clef de la gauche marxiste ou libertaire pour justifier moralement le fait de bafouer délibérément les règles des Etats et de violer les lois démocratiques qui font obstacle à leur idéologie anti-nationale. Et la désinformation médiatique consiste justement à faire passer l’appui que Carola Rackete a reçu – de la part de stars de TV, de politiques bien-pensants et de lobbies pro-migrants chouchoutés par les médias – pour un « soutien de l’Opinion publique ». En Allemagne, du président de l’Église évangélique, Heinrich Bedford-Strohm, au PDG de Siemens, Joe Kaeser, de nombreuses voix se sont élevées pour prendre sa défense comme si elle était une nouvelle Pasionaria « antifasciste / antinazie », 90 ans plus tard… (…) En Italie, outre la figure de Leo Luca Orlando, le maire de Palerme, qui accorde régulièrement la « citoyenneté d’honneur » de sa ville aux dirigeants d’ONG pro-migrants et qui assimile les « cartes de séjours » et contrôles aux frontières à des « instruments de torture », l’ensemble de la gauche (hors le parti 5 étoiles allié de la Ligue), et surtout le parti démocrate, (PD), jouent cette carte de « l’illégalité légitime » et appuie les ONG anti-frontières. « Par nécessité, vous pouvez enfreindre la loi », ont déclaré aux membres de la Sea Watch les députés de gauche montés à bord du bateau Sea Watch 3 avant l’arrestation de Carole Rackete. Premier à être monté à bord du Sea Watch 3, l’élu du PD Graziano Delrio ose lancer : « Dans certains cas, vous ne pouvez pas respecter les lois et vous pouvez même au contraire, dans des cas de nécessité, enfreindre les lois. » (..;) Détail stupéfiant, les représentants du PD venus manifester leur solidarité avec la capitaine (étrangère) d’un navire (étranger) faisant le travail de passeurs / trafiquants d’êtres humains, n’ont pas même condamné ou regretté le fait que la « militante humanitaire Carole » a failli tuer les policiers de la vedette de la Guardia di Finanza qui bloquait le Sea Watch 3. Estimant qu’il ne pouvait manquer ce « coup médiatique » afin de complaire aux lobbies et médias immigrationnistes dominant, l’ex-Premier ministre (PD) Matteo Renzi était lui aussi sur le pont du Sea Watch 3 lorsque Carola Rackete a décidé de forcer le blocus. Avec lui, d’autres parlementaires de gauche (Matteo Orfini, Davide Faraone, Nicola Fratoianni et Riccardo Magi) ont carrément « béni » cette action illégale et violente qui a pourtant mis en danger les membres des forces de leur propre pays. (..;) Étaient également venus applaudir la capitaine allemande et son action illégale : le curé de Lampedusa, Don Carmelo La Magra ; l’ancien maire de l’île Giusi Nicolini, le médecin et député européen Pietro Bartolo, et le secrétaire local du parti PD Peppino Palmeri, lequel a déclaré pompeusement que « l’humanité a gagné, (…). Je pense que oui, nous devons être unis dans une fraternité universelle »… Plutôt que de respecter la légalité des lois approuvées démocratiquement par le Parlement de leur propre pays dont ils sont élus, ces représentants de la gauche ont accusé le gouvernement Ligue / 5 étoiles d’avoir « laissé au milieu de la mer pendant 16 jours un bateau qui avait besoin d’un refuge » (Matteo Orfini), alors qu’en réalité, sur les 53 migrants illégaux au départ présents sur le Sea Watch 3, onze avaient été débarqués en Italie en raison de leur état vulnérable, les autres étant nourris et auscultés par des médecins envoyés par l’Etat italien. (..;) Dès qu’elle est descendue du navire accompagnée des policiers italiens venus l’arrêter, Carola Rackete a été saluée par les ovations d’un groupe d’activistes ainsi que par le curé de la paroisse de Lampedusa, Carmelo La Magra, lequel dormait dans le cimetière de sa paroisse depuis une semaine « en signe de solidarité ». Rivalisant avec les plus virulents pro-migrants d’extrême-gauche, le curé de Lampedusa a exulté : « Noël vient quand il arrive. Bienvenue aux migrants à Porto Salvo di Lampedusa. » Le prêtre de l’église de San Gerlando di Lampedusa s’est ainsi joint à l’appel de l’Action catholique italienne « à permettre le débarquement immédiat des 42 personnes à bord du Sea Watch ». (..;) Au début du mois de mai dernier, lors de son voyage en Bulgarie, le Pape avait donné le ton et répondu ainsi à la politique des « ports fermés » de Matteo Salvini : « Ne fermez pas les portes à ceux qui frappent. Le monde des migrants et des réfugiés est la croix de l’humanité. » Preuve que les curés pro-migrants et l’Église catholique de plus en plus immigrationniste sont, comme la gauche anti-nationale post-ouvrière, totalement déconnectés des peuples et de leurs ouailles : rappelons qu’à Lampedusa la Ligue de Salvini est arrivée en tête avec 45 % des voix aux dernières élections européennes ; que plus de 65 % des Italiens (catholiques) approuvent ses lois et actions visant à combattre l’immigration clandestine ; et que le Pape François, certes populaire auprès des médias quand il défend les migrants, exaspère de plus en plus et a même rendu antipapistes des millions d’Italiens qui se sentent trahis par un souverain Pontife qui semble préférer les musulmans aux chrétiens et les Africains aux Européens. A tort ou à raison d’ailleurs. (…) Il est vrai que la Sicile et en particulier Lampedusa sont plus que jamais en première ligne face à l’immigration clandestine : rien que pendant les deux dernières semaines durant lesquelles le Sea Watch est resté bloqué au large de l’île, Lampedusa a assisté impuissante, malgré la politique des « ports fermés » de Matteo Salvini et de son nouveau « décret sécurité », plus de 200 clandestins (majoritairement tunisiens et aucunement des « réfugiés » politiques syriens) acheminés par des barques de fortunes plus difficiles à repérer que les navires des ONG. Depuis des années, la ville est littéralement défigurée, l’arrivée de migrants entraînant des faits quotidiens de violences, d’agressions, de vols et destructions de commerces. (…) Malgré cela, le médiatique curé de Lampedusa, grand adepte du pape François, martèle qu’il faut « accueillir, protéger, promouvoir et intégrer les migrants et les réfugiés ». Dans une autre ville de Sicile, Noto, où nous nous sommes rendus le 27 juin dernier, une immense croix en bois a été construite à partir de morceaux d’une embarcation de migrants et a été carrément érigée dans l’entrée de la plus grande église du centre-ville. A Catania, ville très catholique-conservatrice et de droite – où se déroule chaque année début février la troisième plus grande fête chrétienne au monde, la Santa Agata – la cathédrale a été prise d’assauts par des sit-in pro-migrants en défense de Carola Rackete et de la Sea Watch. (…) Quant à Palerme, l’alliance entre l’Église catholique et le maire de la Ville, Leo Luca Orlando, chef de file de la lutte contre la politique migratoire de Matteo Salvini, est totale, alors même que Orlando est un anticlérical patenté à la fois islamophile et pro-LGBT. Sa dernière trouvaille a consisté à proposer d’éliminer le terme même de « migrant », puisque « nous sommes tous des personnes ». D’après lui, le terme « migrants » devrait être supprimé, tout comme la gauche a réussi à faire supprimer celui de « clandestin », remplacé dans le jargon journalistique par celui, trompeur, mais plus valorisant, de « migrant ». Cette manipulation sémantique visant à abolir la distinction migrant régulier / illégal est également très présente dans le pacte de Marrakech des Nations-unies. (..;) Récemment, à l’occasion de la rupture du jeûne du ramadan, le médiatique maire palermitain s’est affiché en train de prier avec une assemblée de musulmans, consacrant même une « journée consacrée à l’islam » en rappelant le « glorieux passé arabo-islamique » de la Sicile (en réalité envahie et libérée deux siècles plus tard par les Normands). Orlando utilise lui aussi à merveille l’arme de la culpabilisation lorsqu’il ne cesse de justifier l’immigration illimitée au nom du fait que les Siciliens « ont eu eux aussi des grands-parents qui ont décidé d’aller vivre dans un autre pays en demandant à être considérés comme des personnes humaines ». Bref, « on est tous des migrants ». Une musique bien connue aussi en France. (…) A chaque nouvelle affaire de blocage de bateaux d’ONG pro-migrants par les autorités italiennes obéissant à la politique de la Ligue, le maire de Palerme se déclare prêt à accueillir des navires dans le port de Palerme. Lors de notre visite, le 26 juin dernier, Orlando nous a d’ailleurs remis une brochure consacrée à l’accueil des migrants, « chez eux chez nous ». Comme le Pape ou l’ex-maire de Lampedusa, Leoluca Orlando est depuis quelques années tellement obsédé par « l’impératif d’accueil » des migrants, alors que la Sicile connaît encore une grande pauvreté et un chômage de masse, qu’il suscite une réaction de rejet et d’exaspération, d’autant que de nombreuses initiatives en faveur des migrants sont financées par des citoyens italiens-siciliens hyper-taxés et précarisés. (…) Le 28 juin, lorsque nous avons parlé de la question migratoire au maire de la seconde ville de Sicile, Catania, Salvatore Pogliese, ex-membre d’Alleanza nazionale élu député européen et maire sous les couleurs de Forza Italia, celui-ci nous confiait qu’il jugeait absurdes et extrêmes les vues du maire de Palerme ou du curé de Lampedusa. Et il rappelait que lorsque des maires pro-migrants jouent aux « héros » en réclamant l’ouverture sans limites des ports pour accueillir les « réfugiés » du monde entier, ils mentent puisque l’ouverture des ports relève, comme en France, non pas des maires, mais de l’Etat central (ministères des Transports et de l’Intérieur). (..;) Une autre alliance de forces « progressistes » / pro-migrants n’a pas manqué de surprendre les analystes de la vie politique italienne, notamment à l’occasion de la Gay Pride, organisée à Milan le 28 juin, par le maire de gauche, Beppe Sala, champion de la « diversité » et des minorités en tout genre : l’alliance de la gauche et des multinationales et des Gafam. C’est ainsi que certains journaux italiens de droite ont relevé le fait que les sponsors de la Gay Pride, officiellement indiqués sur le site de l’événement – Google, Microsoft, eBay, Coca-Cola, PayPal, RedBull, Durex, Benetton, etc. – ont tenu et obtenu que soient associées à la cause des gays celle des migrants afin de « prendre en compte toutes les différences, pas seulement liées à l’identité et à l’orientation sexuelle (immigration, handicap, appartenance ethnique, etc.) ». (..;) Les « migrants » illégaux et autres faux réfugiés secourus par les ONG immigrationnistes, adeptes des « ports ouverts », ont donc eu droit à un traitement de faveur et ont pu officiellement venir « exprimer toute sa solidarité avec le capitaine du navire (Sea Watch 3) Carola Rackete, avec les membres de l’équipage et avec toutes les personnes à bord », écrit sur Facebook « Ensemble sans murs », qui « participera avec enthousiasme au défilé de mode de Milan ». L’idéologie diversitaire est si puissante, et l’accueil des migrants est tellement devenu la « cause des causes » capable de surpasser les autres, qu’elle s’invite même chez les lobbies LGBT, pourtant la « minorité » la plus directement persécutée – avec les juifs – par l’islamisme. (..;) Or, une grande majorité d’immigrés clandestins est de confession musulmane : Subsahariens, Erythréens, Soudanais, Égyptiens, Syriens, Turcs, Maghrébins ou Pakistanais et Afghans qui émigrent en masse dans la Vieille Europe de façon tant légale (regroupement familial, migrations économiques, visas étudiants, mineurs non-accompagnés…) qu’illégale. (..;) Pour bien comprendre « d’où parlent » les défenseurs des migrants clandestins qui ne cessent d’apostropher Victor Orban, Matteo Salvini ou encore le « diable en chef » Donald Trump pour leurs politiques de contrôle de l’immigration, il suffit de constater le deux poids deux mesures et l’indignation sélective de la gauche et de l’Église catholique qui dénoncent les « populistes européens xénophobes / islamophobes / racistes » mais très peu le néo-Sultan Erdogan et encore moins les pays d’Afrique, du Maghreb, d’Amérique latine ou d’Asie qui répriment extrêmement sévèrement et violemment l’immigration clandestine et / ou l’islamisme. (…) Deux exemples flagrants suffiront à s’en convaincre : l’ONU a récemment condamné « l’islamophobie » européenne et occidentale, notamment de la France et de l’Italie, mais pas les massacres de masse de musulmans en Chine ou en Inde. Ensuite, le 5 septembre 2018, lorsque la marine marocaine a fait tirer sur une embarcation de migrants clandestins, faisant un mort et un blessé grave, puis fait arrêter le capitaine espagnol du bateau, l’ONU n’a pas bronché. Pas plus dans de nombreux cas de mauvais traitements, persécutions de migrants subsahariens ou de chrétiens dans l’ensemble des pays d’Afrique du Nord et arabes. (..;) Les Etats européens et les « militants » antifascistes hostiles aux « populistes » n’ont pas manifesté la moindre indignation face à ces phénomènes récurrents. Pas plus que les antiracistes français et leurs alliés féministes et pro-LGBT ne dénoncent la misogynie et l’homophobie islamiques, de facto exonérées par primat xénophile et auto-racisme anti-occidental. Ce dernier exemple est significatif : loin de se laisser culpabiliser, les autorités marocaines ont pourtant assumé le fait qu’une « unité de combat de la Marine royale » a ouvert le feu sur l’embarcation (un « go-fast » léger) en tuant une passagère. Comme Carola Rackete, le capitaine de la vedette de clandestins n’avait pas obéi aux ordres des militaires marocains l’intimant de stopper sa course. (..;) Morale de l’histoire : l’immigrationnisme des ONG comme la Sea Watch et autres « No Borders » est – comme l’antiracisme à sens unique – une arme subversive tournée contre les seuls peuples blancs-judéo-chrétiens-occidentaux et leurs Etats-Nations souverains. D’évidence, les forces cosmopolitiquement correctes (gauche internationaliste-marxiste ; libéraux-multiculturalistes ; multinationales / Mc Word ; Église catholique ; fédéralistes européens et autres instances onusiennes) veulent détruire en premier lieu les vieilles nations européennes culpabilisées et vieillissantes, sorte de terra nullius en devenir conçue comme le laboratoire de leurs projets néo-impériaux / mondialistes respectifs. (..) Ces différentes forces ne sont pas amies, mais elles convergent dans un même projet de destruction des Etats-souverains occidentaux. Voilà d’où parlent les No Borders. Et à l’aune de ce constat, le fait que le milliardaire Soros et les multinationales précitées sponsorisent des opérations pro-migrants, pourtant exécutées par des ONG et forces de gauche et d’extrême-gauche ou chrétiennes / tiersmondistes, en dit long sur la convergence des forces cosmopolitiquement correctes hostiles à l’Etat-Nation et à la défense de l’identité occidentale. Alexandre del Valle
Cela s’inscrit dans la ligne politique engagée par l’Iran depuis quarante ans. Ils déploient une politique de chantage sans pour autant l’assumer. Ils déploient une politique de chantage sans pour autant l’assumer. Ils jettent de l’huile sur le feu, mais de manière modérée. La seule chose qui leur reste, c’est leur pouvoir de nuisance. Mahnaz Shirali
Le Président américain Donald Trump est présenté comme un abruti erratique guidé par ses impulsions, ignorant et dangereux. Bien que le rapport Mueller ait montré qu’il n’y a jamais eu aucune «collusion» entre Trump et la Russie, les journalistes français en leur grande majorité se refusent à le dire explicitement et à reconnaître qu’ils ont pratiqué la désinformation à dose intensive pendant deux ans. Les résultats obtenus par Trump, tant sur le plan intérieur que sur le plan extérieur, sont à peine notés et ne le sont parfois pas du tout. Quand ils le sont, le nom de Trump est le plus souvent omis, comme si le citer positivement, ne serait-ce qu’une seule fois, était absolument impensable. Ce n’est, en soi, pas grave: Trump gouverne sans se préoccuper de ce que diront des journalistes français. Cela contribue néanmoins à entraver la compréhension des choses de tous ceux qui ne s’informeraient que grâce à la presse française, et nombre de gens seront dès lors surpris lorsque Trump sera réélu en novembre 2020 (car tout l’indique: il sera réélu). On leur expliquera sans doute que c’est parce que le peuple américain est lui-même ignorant et dangereux. Cela contribue aussi à empêcher de voir que l’action et les idées de Trump ont un impact beaucoup plus vaste, et qui excède de beaucoup les frontières des États-Unis. La politique économique menée par Donald Trump – qui ajoute à une forte baisse des impôts et à une déréglementation radicale, un refus de se soumettre aux lubies écologistes et un nationalisme économique basé sur la renégociation de tous les accords internationaux antécédemment négociés et sur la création de rapports de force – porte ses fruits et mène divers gouvernements sur la planète à adopter des mesures allant dans la même direction. Sa politique intérieure – basée sur un retour à une immigration strictement contrôlée et sur la réaffirmation des valeurs qui fondent la civilisation occidentale – porte, elle aussi, ses fruits, même si elle est, dans plusieurs États du pays, entravée par les décisions délétères de la gauche américaine qui entend protéger les immigrants illégaux (criminels compris). Plusieurs gouvernements sur la planète adoptent des mesures allant dans le même sens. Au Proche-Orient, Donald Trump conduit une asphyxie du régime iranien qui progresse et, n’en déplaise à ceux qui refusent de le voir, diminue la dangerosité de celui-ci. Il met en place un rapprochement entre les pays du monde arabe sunnite et Israël qui modifie profondément la donne régionale et, n’en déplaise là encore à ceux qui refusent de le voir, fait apparaître pour la première fois des espoirs réels qu’émerge une paix durable. L’anéantissement de l’État islamique permet de juguler le terrorisme islamique sur les cinq continents. L’action d’endiguement de la Chine communiste déstabilise celle-ci et freine les ambitions hégémoniques nourries par Xi Jinping. La Corée du Nord n’est plus une menace pour la Corée du Sud et le Japon. L’arrivée au pouvoir de Jaïr Bolsonaro au Brésil est au cœur d’un changement majeur dans toute l’Amérique latine. En Europe, Trump ne cesse d’appuyer les dirigeants «populistes» d’Europe centrale contre les orientations anti-démocratiques et islamophiles de l’Union européenne, et la perspective d’une Europe des nations souveraines fait son chemin. L’ère Trump est en son aurore. La grande presse du monde qui parle anglais le dit explicitement. Ne comptez pas sur la grande presse française pour vous le dire! Guy Millière
Trump ne voulait pas du rôle de policier mondial, mais il se trouve obligé de l’assumer, puisqu’il n’y a aucune puissance capable de remplacer les États-Unis dans ce domaine-clé. C’est l’Amérique, pas l’ONU impotente et corrompue, qui maintient les routes commerciales, et le monde entier en profite, gratuitement – comme si cela allait de soi. Or, non seulement, cela ne va pas de soi, mais beaucoup d’obligés geignent contre un pseudo «impérialisme américain», sans jamais se remettre en question. Si l’Amérique trouve certes son compte dans ce service planétaire assuré à grands frais par sa flotte et ses services de surveillance, ce n’est pas elle qui en a le plus besoin, mais ses alliés qui, eux, ne sont pas sevrés du brut que leur vend l’OPEP. C’est aussi l’Amérique qui en assume les risques comme on vient de voir avec la descente en flammes d’un drone de 100 millions de dollars, heureusement sans pilote, qui croisait dans l’espace international et non iranien. Cela, après des attaques iraniennes, sans raison non plus, sur des pétroliers norvégien et japonais. Alors, «l’opinion internationale» (c’est-à-dire la gauche mondialiste et ses médias désinformateurs) se dit «soulagée» que Trump n’ait pas poursuivi «son escalade», mais tous ces trolls qui renversent ignominieusement les responsabilités, déplorent à présent son «manque de stratégie». Qu’est-ce que des anti-américains et anti-militaristes primaires peuvent comprendre aux questions de stratégie avec leur logiciel bloqué? La véritable question est: pourquoi l’ayatollah Khamenei décide-t-il maintenant de provoquer Trump? Les sanctions asphyxient son économie de rente, d’autant que l’aide concoctée par les Européens cupides, hypocrites et lâches, tarde à se matérialiser. Les dirigeants de l’UE, qui marchent au pas de l’oie avec Merkel, entretiennent une cécité criminelle vis-à-vis de l’Iran. Sous Merkel, l’Allemagne oublie qu’elle doit tout aux États-Unis. Elle remercie par une politique teigneuse de tarifs douaniers. Elle se targue cyniquement d’être la plus mauvaise payeuse de l’OTAN, achète le gaz de la Russie et refuse le gaz américain. Et voici qu’elle pactise avec les ayatollahs contre les USA. L’Allemagne et l’UE illustrent tout ce qui est inacceptable pour Trump: l’archétype de l’allié félon aux prétentions disproportionnées au vu de la réalité. Et elles sont coupables de négligence inadmissible envers notre sécurité collective en dissimulant le danger pour l’Occident qu’est la République islamique, nullement différente (dans ses visées hégémoniques et ses méthodes internes brutales) de l’État islamique que l’Iran aidait et que Trump a éradiqué. L’Iran n’a jamais cessé l’enrichissement d’uranium et continue d’alimenter le terrorisme islamique. Les sanctions ne sont que justice et, malgré leur dureté renforcée, Trump espère des Iraniens éclairés un énième et décisif soulèvement contre ses dirigeants. Car il n’en a qu’après ce régime meurtrier et sympathise avec les Iraniens, mais il leur rappelle qu’il ne peut intervenir militairement, sauf attaque avec victimes américaines, auquel cas la réponse serait foudroyante. Loin de vouloir la guerre, il veut «redonner à l’Iran sa grandeur». Khamenei sait qu’à la Maison Blanche, Trump s’est entouré volontairement de conseillers aux vues opposées qui représentent chacun une partie de la base de Trump et qui constituent un «brain-trust». Il table sur le fait que Trump est tenu par l’impératif de sa réélection. Les « deux côtés de l’équation », comme Trump les appelle, sont parfaitement honorables et défendent des arguments que l’on ne peut négliger. Pour le moment, le côté «colombe» exulte, les isolationnistes, les libertariens, et toute la mouvance du «The American Conservative». Les «faucons» comprennent que l’heure de l’action militaire n’est pas venue. Mais ce serait mal connaître Trump que de penser qu’il ne va pas trouver le moyen de faire payer aux criminels de Téhéran leurs méfaits. Il doit, seul, parvenir à empêcher les ayatollahs d’accéder au nucléaire et faire cesser leur financement du terrorisme, sans engager de troupes et sans dépenser des milliards. C’est une tâche de police mondiale à laquelle les Européens devraient participer. La stratégie de Trump, c’est de voir venir, de ne pas dévoiler son jeu et de se tenir prêt à frapper. Ceux qui lui font confiance ne sont pas inquiets et savourent un divertissement politique quotidien de qualité. Evelyne Joslain
Critics describe President Donald Trump’s foreign policy as a muddled, unpredictable collection of impulses, with the one organizing principle being the coddling of like-minded, ruthless dictators. But there is, in fact, a defining diplomatic strategy: He is cleaning up the messes left by his predecessors. Trump, regularly derided as the most irresponsible of presidents, is actually taking ownership of the most terrifying problems the country faces and trying to solve them in a direct way that his recent predecessors avoided. With respect to Iran, China, North Korea and even Russia, Trump is taking tough stances. He is getting cozy with dictators because the man who considers himself an artist of the deal understands that those are the people he must strike bargains with. Under Trump, China has finally been recognized as a long-term strategic opponent and potential enemy, rather than a nation of billions yearning for democracy. Capitalism has indeed taken hold in China — though without economic nor political liberalization. Instead, authoritarian China is using its newfound riches to expand its economic, political and military influence. Since Clinton permanently normalized trade relations with China in 2000, American manufacturing has relocated to China for its cheap labor, the Chinese have consistently cheated on trade and the annual U.S. trade deficit with China has soared from $83 billion to a record $419 billion in 2018. Recognizing that placating China and quietly nudging it to play fair is not going to work; Trump has taken a more direct approach and assessed tariffs on Chinese imports while threatening even more. The Chinese are now at the table, talking, and Washington may at last secure a more equitable deal. After two and a half decades of Washington dithering, by 2017 the North Koreans were on the cusp of being able to load their bombs on missiles that could reach the continental United States. So Trump decided to try something different. (…) Trump likely cannot succeed in disarming Kim of his weapons by disarming him personally. The North Korean dictator is probably just buying more time. But Trump is at least taking an unconventional approach rather than re-enacting the failures of the past. Since Clinton, administrations have fostered quixotic illusions of reasonable moderates within the Tehran leadership. But there was little change in that country’s behavior — which has included supporting terrorist groups like Hezbollah and killing more than 600 U.S. troops in Iraq through militia surrogates. Obama’s 2015 Iran deal was the ultimate can-kicking exercise, granting Iran sanctions relief in return for limits on its nuclear program that would expire over the next dozen years. The arrangement could have given Iran the cash it would need to complete its nuclear ambitions once sunset clauses allowing it to enrich more uranium were invoked. (…) But Trump has reasoned the time to get tough with Iran is now, not in a dozen years when they are stronger and have perfected technologies related to nuclear weapons. U.S. policy toward Russia pre-Trump had also been marked by years of complacency — remember Russian President Vladimir Putin convincing Bush there was a soul behind his eyes? During the 2012 presidential campaign, Obama dismissed Republican nominee Mitt Romney’s concerns about Russia with a quip about the 1980s wanting its foreign policy back. Obama was also caught on an open mic whispering to Russia’s then-President Dmitri Medvedev that he’d have more “flexibility” after the election. (…) Trump’s administration, Foreign Policy explained, “has held a tough line on Russia, building on his predecessor’s policies by layering on further sanctions, expelling dozens of Russian diplomats, and providing lethal weapons support to Ukraine — a step that former President Barack Obama had been unwilling to take.” Trump’s demand that European nations pay their North Atlantic Treaty Organization obligations — another can regularly kicked down the road — might seem hostile toward long-time allies, but ensures they have skin in the game when it comes to confronting Russia. The Washington establishment, so used to conventional ways, is aghast. But business as usual has strengthened our enemies. Trump’s iconoclasm is worth a try. Keith Koffler
Presidents are drawn to intellectuals — thinkers who can elevate their impulses, distill coherence from chaos and sometimes write the very history they helped shape. It is not always a fruitful partnership. John F. Kennedy had wordsmiths and chroniclers in Ted Sorensen and Arthur Schlesinger Jr., as well as the whiz kids who authored Vietnam. George W. Bush met with historians, philosophers and theologians during dark times in his presidency, when the fiasco of Iraq weighed heavy. Ronald Reagan leaned on the governing plans of the Heritage Foundation, while Bill Clinton combined endless policy salons with the centrist blueprints of the Democratic Leadership Council. Barack Obama had, well, himself. And recall how Jimmy Carter took inspiration from the writings of Christopher Lasch for his ill-fated “malaise” speech in 1979. Yes, surrounding yourself with the brightest does not always prove best. Being a Trump intellectual is an entirely different task. Donald Trump won the White House campaigning against established expertise. He doesn’t like to read beyond a page or so. His brain trust is more “Fox & Friends” than American Enterprise Institute, his influences more Bannon than Buckley. (…) Presidents and intellectuals are always an awkward love affair, especially so when one side seems desperate and the other indifferent. Trump has seemed more concerned about retaining the affections of conservative media figures such as Fox News host Sean Hannity or commentator Ann Coulter, whose 2015 book “Adios, America” likely inspired his attack on Mexican immigrants in the speech announcing his presidential bid. Yet, for all their declared high principle, Trump’s intellectuals have tied themselves to the whims and feuds of their leader, captive minds to that indefinable mix of ideology, impulse and invective known as Trumpism. Hanson, to his credit, attempts to define it in broad terms. Trumpism, he concludes, “was the idea that there were no longer taboo subjects. Everything was open for negotiation; nothing was sacred.” A useful interpretation, but a partial one. Even if nothing is sacred, must everything be profane? (…) In September 2016, Michael Anton, a former aide in the George W. Bush White House, published “The Flight 93 Election,” a pseudonymous essay that previewed this adversarial fixation in melodramatic terms. Voting for Trump, he wrote in the Claremont Review of Books, was like charging the cockpit of a hijacked plane on Sept. 11, 2001. You might die, but if you do nothing, death is certain. A Hillary Clinton presidency would constitute an extinction-level event for American freedom and true conservatism; it would be “pedal-to-the-metal on the entire progressive-Left agenda.” Or, as Anton put it in an excess of metaphor, “Russian Roulette with a semi-auto.” The essay drew criticism for its imagery, anonymity and hostility toward conventional conservatives as well as immigrants — Anton decried America’s “ceaseless importation of Third World foreigners” — thus making the writer a perfect candidate for a job in the Trump White House. Anton, whose identity was revealed by the late Weekly Standard, served for 14 months as a National Security Council official. Then-White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon dubbed him “one of the most significant intellects in this nationalist movement.” So with his new book, “After the Flight 93 Election,” Anton would seem well-positioned to move beyond the election and argue a more concrete case for the president, drawing on the administration’s first two years and on the author’s experience in the Trump White House. Except Anton doesn’t even try; the “After” of his title is an afterthought. Instead, he reprints his original essay, plus a follow-up “restatement” that was posted a week later, arguing that Trump constituted “the first serious national-political defense of the Constitution in a generation” and that concerns over despotism were pointless because the candidate was more “buffoon” than tyrant. Also, Hillary was still way worse. The book’s only new material is the preface and a lengthy rumination (titled “Pre-Statement on Flight 93”) that purports to explain “the essences of conservatism, Americanism, and Western civilization, and to review the main threats to their survival.” The system of federalism, separation of powers and limited government bequeathed to us by the founders is under siege, Anton writes, and the barbarians rattling the gate are the latest iteration of early-20th-century progressives and 1960s radicals, justifying an ever-expanding administrative state with social-justice mantras of personal identity. “The post-1960s Left co-opts the language of ‘justice’ and ‘rights’ as a rhetorical device to get what it wants: the transfer of power, honor, and wealth between groups as retribution for past offenses.” The result, Anton contends, is crime, family dissolution, weak foreign policy, limitless government and restricted speech. (…) In “The Case for Trump,” historian Victor Davis Hanson also treats 2016 as a reaction by voters tired of progressive orthodoxy, globalization and left-wing identity politics. “Trump did not create these divides,” Hanson writes. “He simply found existing sectarianism politically useful.” Trump’s insults, vile language and incessant denigration of opponents are just part of his “uncouth authenticity,” which appeals to supporters and enrages the rest. From the start of his campaign, Trump displayed “an uncanny ability to troll and create hysteria among his media and political critics,” Hanson marvels. “In their anti-Trump rage, they revealed their own character flaws.” Hanson relishes those flaws, and, despite the title, his book focuses less on the case for Trump than on the case against everyone else. Hillary Clinton’s infamous “basket of deplorables” line typified the “toxic venom” with which liberals regard the nation’s interior, he writes, while Clinton’s past misdeeds, real or alleged, provided “scandal vaccination” for Trump’s bankruptcies, sexual misconduct and endless lawsuits. Clinton’s problem, Hanson explains, was threefold: She lied so much that her various deceptions could not be reconciled; she never learned from her past scandals; and she thought herself exempt from accountability. The fact that this trifecta nicely describes Trump’s behavior while in office does not seem to occur to Hanson. He’d rather indulge in casual sexism, criticizing Clinton’s “shrill” voice and her “signature off-putting laugh,” and inexplicably suggesting that while “Trump’s bulk fueled a monstrous energy; Hillary’s girth sapped her strength.” Hanson, a senior fellow with Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, assails the “deep state,” even while acknowledging that Trump’s use of the term is so vague as to be meaningless. He praises the “inspired” and “impressive” Cabinet members Trump has assembled, largely forgetting their high-profile scandals, conflicts of interest, obeisance and resignations. “The Case for Trump” is notable for such omissions. (…) Stephen Moore and Arthur Laffer disagree with some of Trump’s hard-line positions on immigration and worry about his trade protectionism. “To say the least, Donald Trump is a work in progress on trade,” they admit. “He is playing a high-stakes game of poker here with a big upside. But if it doesn’t work, the ramifications scare us to death.” So why did the veteran conservative economists sign on as advisers for Trump’s 2016 campaign, and why did they write a book — titled “Trumponomics” and published late last year — enthusiastically defending the economic policies and instincts of a leader who thinks trade wars are good and easy to win? The answer is simple: “We liked his tax plan.” Forget single-issue voters; Moore and Laffer are single-issue thinkers. Cutting taxes is the siren that lured them to Trump, and for which they appear willing to make any substantive or intellectual sacrifices. The authors recount their role in helping shape the 2017 tax bill — they’re especially proud of their op-eds, which they quote extensively in the book, along with praise thereof — and reiterate their belief that tax cuts and deregulation will unleash so much economic activity that hard choices melt away. “We have always believed that the shrewdest way to make entitlement programs solvent is to restore rapid growth,” they write. And they swoon over Trump’s “unyielding optimism” about the nation’s economic potential, even when he embraces growth projections that the two economists consider unrealistic. Washington Post
Hanson himself calls Trump “flawed,” but his presidency exemplary. Hanson is a retired classics professor from California State University, Fresno, and senior fellow in military history at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and he has written two dozen books on topics ranging from the ancient world to the Second World War. He lives on a working farm in a multiracial, rural area in the interior of California, southeast of San Francisco. He doesn’t live in an Ivory Tower. He also uses his hometown of Selma as a classic example of why America elected Trump. Once prosperous with family-run farms and food-processing plants and other manufacturing jobs, now most jobs are gone, unemployment high, crime and drug abuse commonplace. “In 1970, we did not have keys for our outside doors; in 2018, I have six guard dogs,” he writes. While he is a conservative with an upfront agenda, his critics come from the left and the right. One of the nastiest attacks upon Hanson comes from a Republican who worked on Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign and calls him a “Nazi sympathizer,” “racist enabler” and a “treasonous sophist.” A liberal writer says it’s oxymoronic to call Hanson a “pro-Trump intellectual.” If his ideas are ticking off both ends of the spectrum, they must have some merit, or, at the very least, be interesting. In defending his book, Hanson’s tone is civil. He tells stories from antiquity to make a point; or he acknowledges that Trump is a blowhard like the character Rodney Dangerfield played in the movie Caddyshack. But that doesn’t mean Trump’s policies aren’t working, he says. When one defends a position with reasoned thought, instead of rants and personal attacks like so many Trump supporters and detractors, it’s a welcome change. Some of Hanson’s observations are disagreeable, others are worthy of pointing out and giving Trump his due. For example, Trump’s stand towards China and its murky trade practices is a reprieve from the appeasement of recent years. His support of the Catholic and Jewish faiths is also admirable. Ultimately, though, The Case for Trump crumbles on two fundamental points. It is disingenuous to separate the man from the presidency, but Hanson does. “Trump’s own uncouthness,” he writes, “was in its own manner contextualized by his supporters as a long overdue pushback to the elite disdain and indeed hatred shown them.” Hanson also points out character flaws in former presidents as somehow a reason to hand Trump a “get-out-of-jail-free-card” for his extracurricular activities with hookers and porn stars. “It doesn’t mean Donald Trump is a saint,” Hanson said during a recorded book tour event, “but he’s not an aberration either.” My mother often said “two wrongs don’t make a right” and that applies here, along with Trump’s penchant to surround himself with hucksters, grifters, con men, liars and felons. Then there are the relentless and often vicious personal tweets and attacks on the Constitution. Sorry, but these character cancers cannot be ignored simply because one likes Trump’s tax cuts and deregulation that may or may not have boosted economic growth. Besides, Hanson doesn’t make the case — with hard facts — that Trump’s policies are actually working. Has picking on allies like Canada really helped Wisconsin dairy farmers? Has he really tamed Kim Jong Un and his nuclear aspirations? Have Trump policies really boosted growth more than simply the cyclical nature of the economy itself? The list goes on and on. Trump opponents probably won’t read the book, but it’s not your regular right-wing diatribe camouflaged as a book. It’s readable and, at times, highly entertaining in how he skewers Trump’s adversaries. But, in the end, the book can’t make a case that electing a status quo disruptor like Donald Trump is any more than a Pyrrhic victory in the classical tragic sense. Bob Brehl
One lesson, however, has not fully sunk in and awaits final elucidation in the 2012 election: that of the Chicago style of Barack Obama’s politicking. In 2008 few of the true believers accepted that, in his first political race, in 1996, Barack Obama sued successfully to remove his opponents from the ballot. Or that in his race for the US Senate eight years later, sealed divorced records for both his primary- and general-election opponents were mysteriously leaked by unnamed Chicagoans, leading to the implosions of both candidates’ campaigns. Or that Obama was the first presidential candidate in the history of public campaign financing to reject it, or that he was also the largest recipient of cash from Wall Street in general, and from BP and Goldman Sachs in particular. Or that Obama was the first presidential candidate in recent memory not to disclose either undergraduate records or even partial medical. Or that remarks like “typical white person,” the clingers speech, and the spread-the-wealth quip would soon prove to be characteristic rather than anomalous. Few American presidents have dashed so many popular, deeply embedded illusions as has Barack Obama. And for that, we owe him a strange sort of thanks. Victor Davis Hanson
Presidents run for re-election against real opponents, not public perceptions. For all the media hype, voters often pick the lesser of two evils, not their ideals of a perfect candidate. Victor Davis Hanson
Securing national borders seems pretty orthodox. In an age of anti-Western terrorism, placing temporary holds on would-be immigrants from war-torn zones until they can be vetted is hardly radical. Expecting “sanctuary cities” to follow federal laws rather than embrace the nullification strategies of the secessionist Old Confederacy is a return to the laws of the Constitution. Using the term “radical Islamic terror” in place of “workplace violence” or “man-caused disasters” is sensible, not subversive. Insisting that NATO members meet their long-ignored defense-spending obligations is not provocative but overdue. Assuming that both the European Union and the United Nations are imploding is empirical, not unhinged. Questioning the secret side agreements of the Iran deal or failed Russian reset is facing reality. Making the Environmental Protection Agency follow laws rather than make laws is the way it always was supposed to be. Unapologetically siding with Israel, the only free and democratic country in the Middle East, used to be standard U.S. policy until Obama was elected. (…) Expecting the media to report the news rather than massage it to fit progressive agendas makes sense. In the past, proclaiming Obama a “sort of god” or the smartest man ever to enter the presidency was not normal journalistic practice. (…) Half the country is having a hard time adjusting to Trumpism, confusing Trump’s often unorthodox and grating style with his otherwise practical and mostly centrist agenda. In sum, Trump seems a revolutionary, but that is only because he is loudly undoing a revolution. Victor Davis Hanson
What makes such men and women both tragic and heroic is their knowledge that the natural expression of their personas can lead only to their own destruction or ostracism from an advancing civilization that they seek to protect. And yet they willingly accept the challenge to be of service . . . Yet for a variety of reasons, both personal and civic, their characters not only should not be altered, but could not be, even if the tragic hero wished to change . . . In the classical tragic sense, Trump likely will end in one of two fashions, both not particularly good: either spectacular but unacknowledged accomplishments followed by ostracism . . . or, less likely, a single term due to the eventual embarrassment of his beneficiaries. Victor Davis Hanson
Trump’s own uncouthness was in its own manner contextualized by his supporters as a long overdue pushback to the elite disdain and indeed hatred shown them. (…) Trumpism was the idea that there were no longer taboo subjects. Everything was open for negotiation; nothing was sacred. Victor Davis Hanson
The very idea that Donald Trump could, even in a perverse way, be heroic may appall half the country. Nonetheless, one way of understanding both Trump’s personal excesses and his accomplishments is that his not being traditionally presidential may have been valuable in bringing long-overdue changes in foreign and domestic policy. Tragic heroes, as they have been portrayed from Sophocles’ plays (e.g., Ajax, Antigone, Oedipus Rex, Philoctetes) to the modern western film, are not intrinsically noble. Much less are they likeable. Certainly, they can often be obnoxious and petty, if not dangerous, especially to those around them. These mercurial sorts never end well — and on occasion neither do those in their vicinity. Oedipus was rudely narcissistic, Hombre’s John Russell (Paul Newman) arrogant and off-putting. Tragic heroes are loners, both by preference and because of society’s understandable unease with them. Ajax’s soliloquies about a rigged system and the lack of recognition accorded his undeniable accomplishments are Trumpian to the core — something akin to the sensational rumors that at night Trump is holed up alone, petulant, brooding, eating fast food, and watching Fox News shows. Outlaw leader Pike Bishop (William Holden), in director Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch, is a killer whose final gory sacrifice results in the slaughter of the toxic General Mapache and his corrupt local Federales. A foreboding Ethan Edwards (John Wayne), of John Ford’s classic 1956 film The Searchers, alone can track down his kidnapped niece. But his methods and his recent past as a Confederate renegade make him suspect and largely unfit for a civilizing frontier after the expiration of his transitory usefulness. These characters are not the sorts that we would associate with Bob Dole, Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, or Mitt Romney. The tragic hero’s change of fortune — often from good to bad, as Aristotle reminds us — is due to an innate flaw (hamartia), or at least in some cases an intrinsic and usually uncivilized trait that can be of service to the community, albeit usually expressed fully only at the expense of the hero’s own fortune. The problem for civilization is that the creation of those skill sets often brings with it past baggage of lawlessness and comfortability with violence. Trump’s cunning and mercurialness, honed in Manhattan real estate, global salesmanship, reality TV, and wheeler-dealer investments, may have earned him ostracism from polite Washington society. But these talents also may for a time be suited for dealing with many of the outlaws of the global frontier. (…) So what makes such men and women both tragic and heroic is their full knowledge that the natural expression of their personas can lead only to their own destruction or ostracism. Yet for a variety of reasons, both personal and civic, their characters not only should not be altered but could not be, even if the tragic hero wished to change, given his megalomania and Manichean views of the human experience. Clint Eastwood’s Inspector “Dirty” Harry Callahan cannot serve as the official face of the San Francisco police department. But Dirty Harry alone has the skills and ruthlessness to ensure that the mass murderer Scorpio will never harm the innocent again. So, in the finale, he taunts and then shoots the psychopathic Scorpio, ending both their careers, and walks off — after throwing his inspector’s badge into the water. Marshal Will Kane (Gary Cooper) of High Noon did about the same thing, but only after gunning down (with the help of his wife) four killers whom the law-abiding but temporizing elders of Hadleyville proved utterly incapable of stopping. (…) In other words, tragic heroes are often simply too volatile to continue in polite society. In George Stevens’s classic 1953 western Shane, even the reforming and soft-spoken gunslinger Shane (Alan Ladd) understands his own dilemma all too well: He alone possesses the violent skills necessary to free the homesteaders from the insidious threats of hired guns and murderous cattle barons. (And how he got those skills worries those he plans to help.) Yet by the time of his final resort to lethal violence, Shane has sacrificed all prior chances of reform and claims on reentering the civilized world of the stable “sodbuster” community. (…) Trump could not cease tweeting, not cease his rallies, not cease his feuding, and not cease his nonstop motion and unbridled speech if he wished to. It is his brand, and such overbearing made Trump, for good or evil, what he is — and will likely eventually banish him from establishment Washington, whether after or during his elected term. His raucousness can be managed, perhaps mitigated for a time — thus the effective tenure of his sober cabinet choices and his chief of staff, the ex–Marine general, no-nonsense John Kelly — but not eliminated. His blunt views cannot really thrive, and indeed can scarcely survive, in the nuance, complexity, and ambiguity of Washington. Trump is not a mannered Mitt Romney, who would never have left the Paris climate agreement. He is not a veteran who knew the whiz of real bullets and remains a Washington icon, such as John McCain, who would never have moved the American embassy to Jerusalem. Marco Rubio or Jeb Bush certainly would never have waded into no-win controversies such as the take-a-knee NFL debacle and unvetted immigration from suspect countries in the Middle East and Africa, or called to account sanctuary cities that thwarted federal law. Our modern Agamemnon, Speaker Paul Ryan, is too circumspect to get caught up with Trump’s wall or a mini-trade war with China. Trump does not seem to care whether he is acting “presidential.” The word — as he admits — is foreign to him. He does not worry whether his furious tweets, his revolving-door firing and hiring, and his rally counterpunches reveal a lack of stature or are becoming an embarrassing window into his own insecurities and apprehensions as a Beltway media world closes in upon him in the manner that, as the trapped western hero felt, the shrinking landscape was increasingly without options in the new 20th century. The real moral question is not whether the gunslinger Trump could or should become civilized (again, defined in our context as becoming normalized as “presidential”) but whether he could be of service at the opportune time and right place for his country, crude as he is. After all, despite their decency, in extremis did the frontier farmers have a solution without Shane, or the Mexican peasants a realistic alternative to the Magnificent Seven, or the town elders a viable plan without Will Kane? Perhaps we could not withstand the fire and smoke of a series of Trump presidencies, but given the direction of the country over the last 16 years, half the population, the proverbial townspeople of the western, wanted some outsider, even with a dubious past, to ride in and do things that most normal politicians not only would not but could not do — before exiting stage left or riding off into the sunset, to the relief of most and the regrets of a few. The best and the brightest résumés of the Bush and Obama administrations had doubled the national debt — twice. Three prior presidents had helped to empower North Korea, now with nuclear-tipped missiles pointing at the West Coast. Supposedly refined and sophisticated diplomats of the last quarter century, who would never utter the name “Rocket Man” or stoop to call Kim Jong-un “short and fat,” nonetheless had gone through the “agreed framework,” “six-party talks,” and “strategic patience,” in which three administrations gave Pyongyang quite massive aid to behave and either not to proliferate or at least to denuclearize. And it was all a failure, and a deadly one at that. For all of Obama’s sophisticated discourse about “spread the wealth around” and “You didn’t build that,” quantitative easing, zero interest rates, massive new regulations, the stimulus, and shovel-ready, government-inspired jobs, he could not achieve 3 percent annualized economic growth. Half the country, the more desperate half, believed that the remedy for a government in which the IRS, the FBI, the DOJ, and the NSA were weaponized, often in partisan fashion and without worry about the civil liberties of American citizens, was not more temporizing technicians but a pariah who cleaned house and moved on. Certainly Obama was not willing to have a showdown with the Chinese over their widely acknowledged cheating and coerced expropriation of U.S. technology, with the NATO allies over their chronic welching on prior defense commitments, with the North Koreans after they achieved the capability of hitting U.S. West Coast cities, or with the European Union over its mostly empty climate-change accords. Moving on, sometimes fatally so, is the tragic hero’s operative exit. Antigone certainly makes her point about the absurdity of small men’s sexism and moral emptiness in such an uncompromising way that her own doom is assured. Tom Doniphon (John Wayne), in John Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, unheroically kills the thuggish Liberty Valance, births the career of Ranse Stoddard and his marriage to Doniphon’s girlfriend, and thereby ensures civilization is Shinbone’s frontier future. His service done, he burns down his house and degenerates from feared rancher to alcoholic outcast. (…) He knows that few appreciate that the tragic heroes in their midst are either tragic or heroic — until they are safely gone and what they have done in time can be attributed to someone else. Worse, he knows that the tragic hero’s existence is solitary and without the nourishing networks and affirmation of the peasant’s agrarian life. (…) By his very excesses Trump has already lost, but in his losing he might alone be able to end some things that long ago should have been ended. Victor Davis Hanson
That is how human nature is. (…) if you talk to people in the military, the diplomatic corps, the academic world, and, just to take one example, China, they will tell you in the last two years they have had an awakening. They feel that Chinese military superiority is now to deny help to America’s allies. They believe that the trade deficit is unsustainable. They will tell you all of that, and you are almost listening to Donald Trump in 2015, but they won’t mention the word “Trump,” because to do so would contaminate that argument. What I am getting at is he looked at the world empirically. (…) he said, “This is what’s wrong, and this is what we would have to do to address this problem.” And he said it in such a way—whether he wanted to say it in that way or whether he was forced to say it in that way, I don’t know—but he said it in such a way that was designed to grab attention, to be polarizing, to get through bureaucratic doublespeak. So now he succeeded, but if I were to ask anybody at Stanford University, or anybody that I know is a four-star general or a diplomat, “What caused your sudden change about China?,” they would not say Donald Trump, and yet we know who it was. [Like a hero out of Greek myth] as long as we understand the word “hero.” Americans don’t know what that word means. They think it means you live happily ever after or you are selfless. Whether it is Achilles or Sophocles’s Ajax or Antigone, they can act out of insecurity, they can act out of impatience—they can act out of all sorts of motives that are less than what we say in America are heroic. But the point that they are making is, I see a skill that I have. I see a problem. I want to solve that problem, and I want to solve that problem so much that the ensuing reaction to that solution may not necessarily be good for me. And they accept that. (…) I tried to use as many examples as I could of the classic Western, whether it was “Shane” or “High Noon” or “The Magnificent Seven.” They all are the same—the community doesn’t have the skills or doesn’t have the willpower or doesn’t want to stoop to the corrective method to solve the existential problem, whether it is cattle barons or banditos. So they bring in an outsider, and immediately they start to be uneasy because he is uncouth—his skills, his attitude—and then he solves the problem, and they declare to him, whether it is Gary Cooper in “High Noon” or Alan Ladd in “Shane,” “I think it’s better you leave. We don’t need you anymore. We feel dirty that we ever had to call you in.” I think that is what is awaiting Trump. (…) I think Trump really did think that there were certain problems and he had particular skills that he could solve. Maybe in a naïve fashion. But I think he understood, for all the emoluments-clause hysteria, that he wasn’t going to make a lot of money from it or be liked for it. (…) I look at everything empirically. I know what the left said, and the media said, but I ask myself, “What actually happened?” There are a billion Muslims in the world, and he has, I think, six countries who were not able to substantiate that their passports were vetted. [Trump’s final travel plan limits or prevents travel from seven countries.] We didn’t even, in the final calibration, base it on religion. I think we have two countries that are not predominantly Muslim. (…) As far as separation, I remember very carefully that the whole child separation was started during Barack Obama. (…) It was unapologetically said this came from Obama and we are going to continue to practice deterrence. As someone who lives in a community that is ninety per cent Hispanic, probably forty per cent undocumented, I can tell you that it’s a very different world from what people are talking about in Washington. I have had people knock on my door and ask me where the ob-gyn lives, because they got her name in Oaxaca. And the woman in the car is six months pregnant and living across the border and given the name of a nice doctor in Selma, California, that will deliver the baby. (…) It has happened once, but I know people who come from Mexico with the names of doctors and clinics in Fresno County where they know they will get, for free, twenty to thirty thousand dollars of medical care and an anchor baby. I know that’s supposed to be an uncouth thing to say. (…) As I am talking right now, I have a guy, a U.S. citizen, tiling my kitchen, and he does not like the idea that people hire people illegally for twelve dollars an hour in cash, when he should be getting eighteen, nineteen, twenty dollars. But, when you make these arguments, they are just brushed aside by the left or the media, by saying, oh, these are anecdotal or racist or stereotype. (…) [Trump saying there were good people on both sides] was very clumsy (…) But there wasn’t a monolithic white racist protest movement. There were collections of people. Some of them were just out there because maybe they are deluded and maybe they are not. I don’t know what their hearts are like, but they did not want statues torn down or defaced. (…) You can argue that what was O.K. in 2010 suddenly was racist in 2017. But, in today’s polarized climate, Trump should have said, “While both groups are demonstrating, we can’t have a group on any side that identifies by race.” He should have said that. He just said there were good people on both sides. It was clumsy. (…) I was trying to look at Trump in classical terms, so words like eirôneia, or irony—how could it be that the Republican Party supposedly was empathetic, but a millionaire, a billionaire Manhattanite started using terms I had never heard Romney or McCain or Paul Ryan say? He started saying “our.” Our miners. And then, on the left, every time Hillary Clinton went before a Southern audience, she started speaking in a Southern accent. And Barack Obama, I think you would agree, when he gets before an inner-city audience, he suddenly sounded as if he spoke in a black patois. When Trump went to any of these groups, he had the same tie, the same suit, the same accent. What people thought was that, whatever he is, he is authentic. (…) I read a great deal about the Mar-a-Lago project, and I was shocked that the people who opposed that on cultural and social grounds were largely anti-Semitic. Trump had already announced that he was not going to discriminate against Jews and Mexicans and other people. He said, “I want wealthy people.” I went to Palm Beach and talked to wealthy Jewish donors and Cubans, and they said the same thing to me—“He likes rich people. He doesn’t care what you look like.” (…) I don’t know what the driving force was, but I found that he was indifferent. And I think the same thing is true of blacks and Hispanics. (…) [using birtherism as a way of discrediting Obama] was absurd. I think it was demonstrable that Obama was born in the United States. The only ambiguity was that two things gave rise to the conspiracy theorists. One was—and I think this is a hundred-per-cent accurate—an advertising group that worked in concert with his publisher put on a booklet that Obama was born in Kenya. That gave third-world cachet to “Dreams from My Father.” And he didn’t look at it or didn’t change it. [In 1991, four years before Obama’s first book was published, his literary agency incorrectly stated on a client list that Obama was born in Kenya.] And he left as a young kid and went to Indonesia and applied when he came back as a Fulbright Fellow, and I don’t know if this is substantiated or just rumor, but he probably was given dual citizenship. [The claim that Obama was a Fulbright Fellow from Indonesia, and therefore had Indonesian citizenship, originated in a hoax e-mail, from April 1, 2009, and has been discredited.] (…) What I am getting at is, here you have a guy named Barack Obama, who grew up in Hawaii, and there were indications in his past that there was ambiguity. (…) I think Trump was doing what Trump does, which is trying to sensationalize it. I don’t think it was racial. I think it was political. (…) I mean carefully calibrated in a political sense. That’s my point. Not that it was careful in the sense of being humane or sympathetic. By that I mean, there were elements in Ted Cruz’s personality that offended people. And he got Ted Cruz really angry, and Ted Cruz doesn’t come across well. (…) if you go back and look at the worst tweets, they are retaliatory. What he does is he waits like a coiled cobra until people attack him, and then he attacks them in a much cruder, blunter fashion. And he has an uncanny ability to pick people that have attacked him, whether it’s Rosie O’Donnell, Megyn Kelly—there were elements in all those people’s careers that were starting to bother people, and Trump sensed that out. I don’t think he would have gotten away with taking on other people that were completely beloved. Colin Kaepernick. People were getting tired of him, so he took him on. All that stuff was calibrated. Trump was replying and understood public sympathy would be at least fifty-fifty, if not in his favor. Victor Davis Hanson
Et si, à l’instar de la démocratie selon Churchill, Donald Trump était le pire président – à l’exception de tous les autres ?
En ces temps proprement orwelliens …
Où des élus démocrates assimilent aux camps nazis les camps de rétention pour migrants clandestins …
Ou, entre deux subventions de l’avortement à quasi-terme ou des transsexuels, des candidats du même parti proposent de décriminaliser l’immigration illégale …
Pendant que de l’autre côté de l’Atlantique, on célèbre avec le maître-démagoque du Vatican et une Mairie de Paris plus touristophile que jamais le trafic d’êtres humains …
Et après 30 ou 40 ans de tolérance …
D’une Corée du nord finalement capable d’atteindre avec ses missiles nucléaires la totalité du territoire américain …
D’un Iran menaçant un de ses voisins de rayage de la carte et mettant l’ensemble de la région à feu et à sang …
D’une Chine empilant les surplus commerciaux grâce au pillage des secrets industriels de ses partenaires tout en militarisant les eaux territoriales de ses voisins …
D’une Allemagne accumulant elle aussi les excédents commerciaux tout en réduisant à 1,25% sa contribution à ses défenses militaires …
Comment brusquement ne pas voir …
Avec l’historien américain Victor Davis Hanson
Ou les politologues français Guy Millière ou Evelyne Joslain …
Ou même le grand manitou du néoconservatisme Norman Podhoretz …
Comme l’avait pressenti dès son élection l’ancien secrétaire d’etat Henry Kissinger lui-même …
Et avec ses électeurs de 2016 comme probablement de 2020 …
La véritable force finalement des si nombreuses faiblesses …
Y compris pour les plus pragmatiques des évangéliques …
D’un président aussi peu « présidentiel » que l’actuel président américain ?
Donald Trump, Tragic Hero
His very flaws may be his strengths
Victor Davis Hanson
April 12, 2018
The very idea that Donald Trump could, even in a perverse way, be heroic may appall half the country. Nonetheless, one way of understanding both Trump’s personal excesses and his accomplishments is that his not being traditionally presidential may have been valuable in bringing long-overdue changes in foreign and domestic policy.
Tragic heroes, as they have been portrayed from Sophocles’ plays (e.g., Ajax, Antigone, Oedipus Rex, Philoctetes) to the modern western film, are not intrinsically noble. Much less are they likeable. Certainly, they can often be obnoxious and petty, if not dangerous, especially to those around them. These mercurial sorts never end well — and on occasion neither do those in their vicinity. Oedipus was rudely narcissistic, Hombre’s John Russell (Paul Newman) arrogant and off-putting.
Tragic heroes are loners, both by preference and because of society’s understandable unease with them. Ajax’s soliloquies about a rigged system and the lack of recognition accorded his undeniable accomplishments are Trumpian to the core — something akin to the sensational rumors that at night Trump is holed up alone, petulant, brooding, eating fast food, and watching Fox News shows.
Outlaw leader Pike Bishop (William Holden), in director Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch, is a killer whose final gory sacrifice results in the slaughter of the toxic General Mapache and his corrupt local Federales. A foreboding Ethan Edwards (John Wayne), of John Ford’s classic 1956 film The Searchers, alone can track down his kidnapped niece. But his methods and his recent past as a Confederate renegade make him suspect and largely unfit for a civilizing frontier after the expiration of his transitory usefulness. These characters are not the sorts that we would associate with Bob Dole, Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, or Mitt Romney.
The tragic hero’s change of fortune — often from good to bad, as Aristotle reminds us — is due to an innate flaw (hamartia), or at least in some cases an intrinsic and usually uncivilized trait that can be of service to the community, albeit usually expressed fully only at the expense of the hero’s own fortune. The problem for civilization is that the creation of those skill sets often brings with it past baggage of lawlessness and comfortability with violence. Trump’s cunning and mercurialness, honed in Manhattan real estate, global salesmanship, reality TV, and wheeler-dealer investments, may have earned him ostracism from polite Washington society. But these talents also may for a time be suited for dealing with many of the outlaws of the global frontier.
At rare times, a General George S. Patton (“Give me an army of West Point graduates and I’ll win a battle. Give me a handful of Texas Aggies and I’ll win a war”) could be harnessed to serve the country in extremis. General Curtis LeMay did what others could not — and would not: “I suppose if I had lost the war, I would have been tried as a war criminal. . . . Every soldier thinks something of the moral aspects of what he is doing. But all war is immoral and if you let that bother you, you’re not a good soldier.” Later, the public exposure given to the mentalities and behaviors of such controversial figures would only ensure that they would likely be estranged from or even caricatured by their peers — once, of course, they were no longer needed by those whom they had benefited. When one is willing to burn down with napalm 75 percent of the industrial core of an often-genocidal wartime Japan, and thereby help bring a vicious war to an end, then one looks for sorts like Curtis LeMay and his B-29s. In the later calm of peace, one is often shocked that one ever had. A sober and judicious General Omar Bradley grows on us in peace even if he was hardly Patton in war.
So what makes such men and women both tragic and heroic is their full knowledge that the natural expression of their personas can lead only to their own destruction or ostracism. Yet for a variety of reasons, both personal and civic, their characters not only should not be altered but could not be, even if the tragic hero wished to change, given his megalomania and Manichean views of the human experience. Clint Eastwood’s Inspector “Dirty” Harry Callahan cannot serve as the official face of the San Francisco police department. But Dirty Harry alone has the skills and ruthlessness to ensure that the mass murderer Scorpio will never harm the innocent again. So, in the finale, he taunts and then shoots the psychopathic Scorpio, ending both their careers, and walks off — after throwing his inspector’s badge into the water. Marshal Will Kane (Gary Cooper) of High Noon did about the same thing, but only after gunning down (with the help of his wife) four killers whom the law-abiding but temporizing elders of Hadleyville proved utterly incapable of stopping.
The out-of-place Ajax in Sophocles’ tragedy of the same name cannot function apart from the battlefield. Unlike Odysseus, he lacks the tact and fluidity to succeed in a new world of nuanced civic rules. So he would rather “live nobly, or nobly die” — “nobly” meaning according to an obsolete black-and-white code that is no longer compatible with the ascendant polis.
In other words, tragic heroes are often simply too volatile to continue in polite society. In George Stevens’s classic 1953 western Shane, even the reforming and soft-spoken gunslinger Shane (Alan Ladd) understands his own dilemma all too well: He alone possesses the violent skills necessary to free the homesteaders from the insidious threats of hired guns and murderous cattle barons. (And how he got those skills worries those he plans to help.) Yet by the time of his final resort to lethal violence, Shane has sacrificed all prior chances of reform and claims on reentering the civilized world of the stable “sodbuster” community. As Shane tells young Joey after gunning down the three villains of the film and thereby saving the small farming community: “Can’t break the mold. I tried it, and it didn’t work for me. . . . Joey, there’s no living with . . . a killing. There’s no going back from one. Right or wrong, it’s a brand. A brand sticks. There’s no going back.”
Trump could not cease tweeting, not cease his rallies, not cease his feuding, and not cease his nonstop motion and unbridled speech if he wished to. It is his brand, and such overbearing made Trump, for good or evil, what he is — and will likely eventually banish him from establishment Washington, whether after or during his elected term. His raucousness can be managed, perhaps mitigated for a time — thus the effective tenure of his sober cabinet choices and his chief of staff, the ex–Marine general, no-nonsense John Kelly — but not eliminated. His blunt views cannot really thrive, and indeed can scarcely survive, in the nuance, complexity, and ambiguity of Washington.
Trump is not a mannered Mitt Romney, who would never have left the Paris climate agreement. He is not a veteran who knew the whiz of real bullets and remains a Washington icon, such as John McCain, who would never have moved the American embassy to Jerusalem. Marco Rubio or Jeb Bush certainly would never have waded into no-win controversies such as the take-a-knee NFL debacle and unvetted immigration from suspect countries in the Middle East and Africa, or called to account sanctuary cities that thwarted federal law. Our modern Agamemnon, Speaker Paul Ryan, is too circumspect to get caught up with Trump’s wall or a mini-trade war with China.
Trump does not seem to care whether he is acting “presidential.” The word — as he admits — is foreign to him. He does not worry whether his furious tweets, his revolving-door firing and hiring, and his rally counterpunches reveal a lack of stature or are becoming an embarrassing window into his own insecurities and apprehensions as a Beltway media world closes in upon him in the manner that, as the trapped western hero felt, the shrinking landscape was increasingly without options in the new 20th century.
The real moral question is not whether the gunslinger Trump could or should become civilized (again, defined in our context as becoming normalized as “presidential”) but whether he could be of service at the opportune time and right place for his country, crude as he is. After all, despite their decency, in extremis did the frontier farmers have a solution without Shane, or the Mexican peasants a realistic alternative to the Magnificent Seven, or the town elders a viable plan without Will Kane?
Perhaps we could not withstand the fire and smoke of a series of Trump presidencies, but given the direction of the country over the last 16 years, half the population, the proverbial townspeople of the western, wanted some outsider, even with a dubious past, to ride in and do things that most normal politicians not only would not but could not do — before exiting stage left or riding off into the sunset, to the relief of most and the regrets of a few.
The best and the brightest résumés of the Bush and Obama administrations had doubled the national debt — twice. Three prior presidents had helped to empower North Korea, now with nuclear-tipped missiles pointing at the West Coast. Supposedly refined and sophisticated diplomats of the last quarter century, who would never utter the name “Rocket Man” or stoop to call Kim Jong-un “short and fat,” nonetheless had gone through the “agreed framework,” “six-party talks,” and “strategic patience,” in which three administrations gave Pyongyang quite massive aid to behave and either not to proliferate or at least to denuclearize. And it was all a failure, and a deadly one at that.
For all of Obama’s sophisticated discourse about “spread the wealth around” and “You didn’t build that,” quantitative easing, zero interest rates, massive new regulations, the stimulus, and shovel-ready, government-inspired jobs, he could not achieve 3 percent annualized economic growth. Half the country, the more desperate half, believed that the remedy for a government in which the IRS, the FBI, the DOJ, and the NSA were weaponized, often in partisan fashion and without worry about the civil liberties of American citizens, was not more temporizing technicians but a pariah who cleaned house and moved on. Certainly Obama was not willing to have a showdown with the Chinese over their widely acknowledged cheating and coerced expropriation of U.S. technology, with the NATO allies over their chronic welching on prior defense commitments, with the North Koreans after they achieved the capability of hitting U.S. West Coast cities, or with the European Union over its mostly empty climate-change accords.
Moving on, sometimes fatally so, is the tragic hero’s operative exit. Antigone certainly makes her point about the absurdity of small men’s sexism and moral emptiness in such an uncompromising way that her own doom is assured. Tom Doniphon (John Wayne), in John Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, unheroically kills the thuggish Liberty Valance, births the career of Ranse Stoddard and his marriage to Doniphon’s girlfriend, and thereby ensures civilization is Shinbone’s frontier future. His service done, he burns down his house and degenerates from feared rancher to alcoholic outcast.
The remnants of The Magnificent Seven would no longer be magnificent had they stayed on in the village, settled down to age, and endlessly rehashed the morality and utility of slaughtering the outlaw Calvera and his banditos. As Chris rides out, he sums up to Vin their dilemma: “The old man was right. Only the farmers won. We lost. We always lose.” He knows that few appreciate that the tragic heroes in their midst are either tragic or heroic — until they are safely gone and what they have done in time can be attributed to someone else. Worse, he knows that the tragic hero’s existence is solitary and without the nourishing networks and affirmation of the peasant’s agrarian life.
John Ford’s most moving scene in his best film, The Searchers, is Ethan Edwards’s final exit from a house of shadows, swinging open the door and walking alone into sunlit oblivion. If he is lucky, Trump may well experience the same self-inflicted fate.
By his very excesses Trump has already lost, but in his losing he might alone be able to end some things that long ago should have been ended.
Voir aussi:
Q & A
The Classicist Who Sees Donald Trump as a Tragic Hero
Isaac Chotiner
The New Yorker
February 20, 2019
Many of the books written in support of Donald Trump’s Presidency have been authored by Trump family hangers-on or charlatans looking to make a buck. (Examples include “Trump’s Enemies: How the Deep State Is Undermining the Presidency,” by Corey Lewandowski and David N. Bossie, and “The Russia Hoax: The Illicit Scheme to Clear Hillary Clinton and Frame Donald Trump,” by Gregg Jarrett.) “The Case for Trump,” by Victor Davis Hanson, is different. (There isn’t even a subtitle.) Hanson, a senior fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, is a classicist and military historian, who was awarded the National Humanities Medal by George W. Bush, in 2007. His previous book, “The Second World Wars,” was respectfully reviewed by the Times and The New Yorker.
But Hanson has another side, one that is well suited for the age of Trump. A longtime contributor to the National Review, he has a history of hostility to undocumented Mexican and Central American immigrants, who he claims are undermining American culture, and to African-Americans who speak about the persistence of racism, including Barack Obama, whom he has described as a leading member of “the new segregationists.” In his new book, which will be published by Basic Books, in March, Hanson explains why he thinks Trump was elected, and why he views the President as akin to a classically tragic hero, whom America needs but will never fully appreciate.
I recently spoke by phone with Hanson, who was in his home, in California. During our conversation, which has been edited and condensed for clarity, we discussed whether Trump should be compared to heroes of Greek myth, Hanson’s view of the Charlottesville protesters, and whether the President is carefully choosing the people he attacks.
I want to start with a quote from your book. You compare the President to others you admire in American history, writing, “What makes such men and women both tragic and heroic is their knowledge that the natural expression of their personas can lead only to their own destruction or ostracism from an advancing civilization that they seek to protect. And yet they willingly accept the challenge to be of service . . . Yet for a variety of reasons, both personal and civic, their characters not only should not be altered, but could not be, even if the tragic hero wished to change . . . In the classical tragic sense, Trump likely will end in one of two fashions, both not particularly good: either spectacular but unacknowledged accomplishments followed by ostracism . . . or, less likely, a single term due to the eventual embarrassment of his beneficiaries.” I wonder how your training as a classicist informs this passage, but I also want to ask, is our flawed, sinful country not worthy of Donald Trump?
No, I don’t mean that, as to the latter. I mean that that is how human nature is. So, if you talk to people in the military, the diplomatic corps, the academic world, and, just to take one example, China, they will tell you in the last two years they have had an awakening. They feel that Chinese military superiority is now to deny help to America’s allies. They believe that the trade deficit is unsustainable. They will tell you all of that, and you are almost listening to Donald Trump in 2015, but they won’t mention the word “Trump,” because to do so would contaminate that argument. What I am getting at is he looked at the world empirically.
Empirically?
Yes, empirically, and he said, “This is what’s wrong, and this is what we would have to do to address this problem.” And he said it in such a way—whether he wanted to say it in that way or whether he was forced to say it in that way, I don’t know—but he said it in such a way that was designed to grab attention, to be polarizing, to get through bureaucratic doublespeak. So now he succeeded, but if I were to ask anybody at Stanford University, or anybody that I know is a four-star general or a diplomat, “What caused your sudden change about China?,” they would not say Donald Trump, and yet we know who it was.
Do you feel that in some ways he is a hero out of Greek myth?
Yeah, as long as we understand the word “hero.” Americans don’t know what that word means. They think it means you live happily ever after or you are selfless. Whether it is Achilles or Sophocles’s Ajax or Antigone, they can act out of insecurity, they can act out of impatience—they can act out of all sorts of motives that are less than what we say in America are heroic. But the point that they are making is, I see a skill that I have. I see a problem. I want to solve that problem, and I want to solve that problem so much that the ensuing reaction to that solution may not necessarily be good for me. And they accept that.
It reminds me of Trump saying that people will get sick of winning. It seems like you are saying we have gotten sick of it, and that is the tragedy of Trump.
I think so. I tried to use as many examples as I could of the classic Western, whether it was “Shane” or “High Noon” or “The Magnificent Seven.” They all are the same—the community doesn’t have the skills or doesn’t have the willpower or doesn’t want to stoop to the corrective method to solve the existential problem, whether it is cattle barons or banditos. So they bring in an outsider, and immediately they start to be uneasy because he is uncouth—his skills, his attitude—and then he solves the problem, and they declare to him, whether it is Gary Cooper in “High Noon” or Alan Ladd in “Shane,” “I think it’s better you leave. We don’t need you anymore. We feel dirty that we ever had to call you in.” I think that is what is awaiting Trump.
How does this fit, in a Greek sense, with the man we are often confronted with—constantly tweeting, spending much of his day watching cable news, obsessed with small slights. Do these things, allowing for the modern context, also remind you of great heroes of myth?
Have you read Sophocles’s Ajax ever? It’s one of his best plays.
No, I haven’t.
You have a neurotic hero who cannot get over the fact that he was by all standards the successor to Achilles and deserves Achilles’s armor, and yet he was outsmarted by this wily, lesser Odysseus, who rigged the contest and got the armor. All he does is say, “This wasn’t fair. I’m better. Doesn’t anybody know this?” It’s true, but you want to say to Ajax, “Shut up and just take it.” Achilles has elements of a tragic hero. He says, at the beginning of the Iliad, “I do all the work. I kill all the Trojans. But when it comes to assigning booty, you always give it to mediocrities—deep-state, administrative nothings.” So he stalks off. And the gods tell him, “If you come back in, you will win fame, but you are going to end up dead.” So he makes a tragic, heroic decision that he is going to do that.
I think Trump really did think that there were certain problems and he had particular skills that he could solve. Maybe in a naïve fashion. But I think he understood, for all the emoluments-clause hysteria, that he wasn’t going to make a lot of money from it or be liked for it.
You don’t have much to say about child separation, the ban on certain Muslims, Charlottesville—the more controversial aspects of his Presidency. Are these nicks on a glorious record, or are they actually accomplishments?
I look at everything empirically. I know what the left said, and the media said, but I ask myself, “What actually happened?” There are a billion Muslims in the world, and he has, I think, six countries who were not able to substantiate that their passports were vetted. [Trump’s final travel plan limits or prevents travel from seven countries.] We didn’t even, in the final calibration, base it on religion. I think we have two countries that are not predominantly Muslim.
It was very clever how they did that.
Yeah. And so that’s one thing. As far as separation, I remember very carefully that the whole child separation was started during Barack Obama.
The policy of separating was a Trump thing.
It was used by Trump. It was unapologetically said this came from Obama and we are going to continue to practice deterrence. As someone who lives in a community that is ninety per cent Hispanic, probably forty per cent undocumented, I can tell you that it’s a very different world from what people are talking about in Washington. I have had people knock on my door and ask me where the ob-gyn lives, because they got her name in Oaxaca. And the woman in the car is six months pregnant and living across the border and given the name of a nice doctor in Selma, California, that will deliver the baby.
This has happened once? More than once?
It has happened once, but I know people who come from Mexico with the names of doctors and clinics in Fresno County where they know they will get, for free, twenty to thirty thousand dollars of medical care and an anchor baby. I know that’s supposed to be an uncouth thing to say.
Just a bit.
And they will be here. As I am talking right now, I have a guy, a U.S. citizen, tiling my kitchen, and he does not like the idea that people hire people illegally for twelve dollars an hour in cash, when he should be getting eighteen, nineteen, twenty dollars. But, when you make these arguments, they are just brushed aside by the left or the media, by saying, oh, these are anecdotal or racist or stereotype.
Right, people hear a story about someone knocking on your door wanting an ob-gyn and they say that is anecdotal. Charlottesville was the last one you are going to address, Trump saying there were good people on both sides.
That was very clumsy to say. But there wasn’t a monolithic white racist protest movement. There were collections of people. Some of them were just out there because maybe they are deluded and maybe they are not. I don’t know what their hearts are like, but they did not want statues torn down or defaced.
History buffs, really.
Yeah. You can argue that what was O.K. in 2010 suddenly was racist in 2017. But, in today’s polarized climate, Trump should have said, “While both groups are demonstrating, we can’t have a group on any side that identifies by race.” He should have said that. He just said there were good people on both sides. It was clumsy.
This is what you were saying about Greek heroes. You don’t get the perfect person who will phrase everything or do everything perfectly.
You don’t. You don’t. I was trying to look at Trump in classical terms, so words like eirôneia, or irony—how could it be that the Republican Party supposedly was empathetic, but a millionaire, a billionaire Manhattanite started using terms I had never heard Romney or McCain or Paul Ryan say? He started saying “our.” Our miners. And then, on the left, every time Hillary Clinton went before a Southern audience, she started speaking in a Southern accent. And Barack Obama, I think you would agree, when he gets before an inner-city audience, he suddenly sounded as if he spoke in a black patois. When Trump went to any of these groups, he had the same tie, the same suit, the same accent. What people thought was that, whatever he is, he is authentic.
Honest, authentic.
I don’t know about honest, but authentic and genuine. Honest in the sense that . . .
The larger sense.
Yeah.
Race has been a big part of Trump’s Presidency. There is not a lot of that in your book. The index contains an entry for “blacks,” which just says, when you turn to the page, that “African-Americans increasingly began to control big-city governments.” But there wasn’t a larger discussion of race. Where do you think Trump stands on racial issues?
When I wrote the book, I was interested, so I actually looked at things. I read a great deal about the Mar-a-Lago project, and I was shocked that the people who opposed that on cultural and social grounds were largely anti-Semitic. Trump had already announced that he was not going to discriminate against Jews and Mexicans and other people. He said, “I want wealthy people.” I went to Palm Beach and talked to wealthy Jewish donors and Cubans, and they said the same thing to me—“He likes rich people. He doesn’t care what you look like.”
Egalitarian, yeah.
I don’t know what the driving force was, but I found that he was indifferent. And I think the same thing is true of blacks and Hispanics.
What did you think about him using birtherism as a way of discrediting Obama?
You mean when he was a private citizen? He dropped that.
Well, what do you think about it?
I think it was absurd. I think it was demonstrable that Obama was born in the United States. The only ambiguity was that two things gave rise to the conspiracy theorists. One was—and I think this is a hundred-per-cent accurate—an advertising group that worked in concert with his publisher put on a booklet that Obama was born in Kenya. That gave third-world cachet to “Dreams from My Father.” And he didn’t look at it or didn’t change it. [In 1991, four years before Obama’s first book was published, his literary agency incorrectly stated on a client list that Obama was born in Kenya.] And he left as a young kid and went to Indonesia and applied when he came back as a Fulbright Fellow, and I don’t know if this is substantiated or just rumor, but he probably was given dual citizenship. [The claim that Obama was a Fulbright Fellow from Indonesia, and therefore had Indonesian citizenship, originated in a hoax e-mail, from April 1, 2009, and has been discredited.]
Rumors are fine.
Yeah. While in Indonesia. What I am getting at is, here you have a guy named Barack Obama, who grew up in Hawaii, and there were indications in his past that there was ambiguity.
You don’t think Trump was using it as a racially—
No, no, I think Trump was doing what Trump does, which is trying to sensationalize it. I don’t think it was racial. I think it was political.
You write, “Trump picked his targets carefully. His epithets even more carefully.” On the other hand, you have him making fun of Mika Brzezinski’s looks or saying that Ted Cruz’s dad had a role in the J.F.K. assassination.
I mentioned how that was crude in the book.
O.K., so do we think he picks his targets carefully, or maybe not?
If you go back and look at that, I mean carefully calibrated in a political sense. That’s my point. Not that it was careful in the sense of being humane or sympathetic. By that I mean, there were elements in Ted Cruz’s personality that offended people. And he got Ted Cruz really angry, and Ted Cruz doesn’t come across well.
Right, if someone accused your dad of killing J.F.K., or said that your wife was unattractive, you might get a little—
I think so. But if you go back and look at the worst tweets, they are retaliatory.
What he does is he waits like a coiled cobra until people attack him, and then he attacks them in a much cruder, blunter fashion. And he has an uncanny ability to pick people that have attacked him, whether it’s Rosie O’Donnell, Megyn Kelly—there were elements in all those people’s careers that were starting to bother people, and Trump sensed that out. I don’t think he would have gotten away with taking on other people that were completely beloved. Colin Kaepernick. People were getting tired of him, so he took him on. All that stuff was calibrated. Trump was replying and understood public sympathy would be at least fifty-fifty, if not in his favor.
No, I mean, if you are going to attack a woman as ugly you want to make sure you at least have public sympathy on your side.
I think so. There are certain women that may be homely.
Voir également:
Book paints Trump as tragic hero
Robert Brehl
The Catholic register
March 26, 2019
In a new book, The Case for Trump, scholarly classicist Victor Davis Hanson paints the U.S. president as a tragic hero like Achilles or Ajax from classic Greek literature.
“What makes such men and women both tragic and heroic is their knowledge that the natural expression of their personas can lead only to their own destruction or ostracism from an advancing civilization that they seek to protect. And yet they willingly accept the challenge to be of service,” Hanson writes.
“Yet for a variety of reasons, both personal and civic, their characters not only should not be altered, but could not be, even if the tragic hero wished to change. … In the classical tragic sense, Trump likely will end in one of two fashions, both not particularly good: either spectacular but unacknowledged accomplishments followed by ostracism … or, less likely, a single term due to the eventual embarrassment of his beneficiaries.”
Donald Trump, with metaphorical sword and shield in hand, slaying 21st century dragons like illegal immigrants or foreign despots threatening America; all the while, his selfless bravery misunderstood. It’s quite an image.
But it would be wrong to swiftly dismiss Hanson’s ideas and his book, especially by those opposed to the president and his policies. Hanson himself calls Trump “flawed,” but his presidency exemplary.
Hanson is a retired classics professor from California State University, Fresno, and senior fellow in military history at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and he has written two dozen books on topics ranging from the ancient world to the Second World War. He lives on a working farm in a multiracial, rural area in the interior of California, southeast of San Francisco. He doesn’t live in an Ivory Tower.
He also uses his hometown of Selma as a classic example of why America elected Trump. Once prosperous with family-run farms and food-processing plants and other manufacturing jobs, now most jobs are gone, unemployment high, crime and drug abuse commonplace. “In 1970, we did not have keys for our outside doors; in 2018, I have six guard dogs,” he writes.
While he is a conservative with an upfront agenda, his critics come from the left and the right. One of the nastiest attacks upon Hanson comes from a Republican who worked on Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign and calls him a “Nazi sympathizer,” “racist enabler” and a “treasonous sophist.” A liberal writer says it’s oxymoronic to call Hanson a “pro-Trump intellectual.”
If his ideas are ticking off both ends of the spectrum, they must have some merit, or, at the very least, be interesting.
In defending his book, Hanson’s tone is civil. He tells stories from antiquity to make a point; or he acknowledges that Trump is a blowhard like the character Rodney Dangerfield played in the movie Caddyshack. But that doesn’t mean Trump’s policies aren’t working, he says. When one defends a position with reasoned thought, instead of rants and personal attacks like so many Trump supporters and detractors, it’s a welcome change.
Some of Hanson’s observations are disagreeable, others are worthy of pointing out and giving Trump his due.
For example, Trump’s stand towards China and its murky trade practices is a reprieve from the appeasement of recent years. His support of the Catholic and Jewish faiths is also admirable.
Ultimately, though, The Case for Trump crumbles on two fundamental points.
It is disingenuous to separate the man from the presidency, but Hanson does. “Trump’s own uncouthness,” he writes, “was in its own manner contextualized by his supporters as a long overdue pushback to the elite disdain and indeed hatred shown them.”
Hanson also points out character flaws in former presidents as somehow a reason to hand Trump a “get-out-of-jail-free-card” for his extracurricular activities with hookers and porn stars.
“It doesn’t mean Donald Trump is a saint,” Hanson said during a recorded book tour event, “but he’s not an aberration either.”
My mother often said “two wrongs don’t make a right” and that applies here, along with Trump’s penchant to surround himself with hucksters, grifters, con men, liars and felons. Then there are the relentless and often vicious personal tweets and attacks on the Constitution.
Sorry, but these character cancers cannot be ignored simply because one likes Trump’s tax cuts and deregulation that may or may not have boosted economic growth.
Besides, Hanson doesn’t make the case — with hard facts — that Trump’s policies are actually working. Has picking on allies like Canada really helped Wisconsin dairy farmers? Has he really tamed Kim Jong Un and his nuclear aspirations? Have Trump policies really boosted growth more than simply the cyclical nature of the economy itself? The list goes on and on.
Trump opponents probably won’t read the book, but it’s not your regular right-wing diatribe camouflaged as a book. It’s readable and, at times, highly entertaining in how he skewers Trump’s adversaries.
But, in the end, the book can’t make a case that electing a status quo disruptor like Donald Trump is any more than a Pyrrhic victory in the classical tragic sense.
Voir de même:
That clattering noise you’ve been hearing for years is the sound of previous U.S. presidents, from Bill Clinton to George W. Bush to Barack Obama, kicking cans down the road for someone else to pick up. Now, a heavyset older man with orange hair has set about collecting them — not to recycle for another president, but to ensure no future U.S. leader will trip over them.
Critics describe President Donald Trump’s foreign policy as a muddled, unpredictable collection of impulses, with the one organizing principle being the coddling of like-minded, ruthless dictators. But there is, in fact, a defining diplomatic strategy: He is cleaning up the messes left by his predecessors.
Trump, regularly derided as the most irresponsible of presidents, is actually taking ownership of the most terrifying problems the country faces and trying to solve them in a direct way that his recent predecessors avoided.
Trump is actually taking ownership of the most terrifying problems the country faces and trying to solve them in a direct way that his recent predecessors avoided.
With respect to Iran, China, North Korea and even Russia, Trump is taking tough stances. He is getting cozy with dictators because the man who considers himself an artist of the deal understands that those are the people he must strike bargains with.
Under Trump, China has finally been recognized as a long-term strategic opponent and potential enemy, rather than a nation of billions yearning for democracy. Capitalism has indeed taken hold in China — though without economic nor political liberalization. Instead, authoritarian China is using its newfound riches to expand its economic, political and military influence.
Since Clinton permanently normalized trade relations with China in 2000, American manufacturing has relocated to China for its cheap labor, the Chinese have consistently cheated on trade and the annual U.S. trade deficit with China has soared from $83 billion to a record $419 billion in 2018. Recognizing that placating China and quietly nudging it to play fair is not going to work; Trump has taken a more direct approach and assessed tariffs on Chinese imports while threatening even more. The Chinese are now at the table, talking, and Washington may at last secure a more equitable deal.
Meanwhile, North Korea’s nuclear program has been progressing steadily since 1994 when Clinton, instead of risking military confrontation to put a stop to the nascent effort, acquiesced to a deal negotiated by President Jimmy Carter. That agreement gave the Kim family the room it needed to develop nuclear weapons. Bush’s six-party talks from 2003 to 2008 failed to stem North Korea’s ambitions, and the country continued to build bombs during Obama’s even more passive “strategic patience” approach.
After two and a half decades of Washington dithering, by 2017 the North Koreans were on the cusp of being able to load their bombs on missiles that could reach the continental United States. So Trump decided to try something different.
First, he mocked North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un and menaced him with U.S. gunboats. Then, having made it clear he had no problem getting dirty, he started meeting with Kim directly.
Trump likely cannot succeed in disarming Kim of his weapons by disarming him personally. The North Korean dictator is probably just buying more time. But Trump is at least taking an unconventional approach rather than re-enacting the failures of the past.
Trump, however, has decided a nuclear Iran is not acceptable — neither now nor 12 years from now. He withdrew from the deal and re-invoked sanctions in the hope that the Iranians will renegotiate the terms that legally could have put them on a path toward nuclear weapons.
Of course, this path too has drawbacks — Iran responded by claiming it will increase its uranium enrichment. But Trump has reasoned the time to get tough with Iran is now, not in a dozen years when they are stronger and have perfected technologies related to nuclear weapons.
U.S. policy toward Russia pre-Trump had also been marked by years of complacency — remember Russian President Vladimir Putin convincing Bush there was a soul behind his eyes? During the 2012 presidential campaign, Obama dismissed Republican nominee Mitt Romney’s concerns about Russia with a quip about the 1980s wanting its foreign policy back. Obama was also caught on an open mic whispering to Russia’s then-President Dmitri Medvedev that he’d have more “flexibility” after the election.
In key ways, the White House has been strengthening U.S. posture toward Russia — even if Trump seems to be buddying up to Putin. The Brookings Institution noted this, asserting, “The Trump administration’s policy actions often seem at odds with the president’s rhetoric,” and listing a series of Trump policy actions toward Russia.
Trump’s administration, Foreign Policy explained, “has held a tough line on Russia, building on his predecessor’s policies by layering on further sanctions, expelling dozens of Russian diplomats, and providing lethal weapons support to Ukraine — a step that former President Barack Obama had been unwilling to take.”
Trump’s demand that European nations pay their North Atlantic Treaty Organization obligations — another can regularly kicked down the road — might seem hostile toward long-time allies, but ensures they have skin in the game when it comes to confronting Russia.
The Washington establishment, so used to conventional ways, is aghast. But business as usual has strengthened our enemies. Trump’s iconoclasm is worth a try.
Les semaines se suivent et se ressemblent dans la grande presse française.
Le Président américain Donald Trump est présenté comme un abruti erratique guidé par ses impulsions, ignorant et dangereux.
Bien que le rapport Mueller ait montré qu’il n’y a jamais eu aucune «collusion» entre Trump et la Russie, les journalistes français en leur grande majorité se refusent à le dire explicitement et à reconnaître qu’ils ont pratiqué la désinformation à dose intensive pendant deux ans.
Les résultats obtenus par Trump, tant sur le plan intérieur que sur le plan extérieur, sont à peine notés et ne le sont parfois pas du tout. Quand ils le sont, le nom de Trump est le plus souvent omis, comme si le citer positivement, ne serait-ce qu’une seule fois, était absolument impensable.
Ce n’est, en soi, pas grave: Trump gouverne sans se préoccuper de ce que diront des journalistes français. Cela contribue néanmoins à entraver la compréhension des choses de tous ceux qui ne s’informeraient que grâce à la presse française, et nombre de gens seront dès lors surpris lorsque Trump sera réélu en novembre 2020 (car tout l’indique: il sera réélu).
On leur expliquera sans doute que c’est parce que le peuple américain est lui-même ignorant et dangereux.
Cela contribue aussi à empêcher de voir que l’action et les idées de Trump ont un impact beaucoup plus vaste, et qui excède de beaucoup les frontières des États-Unis.
J’ai écrit en 2017 un premier livre sur l’action et les idées de Trump et j’y disais que la révolution Trump venait de commencer.
Depuis, la révolution Trump suit son cours, aux États-Unis et sur le reste de la planète.
J’ai écrit en 2018 un deuxième livre expliquant la doctrine Trump («Ce que veut Trump»).
Je publierai un troisième livre en 2020 qui portera sur l’ère Trump. Car nous sommes dans l’ère Trump.
La politique économique menée par Donald Trump – qui ajoute à une forte baisse des impôts et à une déréglementation radicale, un refus de se soumettre aux lubies écologistes et un nationalisme économique basé sur la renégociation de tous les accords internationaux antécédemment négociés et sur la création de rapports de force – porte ses fruits et mène divers gouvernements sur la planète à adopter des mesures allant dans la même direction.
Sa politique intérieure – basée sur un retour à une immigration strictement contrôlée et sur la réaffirmation des valeurs qui fondent la civilisation occidentale – porte, elle aussi, ses fruits, même si elle est, dans plusieurs États du pays, entravée par les décisions délétères de la gauche américaine qui entend protéger les immigrants illégaux (criminels compris).
Plusieurs gouvernements sur la planète adoptent des mesures allant dans le même sens.
La façon de Trump d’affronter la gauche et les médias désinformateurs contribue à donner à d’autres dirigeants conservateurs le courage d’affronter la gauche et les médias désinformateurs d’une même façon.
La politique étrangère menée par Donald Trump change le monde.
Au Proche-Orient, Donald Trump conduit une asphyxie du régime iranien qui progresse et, n’en déplaise à ceux qui refusent de le voir, diminue la dangerosité de celui-ci.
Il met en place un rapprochement entre les pays du monde arabe sunnite et Israël qui modifie profondément la donne régionale et, n’en déplaise là encore à ceux qui refusent de le voir, fait apparaître pour la première fois des espoirs réels qu’émerge une paix durable.
L’anéantissement de l’État islamique permet de juguler le terrorisme islamique sur les cinq continents.
L’action d’endiguement de la Chine communiste déstabilise celle-ci et freine les ambitions hégémoniques nourries par Xi Jinping. La Corée du Nord n’est plus une menace pour la Corée du Sud et le Japon.
L’arrivée au pouvoir de Jaïr Bolsonaro au Brésil est au cœur d’un changement majeur dans toute l’Amérique latine.
En Europe, Trump ne cesse d’appuyer les dirigeants «populistes» d’Europe centrale contre les orientations anti-démocratiques et islamophiles de l’Union européenne, et la perspective d’une Europe des nations souveraines fait son chemin.
L’ère Trump est en son aurore. La grande presse du monde qui parle anglais le dit explicitement. Ne comptez pas sur la grande presse française pour vous le dire!
Voir encore:
Trump ne voulait pas du rôle de policier mondial, mais il se trouve obligé de l’assumer, puisqu’il n’y a aucune puissance capable de remplacer les États-Unis dans ce domaine-clé.
C’est l’Amérique, pas l’ONU impotente et corrompue, qui maintient les routes commerciales, et le monde entier en profite, gratuitement – comme si cela allait de soi. Or, non seulement, cela ne va pas de soi, mais beaucoup d’obligés geignent contre un pseudo «impérialisme américain», sans jamais se remettre en question.
Si l’Amérique trouve certes son compte dans ce service planétaire assuré à grands frais par sa flotte et ses services de surveillance, ce n’est pas elle qui en a le plus besoin, mais ses alliés qui, eux, ne sont pas sevrés du brut que leur vend l’OPEP.
C’est aussi l’Amérique qui en assume les risques comme on vient de voir avec la descente en flammes d’un drone de 100 millions de dollars, heureusement sans pilote, qui croisait dans l’espace international et non iranien. Cela, après des attaques iraniennes, sans raison non plus, sur des pétroliers norvégien et japonais.
Alors, «l’opinion internationale» (c’est-à-dire la gauche mondialiste et ses médias désinformateurs) se dit «soulagée» que Trump n’ait pas poursuivi «son escalade», mais tous ces trolls qui renversent ignominieusement les responsabilités, déplorent à présent son «manque de stratégie».
Qu’est-ce que des anti-américains et anti-militaristes primaires peuvent comprendre aux questions de stratégie avec leur logiciel bloqué?
La véritable question est: pourquoi l’ayatollah Khamenei décide-t-il maintenant de provoquer Trump?
Les sanctions asphyxient son économie de rente, d’autant que l’aide concoctée par les Européens cupides, hypocrites et lâches, tarde à se matérialiser.
Les dirigeants de l’UE, qui marchent au pas de l’oie avec Merkel, entretiennent une cécité criminelle vis-à-vis de l’Iran.
Sous Merkel, l’Allemagne oublie qu’elle doit tout aux États-Unis. Elle remercie par une politique teigneuse de tarifs douaniers. Elle se targue cyniquement d’être la plus mauvaise payeuse de l’OTAN, achète le gaz de la Russie et refuse le gaz américain. Et voici qu’elle pactise avec les ayatollahs contre les USA.
L’Allemagne et l’UE illustrent tout ce qui est inacceptable pour Trump: l’archétype de l’allié félon aux prétentions disproportionnées au vu de la réalité. Et elles sont coupables de négligence inadmissible envers notre sécurité collective en dissimulant le danger pour l’Occident qu’est la République islamique, nullement différente (dans ses visées hégémoniques et ses méthodes internes brutales) de l’État islamique que l’Iran aidait et que Trump a éradiqué.
L’Iran n’a jamais cessé l’enrichissement d’uranium et continue d’alimenter le terrorisme islamique. Les sanctions ne sont que justice et, malgré leur dureté renforcée, Trump espère des Iraniens éclairés un énième et décisif soulèvement contre ses dirigeants. Car il n’en a qu’après ce régime meurtrier et sympathise avec les Iraniens, mais il leur rappelle qu’il ne peut intervenir militairement, sauf attaque avec victimes américaines, auquel cas la réponse serait foudroyante. Loin de vouloir la guerre, il veut «redonner à l’Iran sa grandeur».
Khamenei sait qu’à la Maison Blanche, Trump s’est entouré volontairement de conseillers aux vues opposées qui représentent chacun une partie de la base de Trump et qui constituent un «brain-trust». Il table sur le fait que Trump est tenu par l’impératif de sa réélection. Les « deux côtés de l’équation », comme Trump les appelle, sont parfaitement honorables et défendent des arguments que l’on ne peut négliger.
Pour le moment, le côté «colombe» exulte, les isolationnistes, les libertariens, et toute la mouvance du «The American Conservative».
Les «faucons» comprennent que l’heure de l’action militaire n’est pas venue. Mais ce serait mal connaître Trump que de penser qu’il ne va pas trouver le moyen de faire payer aux criminels de Téhéran leurs méfaits.
Il doit, seul, parvenir à empêcher les ayatollahs d’accéder au nucléaire et faire cesser leur financement du terrorisme, sans engager de troupes et sans dépenser des milliards.
C’est une tâche de police mondiale à laquelle les Européens devraient participer.
La stratégie de Trump, c’est de voir venir, de ne pas dévoiler son jeu et de se tenir prêt à frapper.
Ceux qui lui font confiance ne sont pas inquiets et savourent un divertissement politique quotidien de qualité.
Voir encore:
How can evangelicals support Donald Trump?
That question continues to befuddle and exasperate liberals. How, they wonder, can a man who is twice divorced, a serial liar, a shameless boaster (including about alleged sexual assault) and an unrepentant xenophobe earn the enthusiastic backing of so many devout Christians? About 80% of evangelicals voted for Trump in 2016; according to a recent poll, almost 70% of white evangelicals approve of how he has handled the presidency – far more than any other religious group.
To most Democrats, such support seems a case of blatant hypocrisy and political cynicism. Since Trump is delivering on matters such as abortion, the supreme court and moving the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, conservative Christians are evidently willing to overlook the president’s moral failings. In embracing such a one-dimensional explanation, however, liberals risk falling into the same trap as they did in 2016, when their scorn for evangelicals fed evangelicals’ anger and resentment, contributing to Trump’s huge margin among this group.
Bill Maher fell into this trap during a biting six-minute polemic he delivered on his television show in early March. Evangelicals, he said, “needed to solve this little problem” – they want to support a Republican president, but this particular one “happens to be the least Christian person ever”. “How to square the circle?” he asked. “Say that Trump is like King Cyrus.” According to Isaiah 45, God used the non-believer Cyrus as a vessel for his will; many evangelicals today believe that God is similarly using the less-than-perfect Trump to achieve Christian aims.
But Trump isn’t a vessel for God’s will, Maher said, and Cyrus “wasn’t a fat, orange-haired, conscience-less scumbag”. Trump’s supporters “don’t care”, he ventured, because “that’s religion. The more it doesn’t make sense the better, because it proves your faith.” Maher portrayed evangelical Christians as a dim-witted group willing to make the most ludicrous theological leaps to advance their agenda.
As I watched, I tried to imagine how evangelicals would view this routine. I think they would see a secular elitist eager to assert what he considers his superior intelligence. They would certainly sense his contempt for the many millions of Americans who believe fervently in God, revere the Bible and see Trump as representing their interests. Maher’s diatribe reminded me of a pro-Trump acquaintance from Ohio who now lives in Manhattan and who says that New York liberals are among the most intolerant people he has ever met.
Liberals have good cause to decry the ideology of conservative Christians, given their relentless assault on abortion rights, same-sex marriage, transgender rights and climate science. But the disdain for Christians common among the credentialed class can only add to the sense of alienation and marginalization among evangelicals.
Many evangelicals feel themselves to be under siege. In a 2016 survey, 41% said it was becoming more difficult to be an evangelical. And many conservative Christians see the national news media as unrelievedly hostile to them.
Most media coverage of evangelicals falls into a few predictable categories. One is the exotic and titillating – stories of ministers who come out as transgender, or stories of evangelical sexual hypocrisies. Another favorite subject is progressive evangelicals who challenge the Christian establishment.
During the 2016 campaign, a prevailing theme in the press was “the end of white Christian America”, as the title of a much-quoted book by pollster Robert P Jones put it. In an article in the Atlantic that July, Jones noted that the declining number of white Christians can help explain their profound anxiety. But, he warned, relying on “supermajorities” of white Christians to offset broader demographic changes was a losing strategy – one that “sealed the fate of the Romney campaign in 2012 and will likely set the GOP back as it turns to the task of reclaiming the White House in 2016”. That, of course, proved flatly wrong.
In a similar vein, the New York Times ran a piece three weeks before the election describing how the traditional evangelical bloc was splintering, with young people and women voters fleeing the Republican party. “While most of the religious right’s aging old guard has chosen to stand by Mr Trump,” the Times stated, “its judgment and authority are being challenged by an increasingly assertive crop of younger leaders, minorities and women.”
Though many young, black and female evangelicals did reject Trump, the article underestimated his bedrock of evangelical support. In the end, the share of white, born-again Christians in the electorate held steady at about 25 – the same as in 2008 and 2012 – and they gave a greater proportion of their vote to Trump than that recorded for any prior candidate.
There are of course exceptions to such miscast coverage. The Washington Post, with three religion reporters, covers American evangelicalism more fully than most news organizations. And the Times’ Nicholas Kristof, who grew up among evangelicals in rural Oregon, makes periodic efforts to explain their world. In 2016, he wrote a column criticizing the pervasive discrimination toward Christians in liberal circles. He quoted Jonathan Walton, a black evangelical and professor of Christian morals at Harvard, who compared the common condescension toward evangelicals to that directed at racial minorities, with both seen as “politically unsophisticated, lacking education, angry, bitter, emotional, poor”.
Strangely, the group most overlooked by the press is the people in the pews. It would be refreshing for more reporters to travel through the Bible belt and talk to ordinary churchgoers about their faith and values, hopes and struggles. Such reporting would no doubt show that the world of American Christianity is far more varied and complex than is generally thought. It would reveal, for instance, a subtle but important distinction between the Christian right and evangelicals in general, who tend to be less political (though still largely conservative).
This kind of deep reporting would probably also highlight the enduring power of a key tenet of the founder of Protestantism. “Faith, not works,” was Martin Luther’s watchword. In his view, it is faith in Christ that truly matters. If one believes in Christ, then one will feel driven to do good works, but such works are always secondary. Trump’s own misdeeds are thus not central; what he stands for – the defense of Christian interests and values – is.
Luther also preached the doctrine of original sin, which holds that all humans are tainted by Adam’s transgression in the Garden of Eden and so remain innately prone to pride, anger, lust, vengeance and other failings. Many evangelicals have themselves struggled with divorce, broken families, addiction and abuse. We are thus all sinners – the president included.
I don’t expect the media’s dismissive attitude toward evangelicalism to abate anytime soon. A journalist at a top US news organization told me that she and other evangelicals feel the need to “fly under the radar” because of the unwelcoming attitude toward them.
I can hear the reactions of some readers to this column: Enough! Enough trying to understand a group that helped put such a noxious man in the White House. Yet such a reaction is both ungenerous and shortsighted. Liberals take pride in their empathy for “the other” and their efforts to understand the perspective of groups different from themselves. They should apply that principle to evangelicals. If liberals continue to scoff, they risk reinforcing the rage of evangelicals – and their support for Trump.
Voir par ailleurs:
De retour de Sicile, Alexandre del Valle revient sur l’affaire du bateau de l’ONG pro-migrants Sea Watch qui avait « secouru » 53 clandestins dans les eaux internationales au large de la Libye, mi-juin et dont le capitaine fait la une des journaux depuis que son navire a risqué, dans la nuit du 28 juin, d’écraser une vedette de la Guardia della Finanza qui l’empêchait d’accoster.
Arrêtée par la police italienne, le capitaine du bateau Sea Watch, CarolaRackete, semble être devenue l’héroïne de toute une gauche européenne dont l’activisme humanitaire et victimiste pro-migrants sert en réalité une idéologie anti-nationale, anti-frontières et viscéralement hostile à la civilisation européenne-occidentale assimilée au Mal et dont les « fautes » passées et présentes ne pourraient être expiées qu’en acceptant l’auto-submersion migratoire et islamique…
La stratégie culpabilisatrice et victimaire des ONG / lobbies pro-Migrants
Rappelons que le Sea-Watch 3, navire de 600 tonnes battant pavillon hollandais et cofinancé par les fonds de George Soros et autres riches contributeurs, a non seulement « récupéré » des migrants illégaux acheminés par des passeurs nord-africains, ce qui est en soi un viol de la loi, mais a délibérément forcé le blocus des eaux territoriales italiennes, donc violé la souveraineté de ce pays. De ce fait, son capitaine, l’Allemande Carola Rackete, va être présentée à un juge en début de semaine, à Agrigente, dans le sud de la Sicile, puis répondra des faits « d’aide à l’immigration clandestine » (punie de prison par la loi italienne et le « décret-sécurité » (decreto-sicurezza) du gouvernement / Ligue (5 étoiles de Rome), puis de « résistance à un bateau de guerre ». Quant aux 42 migrants clandestins de la Sea Watch 3 débarqués après l’arrestation de la capitaine-activiste allemande (11 migrants plus « vulnérables » avaient déjà été débarqués légalement), ils ont fini par débarquer à Lampedusa après que la France, l’Allemagne, le Portugal, le Luxembourg et la Finlande ont accepté un plan de répartition visant à en accueillir chacun quelques-uns.
Pendant ce temps, des petites embarcations moins identifiables et qui ne font pas la une des médias continuent d’arriver chaque jour à Lampedusa et au sud d’Agrigente (200 ces derniers jours). Et d’autres navires affrétés par des ONG pro-migrants continuent de défier les autorités italiennes ou d’autres pays (Malte, Espagne, Grèce, etc.) dans l’indifférence générale et en violation banalisée de la loi et du principe de protection des frontières. On peut citer par exemple l’ONG espagnole Proactiva open arms, qui patrouille au large de la Libye malgré la menace d’une amende de 200 000 à 900 000 euros brandie par les autorités espagnoles. « Si je dois payer par la prison ou par une amende le fait de sauver les vies de quelques personnes, je le ferais », a d’ailleurs assuré Oscar Camps, fondateur de l’ONG. Utilisant la même rhétorique de « résistance » et de « désobéissance civile » face à une autorité étatique « répressive », Carola Rackette expliquait elle aussi au Spiegel, quelques jours seulement avant d’accoster à Lampedusa : « Si nous ne sommes pas acquittés par un tribunal, nous le serons dans les livres d’histoire. » Niente di meno !
Mon obligation morale est d’aider les gens qui n’ont pas bénéficié des mêmes conditions que moi.
La stratégie d’intimidation psychologique des ONG et lobbies subversifs pro-migrants consiste en fait à adopter une rhétorique victimaire et hautement culpabilisatrice qui a pour but de faire passer pour des horribles racistes / fascistes les défenseurs des frontières et des lois sécuritaires pourtant démocratiquement adoptées. Carola Rackete a ainsi déclaré au journal italien La Repubblica : « J’ai la peau blanche, j’ai grandi dans un pays riche, j’ai le bon passeport, j’ai pu faire trois universités différentes et j’ai fini mes études à 23 ans. Mon obligation morale est d’aider les gens qui n’ont pas bénéficié des mêmes conditions que moi (…). Les pauvres, ils ne se sentent pas bienvenus, imaginez leur souffrance (…), j’ai voulu accoster de force car beaucoup risquaient de se suicider sur la bateau et étaient en danger depuis 17 jours d’immobilisation ».
Très fier de lui et de son « coup », Chris Grodotzki, le président de l’ONG Sea Watch, se réjouit que « dans toute l’Europe, Carole est devenue un symbole. Nous n’avons jamais reçu autant de dons »,indiquant qu’en Italie une cagnotte a recueilli dimanche 400 000 euros. Samedi, en Allemagne, deux stars de la télévision, Jan Böhmermann et Klaas Heufer-Umlauf, ont lancé quant à eux une cagnotte et 500 000 euros ont été récoltés en moins de vingt-quatre heures.En fait, l’aide aux migrants clandestins est une activité lucrative pour les ONG, et pas seulement pour les passeurs et les établissements payés pour offrir le gîte et l’accueil avec les deniers publics.
Quand la gauche italienne et européenne appelle à violer les lois des Etats souverains
D’après Matteo Salvini, Carola Rackete serait une « criminelle » qui aurait tenté de « tuer des membres des forces de l’ordre italienne ». Il est vrai que la vedette de la Guarda della Finanza, (12 mètres), très légère, n’aurait pas résisté au choc du navire de la Sea Watch (600 tonnes) si elle ne s’était pas retirée. Inculpée par le procureur d’Agrigente, la capitaine de la Sea Watch risque jusqu’à dix ans de prison pour « résistance ou violence envers un navire de guerre ». En fait, bien moins que dans de nombreux autres pays du monde, y compris démocratiques comme l’Australie, les Etats-Unis ou la Hongrie. Le procureur d’Agrigente, Luigi Patronaggio, qui est pourtant connu pour ne pas être du tout favorable à la Ligue de Matteo Salvini, a d’ailleurs qualifié le geste de Carola Rackete de « violence inadmissible » et placé la capitaine du navire humanitaire aux « arrêts domiciliaires » (contrôle judiciaire avec assignation à résidence), avant le lancement d’une procédure de flagrant délit. L’intéressée a répondu via le Corriere della Sera, en affirmant que « ce n’était pas un acte de violence, seulement de désobéissance ».
Depuis, de Rome à Berlin, et au sein de toute la gauche et l’extrême-gauche européenne, « Carola » est devenue une nouvelle « héroïne de la désobéissance civile », le concept clef de la gauche marxiste ou libertaire pour justifier moralement le fait de bafouer délibérément les règles des Etats et de violer les lois démocratiques qui font obstacle à leur idéologie anti-nationale. Et la désinformation médiatique consiste justement à faire passer l’appui que Carola Rackete a reçu – de la part de stars de TV, de politiques bien-pensants et de lobbies pro-migrants chouchoutés par les médias – pour un « soutien de l’Opinion publique ».En Allemagne, du président de l’Église évangélique, Heinrich Bedford-Strohm, au PDG de Siemens, Joe Kaeser, de nombreuses voix se sont élevées pour prendre sa défense comme si elle était une nouvelle Pasionaria « antifasciste / antinazie », 90 ans plus tard…
Dans certains cas, vous ne pouvez pas respecter les lois et vous pouvez même au contraire, dans des cas de nécessité, enfreindre les lois.
En Italie, outre la figure de Leo Luca Orlando, le maire de Palerme, qui accorde régulièrement la « citoyenneté d’honneur » de sa ville aux dirigeants d’ONG pro-migrants et qui assimile les « cartes de séjours » et contrôles aux frontières à des « instruments de torture », l’ensemble de la gauche (hors le parti 5 étoiles allié de la Ligue), et surtout le parti démocrate, (PD), jouent cette carte de « l’illégalité légitime » et appuie les ONG anti-frontières. « Par nécessité, vous pouvez enfreindre la loi », ont déclaré aux membres de la Sea Watch les députés de gauche montés à bord du bateau Sea Watch 3 avant l’arrestation de Carole Rackete. Premier à être monté à bord du Sea Watch 3, l’élu du PD Graziano Delrio ose lancer : « Dans certains cas, vous ne pouvez pas respecter les lois et vous pouvez même au contraire, dans des cas de nécessité, enfreindre les lois. »
Détail stupéfiant, les représentants du PD venus manifester leur solidarité avec la capitaine (étrangère) d’un navire (étranger) faisant le travail de passeurs / trafiquants d’êtres humains, n’ont pas même condamné ou regretté le fait que la « militante humanitaire Carole » a failli tuer les policiers de la vedette de la Guardia di Finanza qui bloquait le Sea Watch 3. Estimant qu’il ne pouvait manquer ce « coup médiatique » afin de complaire aux lobbies et médias immigrationnistes dominant, l’ex-Premier ministre (PD) Matteo Renzi était lui aussi sur le pont du Sea Watch 3 lorsque Carola Rackete a décidé de forcer le blocus. Avec lui, d’autres parlementaires de gauche (Matteo Orfini, Davide Faraone, Nicola Fratoianni et Riccardo Magi) ont carrément « béni » cette action illégale et violente qui a pourtant mis en danger les membres des forces de leur propre pays.
Étaient également venus applaudir la capitaine allemande et son action illégale : le curé de Lampedusa, Don Carmelo La Magra ; l’ancien maire de l’île Giusi Nicolini, le médecin et député européen Pietro Bartolo, et le secrétaire local du parti PD Peppino Palmeri, lequel a déclaré pompeusement que « l’humanité a gagné, (…). Je pense que oui, nous devons être unis dans une fraternité universelle »… Plutôt que de respecter la légalité des lois approuvées démocratiquement par le Parlement de leur propre pays dont ils sont élus, ces représentants de la gauche ont accusé le gouvernement Ligue / 5 étoiles d’avoir « laissé au milieu de la mer pendant 16 jours un bateau qui avait besoin d’un refuge » (Matteo Orfini), alors qu’en réalité, sur les 53 migrants illégaux au départ présents sur le Sea Watch 3, onze avaient été débarqués en Italie en raison de leur état vulnérable, les autres étant nourris et auscultés par des médecins envoyés par l’Etat italien.
L’alliance immigrationniste entre la gauche anti-nationale ; l’Eglise catholique et le grand Capital !
Dès qu’elle est descendue du navire accompagnée des policiers italiens venus l’arrêter, Carola Rackete a été saluée par les ovations d’un groupe d’activistes ainsi que par le curé de la paroisse de Lampedusa, Carmelo La Magra, lequel dormait dans le cimetière de sa paroisse depuis une semaine « en signe de solidarité ». Rivalisant avec les plus virulents pro-migrants d’extrême-gauche, le curé de Lampedusa a exulté : « Noël vient quand il arrive. Bienvenue aux migrants à Porto Salvo di Lampedusa. » Le prêtre de l’église de San Gerlando di Lampedusa s’est ainsi joint à l’appel de l’Action catholique italienne « à permettre le débarquement immédiat des 42 personnes à bord du Sea Watch ».
Au début du mois de mai dernier, lors de son voyage en Bulgarie, le Pape avait donné le ton et répondu ainsi à la politique des « ports fermés » de Matteo Salvini : « Ne fermez pas les portes à ceux qui frappent. Le monde des migrants et des réfugiés est la croix de l’humanité. » Preuve que les curés pro-migrants et l’Église catholique de plus en plus immigrationniste sont, comme la gauche anti-nationale post-ouvrière, totalement déconnectés des peuples et de leurs ouailles : rappelons qu’à Lampedusa la Ligue de Salvini est arrivée en tête avec 45 % des voix aux dernières élections européennes ; que plus de 65 % des Italiens (catholiques) approuvent ses lois et actions visant à combattre l’immigration clandestine ; et que le Pape François, certes populaire auprès des médias quand il défend les migrants, exaspère de plus en plus et a même rendu antipapistes des millions d’Italiens qui se sentent trahis par un souverain Pontife qui semble préférer les musulmans aux chrétiens et les Africains aux Européens. A tort ou à raison d’ailleurs.
Il est vrai que la Sicile et en particulier Lampedusa sont plus que jamais en première ligne face à l’immigration clandestine : rien que pendant les deux dernières semaines durant lesquelles le Sea Watch est resté bloqué au large de l’île, Lampedusa a assisté impuissante, malgré la politique des « ports fermés » de Matteo Salvini et de son nouveau « décret sécurité », plus de 200 clandestins (majoritairement tunisiens et aucunement des « réfugiés » politiques syriens) acheminés par des barques de fortunes plus difficiles à repérer que les navires des ONG. Depuis des années, la ville est littéralement défigurée, l’arrivée de migrants entraînant des faits quotidiens de violences, d’agressions, de vols et destructions de commerces.
Nous sommes tous des personnes.
Malgré cela, le médiatique curé de Lampedusa, grand adepte du pape François, martèle qu’il faut « accueillir, protéger, promouvoir et intégrer les migrants et les réfugiés ». Dans une autre ville de Sicile, Noto, où nous nous sommes rendus le 27 juin dernier, une immense croix en bois a été construite à partir de morceaux d’une embarcation de migrants et a été carrément érigée dans l’entrée de la plus grande église du centre-ville. A Catania, ville très catholique-conservatrice et de droite – où se déroule chaque année début février la troisième plus grande fête chrétienne au monde, la Santa Agata – la cathédrale a été prise d’assauts par des sit-in pro-migrants en défense de Carola Rackete et de la Sea Watch.
Quant à Palerme, l’alliance entre l’Église catholique et le maire de la Ville, Leo Luca Orlando, chef de file de la lutte contre la politique migratoire de Matteo Salvini, est totale, alors même que Orlando est un anticlérical patenté à la fois islamophile et pro-LGBT. Sa dernière trouvaille a consisté à proposer d’éliminer le terme même de « migrant », puisque « nous sommes tous des personnes ». D’après lui, le terme « migrants » devrait être supprimé, tout comme la gauche a réussi à faire supprimer celui de « clandestin », remplacé dans le jargon journalistique par celui, trompeur, mais plus valorisant, de « migrant ». Cette manipulation sémantique visant à abolir la distinction migrant régulier / illégal est également très présente dans le pacte de Marrakech des Nations-unies.
Récemment, à l’occasion de la rupture du jeûne du ramadan, le médiatique maire palermitain s’est affiché en train de prier avec une assemblée de musulmans, consacrant même une « journée consacrée à l’islam » en rappelant le « glorieux passé arabo-islamique » de la Sicile (en réalité envahie et libérée deux siècles plus tard par les Normands). Orlando utilise lui aussi à merveille l’arme de la culpabilisation lorsqu’il ne cesse de justifier l’immigration illimitée au nom du fait que les Siciliens « ont eu eux aussi des grands-parents qui ont décidé d’aller vivre dans un autre pays en demandant à être considérés comme des personnes humaines ». Bref, « on est tous des migrants ». Une musique bien connue aussi en France.
A chaque nouvelle affaire de blocage de bateaux d’ONG pro-migrants par les autorités italiennes obéissant à la politique de la Ligue, le maire de Palerme se déclare prêt à accueillir des navires dans le port de Palerme. Lors de notre visite, le 26 juin dernier, Orlando nous a d’ailleurs remis une brochure consacrée à l’accueil des migrants, « chez eux chez nous ». Comme le Pape ou l’ex-maire de Lampedusa, Leoluca Orlando est depuis quelques années tellement obsédé par « l’impératif d’accueil » des migrants, alors que la Sicile connaît encore une grande pauvreté et un chômage de masse, qu’il suscite une réaction de rejet et d’exaspération, d’autant que de nombreuses initiatives en faveur des migrants sont financées par des citoyens italiens-siciliens hyper-taxés et précarisés.
Le 28 juin, lorsque nous avons parlé de la question migratoire au maire de la seconde ville de Sicile, Catania, Salvatore Pogliese, ex-membre d’Alleanza nazionale élu député européen et maire sous les couleurs de Forza Italia, celui-ci nous confiait qu’il jugeait absurdes et extrêmes les vues du maire de Palerme ou du curé de Lampedusa. Et il rappelait que lorsque des maires pro-migrants jouent aux « héros » en réclamant l’ouverture sans limites des ports pour accueillir les « réfugiés » du monde entier, ils mentent puisque l’ouverture des ports relève, comme en France, non pas des maires, mais de l’Etat central (ministères des Transports et de l’Intérieur).
L’alliance de la gauche et des multinationales
Une autre alliance de forces « progressistes » / pro-migrants n’a pas manqué de surprendre les analystes de la vie politique italienne, notamment à l’occasion de la Gay Pride, organisée à Milan le 28 juin, par le maire de gauche, Beppe Sala, champion de la « diversité » et des minorités en tout genre : l’alliance de la gauche et des multinationales et des Gafam. C’est ainsi que certains journaux italiens de droite ont relevé le fait que les sponsors de la Gay Pride, officiellement indiqués sur le site de l’événement – Google, Microsoft, eBay, Coca-Cola, PayPal, RedBull, Durex, Benetton, etc. – ont tenu et obtenu que soient associées à la cause des gays celle des migrants afin de « prendre en compte toutes les différences, pas seulement liées à l’identité et à l’orientation sexuelle (immigration, handicap, appartenance ethnique, etc.) ».
Les « migrants » illégaux et autres faux réfugiés secourus par les ONG immigrationnistes, adeptes des « ports ouverts », ont donc eu droit à un traitement de faveur et ont pu officiellement venir « exprimer toute sa solidarité avec le capitaine du navire (Sea Watch 3) Carola Rackete, avec les membres de l’équipage et avec toutes les personnes à bord », écrit sur Facebook « Ensemble sans murs », qui « participera avec enthousiasme au défilé de mode de Milan ». L’idéologie diversitaire est si puissante, et l’accueil des migrants est tellement devenu la « cause des causes » capable de surpasser les autres, qu’elle s’invite même chez les lobbies LGBT, pourtant la « minorité » la plus directement persécutée – avec les juifs – par l’islamisme.
Or, une grande majorité d’immigrés clandestins est de confession musulmane : Subsahariens, Erythréens, Soudanais, Égyptiens, Syriens, Turcs, Maghrébins ou Pakistanais et Afghans qui émigrent en masse dans la Vieille Europe de façon tant légale (regroupement familial, migrations économiques, visas étudiants, mineurs non-accompagnés…) qu’illégale.
Deux poids deux mesures
Pour bien comprendre « d’où parlent » les défenseurs des migrants clandestins qui ne cessent d’apostropher Victor Orban, Matteo Salvini ou encore le « diable en chef » Donald Trump pour leurs politiques de contrôle de l’immigration, il suffit de constater le deux poids deux mesures et l’indignation sélective de la gauche et de l’Église catholique qui dénoncent les « populistes européens xénophobes / islamophobes / racistes » mais très peu le néo-Sultan Erdogan et encore moins les pays d’Afrique, du Maghreb, d’Amérique latine ou d’Asie qui répriment extrêmement sévèrement et violemment l’immigration clandestine et / ou l’islamisme.
Deux exemples flagrants suffiront à s’en convaincre : l’ONU a récemment condamné « l’islamophobie » européenne et occidentale, notamment de la France et de l’Italie, mais pas les massacres de masse de musulmans en Chine ou en Inde. Ensuite, le 5 septembre 2018, lorsque la marine marocaine a fait tirer sur une embarcation de migrants clandestins, faisant un mort et un blessé grave, puis fait arrêter le capitaine espagnol du bateau, l’ONU n’a pas bronché. Pas plus dans de nombreux cas de mauvais traitements, persécutions de migrants subsahariens ou de chrétiens dans l’ensemble des pays d’Afrique du Nord et arabes.
Les Etats européens et les « militants » antifascistes hostiles aux « populistes » n’ont pas manifesté la moindre indignation face à ces phénomènes récurrents. Pas plus que les antiracistes français et leurs alliés féministes et pro-LGBT ne dénoncent la misogynie et l’homophobie islamiques, de facto exonérées par primat xénophile et auto-racisme anti-occidental. Ce dernier exemple est significatif : loin de se laisser culpabiliser, les autorités marocaines ont pourtant assumé le fait qu’une « unité de combat de la Marine royale » a ouvert le feu sur l’embarcation (un « go-fast » léger) en tuant une passagère. Comme Carola Rackete, le capitaine de la vedette de clandestins n’avait pas obéi aux ordres des militaires marocains l’intimant de stopper sa course.
Morale de l’histoire : l’immigrationnisme des ONG comme la Sea Watch et autres « No Borders » est – comme l’antiracisme à sens unique – une arme subversive tournée contre les seuls peuples blancs-judéo-chrétiens-occidentaux et leurs Etats-Nations souverains. D’évidence, les forces cosmopolitiquement correctes (gauche internationaliste-marxiste ; libéraux-multiculturalistes ; multinationales / Mc Word ; Église catholique ; fédéralistes européens et autres instances onusiennes) veulent détruire en premier lieu les vieilles nations européennes culpabilisées et vieillissantes, sorte de terra nullius en devenir conçue comme le laboratoire de leurs projets néo-impériaux / mondialistes respectifs.
Ces différentes forces ne sont pas amies, mais elles convergent dans un même projet de destruction des Etats-souverains occidentaux. Voilà d’où parlent les No Borders. Et à l’aune de ce constat, le fait que le milliardaire Soros et les multinationales précitées sponsorisent des opérations pro-migrants, pourtant exécutées par des ONG et forces de gauche et d’extrême-gauche ou chrétiennes / tiersmondistes, en dit long sur la convergence des forces cosmopolitiquement correctes hostiles à l’Etat-Nation et à la défense de l’identité occidentale.
Voir encore:
Norman Podhoretz, the last remaining ‘anti-anti Trump’ neocon
The former editor of Commentary says he has ‘no admiration’ for Trump, but deems him the ‘lesser evil’ compared to Clinton
WHAT HAVE WE BECOME ? (#LightsForLiberty: Guess who on a March to Close Concentration Camps took down the US flag on a federal facility and replaced it by the Mexican flag ?)
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7243975/Anti-ICE-protesters-flag-Colorado-migrant-holding-facility.html
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CHERCHEZ L’ERREUR ! (Quand la radicalité démocrate pourrait permettre à Trump de se recentrer et gagner à nouveau en 2020 !)
Comme disent les observateurs américains, Trump fera toujours du Trump! Il ne faut donc pas s’attendre à un changement de style, mais cela n’exclut pas les surprises qui font partie de l’arsenal politique du président américain. Depuis son entrée en politique en juin 2015, il n’a pas bougé d’un iota dans son comportement, multipliant les déclarations à l’emporte-pièce, et déclinant les mêmes thèmes dans un style qui a créé un véritable tremblement de terre politique. C’est une sorte d’ouragan fait homme. Armé de son compte Twitter, et désormais fort de la chambre d’écho formidable que lui donne le «pupitre» présidentiel, il scandalise, indigne, choque, se permet presque tout dans la rhétorique, même l’indécence. Comme le soulignait récemment le professeur de science politique de Harvard, Harvey Mansfield lors des Conversations Tocqueville, de ce point de vue, c’est clairement un adepte de Machiavel: tous les moyens sont bons pour arriver à ses fins. Trump ne changera pas car ce n’est pas un politicien classique. Contrairement à la plupart des politiques traditionnels, qui s’en tiennent encore à des règles de bienséance communément admises, (ce qui pourrait changer dans l’avenir à son exemple), il est sans filtre. Il est donc capable de parler comme le gars du café du commerce, qui assis au comptoir, déclare que ceux qui ne sont pas contents «n’ont qu’à rentrer chez eux», ce qu’il a fait il y a quelques jours. En ce sens, pour reprendre là encore, une formule de Mansfield, il représente le côté «vulgaire de la démocratie» au sens littéral du terme Vulgaire. Il donne une voix au Vulgus, au peuple. (…) je ne vois pas pour autant Trump comme un raciste prêt à discriminer quelqu’un sur sa couleur de peau, pas plus qu’il n’est «anti-femme», à mon avis, contrairement à ce que soutiennent là encore ses ennemis politiques. Aurait-il sinon suggéré à la célèbre star démocrate de la téléréalité Oprah Winfrey, une Afro-américaine, d’être son binôme quand il envisageait déjà une campagne présidentielle dans le passé? Je peux me tromper, mais je vois plutôt Trump comme un gars grandi dans la banlieue new-yorkaise de Queens dans les années 50, habitué au multiculturalisme mais surtout aux rapports de force, et ayant l’habitude de ne prendre de gants avec personne, quelle que soit sa couleur ou son sexe. Ceci dit, il joue sur tous les tableaux pour aller à la chasse aux voix, sans se préoccuper de savoir si cela peut exciter les franges minoritaires racistes, ce que ses adversaires ont beau jeu de souligner. Mais Trump sait surtout que beaucoup d’Américains sont réceptifs au coup de gueule qu’il a poussé et ses électeurs n’apprécient pas que les élues de la gauche démocrate aient le culot de comparer les camps installés sur la frontière mexicaine par la police des frontières avec des camps nazis (car cette comparaison est tout à fait absurde). Alors il pousse son avantage. Il a compris qu’il pouvait profiter du radicalisme de ces quatre jeunes députées, pour coller à l’ensemble du parti démocrate une image extrémiste. De ce point de vue, beaucoup estiment qu’il a trouvé son thème pour 2020. Se présenter comme un rempart contre l’extrémisme culturel de la Gauche tout en vantant son bilan économique. Il ne faut pas s’attendre à un changement de thèmes de campagne, car ceux que le président a lancés sans crier gare dans la conversation électorale en 2016, restent extrêmement porteurs auprès de son électorat: l’immigration hors de contrôle, l’ouvrier américain mis sur la touche par la globalisation et la délocalisation massive, l’importance de rétablir du coup une forme de protectionnisme. La bataille contre la Chine. Le retour à une forme de nationalisme et de restreinte en matière d’interventions extérieures, au motif que l’Amérique, en portant seule le fardeau de gendarme du monde, s’est affaiblie. Et bien sûr la bataille contre le politiquement correct. Regardez d’ailleurs son nouveau slogan de campagne, ce n’est pas «Rendre sa grandeur à l’Amérique» comme en 2016, c’est désormais «Maintenir la grandeur de l’Amérique», ce qui veut dire la même chose, sauf qu’il sous-entend qu’il a tenu ses promesses. (…) Donald Trump est adoré par sa base, détesté par l’autre partie du pays, et toléré par les élites du parti républicain, qui à l’exception d’un petit bataillon de «Never Trumpers» (les Jamais Trumpistes), essaient de s’accommoder de sa présidence, à défaut de pouvoir l’influencer (parce qu’ils estiment que le camp démocrate est pire). Bien sûr, il y a dans les rangs du centre, chez les indépendants susceptibles de voter alternativement à droite ou à gauche, et chez une partie des républicains modérés des gens qui sont très embarrassés par les mauvaises manières de Trump et ses dérapages. Je me souviens que pendant sa campagne de 2016, beaucoup de ses électeurs fronçaient les sourcils et disaient qu’ils aimeraient qu’il apprenne à «fermer parfois sa grande gueule». Mais ils ajoutaient aussi qu’il ne fallait pas prendre les sorties de Trump de manière littérale, et qu’eux ne le faisaient pas. Les troupes trumpiennes ont toujours reconnu les défauts de Trump, mais elles sont passées outre car elles ont vu en lui l’homme capable de dire des vérités que personne ne voulait plus entendre, notamment sur la question des frontières (son idée qu’un pays sans frontières n’est plus un pays). Les électeurs républicains et la partie des ex-démocrates qui ont voté pour lui ont soutenu Trump, parce qu’il est indomptable et qu’ils voient en lui l’homme qui a porté leur rébellion contre le système jusqu’au cœur de la Maison blanche. Ils ont le sentiment qu’il n’a pas changé et ne les a pas trahis, et d’une certaine manière, c’est vrai.. Il reste leur homme. Regardez la vigueur avec laquele il essaie contre vents et marées de faire construire son fameux Mur. Je pense que ses électeurs le soutiennent aussi d’autant plus que les démocrates n’ont jamais renoncé à l’expulser du pouvoir, le déclarant illégitime depuis le premier jour et maintenant ouverte la possibilité d’une destitution jusqu’à aujourd’hui. Pour la base républicaine, cet acharnement contre Trump est la meilleure preuve qu’il est l’homme qu’il leur faut. L’acharnement des médias mainstream à son encontre joue aussi en sa faveur. C’est trop voyant, trop unanime, trop obsessionnel, le tableau qui est fait de lui est si noir qu’il devient contre-productif. Beaucoup de gens à droite sont fatigués de Trump, voire exaspérés. Ils s’inquiètent aussi à juste titre de son mode de fonctionnement purement tactique, du chaos qui règne dans son équipe, où tout est suspendu à ses humeurs et ses derniers tweets. Mais ils en ont marre, aussi, de l’anti-trumpisme primaire et constatent que l’apocalypse économique et politique qui avait été annoncée à l’arrivée de Trump n’a pas eu lieu. L’économie affiche une santé insolente, malgré toutes ses foucades, le président n’a pas déclenché la guerre nucléaire que tant d’observateurs annonçaient vu sa supposée «folie». Bien sûr, son action suscite bien des controverses et donne le vertige. Reste ouverte la possibilité d’un dérapage en politique extérieure, si ses interlocuteurs chinois, nord-coréens ou iraniens décident de le tester. Mais ce que nous ne mesurons pas bien, c’est si l’embarras et l’inquiétude que suscite Trump sont supérieurs à la satisfaction que suscite sa capacité à s’élever contre les élites. C’est sans doute dans ce dilemme que se jouera l’élection. (…) La question du degré de division de l’Amérique est un sujet sur lequel tout observateur des États-Unis finit par s’interroger. S’accroît-elle ou est-elle une donnée persistante, dont on oublie seulement l’acuité avec le temps? La présidence Trump l’a-t-elle exacerbée? Quand les Américains vous disent qu’ils n’ont jamais vu «division pareille», on a tendance à les croire sur parole, mais on réalise ensuite qu’ils oublient parfois largement l’intensité des fractures du passé, alors qu’elles ont toujours été là. Entre le Sud anciennement ségrégationniste et le Nord largement abolitionniste, entre la droite chrétienne conservatrice et les libéraux laïques. Entre l’Amérique démocrate des côtes, et le pays profond du milieu. Entre les partisans de l’État minimal et les partisans du New Deal et des lois sociales… L’opposition entre la gauche américaine et les Mccarthystes dans les années 50 était-elle vraiment moins profonde que celle des démocrates et des républicains sous Trump? Et que dire de la bataille jonchée de cadavres des années 60 pour arracher les droits civiques des Noirs sous Kennedy et sous Johnson, puis des divisions sociétales autour de la guerre du Vietnam? A-t-on oublié les furieuses batailles sous Reagan, sous Clinton, sous les Bush Père et fils, puis sous Obama, qui devait pourtant réconcilier l’Amérique bleue des démocrates et l’Amérique rouge des républicains? Qu’est-ce qui change sous Trump par rapport au passé? (…) En dehors de la personnalité même du président, qui a effectivement le plus haut taux d’impopularité d’un président, les vieux routiers de la politique washingtonienne citent la disparition quasi-totale des ailes modérées des deux camps, qui ne sont plus vraiment représentées au Congrès, ce qui rend de plus en plus difficile la création de compromis. Les compromis exigeaient la volonté de «travailler avec l’autre aile». Mais ce champ s’étiole faute de «soldats» désireux de coopérer. La radicalisation du champ de l’information sous l’effet des réseaux sociaux participe aussi à l’accroissement des fossés, car on ne partage plus les mêmes faits! Du coup, on est dans un combat sans répit et un dialogue de sourds, dont l’issue semble être de vouloir annihiler l’autre camp, au lieu de le laisser vivre. La manière dont la confirmation du juge Bret Kavanaugh a tourné au pugilat, à l’automne, a été à cet égard très significative, car les «troupes» des deux camps ne se sont pas privées d’envoyer des «commandos de militants» huer et menacer les élus qui avaient pris des positions nuancées contraires à l’orthodoxie du parti, pour ou contre le juge suprême! Il me semble qu’entre Trump et les démocrates, la confrontation est presque devenue un jeu de rôles ; une sorte de théâtre, où chacun s’enferme dans son personnage ou son parti…Trump est traité de «raciste», lui dénonce à son tour le caractère «anti-américain» de ses adversaires, et cela s’enflamme. C’est comme si ces deux forces se nourrissaient l’une l’autre. Le problème est de savoir comment tout cela est reçu «en bas», chez les électeurs de base. J’ai peur qu’à force de jouer la carte de l’ennemi, les gens finissent par se haïr vraiment. Les attaques seront-elles encore pires en 2020 qu’en 2016? C’est possible car dans les deux partis, ce sont les plus vocaux et les plus extrêmes, qui couvrent le débat de leur brouhaha et semblent donner le «la». Il règne un véritable climat de «guerre civile politique». Il faut espérer que la violence ne sortira pas du cadre verbal. (…) L’élection se jouera à nouveau à la marge dans les États clé du Midwest, mais aussi en Floride, au Nevada ; dans le Missouri, tous ces États violets, à moitié rouges et à moitié bleus, où la question de la participation et donc de la mobilisation de la base sera clé….Il faudra aussi aller chercher les électeurs au centre, ces fameux indépendants ou ces démocrates reaganiens, qui se définissent comme conservateurs et qui tout en votant souvent démocrate pour des raisons historiques, ne se reconnaissent plus dans le parti démocrate actuel, parti trop à gauche. Dans le cas de Trump, cela veut dire qu’il lui faut persister dans son approche ouvriériste de défense de l’ouvrier américain et de renégociation musclée des conséquences de la globalisation, bref, miser sur son cœur de cible, en présentant l’adversaire comme une armée de radicaux inquiétants. (…) Si certains observateurs notent que Trump part avec un désavantage car il va devoir convaincre les électeurs désabusés par ses scandales et sa pusillanimité, il ne faut pas sous-estimer sa capacité à l’emporter à nouveau, qui est très réelle, même si rien ne peut être prédit aujourd’hui, vu l’éloignement de la date. Car il présente aussi des avantages. Il n’a peur de rien, il tient ses promesses (en tout cas certaines!). Il est drôle et il crée sans cesse l’évènement. L’ancienne porte-parole du Pentagone Dana White que j’interviewais récemment, estime qu’ «il sera réélu d’abord parce qu’il est le président sortant, un avantage énorme, deuxièmement parce que l’économie affiche des chiffres excellents, notamment en matière de chômage, mais aussi parce que le pays ne devient pas plus violet, mais plus rouge là où il est rouge, et plus bleu là où il est bleu, ce qui signifie que Trump devrait gagner à nouveau le MidWest». White remarque à juste titre qu’ «il y a une majorité silencieuse dans ces États pivots qui pense que le président Trump se bat pour eux-mêmes quand le combat tourne au pugilat» . Élément intéressant, Trump est aujourd’hui aussi populaire que Reagan au même moment, ce qui veut dire qu’il pourrait aussi surprendre et faire mieux que la dernière fois chez les minorités, le taux de chômage des noirs par exemple, ayant atteint un seuil à la baisse historique. Surtout, Trump pourrait bénéficier d’un cru démocrate où les candidats capables de s’imposer dans le fameux Midwest ne sont pas légion, en dehors de l’ancien vice président Joe Biden, originaire de Pennsylvanie, et qui a été récemment l’objet d’une attaque en règle de la Gauche identitaire du parti démocrate, qui l’accuse de sexisme et de racisme, rien de moins! (…) Depuis l’arrivée de Trump au pouvoir, le parti démocrate a été si sonné et si ulcéré de le voir gagner au détriment de la «reine Hillary» qu’il a conclu à son illégitimité. Il en a fait un repoussoir, un diable qui finirait par être expulsé de la Maison Blanche, rapidement. Pendant deux ans et demi, leur stratégie a donc consisté à attaquer chaque sujet sous l’angle de la personnalité de Trump, au lieu de prendre la mesure des problèmes que son élection révèle. Ainsi par exemple de la question de la migration, approchée seulement sous l’angle de la «cruauté» de Trump, de sa folie et de son racisme supposés, sans aucune tentative de prise en compte de la crise migratoire aiguë réelle, qui se joue à la frontière avec le Mexique. Mais cette stratégie a échoué à atteindre son but et de ce point de vue, l’intervention du procureur spécial Robert Mueller devant le Congrès, qui n’a pas apporté confirmation de l’attitude criminelle du président en matière d’obstruction (même s’il a clairement eu la tentation d’arrêter l’enquête), ni trace d’une collusion avec la Russie, marque la fin d’un cycle. (…) Si une centaine d’élus souhaiteraient poursuivre la procédure de destitution, une partie très substantielle du camp démocrate n’en veut pas, persuadé que cette stratégie serait perdue d’avance et qu’il est temps de passer à l’ordre du jour. Dans ce camp, figure notamment la Speaker de la Chambre Nancy Pelosi, mais aussi toute une série d’élus des États du MidWest, qui souhaiteraient aussi s’éloigner du parti pris idéologique centré sur la défense des minorités, la fameuse «politique des identités», pour revenir à une approche plus sociale des dossiers et construire une alternative crédible à Trump, prenant en compte les problèmes qu’il a soulevés. L’autre camp, qui regroupe notamment le fameux commando des 4 élues en bataille contre Trump, mais aussi une grande partie des élites intellectuelles, veut persister dans l’entreprise de destitution du président avec une ferveur quasi religieuse. D’après ce que rapporte l’analyste James Kirchick de la Brookings Institution, la bataille qui se joue en coulisses pour trancher ce désaccord est si féroce qu’un groupe d’élus démocrates modérés aurait fait passer discrètement récemment auprès des journaux américains un sondage révélant la faible popularité de la jeune pasionaria de gauche Alexandra Ocasio Cortez et de ses trois alliées. Cette offensive ne se fait pas au grand jour, car bien des élus ont peur d’être accusés de racisme et ne veulent pas donner d’armes à Trump. Du coup, les démocrates se retrouvent presque forcés d’endosser des propositions incroyablement radicales venues de la gauche sur le financement de l‘assurance médicale pour les illégaux en situation irrégulière, la nécessité de dissoudre les services d’immigration ICE. Une radicalisation qui ouvrira un boulevard à Trump dans le Midwest si l’aile modérée ne parvient pas à contenir ces élans. (…) Le paradoxe est que cette approche excessive permet à Trump de se recentrer et de passer par pertes et profits tous ses gigantesques travers, et notamment sa sous-estimation inquiétante des attaques russes sur les élections américaines. En voulant l’abattre trop grossièrement, les démocrates l’ont presque sanctuarisé…Leur persistance à jouer la carte identitaire, et à tenter de rassembler toutes les minorités, femmes y compris, contre «le patriarcat de «l’Homme blanc» qu’il incarnerait supposément, pourrait lui servir de tremplin. Si on ajoute à ça, ses excellents chiffres économiques et l’absence de leader clair et incontesté face à lui, on voit à quel point la bataille va être difficile pour les démocrates. Encore une fois, la manière dont ils ont attaqué Joe Biden, le seul candidat susceptible de concurrencer Trump dans les États pivots du MidWest, révèle le piège dans lequel ils pourraient se laisser enfermer. Il faut en effet reconnaître qu’accuser de racisme supposé, l’homme qui a été le vice président du premier président noir de l’Histoire des États-Unis ne manque pas de sel »…
Laure Mandeville
http://www.lefigaro.fr/vox/monde/laure-mandeville-en-persistant-a-jouer-la-carte-identitaire-les-democrates-aident-trump-20190802
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ASK IRAN (Know-nothing American elites can protest Trump’s decision to abandon the Syrian Kurds, but the point is getting America’s regional partners to pull their own weight in the rollback of Iran’s expansionism)
Beyond President Trump’s controversial decision, though, are two hugely beneficial moves: first, Trump is getting Turkey to take more ownership of the Middle East, allowing for American forces to begin the much-needed drawdown of its forces that have been fighting there for years. Second, from a geopolitical perspective, this move is brilliant because it has already elicited cries of protest from Iran. You see, Iran may dislike the Kurds and want to see American forces withdraw from the region, but the last thing Iran wants is to have a competent foe, like Turkey, increase its military presence in the Mideast. This is especially because Turkey is a Sunni Muslim state and its leader, the autocratic Recep Erdogan, has spent years openly declaring his intention to reconstitute the old Ottoman Empire (under his rule) in the Middle East.
Know-nothing American elites can protest Trump’s decision to abandon the Syrian Kurds, but this is not a moral discussion. This is about getting America’s regional partners to resist Iran while at the same time enhancing their ability to wage a sustained campaign of ideological rollback against Iran on their own. The United States needs a multilateral framework for restoring order in the Middle East—and any formulation, for better or worse, will have to include autocratic, Islamist Turkey.
Turkey, a NATO ally, may be a nuisance but it is a competent military (especially compared to America’s Sunni Arab allies or Iran). By getting Turkey more involved in the Middle East, President Trump is ensuring that the region returns to its historic geopolitics: one that is generally divided between a Turkey-led Sunni Islam against Shiite Iran. In such a world, the United States can return to its preferred role of offshore balancer while still having considerable influence over the Turks, Sunni Arabs, and Israelis arrayed against Iran.
Whether Trump’s geopolitical gambit can work or not is another question entirely. But this is a reasonable move (compared to Trump’s other options in the Mideast). Only time will tell whether President Trump’s decision to leave the Syrian Kurds to their doom at the hands of Turkey will work or not. At least the United States is not having to attack yet another Mideast country, though.
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SPOT THE ERROR ! (When Iran pulls surprise military drills on their friend and brother Turkey’s border)
« We have made it clear that the solution to establishment of security in the northern Syrian and southern Turkish borders is possible only with the presence of the Syrian army and we must provide all grounds for the Syrian military presence in these areas. The Americans must leave the region, and the Kurds should cooperate with the Syrian Army, which is actually their own country. The path chosen today and the agreements that are happening behind the scenes will not benefit the region, and we call on our friend and brother Turkey and its government to pay more attention and patience in such matters. »
Hassan Rouhani
https://www.newsweek.com/iran-holds-military-drills-near-turkey-tells-it-stop-syria-attack-russia-accuses-us-1464124
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WHAT KURDISH BETRAYAL ?
The near consensus view of President Donald Trump’s decision to remove US special forces from the Syrian border with Turkey is that Trump is enabling a Turkish invasion and double crossing the Syrian Kurds who have fought with the Americans for five years against ISIS. Trump’s move, the thinking goes, harms US credibility and undermines US power in the region and throughout the world.
There are several problems with this narrative. The first is that it assumes that until this week, the US had power and influence in Syria when in fact, by design, the US went to great lengths to limit its ability to influence events in Syria.
The war in Syria broke out in 2011 as a popular insurrection by Syrian Sunnis against the Iranian-sponsored regime of President Bashar al Assad. The Obama administration responded by declaring US support for Assad’s overthrow. But the declaration was empty. The administration sat on its thumbs as the regime’s atrocities mounted. They supported a feckless Turkish effort to raise a resistance army dominated by jihadist elements aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood.
Obama infamously issued his “redline” regarding the use of chemical weapons against civilians by Assad, which he repudiated the moment it was crossed.
As ISIS forces gathered in Iraq and Syria, Obama shrugged them off as a “jayvee squad.” When the jayvees in ISIS took over a third of Iraqi and Syrian territory, Obama did nothing.
As Lee Smith recalled in January in the New York Post, Obama only decided to do something about ISIS in late 2014 after the group beheaded a number of American journalists and posted their decapitations on social media.
The timing was problematic for Obama.
In 2014 Obama was negotiating his nuclear deal with Iran. The deal, falsely presented as a non-proliferation pact, actually enabled Iran — the world’s greatest state sponsor of terrorism — to develop both nuclear weapons and the missile systems required to deliver them. The true purpose of the deal was not to block Iran’s nuclear aspirations but to realign US Middle East policy away from the Sunnis and Israel and towards Iran.
Given its goal of embracing Iran, the Obama administration had no interest in harming Assad, Iran’s Syrian factotum. It had no interest in blocking Iran’s ally Russia from using the war in Syria as a means to reassert Moscow’s power in the Middle East.
As both Michael Doran, a former national security advisor in the George W. Bush administration and Smith argue, when Obama was finally compelled to act against ISIS, he structured the US campaign in a manner than would align it with Iran’s interests.
Obama’s decided to work with the Kurdish-YPG militia in northern Syria because it was the only significant armed force outside the Iranian axis that enjoyed congenial relations with both Assad and Iran.
Obama deployed around a thousand forces to Syria. Their limited numbers and radically constrained mandate made it impossible for the Americans to have a major effect on events in the country. They weren’t allowed to act against Assad or Iran. They were tasked solely with fighting ISIS. Obama instituted draconian rules of engagement that made achieving even that limited goal all but impossible.
During his tenure as Trump’s national security advisor John Bolton hoped to revise the US mandate to enable US forces to be used against Iran in Syria. Bolton’s plan was strategically sound. Trump rejected it largely because it was a recipe for widening US involvement in Syria far beyond what the American public – and Trump himself — are willing to countenance.
In other words, the claim that the US has major influence in Syria is wrong. It does not have such influence and is unwilling to pay the price of developing such influence.
This brings us to the second flaw in the narrative about Trump’s removal of US forces from the Syrian border with Turkey.
The underlying assumption of the criticism is that America has an interest in confronting Turkey to protect the Kurds.
This misconception like the misconception regarding US power and influence in Syria is borne of a misunderstanding of Obama’s Middle East policies. Aside from ISIS’s direct victims, the major casualty of Obama’s deliberately feckless anti-ISIS campaign was the US alliance with Turkey. Whereas the US chose to work with the Kurds because they were supportive of Assad and Iran, the Turks view the Syrian Kurdish YPG as a sister militia to the Turkish PKK. The Marxist PKK has been fighting a guerilla war against Turkey for decades. The State Department designates the PKK as a terrorist organization responsible for the death of thousands of Turkish nationals. Not surprisingly then, the Turks viewed the US-Kurdish collaboration against ISIS as an anti-Turkish campaign.
Throughout the years of US-Kurdish cooperation, many have made the case that the Kurds are a better ally to the US that Turkey. The case is compelling not merely because the Kurds have fought well.
Under Erdogan, Turkey has stood against the US and its interests far more often than it has stood with it. Across a spectrum of issues, from Israel to human rights, Hamas and ISIS to Turkish aggression against Cyprus, Greece and Israel in the Eastern Mediterranean, to upholding US economic sanctions against Iran and beyond, for nearly twenty years, Erdogan’s Turkey has distinguished itself as a strategic threat to America’s core interests and policies and those of its closest allies in the Middle East.
Despite the compelling, ever growing body of evidence that the time has come to reassess US-Turkish ties, the Pentagon refuses to engage the issue. The Pentagon has rejected the suggestion that the US remove its nuclear weapons from Incirlik air base in Turkey or diminish Incirlik’s centrality to US air operations in Central Asia and the Middle East. The same is true of US dependence on Turkish naval bases.
Given the Pentagon’s position, there is no chance that US would consider entering an armed conflict with Turkey on behalf of the Kurds.
The Kurds are a tragic people. The Kurds, who live as persecuted minorities in Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran have been denied the right of self-determination for the past hundred years. But then, the Kurds have squandered every opportunity they have had to assert independence. The closest they came to achieving self-determination was in Iraq in 2017. In Iraqi Kurdistan, the Kurds have governed themselves effectively since 1992. In 2017, they overwhelmingly passed a referendum calling for Iraqi Kurdistan to secede from Iraq and form an independent state. Instead of joining forces to achieve their long-held dream, the Kurdish leaders in Iraq worked against one another. One faction, in alliance with Iran, blocked implementation of the referendum and then did nothing as Kurdish-controlled Kirkuk was overrun by Iraqi government forces.
The Kurds in Iraq are far more capable of defending themselves than the Kurds of Syria. Taking on the defense of Syria’s Kurds would commit the US to an open-ended presence in Syria and justify Turkish antagonism. America’s interests would not be advanced. They would be harmed, particularly in light of the YPG’s selling trait for Obama – its warm ties to Assad and Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps.
The hard truth is that the fifty US soldiers along the Syrian-Turkish border were a fake trip wire. Neither Trump nor the US military had any intention of sacrificing US forces to either block a Turkish invasion of Syria or foment deeper US involvement in the event of a Turkish invasion.
Apparently in the course of his phone call with Trump on Sunday, Erdogan called Trump’s bluff. Trump’s announcement following the call made clear that the US would not sacrifice its soldiers to stop Erdogan’s planned invasion of the border zone.
But Trump also made clear that the US did not support the Turkish move. In subsequent statements, Trump repeatedly pledged to destroy the Turkish economy if Turkey commits atrocities against the Kurds.
If the Pentagon can be brought on board, Trump’s threats can easily be used as a means to formally diminish the long hollow US alliance with Turkey.
Here it is critical to note that Trump did not remove US forces from Syria. They are still deployed along the border crossing between Jordan, Iraq and Syria to block Iran from moving forces and materiel to Syria and Lebanon. They are still blocking Russian and Syrian forces from taking over the oil fields along the eastern bank of the Euphrates. Aside from defeating ISIS, these missions are the principle strategic achievements of the US forces in Syria. For now, they are being maintained. Will Turkey’s invasion enable ISIS to reassert itself in Syria and beyond? Perhaps. But here too, as Trump made clear this week, it is not America’s job to serve as the permanent jailor of ISIS. European forces are just as capable of serving as guards as Americans are. America’s role is not to stay in Syria forever. It is to beat down threats to US and world security as they emerge and then let others – Turks, Kurds, Europeans, Russians, UN peacekeepers – maintain the new, safer status quo.
The final assumption of the narrative regarding Trump’s moves in Syria is that by moving its forces away from the border ahead of the Turkish invasion, Trump harmed regional stability and America’s reputation as a trustworthy ally.
On the latter issue, Trump has spent the better part of his term in office rebuilding America’s credibility as an ally after Obama effectively abandoned the Sunnis and Israel in favor of Iran. To the extent that Trump has harmed US credibility, he didn’t do it in Syria this week by rejecting war with Turkey. He did it last month by failing to retaliate militarily against Iran’s brazen military attack on Saudi Arabia’s oil installations. Whereas the US has no commitment to protect the Kurds, the US’s central commitment in the Middle East for the past 70 years has been the protection of Saudi oil installations and maintaining the safety of maritime routes in and around the Persian Gulf.
The best move Trump can make now in light of the fake narrative of his treachery towards the Kurds is to finally retaliate against Iran. A well-conceived, and limited US strike against Iranian missile and drone installations would restore America’s posture as the dominant power in the Persian Gulf and prevent the further destabilization of the Saudi regime and the backsliding of the UAE towards Iran.
As for Syria, it is impossible to known what the future holds for the Kurds, the Turks, the Iranians, Assad or anyone else. But what is clear enough is that Trump avoided war with Turkey this week. And he began extracting America from an open-ended commitment to the Kurds it never made and never intended to fulfill.
Caroline Glick
http://carolineglick.com/trump-did-not-betray-the-kurds/
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FORMER OBAMA ADMINISTRATION AMBASSADOR CONFIRMS TRUMP DID WHAT FORMER OBAMA VP BIDEN DID (Which planet was former US ambassador to Ukraine on when former US Vice-president Biden pressured the Ukrainian government to fire a prosecutor which happened to be investigating a firm his son had just joined ?)
Republicans, however, have countered that military aid to Ukraine was released in September, and that there has been no evidence Ukrainians were aware that the aid was being withheld as part of any implicit quid pro quo. Ukrainian officials have denied that there was any undue pressure from the White House. Burisma Holdings is the Ukrainian natural gas company where Biden’s son Hunter was employed in a lucrative role despite no relevant expertise…
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/bill-taylor-testifies-trump-used-ukraine-aid-white-house-meeting-as-leverage-to-get-investigations
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WHERE WERE YOU, BILL TAYLOR, WHEN VP JOE BIDEN GOT A UKRAINIAN PROSECUTOR FIRED THAT JUST HAPPENED TO BE INVESTIGATING HIS OWN SON’S COMPANY ?
A career State Department official overseeing Ukraine policy told congressional investigators this week that he had raised concerns in early 2015 about then-Vice President Joe Biden’s son serving on the board of a Ukrainian energy company but was turned away by a Biden staffer, according to three people familiar with the testimony. George Kent, a deputy assistant secretary of state, testified Tuesday that he worried that Hunter Biden’s position at the firm Burisma Holdings would complicate efforts by U.S. diplomats to convey to Ukrainian officials the importance of avoiding conflicts of interest, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of confidentiality rules surrounding the deposition. Kent said he had concerns that Ukrainian officials would view Hunter Biden as a conduit for currying influence with his father, said the people. But when Kent raised the issue with Biden’s office, he was told the then-vice president didn’t have the “bandwidth” to deal with the issue involving his son as his other son, Beau, was battling cancer, said the people familiar with his testimony.
Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/diplomat-tells-investigators-he-raised-alarms-in-2015-about-hunter-bidens-ukraine-work-but-was-rebuffed/2019/10/18/81e35be9-4f5a-4048-8520-0baabb18ab63_story.html
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CORRECTION: BIDEN WAS IN FACT PRESSURING UKRAINE GOVERNMENT TO FIRE ITS CORRUPT PROSECUTOR FOR… NOT INVESTIGATING HIS SON’S FIRM !
a former Ukrainian official (…) described to Bloomberg details about the country’s political dynamic in the run-up to early 2016 when Biden, then the U.S. vice president, threatened to hold up U.S. funding to Ukraine unless it cracked down on corruption. Biden’s chief demand was the ouster of a top Ukrainian prosecutor who he said had been ineffective. The episode has come under the spotlight in the last week because at one point, that prosecutor had been investigating a natural gas company where Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, sat on the board and received substantial compensation. There’s little question that the Bidens’ paths in Ukraine held the potential for conflict, and in a tweet last week, Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani said the U.S. should investigate the matter. But what has received less attention is that at the time Biden made his ultimatum, the probe into the company — Burisma Holdings, owned by Mykola Zlochevsky — had been long dormant, according to the former official, Vitaliy Kasko. “There was no pressure from anyone from the U.S. to close cases against Zlochevsky,” Kasko said in an interview last week. “It was shelved by Ukrainian prosecutors in 2014 and through 2015.” Kasko’s assessment adds a wrinkle to one of the first political intrigues of the 2020 election season. It undercuts the idea that Biden, now a top Democratic presidential candidate, was seeking to sideline a prosecutor who was actively threatening a company tied to his son. Instead, it appears more consistent with Biden’s previous statements that he was pressing for the removal of a prosecutor who was failing to tackle rampant corruption: According to public reports and internal documents from the Ukrainian prosecutor’s office, U.S. officials had expressed concern for more than a year about Ukrainian prosecutors’ failure to assist an international investigation of Zlochevsky. (…) Questions about the potential Ukraine conflict resurfaced with recent reports of a video in which Joe Biden described how he’d threatened to withhold $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees from Ukraine unless its leaders dismissed Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin. The New York Times reported on May 1 that Hunter Biden had a stake in the outcome because at the time he was on the board of Zlochevsky’s company, where he was paid as much as $50,000 a month for his work. Hunter Biden joined the board in April 2014, two months after U.K. authorities requested information from Ukraine as part of a probe against Zlochevsky related to money laundering allegations. Zlochevsky had been minister of environmental protection under then-President Viktor Yanukovych, who fled to Russia in February 2014 after mass protests. After the U.K. request, Ukrainian prosecutors opened their own case, accusing Zlochevsky of embezzling public funds. Burisma and Zlochevsky have denied the allegations. The case against Zlochevsky and his Burisma Holdings was assigned to Shokin, then a deputy prosecutor. But Shokin and others weren’t pursuing it, according to the internal reports from the Ukrainian prosecutor’s office reviewed by Bloomberg. In a December 2014 letter, U.S. officials warned Ukrainian prosecutors of negative consequences for Ukraine over its failure to assist the U.K., which had seized Zlochevsky’s assets, according to the documents. Those funds, $23.5 million, were unblocked in 2015 when a British court determined there wasn’t enough evidence to justify the continued freeze, in part because Ukrainian prosecutors had failed to provide the necessary information. Shokin became prosecutor general in February 2015. Over the next year, the U.S. and the International Monetary Fund criticized officials for not doing enough to fight corruption in Ukraine. Shokin took no action to pursue cases against Zlochevsky throughout 2015, said Kasko, who was Shokin’s deputy overseeing international cooperation and helping in asset-recovery investigations. Kasko said he had urged Shokin to pursue the investigations. The U.S. stepped up its criticism in September 2015, when its ambassador to Ukraine, during a speech, accused officials working under Shokin of “subverting” the U.K. investigation. Kasko resigned in February 2016, citing corruption and lawlessness in the prosecutor general’s office. The U.S. plan to push for Shokin’s dismissal didn’t initially come from Biden, but rather filtered up from officials at the U.S. Embassy in Kiev, according to a person with direct knowledge of the situation. Embassy personnel had called for U.S. loan guarantees to Ukraine to be tied to broader anti-corruption efforts, including Shokin’s dismissal, this person said. Biden’s threat to withhold $1 billion if Ukraine didn’t crack down on corruption reportedly came in March. That same month, hundreds of Ukrainians demonstrated outside President Petro Poroshenko’s office demanding Shokin’s resignation, and he was dismissed…
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-07/timeline-in-ukraine-probe-casts-doubt-on-giuliani-s-biden-claim
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WHAT APPEARANCE OF IMPROPRIETY ? (Both Bidens were in fact helping corrupt Ukraine clean up its act)
“I looked at them and said: I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money. Well, son of a bitch. He got fired.”
Joe Biden
That Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, joined the board of the Cyprus-registered Ukrainian gas company Burisma in May 2014 is at the heart of claims by Trump and Rudy Giuliani that Biden was seeking Shokin’s firing as a matter of personal vengeance — never mind that Shokin was not investigating the company. Even those who served Trump, including Kurt Volker, his special envoy to Ukraine, have debunked that. (…) But Hunter Biden’s decision to join the board rankled those who worked with Biden on Ukraine issues — mainly because of concerns that even the appearance of impropriety could be used against the administration, especially by an adversary like Russia, which is steeped in deploying misinformation. “I obviously believed that there was nothing improper, but, especially because there is so much scrutiny, you never want there to be anything that appears in any way inappropriate,” one former official said. “At no point did anyone think or believe that Shokin was investigating Burisma, so it wasn’t that. It was more, the appearance of him getting that job not because of his own achievements but because of his connection.” Hunter Biden reportedly made $50,000 a month as a member of Burisma’s board, a position he held until April of this year. A former official involved in ethics questions in the White House said it was standard practice to put up “a wall” between elected officials and independent adult family members on issues where there could be personal conflicts. “I actually do believe, the vice president handling it the way he did — blind, you’re gonna do what you’re gonna do and I’m gonna do what I’m gonna do — is the best practical thing in these circumstances.” When he joined the board, Hunter issued a statement saying he would work on “consulting the Company on matters of transparency, corporate governance and responsibility, international expansion and other priorities will contribute to the economy and benefit the people of Ukraine. » It’s not clear what, if anything, he actually did. Despite their concerns, only Amos Hochstein, who served as an adviser to Biden and as then-president Barack Obama’s special envoy on global energy, is known to have raised the issue with the vice president, but, the New Yorker reported, he did not recommend Hunter leave the board. Another former official said they believed Burisma hired Biden to cleanse its reputation. The company and its founder had faced investigations in the UK and Ukraine and by 2014, it was hoping to erase those from investors’ memories, as so many boards before it had done, in what the Atlantic recently called “perfectly legal, socially acceptable corruption” …
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/miriamelder/joe-biden-ukraine-hunter
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TURKEY SALUTES TRUMP’S POISONED GIFT (Erdogan’s pyrrhic victory in Syria could turn his country into another Venezuela, says Middle East expert Daniel Pipes)
Turkish citizens are wildly optimistic about the invasion of Syria that began Oct. 9. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s decision finds broad support within Turkey, including from all the major opposition parties except the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party. The incursion is understood domestically not only as a measure to protect the country from the Kurdish forces Mr. Erdoğan calls « terrorists, » but also to affirm Turkey’s status as a power; Ankara no longer must bow to the wishes of Washington, Berlin or Moscow. Then there’s the pessimistic view, the one I share. The invasion damages Turkey internationally: Western and Arab governments have condemned the military operation, as have the Russian, Iranian, Indian and Chinese governments. Volkswagen paused a planned investment in Turkey, and other companies may follow suit. Congress is weighing economic sanctions. Italy, France and Germany have suspended arms sales. Tensions are heightening between Turks and Kurds in Germany, and will likely rise within Turkey as well. Though northern Syria’s open terrain is favorable to regular forces, Turkey’s huge army may not do so well on the battlefield. Mr. Erdogan has purged the officer corps several times in recent years for domestic political reasons. Even if initially routed, the Syrian Kurdish forces could regroup to mount a costly insurgency against the Turkish occupation. Turkey has many regional enemies eager to trip it up. Like many prior wars begun in a flush of jubilation—recall the British youth joyfully enlisting in 1914, confident of returning victorious within weeks—this one may end ingloriously. Should the military operation go badly, responsibility for the failure will fall squarely on Mr. Erdogan’s shoulders. A brilliant politician and Turkey’s most consequential leader since Atatürk, Mr. Erdogan has repudiated Atatürk’s legacy of socialism, secularism and avoiding foreign military adventures. Instead, for years he oversaw a capitalist economic boom, and he still rules with an Islamist sensibility and a neo-Ottoman approach to foreign policy. In the nearly 17 years since his party first took Parliament, he has transformed Turkey.
But like other masters of domestic politics— Saddam Hussein comes to mind—Mr. Erdogan wrongly assumes that the cunning and aggression that brought him political success internally will also work internationally. This explains his unleashing thugs on the streets of Washington, abducting Turkish citizens accused of coup plotting from multiple countries, attempting to smuggle dual-use materials to Gaza, illegally drilling for natural gas in Cypriot waters, and shooting down a Russian jet fighter, among other bellicose actions. Mr. Erdogan’s foreign-policy ineptitude has alienated other governments. Europeans seethe when he threatens to send 3.6 million displaced Syrians their way. Israelis despise him for a vitriolic anti-Zionism that compares them to Nazis. Egypt’s president hates Mr. Erdogan’s backing of the Muslim Brotherhood. Mr. Erdogan’s abject apologies haven’t compensated for shooting down the Russian jet. China hasn’t forgotten Mr. Erdogan’s accusing it of genocide against the Uighurs, despite his silence now.
When the candidate from Mr. Erdogan’s AKP party twice lost the Istanbul mayor’s race this year, most analysts saw this as a “political earthquake” and a “stunning blow” to Mr. Erdogan, but he remains as dominant and dangerous as ever. A ruthless ideologue, his continued rule could bring to Turkey the political repression, economic collapse, hunger and mass emigration that plague Nicolás Maduro’s Venezuela. I worry about this terrible outcome because Mr. Erdogan has consolidated power over Turkey’s institutions: the military, the intelligence services, the police, the judiciary, the banks, the media, the election board, the mosques and the educational system. He has supported the private security company Sadat, which some analysts consider a “shadow” or “private” army. Academics who signed a 2016 petition critical of Mr. Erdogan’s policies toward the Kurds have lost their jobs, faced criminal charges and even been jailed. Mr. Erdogan’s hare-brained theory that high interest rates cause, rather than cure, high inflation has recently done great damage to the economy. The 1,150-room palace he had built symbolizes his grandiosity and ambition.
In short, Mr. Erdogan is a dictator with strange ideas, wild ambitions and no restraints. The invasion of Syria has made a domestic and regional tragedy the most likely outcome.
How can the outside world prevent catastrophe? By terminating its disgraceful indulgence of Mr. Erdogan. Donald Trump is only the latest politician to fall for his mysterious charms— George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Angela Merkel, among others, preceded him. Mr. Erdogan deserves punishment, not rewards, for his outrageous behavior. His heading a North Atlantic Treaty Organization member country should raise, not lower, the bar. The U.S. consensus rejecting the Turkish invasion as unacceptable offers an encouraging basis for action. It suggests that Americans can join with others to restrain the rogue Turkish president and help his country avoid becoming another Venezuela. But unless tough action is taken quickly, starting with American leadership to end the Turkish occupation of northern Syria, it will be too late to stop Turkey from becoming a premier international trouble spot.
Mr. Pipes is president of the Middle East Forum
https://www.wsj.com/articles/turkey-may-go-the-way-of-venezuela-11571872299
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WHAT KURDISH THREAT ?
“The policy [of backing the YPG] was not a long-term strategy. We knew it had to be temporary because there was no way Turkey would tolerate that threat.”
Former Obama official
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/19/fighting-continues-on-syrian-turkish-border-despite-us-ceasefire
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WELCOME TO THE BLOODY SANDBOX !
After U.S. President Donald Trump announced a withdrawal from Syria, the House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a resolution denouncing it as “a benefit to adversaries of the United States government, including Syria, Iran and Russia.’ Six days later, Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader of the Senate, introduced a similar resolution. Such bipartisan agreement is rare in Washington these days. But it underestimates the wisdom of Trump’s decision, the benefits for U.S. interests in the Middle East and the nasty trick he has played on Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Trump calls Syria a “bloody sandbox.” He’s right about that. It is also a briar patch of warring tribes and sects, inexplicable ancient animosities and irreconcilable differences.
The president is not prepared to take responsibility for this complicated place, or to get caught up in it. If leaving creates an opportunity for Russia to fill the vacuum, as American lawmakers believe, then it is one Trump is happy to cede. The Russian leader struts on the world stage, but he has not exactly won a victory.
Sooner or later, al-Qaeda, Islamic State or the next iteration of jihad will break loose in Syria. When that happens, the Russians will be the new Satan on the block. Their diplomats in Damascus will come under attack, as will Russian troops. More troops will be sent to defend them. Putin’s much-prized Mediterranean naval installations will require reinforcement. And so on. Soon enough, jihad will inflame Russia’s large Muslim population. Moscow itself will become a terrorist target.
The “safety zone” that Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan have recently carved from northern Syria will collapse. Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad rightly considers it a violation of his country’s sovereignty, and if he can persuade his Russian patrons to shut down the zone, Erdogan will threaten another invasion. If Putin then sides with Turkey, Assad will take matters into his own hands. His army may not be fit for fighting armed opponents, but the Kurds are and can act as Assad’s proxies.
If and when such a border fight develops, Putin will find himself between Assad and Erdogan. Whatever he does, he will wind up in that most vulnerable of Middle Eastern positions, the friend of somebody’s enemy.
As the big power in charge, Russia also will be expected to help its Syrian client rebuild the damage from the civil war. Physical reconstruction alone is expected to cost $400-500 billion. This is a bill Trump had no intention of paying — and one more reason he was glad to hand northern Syria to Putin.
Russia cannot afford a project of this magnitude. It’s possible that Putin expects EU countries to foot the bill — motivated either by humanitarian impulses or by the desire to forestall another wave of destitute immigrants. But this is wishful thinking. Faced with a potential influx of Syrian refugees, Europe is more likely to raise barriers on its southern and eastern borders than to invest in affordable housing in the ruins of Aleppo and Homs.
What’s more, Syria needs more than new housing. It needs an entire economy. Tourism, once a major industry, has vanished. The country’s relatively insignificant oilfields are inoperable or in the hands of the tiny contingent of U.S. troops that’s left to guard them. And the country’s biggest export product is spice seeds.
Another headache for Putin is the ongoing Israel-Iran war, which is being fought largely in Syrian territory. So far, Russia has been studiously neutral. The powerful Israel Defense Forces are engaged against what their leaders regard as a strategic threat. And, unlike the Kurds, Israel is not a disposable American ally. Putin knows this and will not risk a military confrontation no matter how many Syrian-based Iranian munitions warehouses Israel destroys or how hard Assad pushes him to retaliate.
Critics who see the U.S. withdrawal as an act of weakness that will hurt American prestige and influence in the Middle East are wrong. The Arab world understands realpolitik and will read Trump’s indifference to the fate of Syria as the self-serving behavior of the strong horse.
For that is what the U.S. is. It has far more naval power, air dominance, strategic weaponry and intelligence assets than any other country in the region, including Russia. And its allies are the richest, best situated and most militarily potent countries in the Middle East. Not one of them will trade its relationship with Washington for an alliance with Moscow, and Trump knows this. As far as he’s concerned, Putin is welcome to the sandbox and the briar patch.
Zev Chafets
https://www.newsmax.com/politics/trump-syria-putin/2019/10/26/id/938811/
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65-53: MACRON ENFONCE A NOUVEAU TRUMP ! (Plus impopulaire que moi, tu meurs !)
65 % des Français jugent qu’Emmanuel Macron n’est pas un bon président contre 35 % qui pensent qu’il est un « bon président »…
https://www.ouest-france.fr/pays-de-la-loire/loire-atlantique/sondage-pour-43-des-francais-le-mouvement-des-gilets-jaunes-n-est-pas-mort-e2833320-f9b1-11e9-8a09-036fd42461cd
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/trump_administration/trump_approval_index_history
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SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL NO MORE (What bad boy Trump’s poisoned gifts to Russia and Turkey in Syria ?)
US President Donald Trump’s many critics insist he has no idea what he is doing in Syria. The assassination of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi over the weekend by US Special Forces showed this criticism is misplaced. Trump has a very good idea of what he is doing in Syria, not only regarding ISIS, but regarding the diverse competing actors on the ground. Regarding ISIS, the obvious lesson of the Baghdadi raid is that Trump’s critics’ claim that his withdrawal of US forces from Syria’s border with Turkey meant that he was going to allow ISIS to regenerate was utterly baseless. The raid did more than that. Baghdadi’s assassination, and Trump’s discussion of the mass murderer’s death showed that Trump has not merely maintained faith with the fight against ISIS and its allied jihadist groups. He has fundamentally changed the US’s counter-terror fighting doctrine, particularly as it relates to psychological warfare against jihadists.
Following the September 11 attacks, the Bush administration initiated a public diplomacy campaign in the Arab-Islamic world. Rather than attack and undermine the jihadist doctrine that insists that it is the religious duty of Muslims to fight with the aim of conquering the non-Muslim world and to establish a global Islamic empire or caliphate, the Bush strategy was to ignore the jihad in the hopes of appeasing its adherents. The basic line of the Bush administration’s public diplomacy campaign was to embrace the mantra that Islam is peace, and assert that the US loves Islam because the US seeks peace. Along these lines, in 2005, then secretary of state Condoleezza Rice prohibited the State Department, FBI and US intelligence agencies from using “controversial” terms like “radical Islam,” “jihad” and “radical Islam” in official documents.
The Obama administration took the Bush administration’s obsequious approach to strategic communications several steps further. President Barack Obama and his advisors went out of their way to express sympathy for the “Islamic world.” The Obama administration supported the jihadist Muslim Brotherhood against Egypt’s long-serving president and US ally Hosni Mubarak and backed Mubarak’s overthrow with the full knowledge that the only force powerful enough to replace him was the Muslim Brotherhood. As for the Shiite jihadists, Obama’s refusal to support the pro-democracy protesters in Iran’s attempted Green Revolution in 2009 placed the US firmly on the side of the jihadist, imperialist regime of the ayatollahs and against the Iranian people. In short, Obama took Bush’s rhetoric of appeasement and turned it into America’s actual policy.
The Bush-Obama sycophancy won the US no good will. Al Qaeda, which led the insurgency against US forces in Iraq with Iranian and Syrian support was not moved to diminish its aggression and hatred of the US due to the administration’s efforts. It was during the Obama years that ISIS built its caliphate on a third of the Iraqi-Syrian landmass and opened slave markets and launched a mass campaign of filmed beheadings in the name of Islam.
In his announcement of Baghdadi’s death on Sunday, Trump unceremoniously abandoned his predecessors’ strategy of sucking up to jihadists. Unlike Obama, who went to great lengths to talk about the respect US forces who killed Osama bin Laden accorded the terrorist mass-murderer’s body, “in accordance with Islamic practice,” Trump mocked Baghdadi, the murdering, raping, slaving “caliph.” Baghdadi, Trump said, died “like a dog, like a coward.” Baghdadi died, Trump said, “whimpering and crying.”
Trump posted a picture on his Twitter page of the Delta Force combat dog who brought about Baghdadi’s death by chasing him into a tunnel under his compound and provoking him to set off the explosive belt he was wearing, and kill himself and the two children who were with him. Trump later described the animal who killed Allah’s self-appointed representative on earth as “Our ‘K-9,’ as they call it. I call it a dog. A beautiful dog – a talented dog.”
Obama administration officials angrily condemned Trump’s remarks. For instance, former CIA deputy director Mike Morell said he was “bothered” by Trump’s “locker room talk,” which he said, “inspire[s] other people” to conduct revenge attacks. His colleague, former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff retired admiral James Winnefeld said that Trump’s “piling on” describing Baghdadi as a “dog” sent a signal to his followers “that could cause them to lash out possibly more harshly in the wake.”
These criticisms are ridiculous. ISIS terrorists have richly proven they require no provocation to commit mass murder. They only need the opportunity. Moreover, Trump’s constant use of the term “dog” and employment of canine imagery is highly significant. Dogs are considered “unclean” in Islam. In Islamic societies, “dog” is the worst name you can call a person. It is hard to imagine that Baghdadi’s death at the paws of a dog is likely to rally many Muslims to his side. To the contrary, it is likely instead to demoralize his followers. What’s the point of joining a group of losers who believe in a fake prophet who died like a coward while chased by a “a beautiful dog – a talented dog?”
Then there is Russia.
Trump’s critics insist that his decision to abandon the US position along the Syrian border with Turkey effectively surrendered total control over Syria to Russia. But that is far from the case. The American presence along the border didn’t harm Russia. It helped Russia. It freed Russian President Vladimir Putin from having to deal with Turkey. Now that the Americans have left the border zone, Turkish President Recep Erdogan is Putin’s problem.
And he is not the main problem that Trump has made for Putin in Syria. Putin’s biggest problem in Syria is financial. The Russian economy is sunk in a deep recession due to the drop in global oil prices. Putin had planned to finance his Syrian operation with Syrian oil revenues. To this end, in January 2018, he signed an agreement with Syrian President Bashar Assad that effectively transferred the rights to the Syrian oil to Russia.
But Putin hadn’t taken Trump into consideration. US forces did not withdraw from all of their positions in Syria last month. They maintained their control over al-Tanf airbase which controls the Syrian border with Jordan and Iraq. More importantly, from Russia’s perspective, the US has not relinquished its military presence adjacent to Syria’s oil facilities in the Deir Azzour province on the eastern side of the Euphrates River. Indeed, according to media reports, the US is reinforcing its troop strength in Deir Azzour to ensure continued US-Kurdish control over Syria’s oil fields.
To understand how high a priority control over Syria’s oil installations is for Putin it is worth recalling what happened in February 2018. On February 7, 2018, a month after Putin and Assad signed their oil agreement, a massive joint force comprised of Russian mercenaries, Syrian commandos and Iranian Revolutionary Guards forces crossed the Euphrates River with the aim of seizing the town of Khusham adjacent to the Conoco oil fields. Facing them were forty US Special Forces deployed with Kurdish and Arab SDF forces. The US forces directed a massive air assault against the attacking forces which killed some 500 soldiers and ended the assault. Accounts regarding the number of Russian mercenaries killed start at 80 and rise to several hundred.
The American counter-attack caused grievous harm to the Russian force in Syria. Putin has kept the number of Russian military forces in Syria low by outsourcing much of the fighting to Russian military contractors. The aim of the failed operation was to enable those mercenary forces to seize the means to finance their own operations, and get them off the Kremlin payroll.
Since then, Putin has tried to dislodge the US forces from Khusham at least one more time, only to be met with a massive demonstration of force.
The continued US-Kurdish control over Syria’s oil fields and installations requires Putin to continue directly funding his war in Syria. So long as this remains the case, given Russia’s financial constraints, Putin is likely to go to great lengths to restrain his Iranian, Syrian and Hezbollah partners and their aggressive designs against Israel in order to prevent a costly war.
In other words, by preventing Russia from seizing Syria’s oil fields, Trump is forcing Russia to behave in a manner that protects American interests in Syria.
The focus of most of the criticism against Trump’s Syria policies has been his alleged abandonment of the Syrian Kurds to the mercies of their Turkish enemies. But over the past week we learned that this is not the case. As Trump explained, continued US-Kurdish control over Syria’s oil fields provides the Kurdish-controlled Syrian Democratic Forces with the financial and military wherewithal to support and defend its people and their operations.
Moreover, details of Baghdadi’s assassination point to continued close cooperation between US and Kurdish forces. According to accounts of the raid, the Kurds provided the Americans with key intelligence that enabled US forces to pinpoint Baghdadi’s location.
As to Turkey, both Baghdadi and ISIS spokesman Abu Hassan al-Mujahir, who was killed by US forces on Tuesday, were located in areas of eastern Syria controlled by Turkey. The Americans didn’t try to hide this fact.
The Turkish operation in eastern Syria is reportedly raising Erdogan’s popularity at home. But it far from clear that the benefit he receives from his actions will be long-lasting. Turkey’s Syrian operation is exposing the NATO member’s close ties to ISIS and its allied terror groups. This exposure in and of itself is making the case for downgrading US strategic ties with its erstwhile ally.
Even worse for Turkey, due to Trump’s public embrace of Erdogan, the Democrats are targeting the Turkish autocrat as Enemy Number 1. On Tuesday, with the support of Republican lawmakers who have long recognized Erdogan’s animosity to US interests and allies, the Democratic-led House overwhelmingly passed a comprehensive sanctions resolution against Turkey.
The al-Baghdadi assassination and related events demonstrate that Trump is not flying blind in Syria. He is implementing a multifaceted set of policies that are based on the strengths, weaknesses and priorities of the various actors on a ground in ways that advance US interests at the expense of its foes and to the benefit of its allies.
https://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/al-baghdadi-and-trumps-syrian-chess-board/
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WHAT CAVALIER USE OF THE WORD LYNCH ? (Merriam-Webster joins the fray on Trump’s « misuse » of the word « lynching », but forgets… Biden’s !)
« Even if the President should be impeached, history is going to question whether or not this was just a partisan lynching or whether or not it was something that in fact met the standard, the very high bar, that was set by the founders as to what constituted an impeachable offense. »
Joe Biden (1998)
https://www.bbc.com/news/50147048
Statistics of reported lynching in the United States indicate that, between 1882 and 1951, 4,730 persons were lynched, of whom 1,293 were white and 3,437 were black. Lynching continued to be associated with U.S. racial unrest during the 1950s and ’60s, when civil rights workers and advocates were threatened and in some cases killed by mobs.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/lynching#ref205597
Captain Kangaroo Rodino and his loyal kangaroos did a wonderful job of lynching President Nixon
Orlando Milano, (letter to editor), Newsday (Long Island, NY), 2 Aug. 1974
Los Angeles Police Chief Ed Davis recently described the Watergate grand jury hearings of aides of former President Richard M. Nixon as “an unconstitutional lynching” in a letter that has been released by the Washington, D.C.-based Coalition to End Grand Jury Abuse.
Kenneth Reich, Los Angeles Times, 25 Mar. 1974
Lynch and lynching may occasionally be found used in a figurative or hyperbolic manner (describing a situation in which no one is actually put to death). It has also been used in reference to a president who is, or has been, close to impeachment. The fact that a word has been used in a certain manner should not always be interpreted as a sign that doing so is advisable. While it is true that people of many races have been put to death by mobs in a variety of settings and times, lynching has, over the past several hundred years, been primarily constituted of acts of violence against Black Americans. All words change in time, but the cavalier use of such a word as lynch, even in a metaphorical context, still evokes a long and painful history of racist violence…
https://www.merriam-webster.com/news-trend-watch/trump-impeachment-inquiry-is-a-lynching-20191022
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WHAT UKRAINIAN EFFORTS TO SABOTAGE TRUMP IN FAVOR OF HILLARY CLINTON IN THE 2016 ELECTION ?
Ukrainian government officials tried to help Hillary Clinton and undermine Trump by publicly questioning his fitness for office. They also disseminated documents implicating a top Trump aide in corruption and suggested they were investigating the matter, only to back away after the election. And they helped Clinton’s allies research damaging information on Trump and his advisers, a Politico investigation found. A Ukrainian-American operative who was consulting for the Democratic National Committee met with top officials in the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington in an effort to expose ties between Trump, top campaign aide Paul Manafort and Russia, according to people with direct knowledge of the situation. The Ukrainian efforts had an impact in the race, helping to force Manafort’s resignation and advancing the narrative that Trump’s campaign was deeply connected to Ukraine’s foe to the east, Russia. But they were far less concerted or centrally directed than Russia’s alleged hacking and dissemination of Democratic emails.
Politico’s investigation found evidence of Ukrainian government involvement in the race that appears to strain diplomatic protocol dictating that governments refrain from engaging in one another’s elections. Ukraine ((…) has traditionally enjoyed strong relations with U.S. administrations. Its officials worry that could change under Trump, whose team has privately expressed sentiments ranging from ambivalence to deep skepticism about Poroshenko’s regime, while sounding unusually friendly notes about Putin’s regime. Poroshenko is scrambling to alter that dynamic, recently signing a $50,000-a-month contract with a well-connected GOP-linked Washington lobbying firm to set up meetings with U.S. government officials “to strengthen U.S.-Ukrainian relations.”
The Ukrainian antipathy for Trump’s team — and alignment with Clinton’s — can be traced back to late 2013. That’s when the country’s president, Viktor Yanukovych, whom Manafort had been advising, abruptly backed out of a European Union pact linked to anti-corruption reforms. Instead, Yanukovych entered into a multibillion-dollar bailout agreement with Russia, sparking protests across Ukraine and prompting Yanukovych to flee the country to Russia under Putin’s protection. In the ensuing crisis, Russian troops moved into the Ukrainian territory of Crimea, and Manafort dropped off the radar.
Manafort’s work for Yanukovych caught the attention of a veteran Democratic operative named Alexandra Chalupa, who had worked in the White House Office of Public Liaison during the Clinton administration. Chalupa went on to work as a staffer, then as a consultant, for Democratic National Committee. The DNC paid her $412,000 from 2004 to June 2016, according to Federal Election Commission records, though she also was paid by other clients during that time, including Democratic campaigns and the DNC’s arm for engaging expatriate Democrats around the world.
A daughter of Ukrainian immigrants who maintains strong ties to the Ukrainian-American diaspora and the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine, Chalupa, a lawyer by training, in 2014 was doing pro bono work for another client interested in the Ukrainian crisis and began researching Manafort’s role in Yanukovych’s rise, as well as his ties to the pro-Russian oligarchs who funded Yanukovych’s political party.
In an interview this month, Chalupa told Politico she had developed a network of sources in Kiev and Washington, including investigative journalists, government officials and private intelligence operatives. While her consulting work at the DNC this past election cycle centered on mobilizing ethnic communities — including Ukrainian-Americans — she said that, when Trump’s unlikely presidential campaign began surging in late 2015, she began focusing more on the research, and expanded it to include Trump’s ties to Russia, as well.
She occasionally shared her findings with officials from the DNC and Clinton’s campaign, Chalupa said. In January 2016 — months before Manafort had taken any role in Trump’s campaign — Chalupa told a senior DNC official that, when it came to Trump’s campaign, “I felt there was a Russia connection,” Chalupa recalled. “And that, if there was, that we can expect Paul Manafort to be involved in this election,” said Chalupa, who at the time also was warning leaders in the Ukrainian-American community that Manafort was “Putin’s political brain for manipulating U.S. foreign policy and elections.”
She said she shared her concern with Ukraine’s ambassador to the U.S., Valeriy Chaly, and one of his top aides, Oksana Shulyar, during a March 2016 meeting at the Ukrainian Embassy. According to someone briefed on the meeting, Chaly said that Manafort was very much on his radar, but that he wasn’t particularly concerned about the operative’s ties to Trump since he didn’t believe Trump stood much of a chance of winning the GOP nomination, let alone the presidency.
That was not an uncommon view at the time, and, perhaps as a result, Trump’s ties to Russia — let alone Manafort’s — were not the subject of much attention. That all started to change just four days after Chalupa’s meeting at the embassy, when it was reported that Trump had in fact hired Manafort, suggesting that Chalupa may have been on to something. She quickly found herself in high demand. The day after Manafort’s hiring was revealed, she briefed the DNC’s communications staff on Manafort, Trump and their ties to Russia, according to an operative familiar with the situation.
A former DNC staffer described the exchange as an “informal conversation,” saying “‘briefing’ makes it sound way too formal,” and adding, “We were not directing or driving her work on this.” Yet, the former DNC staffer and the operative familiar with the situation agreed that with the DNC’s encouragement, Chalupa asked embassy staff to try to arrange an interview in which Poroshenko might discuss Manafort’s ties to Yanukovych.
While the embassy declined that request, officials there became “helpful” in Chalupa’s efforts, she said, explaining that she traded information and leads with them. “If I asked a question, they would provide guidance, or if there was someone I needed to follow up with.” But she stressed, “There were no documents given, nothing like that.”
Chalupa said the embassy also worked directly with reporters researching Trump, Manafort and Russia to point them in the right directions. She added, though, “they were being very protective and not speaking to the press as much as they should have. I think they were being careful because their situation was that they had to be very, very careful because they could not pick sides. It’s a political issue, and they didn’t want to get involved politically because they couldn’t.”
Shulyar vehemently denied working with reporters or with Chalupa on anything related to Trump or Manafort, explaining “we were stormed by many reporters to comment on this subject, but our clear and adamant position was not to give any comment [and] not to interfere into the campaign affairs.”
Russia’s effort to influence the 2016 race was personally directed by Russian President Vladimir Putin (pictured), and involved the country’s military and foreign intelligence services, according to U.S. intelligence officials.
Both Shulyar and Chalupa said the purpose of their initial meeting was to organize a June reception at the embassy to promote Ukraine. According to the embassy’s website, the event highlighted female Ukrainian leaders, featuring speeches by Ukrainian parliamentarian Hanna Hopko, who discussed “Ukraine’s fight against the Russian aggression in Donbas,” and longtime Hillary Clinton confidante Melanne Verveer, who worked for Clinton in the State Department and was a vocal surrogate during the presidential campaign.
Shulyar said her work with Chalupa “didn’t involve the campaign,” and she specifically stressed that “We have never worked to research and disseminate damaging information about Donald Trump and Paul Manafort.”
But Andrii Telizhenko, who worked as a political officer in the Ukrainian Embassy under Shulyar, said she instructed him to help Chalupa research connections between Trump, Manafort and Russia. “Oksana said that if I had any information, or knew other people who did, then I should contact Chalupa,” recalled Telizhenko, who is now a political consultant in Kiev. “They were coordinating an investigation with the Hillary team on Paul Manafort with Alexandra Chalupa,” he said, adding “Oksana was keeping it all quiet,” but “the embassy worked very closely with” Chalupa.
In fact, sources familiar with the effort say that Shulyar specifically called Telizhenko into a meeting with Chalupa to provide an update on an American media outlet’s ongoing investigation into Manafort.
Telizhenko recalled that Chalupa told him and Shulyar that, “If we can get enough information on Paul [Manafort] or Trump’s involvement with Russia, she can get a hearing in Congress by September.”
Chalupa confirmed that, a week after Manafort’s hiring was announced, she discussed the possibility of a congressional investigation with a foreign policy legislative assistant in the office of Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio), who co-chairs the Congressional Ukrainian Caucus. But, Chalupa said, “It didn’t go anywhere.”
Asked about the effort, the Kaptur legislative assistant called it a “touchy subject” in an internal email to colleagues that was accidentally forwarded to Politico.
Kaptur’s office later emailed an official statement explaining that the lawmaker is backing a bill to create an independent commission to investigate “possible outside interference in our elections.” The office added “at this time, the evidence related to this matter points to Russia, but Congresswoman Kaptur is concerned with any evidence of foreign entities interfering in our elections.”
•••
Almost as quickly as Chalupa’s efforts attracted the attention of the Ukrainian Embassy and Democrats, she also found herself the subject of some unwanted attention from overseas.
Within a few weeks of her initial meeting at the embassy with Shulyar and Chaly, Chalupa on April 20 received the first of what became a series of messages from the administrators of her private Yahoo email account, warning her that “state-sponsored actors” were trying to hack into her emails.
She kept up her crusade, appearing on a panel a week after the initial hacking message to discuss her research on Manafort with a group of Ukrainian investigative journalists gathered at the Library of Congress for a program sponsored by a U.S. congressional agency called the Open World Leadership Center.
Center spokeswoman Maura Shelden stressed that her group is nonpartisan and ensures “that our delegations hear from both sides of the aisle, receiving bipartisan information.” She said the Ukrainian journalists in subsequent days met with Republican officials in North Carolina and elsewhere. And she said that, before the Library of Congress event, “Open World’s program manager for Ukraine did contact Chalupa to advise her that Open World is a nonpartisan agency of the Congress.”
In the email, which was sent in early May to then-DNC communications director Luis Miranda, Chalupa noted that she had extended an invitation to the Library of Congress forum to veteran Washington investigative reporter Michael Isikoff. Two days before the event, he had published a story for Yahoo News revealing the unraveling of a $26 million deal between Manafort and a Russian oligarch related to a telecommunications venture in Ukraine. And Chalupa wrote in the email she’d been “working with for the past few weeks” with Isikoff “and connected him to the Ukrainians” at the event.
Isikoff, who accompanied Chalupa to a reception at the Ukrainian Embassy immediately after the Library of Congress event, declined to comment.
Chalupa further indicated in her hacked May email to the DNC that she had additional sensitive information about Manafort that she intended to share “offline” with Miranda and DNC research director Lauren Dillon, including “a big Trump component you and Lauren need to be aware of that will hit in next few weeks and something I’m working on you should be aware of.” Explaining that she didn’t feel comfortable sharing the intel over email, Chalupa attached a screenshot of a warning from Yahoo administrators about “state-sponsored” hacking on her account, explaining, “Since I started digging into Manafort these messages have been a daily occurrence on my yahoo account despite changing my password often.”
A DNC official stressed that Chalupa was a consultant paid to do outreach for the party’s political department, not a researcher. She undertook her investigations into Trump, Manafort and Russia on her own, and the party did not incorporate her findings in its dossiers on the subjects, the official said, stressing that the DNC had been building robust research books on Trump and his ties to Russia long before Chalupa began sounding alarms.
Nonetheless, Chalupa’s hacked email reportedly escalated concerns among top party officials, hardening their conclusion that Russia likely was behind the cyber intrusions with which the party was only then beginning to grapple.
Chalupa left the DNC after the Democratic convention in late July to focus fulltime on her research into Manafort, Trump and Russia. She said she provided off-the-record information and guidance to “a lot of journalists” working on stories related to Manafort and Trump’s Russia connections, despite what she described as escalating harassment.
About a month-and-a-half after Chalupa first started receiving hacking alerts, someone broke into her car outside the Northwest Washington home where she lives with her husband and three young daughters, she said. They “rampaged it, basically, but didn’t take anything valuable — left money, sunglasses, $1,200 worth of golf clubs,” she said, explaining she didn’t file a police report after that incident because she didn’t connect it to her research and the hacking.
But by the time a similar vehicle break-in occurred involving two family cars, she was convinced that it was a Russia-linked intimidation campaign. The police report on the latter break-in noted that “both vehicles were unlocked by an unknown person and the interior was ransacked, with papers and the garage openers scattered throughout the cars. Nothing was taken from the vehicles.”
Then, early in the morning on another day, a woman “wearing white flowers in her hair” tried to break into her family’s home at 1:30 a.m., Chalupa said. Shulyar told Chalupa that the mysterious incident bore some of the hallmarks of intimidation campaigns used against foreigners in Russia, according to Chalupa.
“This is something that they do to U.S. diplomats, they do it to Ukrainians. Like, this is how they operate. They break into people’s homes. They harass people. They’re theatrical about it,” Chalupa said. “They must have seen when I was writing to the DNC staff, outlining who Manafort was, pulling articles, saying why it was significant, and painting the bigger picture.”
In a Yahoo News story naming Chalupa as one of 16 “ordinary people” who “shaped the 2016 election,” Isikoff wrote that after Chalupa left the DNC, FBI agents investigating the hacking questioned her and examined her laptop and smartphone.
Chalupa this month told Politico that, as her research and role in the election started becoming more public, she began receiving death threats, along with continued alerts of state-sponsored hacking. But she said, “None of this has scared me off.”
•••
While it’s not uncommon for outside operatives to serve as intermediaries between governments and reporters, one of the more damaging Russia-related stories for the Trump campaign — and certainly for Manafort — can be traced more directly to the Ukrainian government.
Documents released by an independent Ukrainian government agency — and publicized by a parliamentarian — appeared to show $12.7 million in cash payments that were earmarked for Manafort by the Russia-aligned party of the deposed former president, Yanukovych.
Clinton’s campaign seized on the story to advance Democrats’ argument that Trump’s campaign was closely linked to Russia. The ledger represented “more troubling connections between Donald Trump’s team and pro-Kremlin elements in Ukraine,” Robby Mook, Clinton’s campaign manager, said in a statement. He demanded that Trump “disclose campaign chair Paul Manafort’s and all other campaign employees’ and advisers’ ties to Russian or pro-Kremlin entities, including whether any of Trump’s employees or advisers are currently representing and or being paid by them.”
A former Ukrainian investigative journalist and current parliamentarian named Serhiy Leshchenko, who was elected in 2014 as part of Poroshenko’s party, held a news conference to highlight the ledgers, and to urge Ukrainian and American law enforcement to aggressively investigate Manafort.
“I believe and understand the basis of these payments are totally against the law — we have the proof from these books,” Leshchenko said during the news conference, which attracted international media coverage. “If Mr. Manafort denies any allegations, I think he has to be interrogated into this case and prove his position that he was not involved in any misconduct on the territory of Ukraine,” Leshchenko added.
Manafort denied receiving any off-books cash from Yanukovych’s Party of Regions, and said that he had never been contacted about the ledger by Ukrainian or American investigators, later telling POLITICO “I was just caught in the crossfire.”
According to a series of memos reportedly compiled for Trump’s opponents by a former British intelligence agent, Yanukovych, in a secret meeting with Putin on the day after the Times published its report, admitted that he had authorized “substantial kickback payments to Manafort.” But according to the report, which was published Tuesday by BuzzFeed but remains unverified. Yanukovych assured Putin “that there was no documentary trail left behind which could provide clear evidence of this” — an alleged statement that seemed to implicitly question the authenticity of the ledger.
Manafort’s top moments from the Trump campaign.
The scrutiny around the ledgers — combined with that from other stories about his Ukraine work — proved too much, and he stepped down from the Trump campaign less than a week after the Times story.
At the time, Leshchenko suggested that his motivation was partly to undermine Trump. “For me, it was important to show not only the corruption aspect, but that he is [a] pro-Russian candidate who can break the geopolitical balance in the world,” Leshchenko told the Financial Times about two weeks after his news conference. The newspaper noted that Trump’s candidacy had spurred “Kiev’s wider political leadership to do something they would never have attempted before: intervene, however indirectly, in a U.S. election,” and the story quoted Leshchenko asserting that the majority of Ukraine’s politicians are “on Hillary Clinton’s side.”
But by this month, Leshchenko was seeking to recast his motivation, telling Politico, “I didn’t care who won the U.S. elections. This was a decision for the American voters to decide.” His goal in highlighting the ledgers, he said was “to raise these issues on a political level and emphasize the importance of the investigation.”
In a series of answers provided to Politico, a spokesman for Poroshenko distanced his administration from both Leshchenko’s efforts and those of the agency that reLeshchenko Leshchenko leased the ledgers, The National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine. It was created in 2014 as a condition for Ukraine to receive aid from the U.S. and the European Union, and it signed an evidence-sharing agreement with the FBI in late June — less than a month and a half before it released the ledgers.
The bureau is “fully independent,” the Poroshenko spokesman said, adding that when it came to the presidential administration there was “no targeted action against Manafort.” He added “as to Serhiy Leshchenko, he positions himself as a representative of internal opposition in the Bloc of Petro Poroshenko’s faction, despite [the fact that] he belongs to the faction,” the spokesman said, adding, “it was about him personally who pushed [the anti-corruption bureau] to proceed with investigation on Manafort.”
But an operative who has worked extensively in Ukraine, including as an adviser to Poroshenko, said it was highly unlikely that either Leshchenko or the anti-corruption bureau would have pushed the issue without at least tacit approval from Poroshenko or his closest allies.
“It was something that Poroshenko was probably aware of and could have stopped if he wanted to,” said the operative.
And, almost immediately after Trump’s stunning victory over Clinton, questions began mounting about the investigations into the ledgers — and the ledgers themselves.
And, while the anti-corruption bureau told Politico late last month that a “general investigation [is] still ongoing” of the ledger, it said Manafort is not a target of the investigation. “As he is not the Ukrainian citizen, [the anti-corruption bureau] by the law couldn’t investigate him personally,” the bureau said in a statement.
Some Poroshenko critics have gone further, suggesting that the bureau is backing away from investigating because the ledgers might have been doctored or even forged.
Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, a Ukrainian former diplomat who served as the country’s head of security under Poroshenko but is now affiliated with a leading opponent of Poroshenko, said it was fishy that “only one part of the black ledger appeared.” He asked, “Where is the handwriting analysis?” and said it was “crazy” to announce an investigation based on the ledgers. He met last month in Washington with Trump allies, and said, “of course they all recognize that our [anti-corruption bureau] intervened in the presidential campaign.”
And in an interview this week, Manafort, who re-emerged as an informal advisor to Trump after Election Day, suggested that the ledgers were inauthentic and called their publication “a politically motivated false attack on me. My role as a paid consultant was public. There was nothing off the books, but the way that this was presented tried to make it look shady.”
He added that he felt particularly wronged by efforts to cast his work in Ukraine as pro-Russian, arguing “all my efforts were focused on helping Ukraine move into Europe and the West.” He specifically cited his work on denuclearizing the country and on the European Union trade and political pact that Yanukovych spurned before fleeing to Russia. “In no case was I ever involved in anything that would be contrary to U.S. interests,” Manafort said.
Yet Russia seemed to come to the defense of Manafort and Trump last month, when a spokeswoman for Russia’s Foreign Ministry charged that the Ukrainian government used the ledgers as a political weapon.
“Ukraine seriously complicated the work of Trump’s election campaign headquarters by planting information according to which Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign chairman, allegedly accepted money from Ukrainian oligarchs,” Maria Zakharova said at a news briefing, according to a transcript of her remarks posted on the Foreign Ministry’s website. “All of you have heard this remarkable story,” she told assembled reporters.
•••
Beyond any efforts to sabotage Trump, Ukrainian officials didn’t exactly extend a hand of friendship to the GOP nominee during the campaign.
The ambassador, Chaly, penned an op-ed for The Hill, in which he chastised Trump for a confusing series of statements in which the GOP candidate at one point expressed a willingness to consider recognizing Russia’s annexation of the Ukrainian territory of Crimea as legitimate. The op-ed made some in the embassy uneasy, sources said.
“That was like too close for comfort, even for them,” said Chalupa. “That was something that was as risky as they were going to be.”
Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk warned on Facebook that Trump had “challenged the very values of the free world.”
Ukraine’s minister of internal affairs, Arsen Avakov, piled on, trashing Trump on Twitter in July as a “clown” and asserting that Trump is “an even bigger danger to the US than terrorism.”
Avakov, in a Facebook post, lashed out at Trump for his confusing Crimea comments, calling the assessment the “diagnosis of a dangerous misfit,” according to a translated screenshot featured in one media report, though he later deleted the post. He called Trump “dangerous for Ukraine and the US” and noted that Manafort worked with Yanukovych when the former Ukrainian leader “fled to Russia through Crimea. Where would Manafort lead Trump?”
Paul Manafort is hired to help lead Donald Trump’s delegate-gathering efforts.
The Trump-Ukraine relationship grew even more fraught in September with reports that the GOP nominee had snubbed Poroshenko on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, where the Ukrainian president tried to meet both major party candidates, but scored only a meeting with Clinton.
Telizhenko, the former embassy staffer, said that, during the primaries, Chaly, the country’s ambassador in Washington, had actually instructed the embassy not to reach out to Trump’s campaign, even as it was engaging with those of Clinton and Trump’s leading GOP rival, Ted Cruz.
“We had an order not to talk to the Trump team, because he was critical of Ukraine and the government and his critical position on Crimea and the conflict,” said Telizhenko. “I was yelled at when I proposed to talk to Trump,” he said, adding, “The ambassador said not to get involved — Hillary is going to win.”
This account was confirmed by Nalyvaichenko, the former diplomat and security chief now affiliated with a Poroshenko opponent, who said, “The Ukrainian authorities closed all doors and windows — this is from the Ukrainian side.” He called the strategy “bad and short-sighted.”
Andriy Artemenko, a Ukrainian parliamentarian associated with a conservative opposition party, did meet with Trump’s team during the campaign and said he personally offered to set up similar meetings for Chaly but was rebuffed.
“It was clear that they were supporting Hillary Clinton’s candidacy,” Artemenko said. “They did everything from organizing meetings with the Clinton team, to publicly supporting her, to criticizing Trump. … I think that they simply didn’t meet because they thought that Hillary would win.”
Shulyar rejected the characterizations that the embassy had a ban on interacting with Trump, instead explaining that it “had different diplomats assigned for dealing with different teams tailoring the content and messaging. So it was not an instruction to abstain from the engagement but rather an internal discipline for diplomats not to get involved into a field she or he was not assigned to, but where another colleague was involved.”
And she pointed out that Chaly traveled to the GOP convention in Cleveland in late July and met with members of Trump’s foreign policy team “to highlight the importance of Ukraine and the support of it by the U.S.”
Despite the outreach, Trump’s campaign in Cleveland gutted a proposed amendment to the Republican Party platform that called for the U.S. to provide “lethal defensive weapons” for Ukraine to defend itself against Russian incursion, backers of the measure charged.
The outreach ramped up after Trump’s victory. Shulyar pointed out that Poroshenko was among the first foreign leaders to call to congratulate Trump. And she said that, since Election Day, Chaly has met with close Trump allies, including Sens. Jeff Sessions, Trump’s nominee for attorney general, and Bob Corker, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, while the ambassador accompanied Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze, Ukraine’s vice prime minister for European and Euro-Atlantic integration, to a round of Washington meetings with Rep. Tom Marino (R-Pa.), an early Trump backer, and Jim DeMint, president of The Heritage Foundation, which played a prominent role in Trump’s transition.
•••
Many Ukrainian officials and operatives and their American allies see Trump’s inauguration this month as an existential threat to the country, made worse, they admit, by the dissemination of the secret ledger, the antagonistic social media posts and the perception that the embassy meddled against — or at least shut out — Trump.
“It’s really bad. The [Poroshenko] administration right now is trying to re-coordinate communications,” said Telizhenko, adding, “The Trump organization doesn’t want to talk to our administration at all.”
During Nalyvaichenko’s trip to Washington last month, he detected lingering ill will toward Ukraine from some, and lack of interest from others, he recalled. “Ukraine is not on the top of the list, not even the middle,” he said.
Poroshenko’s allies are scrambling to figure out how to build a relationship with Trump, who is known for harboring and prosecuting grudges for years.
A delegation of Ukrainian parliamentarians allied with Poroshenko last month traveled to Washington partly to try to make inroads with the Trump transition team, but they were unable to secure a meeting, according to a Washington foreign policy operative familiar with the trip. And operatives in Washington and Kiev say that after the election, Poroshenko met in Kiev with top executives from the Washington lobbying firm BGR — including Ed Rogers and Lester Munson — about how to navigate the Trump regime.
Weeks later, BGR reported to the Department of Justice that the government of Ukraine would pay the firm $50,000 a month to “provide strategic public relations and government affairs counsel,” including “outreach to U.S. government officials, non-government organizations, members of the media and other individuals.”
Firm spokesman Jeffrey Birnbaum suggested that “pro-Putin oligarchs” were already trying to sow doubts about BGR’s work with Poroshenko. While the firm maintains close relationships with GOP congressional leaders, several of its principals were dismissive or sharply critical of Trump during the GOP primary, which could limit their effectiveness lobbying the new administration.
The Poroshenko regime’s standing with Trump is considered so dire that the president’s allies after the election actually reached out to make amends with — and even seek assistance from — Manafort, according to two operatives familiar with Ukraine’s efforts to make inroads with Trump.
Meanwhile, Poroshenko’s rivals are seeking to capitalize on his dicey relationship with Trump’s team. Some are pressuring him to replace Chaly, a close ally of Poroshenko’s who is being blamed by critics in Kiev and Washington for implementing — if not engineering — the country’s anti-Trump efforts, according to Ukrainian and U.S. politicians and operatives interviewed for this story. They say that several potential Poroshenko opponents have been through Washington since the election seeking audiences of their own with Trump allies, though most have failed to do do so.
“None of the Ukrainians have any access to Trump — they are all desperate to get it, and are willing to pay big for it,” said one American consultant whose company recently met in Washington with Yuriy Boyko, a former vice prime minister under Yanukovych. Boyko, who like Yanukovych has a pro-Russian worldview, is considering a presidential campaign of his own, and his representatives offered “to pay a shit-ton of money” to get access to Trump and his inaugural events, according to the consultant.
The consultant turned down the work, explaining, “It sounded shady, and we don’t want to get in the middle of that kind of stuff.”
https://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/ukraine-sabotage-trump-backfire-233446
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WHAT DOUBLE STANDARDS ?
Vice President Biden’s son got paid $50,000 (or as much as $83,000) per month for years from a corrupt company in Ukraine for the sole reason that he was the V.P.’s son, and supposedly, Trump should apologize and be removed from office for bringing it up. The dishonest media say there is no evidence Biden did anything wrong. We know that Obama/Biden withheld military aid from Ukraine and Trump gave it the aid — but somehow, Trump should be impeached for bringing up the Bidens’ name, and the complicit media continually say there is no indication Biden did anything wrong. Biden/Obama threatened to withhold over one billion dollars in aid if Ukraine didn’t fire a prosecutor [supposed to be ] investigating the corrupt company that Hunter Biden got paid by — and Trump should be impeached for bringing up the Bidens’ name. The sycophant media continually say there is no indication Biden did anything wrong.
Journalists and other Democrats have complained for years that politicians colluding with foreigners is pure corruption and should not be allowed. We know from Politico and other sources that the Democrats worked with Ukraine to defeat Trump in 2016 — but if Trump or Barr wants to investigate that corruption, he should be removed from office and apologize for even bringing it up.
Journalists and other Democrats tried to impeach Trump for years with the false story about Russian collusion with Trump, and now they want him impeached for wanting an investigation into actual collusion by Democrats with Ukraine.
Summary:
If journalists and other Democrats truly cared about corruption, they would investigate the Bidens and Clintons for all their kickbacks instead of seeking to impeach Trump for seeking to show the public the truth.
If they cared about interference by foreigners and bureaucrats in the 2016 election, they would want to investigate Ukraine, Hillary, the DNC, the FBI, the intelligence agencies, Obama, and others in his administration, instead of trying to hide the truth from the public and seeking to impeach Trump and destroy Barr.
The only thing journalists and other Democrats care about since Trump was elected is getting rid of Trump and putting Democrats back in power.
It is no wonder so many politicians and their families enrich themselves while feasting at the public trough since most journalists care about only an agenda and electing Democrats.
Journalists claim they are fact-checkers, but the fact that they willingly spread lies about Russian collusion with Trump for years and want to cover up the clear collusion of Democrats with Ukraine in 2016 shows that facts have little if anything to do with what they report. They are agenda-pushers, not fact-checkers.
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/11/ukraine_the_truth_versus_the_democrats_narrative.html
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LIVE AND LET DIE (Balance in achieving deterrence is the key, but Trump is in danger of following the disastrous Obama model with thugs like Erdogan who view magnanimity as a sign of weakness)
Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign sought to overturn 75 years of bipartisan foreign policy orthodoxy, especially as it applied to the Middle East. (…) Now the threat was not Russian nukes but confronting new enemies such as radical Islam and a rogue’s gallery of petty but troublesome nuts, freaks, and dictators — Granada’s Hudson Austin, an unhinged Moammar Qaddafi of Libya, Hezbollah’s terrorists in Lebanon, Nicaraguan Communist Daniel Ortega, Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega, the gang leader Mohamed Aidid of Somalia, the former Serbian thug Slobodan Milosevic, Mullah Omar of the Taliban, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, arch terrorist Osama bin Laden, the macabre al-Qaeda and ISIS, and on and on.
These put-downs, some successful and some not so much, were apparently viewed by the post–Cold War establishment as our versions of the late Roman Republic and Empire policies of mowing the lawn, with an occasional weeding out of regional nationalists and insurrectionists like Jugurtha, Mithridates, Vercingetorix, Ariovistus, Boudicca, and the like. The theory was that occasionally knocking flat a charismatic brute discouraged all others like him from trying to emulate his revolt and upend the international order. Having one or two legions always on the move often meant that most others could stay in their barracks. And it kept the peace, or so the U.S., like Rome, more or less believed.
But the problem with American policy after the Cold War and the end of the Soviet nuclear threat was that the U.S. was not really comfortable as an imperial global watchdog, we no longer had a near monopoly on the world economy that subsidized these expensive interventions, and many of these thugs did not necessarily pose a direct threat to American interests — perhaps ISIS, an oil-rich Middle East dictator, and radical Islamists excepted. What started as a quick, successful take-out of a monster sometimes ended up as a long-drawn out “occupation” in which all U.S. assets of firepower, mobility, and air support were nullified in the dismal street fighting of a Fallujah or a Mogadishu.
The bad guys were bothersome and even on occasion genocidal, and their removal sometimes improved the lot of those of the ground — but not always. When things got messy — such as in the Beqaa Valley in Lebanon, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, or Somalia — it was not clear whether the American use of force resulted in tactical success leading to strategic advantage. Often preemptive insertion of troops either did not further U.S. deterrence or actually undermined it — as in the case of the “Arab Spring” bombing in Libya.
At home, in a consistent pattern, the most vociferous advocates of preemptory war usually claimed prescient brilliance, as when the American military rapidly dislodged the Taliban and Saddam Hussein. But then came the occupation and post-war anarchy. As American dead mounted, the mission mysteriously creeped into nation-building. Sometimes, in the post-invasion chaos, the once noble liberated victims became the opportunistic victimizers. Depressed, some of the original architects of preemption blamed those who had listened to them. The establishment’s calling card became, “My weeks-long brilliant theoretical preemption was ruined by your actual botched decade-long occupation.” In extremis, few kept their support; most abandoned it.
Into this dilemma charged Donald Trump, who tried to square the old circle by boasting that he would “bomb the s*** out of ISIS” (and he mostly did that). Yet he also pledged to avoid optional wars in the Middle East — given that they did not pencil out to the Manhattan developer as a cost-benefit profit for America. We had become the world’s largest large oil producer anyway without worrying very much about how many barrels of oil a post-Qaddafi Libya or the Iranian theocrats pumped each day, and our rivals, like China and Russia, would soon find out that their involvement in the Middle East would likely not pencil out.
Trump started well enough. He backed down the provocative North Koreans and Iranians with tougher sanctions, while refusing to use kinetic force to reply to their rather pathetic provocations. He bombed ISIS but yanked American “trip wire” troops out of the Kurdish-Turkish battle zones in Syria, and he green-lighted the military’s killing of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. He ratcheted up sanctions against Russia and armed Putin’s enemies without committing to defend any of the old republics of the Soviet Union. He increased the defense budget and boomed the economy but did not use such newly acquired power other than against ISIS.
Rarely has such an empowered military relied so much on economic sanctions. And rarely have leftist pacifist advocates of using sanctions and boycotts so damned Trump’s reluctance to launch missiles and drop bombs — the only common denominator being that whatever the orange man is for, they are against.
Trump’s apparent theory is that time is on his side. The Palestinians are cut off from U.S. funds; their U.N. surrogates are orphaned from the U.S. The U.S. Embassy is in Jerusalem. The Golan Heights are not going back to Syria. It is up to the West Bank and Gaza to change the Middle East dynamic, since their Gulf paymasters couldn’t care less about them, given the Palestinians’ romance with an Iran that is slowly going broke.
North Korea is squeezed by toughed-up sanctions. They can conduct missile tests, threaten, and cajole, but ultimately their people will be eating grass if they don’t wish to deal. And if they do launch a missile toward the U.S., they are convinced that Trump will launch a lot more against them.
Iran wants a confrontation before the election to undermine the Trump Electoral College base of support. So Trump is apparently willing to overlook such petty slights as the downing of the American drone by Iranian forces. But the Iranians must know that if they start targeting U.S. ships, or attacking NATO allied vessels and planes, Trump will likely restore deterrence by one-off, disproportionate air and missile attacks against Iranian naval and air bases — without intervening on the ground and without worrying that Iranian oil will go off the market entirely.
So there is a sort of Trump doctrine that grew in part out of Trump’s campaign promises and in part from the strategic assessment in 2016-17 by then national-security adviser H.R. McMaster, outlining a new “principled realism.” The net result is not to nation-build, preempt, or worry much about changing fetid countries to look like us, but to disproportionately respond when attacked or threatened, and in a manner that causes real damage, without the insertion of U.S. ground troops, in the fashion of the past 75 years.
Balance in achieving deterrence is the key. If Trump’s protestations that he does not wish to take enemy lives or conduct endless wars for no profit encourage enemy adventurism, then he will have to respond forcefully when American forces are attacked — but in a way that is not open-ended. And that usually means not through the use of ground troops that involve wars that, in Trump’s mind, create bad optics and poor ratings back home.
There are three ways of losing deterrence. One is to bluster, boast, and threaten and then do little — as with Barack Obama’s bombast about red lines in Syria.
A second is to reach out and appease a thug who has no intention of seeing outreach as anything other than laxity to be exploited. The Obama administration’s Russian reset combined the worst elements of this strategy: alternately courting and lecturing Putin, while doing nothing as he invaded former republics and returned to the Middle East. With Recep Erdogan, Trump is in danger of following the disastrous Obama model. More than most dictators, Erdogan views magnanimity with contempt and as a sign of weakness, rather than a gesture to be reciprocated in kind.
A third way of losing deterrence is to get bogged down in a quagmire that encourages other would-be terrorists, revolutionaries, and psychopaths to try instigating more of the same. Afghanistan and Iraq, from 2003 to 2006, are good examples of gridlock. The Libya project of Susan Rice, Samantha Power, and Hillary Clinton is a perfect case of hasty bombing followed by embarrassed indifference to the resulting chaos, and then withdrawal after the loss of four Americans. When Ronald Reagan inserted Marines into Lebanon, saw them blown up, and then yanked them, almost everyone concluded that Hezbollah and Iran had a free hand to do whatever they wanted. And they mostly did.
There is one final paradox related to the dilemma of maintaining deterrence without invading hostile countries. Trump apparently believes that a booming economy, a well-funded muscular military, and plenty of U.S.-produced oil and gas give America enormous power and a range of choices that recent presidents lacked.
The result would be that when forced to respond to an attack on an American asset or ally, the U.S. could do so disproportionately, destructively, and without any red line, promise, or virtue-signaling about what it might do next — given its unique ability to hit abroad without being hit at home, and with a well-oiled economy that has no need to beg the Saudis to be nice, or to urge the Iranians to pump more, or to get the Venezuelans back into the exporting business.
Add up all these paradoxes, and I suppose we could call the Trump administration’s idea of deterrence without preemptive intervention as either “Live and let live” — or, more macabrely, “Live — and let die.” Either way, the paradox is to maintain critical deterrence against American enemies to prevent a war, but without Pavlovian interventions, and without being baited into optional military action that is antithetical to the national mood that got Trump elected.
VDH
https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/11/trump-foreign-policy-doctrine-deterrence-without-intervention/
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WHAT ALT CENTRIST CONFUSION BETWEEN RHETORIC AND REALITY ?
The centrist elite has been successful in raising alarm about the supposed death of the old liberal order. But the picture it paints is a fantasy. When I’m done ruminating on the depredations of the “deep state,” sometimes I wonder if there’s a dark room somewhere in which graduates from the Kennedy School of Government and the PPE programs of Oxford and Cambridge are programming bots and producing viral news sites to spread their messages across social media. From this den they amplify the voices of their resolutely centrist, establishment-oriented collaborators, creating an alternate reality. In this reality, Brexit is already a disaster. Hungary and Poland are places of severe political repression. Donald Trump is subverting the Constitution and running a pro-Russia foreign policy. America has withdrawn from the world stage, having given up on global leadership. Angela Merkel is the “leader of the free world” and the only one trying to save the seven-decade-long liberal world order that is rapidly collapsing. The message is that there’s too much change and it’s terrifying.
Commentators have been building this picture for a long time. Bret Stephens wrote a book in 2014 titled America in Retreat: The New Isolationism and the Coming Global Disorder. Stephens was mostly concerned with the rhetorical momentum that advocates of foreign-policy restraint had made in recent years. He could not really cite anywhere on earth that the United States military had actually stopped occupying. The great sin of the time wasn’t that President Obama had refused to intervene in Syria — U.S. Special Forces had been supporting various Sunni militias there since 2012 — but that he hadn’t intervened forcefully enough. The war in Afghanistan was only 13 years old, rather than 18, then.
Simpler times.
Since that book, America has elected a president who promised to end Middle East wars, and still talks about our troops coming home. But again, for President Trump, this is mostly rhetorical, however much it might reflect a genuine gut preference for a reduced global military footprint. Very little has been done on his watch to tangibly reduce that footprint, much as he might claim otherwise.
Yet Trump’s rhetoric is enough to make him complicit in the centrist reality-building project. An old foreign-policy hand such as Richard Haas can write an obituary for 70 years of the liberal world order and describe its death like this:
Under President Donald Trump, the US decided against joining the Trans-Pacific Partnership and to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement. It has threatened to leave the North American Free Trade Agreement and the Iran nuclear deal. It has unilaterally introduced steel and aluminum tariffs, relying on a justification (national security) that others could use, in the process placing the world at risk of a trade war. It has raised questions about its commitment to NATO and other alliance relationships. And it rarely speaks about democracy or human rights. “America First” and the liberal world order seem incompatible.
After the TPP, we’re down mostly to, again, rhetorical deviations. But Haas and his ilk have done their job well nevertheless. Intelligent commentators about, say, Brexit will note, as if it were an incontestable fact, that we are “in an era of American isolation.”
This confusion of rhetoric and reality is everywhere these days. Trump’s occasionally warm remarks about Vladimir Putin are taken to be statements about American foreign policy, which is as adversarial to Russia as it’s been since the early 1990s, with sanctions and hostile diplomatic statements tossed around liberally.
Trump talks as if he can do anything he wants as president, but his administration complies punctiliously with court orders. He sometimes questions NATO, but the U.S. seems to be investing more in its collective defense, and has recently gotten back on the right side of Turkey. Contrary to the predictions and the mood of the media class, the United Kingdom has experienced a period of economic expansion in the years since the Brexit vote. Hungary lacks compelling opposition parties, but retains a culture of protest and raucous dissent. The Polish government’s most novel attempts to reform its nation’s judiciary were turned back.
The liberal world order is kludgy and in search of a greater purpose and mission. Maybe it will find it in resisting the authoritarian depredations of China, maybe not. But the world of 2019 is not so cataclysmic in comparison to the world of 2016 or 2014 or 2009 or even 1999. In fact, maybe too little has changed.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/11/centrist-elite-reports-liberal-world-order-death-greatly-exaggerated
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SOCIALISM NOW (Sometimes the naive and disaffected must relearn that their pie-in-the sky socialist medicine is far worse than the perceived malady of inequality)
Multiple forms of socialism, from hard Stalinism to European redistribution, continue to fail. Russia and China are still struggling with the legacy of genocidal Communism. Eastern Europe still suffers after decades of Soviet-imposed socialist chaos. Cuba, Nicaragua, North Korea, and Venezuela are unfree, poor, and failed states. Baathism — a synonym for pan-Arabic socialism — ruined the post-war Middle East. The soft-socialist European Union countries are stagnant and mostly dependent on the U.S. military for their protection. In contrast, current American deregulation, tax cuts and incentives, and record energy production have given the United States the strongest economy in the world.
So why, then, are two of the top three Democratic presidential contenders — Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren — either overtly or implicitly running on socialist agendas? Why are the heartthrobs of American progressives — Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.), Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.), and Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) — calling for socialist redistributionist schemes? Why do polls show that a majority of American Millennials have a favorable view of socialism?
There are lots of catalysts for the new socialism. Massive immigration is changing the demography of the United States. The number of foreign-born U.S. residents and their children has been estimated at almost 60 million, or about 1 in 5 U.S. residents. Some 27 percent of California residents were born outside of America.
Many of these immigrants flee from poor areas of Latin America, Mexico, Africa, and Asia that were wrecked by statism and socialism. Often, they arrive in the U.S. unaware of economic and political alternatives to state socialism. When they reach the U.S. — often without marketable skills and unable to speak English — many assume that America will simply offer a far better version of the statism from which they fled. Consequently, many take for granted that government will provide them an array of social services, and they become supportive of progressive socialism.
Another culprit for the new socialist craze is the strange leftward drift of the very wealthy in Silicon Valley, in corporate America, and on Wall Street. Some of the new progressive rich feel guilty about their unprecedented wealth. So they champion redistribution as the sort of medieval penance that alleviates guilt. Yet the influential and monied classes usually are so well off that higher taxes hardly affect them. Instead, redistributionist taxation hurts the struggling middle classes.
In California, it became hip for wealthy leftists to promote socialism from their Malibu, Menlo Park, or Mill Valley enclaves — while still living as privileged capitalists. Meanwhile, it proved nearly impossible for the middle classes of Stockton and Bakersfield to cope with the reality of crushing taxes and terrible social services.
From 2008 to 2017, the now-multimillionaire Barack Obama, first as candidate and then as president, used all sorts of cool socialist slogans, from “spread the wealth around” and “now is not the time to profit” to “you didn’t build that” and “at a certain point you’ve made enough money.”
Universities bear much of the blame. Their manipulation of the federal government to guarantee student loans empowered them to jack up college costs without any accountability. Liberal college administrators and faculty did not care much when graduates left campus poorly educated and unable to market their expensive degrees.
More than 45 million borrowers now struggle with nearly $1.6 trillion in collective student debt, with climbing interest. That indebtedness has delayed — or ended — the traditional forces that encourage conservatism and traditionalism, such as getting married, having children and buying a home.
Instead, a generation of single, childless, and mostly urban youth feels cheated that their high-priced degrees did not earn them competitive salaries. Millions of embittered college graduates will never be able to pay off what they owe — and want some entity to pay off their debts.
In paradoxical fashion, teenagers were considered savvy adults who were mature enough to take on gargantuan loans. But they were also treated like fragile preteens who were warned that the world outside their campus sanctuaries was downright mean, sexist, racist, homophobic, and unfair.
Finally, doctrinaire Republicans for decades mouthed orthodoxies of free rather than fair trade. They embraced the idea of creative destruction of industries, but without worrying about the real-life consequences for the unemployed in the hollowed out red-state interior.
Add up a lost generation of woke and broke college graduates, waves of impoverished immigrants without much knowledge of American economic traditions, wealthy advocates of boutique socialism, and asleep-at-the-wheel Republicans, and it becomes clear why historically destructive socialism is suddenly seen as cool.
Regrettably, sometimes the naïve and disaffected must relearn that their pie-in-the sky socialist medicine is far worse than the perceived malady of inequality.
And unfortunately, when socialists gain power, they don’t destroy just themselves. They usually take everyone else down with them as well.
VDH
https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/11/history-shows-socialism-not-the-cure/
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NO KEYS UNDER THE LAMPPOST (But guess who’s losing their own backyard in both Lebanon and Iraq ?)
First, the fact that the Iranian economy hasn’t collapsed doesn’t mean that the Iranians aren’t constrained by the sanctions. According to the World Bank data, Iranian military expenditures increased from year to year between 2014 and 2017, but dropped in 2018. This week US Ambassador in Germany Richard Grenell said that Iran’s military budget shrunk by 28 percent last year. Grenell said that outlays to the Revolutionary Guard Corps decreased by 17 percent last year. So while it is true that the regime has survived, it is far from true that the sanctions have had no significant impact on Iran. Moreover, even Foreign Affairs acknowledged that it is likely that Iran’s ability to survive under the sanctions is limited.
Second, there is reason to doubt that Iran’s announcements regarding its stepped-up uranium enrichment describe new activity. In 2015, Barack Obama and his advisors insisted that the nuclear deal’s inspection regime was unprecedented in its invasiveness. But this is not true. Under the agreement, Iran had the right to bar UN nuclear inspectors from entering “military sites.” And under the agreement, Iran can label any facility a “military site.” The “invasive” inspections that have taken place have also been far from exhaustive. For instance, as the Los Angeles Times reported in late 2017, the nuclear reactor at Natanz is monitored around the clock through closed circuit video cameras. The problem is that the feed does not go directly to the IAEA in Vienna. It goes to the Iranian regime which then sends it on to Vienna. Consequently, there is no way to determine whether the footage the UN receives reflects what is actually occurring at the nuclear site.
The same article pointed out that IAEA inspectors did not seek access to the most sinister nuclear installations, including the nuclear installation in Parchin where Iran was suspected of having carried out nuclear explosive testing. “Nearly all of the inspections,” the paper reported “were of less sensitive facilities such as universities and manufacturing plants.” Diplomatic sources told the LA Times that the IAEA was “careful not to provoke a confrontation by demanding access without evidence to sites that Iranian officials have said are off-limits to foreign inspectors.”
In other words, we don’t really know what Iran has been doing in its nuclear facilities. The IAEA defined its job as looking for keys under the lamppost and declaring, every six months that it found no keys under the lamppost.
Perhaps Iran was moved to announce its breaches of the nuclear deal at Natanz and Fordo because the US forces have Syria’s border with Turkey. But it is more likely that Iran’s action was a distress signal.
In his statement Monday, Rouhani made clear the move is an attempt to extort the Europeans into giving Iran money.
In his words, “When they, [i.e., Europe] fulfill their commitments, [i.e., give us money], we will stop the gas injection.”
The US withdrawal from Syria’s border with Turkey did lead to Iran and Russia asserting control over the border. But it also put Iran in open confrontation with Turkey. For a decade, Iran and Turkey have been working together in busting US sanctions and in undermining US operations in Syria and Iraq. Now that they stand opposite one another at the Syrian border with Turkey, the future of that cooperation is in doubt.
On Tuesday, Elizabeh Tsurkov from the Foreign Policy Research Institute posted footage of Syrian protesters in Sharjah, a town in Daraa province in southern Syria, an area under full control of the Assad regime, (which is controlled by Iran).
The protesters were chanting “Free, free Syria. Iran get out.”
The protesters in Sharjah were echoing the sentiments of millions of Lebanese and Iraqi protesters who have been out on the streets of their respective countries calling for the overthrow of their governments, which are controlled by Iran, and for a complete reordering of their political systems.
This then brings us to the third argument for the failure of the maximum pressure campaign.
Far from demonstrating that Iran is fully in charge of Iraq and Lebanon, the central role Soleimani is taking in quelling the protests in Iraq, and the central role Hezbollah is playing in Lebanon in undermining the protests is an indication of Iranian weakness.
According to media reports, Soleimani has travelled to Iraq twice over the past month to oversee the repression of the protests, and Iranian-controlled Shiite militias have so far reportedly killed 250 protesters and wounded thousands more.
In Iraq, the protests are concentrated not in Sunni areas, but in the Shiite south. And they are distinctly anti-Iranian.
At the same time the Iranian demonstrators in Tehran were shouting “Death to America,” and “Death to Israel,” thousands of Iraqi protesters in Karbala were throwing firebombs at the Iranian consulate in the city. They replaced the Iranian flag at the site with an Iraqi flag.
Throughout Iraq’s Shiite south, protesters are throwing shoes and burning pictures of Iranian leader Ali Khamenei and calling for Iran to get out of their country. The Shiite clerics in Najaf, the religious capital of Shiite Islam have green lighted the protests against Iran. In other words, the Iranians are losing their own backyard.
The sanctions are one of the causes of the protests in both Lebanon and Iraq. Due to the economic constraints Iran is facing, it has reportedly scaled back its payments to its proxies – particularly Hezbollah and the Shiite militias in Iraq. These proxies in turn, have had to expand their use of public funds and extortion to fund their operations.
The protesters in Lebanon are reacting to the economic failure of their country, a failure which owes primarily to government corruption and incompetence. Hezbollah controls the Lebanese government both through its own political representatives and through its proxies. Consequently, it is the protesters’ main target.
In Iraq, the Iranian run Shiite militias have also been feeding off the public trough. They have commandeered public funds and institutions to pay for their operations. And, according to a recent report in Tablet online magazine, they supplement their income by making people travelling on roads under their control pay “tolls.”
If Iran had more money to pay its proxy governments, presumably they would be stealing less money from their respective publics.
In other words, far from having nothing to do with the protests, the sanctions against Iran have everything to do with the protests.
The Lebanese and Iraqis protesting their governments and the Iranian regime which controls them represent a profoundly negative development for Iran and its 40 year war against Israel and America. Together with Syria, Lebanon and Iraq play key roles in Iran’s strategy for fighting Israel. The more unstable they are, the less use Iran will be able to make of them in a future offensive against Israel.
Today, at least publicly, Israel is focusing its attention on Iran’s nuclear operations, and this makes sense. But actions to decrease Iran’s regional power and to destabilize the regime’s grip on power at home are essential components of any strategy for diminishing Iran’s capacity to attack Israel.
To date, the Trump administration’s maximum pressure strategy has not managed to bring the regime down. And it is unlikely that on their own, US economic sanctions will suffice to ever bring it down.
Yet as the mass demonstrations against Iran and its proxies in Lebanon and Iraq make clear, the American strategy can and is undermining Iranian domestic and regional power and stability. It is Israel’s responsibility to ensure that this process is expanded and exploited to the greatest degree possible to diminish the prospects of a direct Iranian assault on the Jewish state.
Caroline Glick
http://carolineglick.com/is-iran-winning-or-losing/
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WHAT ONE-PARTY MISRULE IN CALIFORNIA ? (After three decades of radical progressivism, California residents are tiring of one-party, judge-led straitjacket rule with the final irony of those most hurt and growing the most angry being the immigrants who once fled to a different California that now no longer exists)
After three decades of radical progressivism, California residents are tiring of one-party straitjacket rule. From 1967 to 2019, Republicans controlled the California governorship for 31 of 52 years. So why is there currently not a single statewide Republican officeholder? California also has a Democratic governor and Democratic supermajorities in both houses of the state legislature. Only seven of California’s 53 congressional seats are held by Republicans. In 1994, then-governor Pete Wilson backed Proposition 187, which denied state social services to undocumented immigrants. The spin goes that it backfired and alienated the Hispanic community, and thus marked the road to Republican perdition. Not quite. Prop 187 passed with 59 percent support. Wilson’s endorsement of the bill helped its passage, and his support of it aided his landslide 1994 reelection. Among minority voters, 52 percent of Asian and African-American voters supported Proposition 187. Some 27 percent of Latinos voted for it. Liberal groups immediately sued in federal court. Just three days after the measure passed, a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order preventing Proposition 187 from going into effect. A month later, U.S. district judge Mariana Pfaelzer issued a permanent injunction. Prop 187 never became law. In effect, two judges nullified the wishes of more than 5 million California voters. Arnold Schwarzenegger had supported Prop 187. Yet in 2003 he was elected governor. So what caused the Republican demise?
Ironically, radical changes in California demography may have been brought about by Prop 187 — but not in the way many people think. The state’s population has increased by nearly 10 million in the last quarter century. Yet the growth has been marked by the exodus of some and larger influxes of others. When Prop 187 passed, there were an estimated 1.5 million undocumented immigrants statewide. In the 25 years since, millions of others have entered the state, and the current number of those still undocumented exceeds 3 million. Some 27 percent of current California residents were not born in the U.S. Traditionally, first-generation immigrants favor larger, not smaller, government. A cynic might argue that once a federal judge allowed undocumented immigrants to enjoy the full array of state services and entitlements, there were incentives for millions of other immigrants to enter the U.S. illegally, and California in particular. Statistics suggests they did just that — often to the chagrin of Democratic politicians, the United Farm Workers, and other liberal groups who worried about the negative effects of illegal immigration on entry-level wages, unionization, and poor citizens’ access to overtaxed social services. Oddly, conservative businesspeople were likely to favor permissive immigration policies in hopes of finding an ample supply of low-cost laborers while simultaneously diminishing the power of unions.
A technological revolution sparked a lucrative Silicon Valley renaissance. Suddenly, coastal California became one of the wealthiest corridors in the history of the planet. Big Tech drew in hundreds of thousands of hip young workers eager to come to California and join what was thought to be a global revolution. Silicon Valley was seen as a uniquely progressive corporate paradise where one could get rich and stay woke all at once. Most techies supported big government, higher taxes, and open borders, and had the money and wherewithal to not worry much about the ensuing costs and the catastrophic results for others. By the turn of the century, the California treasury was relying on the tech industry for an enormous share of the taxes to fund its massive expansion of state services — and politicians often bowed to Big Tech’s political wishes. As taxes climbed, schools eroded, and funds for infrastructure were diverted elsewhere, millions of middle-class Californians fled. The total numbers of this continuing exodus are still in dispute. Many left in despair over climbing gas, sales and income taxes that seemed to worsen rather improve state infrastructure and services. This tripartite demographic revolution proved disastrous for the Republican party. The GOP lost much of its base to other states. Many conservative voters left for small-government, low-tax alternatives. Republican efforts to reduce taxes, limit some abortions, and fund additional roads and dams had little appeal to the new gentry classes on the coast.
Will there ever again be a viable California Republican party? After three decades of radical progressivism, California residents are tiring of one-party straitjacket rule. The hard-liberal order normalized massive power blackouts, the nation’s highest array of taxes, the forest mismanagement that fuels deadly fires, an epidemic of homelessness in major cities, eroding schools, ossified infrastructure, and soaring energy costs.
The final irony?
Those most hurt — and growing the most angry — are the immigrants who once fled to a different California that now no longer exists.
VDH
https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/11/california-progressive-politics-residents-tiring-one-party-rule/
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L’ANNEE DE TOUS LES DANGERS (Coincés entre des sanctions américaines toujours plus paralysantes et le risque de désaveu croissant des populations libanaise, irakienne et iranienne face aux coûteux interventionnisme de leurs supplétifs, les ayatollahs profiteront-ils de la fenêtre de tir de la campagne électorale américaine pour attaquer Israël ?)
A l’inverse, la situation de l’Iran se dégrade aussi concernant certains paramètres : il disposera de moins en moins de fonds pour payer l’entretien de ses milices (évaluées à 200.000 combattants au total) et la fourniture de services aux populations locales où elles sont cantonnées tant que des sanctions économiques américaines perdureront ; des mouvement de masse puissants et durables se sont développés au Liban et en Irak pour protester contre la présence de ses milices supplétives et son emprise sur les états nationaux, ce qui multiplie les aléas qui pèsent sur sa stratégie expansionniste et en augmentent le coût ; la dégradation de la situation économique de Téhéran ne peut pas manquer d’accroître l’instabilité intérieure du régime, ce qui devrait aussi modérer ses avancées régionales.
Que veut exactement l’Iran ?
Comme « partisan d’Ali » Khomeiny a donné à sa révolution la mission de rétablir l’essence divine de la succession du Prophète, c’est-à-dire d’amener les musulmans à rallier la vraie foi et d’écarter du pouvoir islamique suprême quiconque ne peut faire valoir un lien de filiation avec lui.
Le rêve du régime est de chasser du Moyen-Orient le grand Satan américain pour agir sans entraves, de détruire le petit Satan israélien pour se poser en libérateur, et de retirer à la famille Saoud, dépourvue de tout lien familial avec Mohamed, la fonction de gardien des deux villes saintes de l’Islam, La Mecque et Médine. Il pourrait sur la base de ces victoires devenir le phare des musulmans et leur rendre leur foi épurée des 15 derniers siècles d’errements. C’est en cela qu’il s’agit d’un régime d’essence révolutionnaire et que tout ses actes doivent être rapportés à cette grille de lecture.
Enfin, depuis plusieurs décennies, les Khomeynistes rêvent de sanctuariser leur pré carré et s’ouvrir des opportunités de conquête en développant un armement nucléaire et balistique moderne.
Au-delà de ces rêves entretenus avec persévérance depuis 40 ans, les ayatollahs sont pragmatiques et opportunistes en même temps. Ils poursuivent aujourd’hui des objectifs d’étape très concrets. La destruction d’Israël n’est pas leur première urgence. Ils la voient comme le couronnement de leur emprise sur le Moyen-Orient dans un processus progressif d’isolement, de harcèlement et d’étranglement, car leur doctrine opérationnelle leur commande de masquer leurs coups et d’agir par procuration. Ils s’attachent actuellement à multiplier les sites d’origine de leurs possibles attaques, et à disperser des cibles toujours plus nombreuses pour compliquer la défense d’Israël. Mais pour sécuriser leur implantations en Irak et en Syrie exposées aux frappes israéliennes, ils pourraient lancer à n’importe quel moment des attaques à l’intérieur de l’État hébreu sur le modèle de celle qui a ébranlé l’Arabie saoudite le 14 septembre, ou sur une mode nouveau, moins prévisible.
On peut anticiper leur agenda : le raid écrasant qu’ils ont mené le 14 septembre sur les champs pétroliers du cœur de l’Arabie avait sans doute pour objectif premier l’abandon par Riyad de son intervention au Yémen. D’ailleurs, après les Émirats arabes unis, ils semble que ce pays ait baissé les bras et soit en train de négocier sa sortie du théâtre yéménite d’importance majeure pour son avenir. Dans cette affaire, l’Iran trouve l’avantage de consolider le règne de son obligé Houthi qui lui offre des positions rêvées à l’entrée du détroit stratégique de Bab el-Mandel.
Le second objectif, c’est d’obtenir un gel progressif des sanctions américaines en cours. Christopher Ford déclarait lors de la conférence de Tel Aviv évoquée plus haut que les États-Unis avaient proposé à l’Iran une offre de négociation comprenant : « l’allègement de toutes les sanctions[…] le rétablissement des relations diplomatiques et des relations de coopération semblables à celles avec les États normaux[…] Vous devez vous comporter comme un État normal, mais j’espère que l’Iran fera ce choix[à son tour]. » Les ayatollahs attendent sans doute pour acquiescer d’avoir la garantie, façon Obama, qu’un nouvel accord scellera la réconciliation sans vraiment brider la poursuite de leur programme nucléaire et balistique.
L’Iran poursuivra naturellement l’édification du « cercle de feu » autour d’Israël en stabilisant les groupes armés supplétifs déjà déployés, en les équipant d’armes toujours plus avancées, en améliorant leur coordination et leur capacité de manœuvre. De ce point de vue, la Jordanie est dans l’œil du cyclone car elle dispose de longues frontières avec l’Irak et aussi avec Israël. On peut s’attendre à des opérations de subversion téléguidées depuis Téhéran pour contraindre ce royaume sunnite à intégrer « l’axe chiite ».
Enfin, la campagne électorale américaine s’achèvera le 03 novembre 2020, dans un peu moins d’une année. Comme l’a bien précisé Christopher Ford, l’Iran aura dans cette période une totale liberté d’action y compris concernant la conduite de son programme nucléaire. Les ayatollahs pourraient parfaitement saisir cette fenêtre inespérée pour se projeter dans le « saut nucléaire », la construction de la bombe, qui nécessiterait théoriquement un an mais en réalité, chacun le sait, seulement quelques mois.
Quelle stratégie pour Israël ?
Dans un affrontement sur un théâtre stratégique aussi vaste, élargi encore de milliers de kilomètres par la portée nouvelle des missiles, l’un des impératifs est d’identifier les alliances possibles. Les premiers alliés potentiels d’Israël face à l’Iran devraient être les pays européens, pas par excès de sympathie pour l’État juif, mais parce qu’ils partagent avec lui d’importants intérêts communs. L’Europe est à portée des missiles intercontinentaux de l’Iran et elle sait que ces missiles risquent d’être bientôt garnis d’ogives nucléaires. Elle sait aussi avec quelle brutalité les ayatollahs poussent leurs pions. Les 58 soldats du poste Drakkar tués en 1983, les attentats de Paris de 1985/86 et les prises d’otage du Liban, l’attentat déjoué de Villepinte en 2018, sont dans les mémoires. Elle sait que l’Iran est en train de s’approcher de la Méditerranée, leurs arrière-cour en quelque sorte. Enfin, elle sait enfin qu’étant déployés dans le Golfe persique et aux abords de Bab el-Mandel, les Iraniens tiennent des routes maritimes stratégiques du sud qu’ils peuvent assaisonner à leur gré, provoquant s’il le faut un séisme dans l’économie mondiale dont l’Europe serait la première victime. Israël doit rechercher et nourrir cette alliance dans un esprit créatif.
Par ailleurs, Israël doit se préparer à l’éventualité d’attaques massives par des vagues de missiles. On estime que le Hezbollah dispose au Liban de 130 à 150.000 missiles qui pour une part disposent d’un guidage de précision. En cas de guerre totale, le groupe terroriste, qui est en fait une armée, pourrait lancer 1.000 missiles par jour. Il est impossible d’interrompre ce genre d’offensive par des dispositifs antimissiles (qui seraient saturés) ni par l’aviation qui n’est pas configurée pour frapper une quantité indéterminée de micro cibles. La seule solution serait le déploiement immédiat de troupes au sol pour occuper au plus vite le terrain.
Cela suppose un changement radical de doctrine militaire. Depuis 1982 la doctrine d’Israël est résumée en une formule, « Intel/Firepower », soit renseignement et frappes puissantes sur les cibles. Cette option permet d’économiser les déploiements au sol, donc la vie des soldats. Mais l’ennemi s’est adapté. Il sait disperser les cibles, il sait déployer de pseudo-cibles, il sait enterrer ses hommes et ses armes. D’où un rendement décroissant du couple Intel/Firepower. L’alternative est le retour à la doctrine antérieure des « résultats décisifs », c’est-à-dire combattre au sol sur le territoire de l’ennemi pour mettre un terme effectif à sa capacité de nuisance. La victoire dans la seconde Intifada est intervenue en avril 2002 avec l’opération « Rempart », quand après des centaines de victimes on a enfin consenti à envoyer les soldats dans les grandes villes palestiniennes d’où partaient les commandos jihadistes. La construction d’une armée conventionnelle capable d’exceller dans les manœuvres au sol est une option complexe qui prend du temps. L’état-major israélien en est parfaitement conscient.
Le troisième aspect de la stratégie d’Israël est la défense contre les missiles de croisière et les drones d’attaque si difficiles à détecter. Si les satellites américains et saoudiens et les dispositifs au sol ont été incapables de détecter les deux essaims de missiles et de drones d’attaque iraniens qui approchaient de leurs cibles en volant près du sol, c’est en partie parce que la zone à couvrir était immense. La surface de l’Arabie saoudite est du même ordre que celle de l’Europe entière. De ce point de vue, Israël a deux avantages. D’un coté, il n’est pas soumis à l’effet de surprise puisque le raid en Arabie est antérieur et qu’il a été dument analysé. De l’autre, vu l’exigüité la zone à couvrir, la couverture actuelle est presque suffisante et il existe des radars Doppler bon marché, de conception israélienne, qui peuvent couvrir l’espace éventuel entre l’horizon de détectabilité des dispositifs actuels et le sol.
Enfin, last but not least, quelle réponse apporter à un Iran qui aurait entrepris le « saut nucléaire », une hypothèse bien plausible, on l’a vu. L’état-major israélien connait ses propres moyens et les difficultés d’une telle entreprise. A trois reprises, de 2010 à 2012, Bibi Netanyahou et Ehoud Barak auraient commandé à l’armée des raids de destruction des installations du programme nucléaire des ayatollahs que les responsables de la défense Meir Dagan et Gabi Askhenazi en 2010, puis Benny Gantz en 2011, ont refusé d’exécuter. La troisième tentative en 2012 a avorté suite à un différend sur le calendrier entre Netanyahou et Barak. En 2019, l’opération est beaucoup plus compliquée car l’Iran s’est doté, 10 ans après, de moyens de défense et de riposte nouveaux. L’affaire est aujourd’hui entre les mains des hiérarchies politiques et militaires du pays.
Ce qui est sûr c’est qu’il y a plusieurs façons de poser le problème iranien en général. A demi-mots Yaakov Amidror suggère une critique de la politique suivie dans la dernière décennie : une stratégie « prudente », donc perdante, a laissé le Hezbollah accumuler un arsenal offensif monstrueux sur la gorge de l’état juif. Ensuite, avec la guerre de Syrie, une « stratégie agressive », donc gagnante, a permis de freiner les transferts d’armes vers le nord, la diffusion des systèmes de guidage de précision des missiles et l’installation de bases militaires. Que nous suggère Yaakov Amidror ? « L’Iran s’est rendu compte qu’Israël a réussi en Syrie [à démanteler une machine de guerre], alors il a commencé à construire une branche de sa machine de guerre indépendante en Irak…. Pour l’Iran, l’idée est d’avoir une capacité militaire proche d’Israël, tout en restant à distance. Une question intéressante est de savoir quelle devrait être la réaction d’Israël dans une telle situation. Nous savons que la tête du serpent est en Iran. Israël va-t-il poursuivre des cibles en Syrie, en Irak, au Liban ou au Yémen ? Ou irons-nous directement à la tête du serpent ? »
JP Bensimon
http://www.danilette.com/2019/11/qui-attaquera-qui-l-iran-et-le-destin-d-israel-jean-pierre-bensimon.html
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SPOT THE ERROR ! (While the Trump administration expresses its support for the Iranian people against 40 years of oppression by the hated mullahs, guess where France and Europe stand ?)
« As I said to the people of Iran almost a year and a half ago: The United States is with you. The United States hears you. The United States supports you. The United States is with you. After 40 years of tyranny, the proud Iranian people are not staying silent about their government’s abuses. We will not stay silent either. I have a message for the people of Iran: The United States hears you. »
Mike Pompeo
https://www.ensonhaber.com/en/world/us-declares-support-to-iranian-protesters
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ENOUGH ALREADY, JUST VOTE (The more Adam Schiff, who has replaced AOC as the new face of the Democratic party, goes before the cameras, the more the people shrug and think it’s time to pack up the circus and leave town)
Our shocked State Department experts somehow cannot explain why they were abjectly silent during the Obama administration when the “reset” proved to be virtual appeasement of Vladimir Putin; when Obama on a hot mic both offered the Russians a disturbing quid pro quo and then followed through on it; when Obama declined to send arms to Ukraine; and when Vice President Joe Biden took over as point man for Ukrainian policy only to leverage U.S. aid in exchange for Ukraine’s ceasing investigations of corruption that eventually would have targeted his own morally compromised son. And why would these career experts be outraged by the Trump administration that at last fulfilled their wildest agendas: ending the reset, upping sanctions against Russians, killing hired Russian thugs in Syria, pulling out of the warped missile agreement with Russia, increasing American and NATO defense expenditures, pumping more oil to lower world prices to the detriment of Russia, and arming Ukraine?
What would have been the reaction in 2012 had an anonymous Bush holdover at the Obama National Security Council gone to the IG — but only after first consulting secretly with the staff of Devin Nunes — to claim third-hand knowledge of a confidential Obama phone call to Russia’s President Medvedev? The Bush-era whistleblower, a protégé of John Bolton and Dick Cheney, would then have claimed that he was told by an anonymous NSC leaker that Obama in the call had confirmed his prior hot-mic, quid pro quo promise to drop missile defense in Eastern Europe if Putin would in return give “space” to Obama before the 2012 election — with “space” perhaps defined as the Russians keeping quiet and making Obama’s foreign policy seem successful in the run-up to Election Day. Would there have been impeachment proceedings against Obama? Would Adam Schiff have pleaded to keep the “whistleblower’s” identity secret?
Each day closer to the November 2020 election is one day nearer to allowing the American people to vote on their first-team president. There is no Nixonian or Clintonian argument that without impeachment, a second-term president could not be brought to heel. Schiff has essentially decided to abort the early 2020 campaign and substitute in its place his star-chamber impeachment. Day-by-day Schiff’s ginned-up media hysteria has created a virtual news blackout of the Democratic presidential front-runners. We are well into the 2020 campaign and the public knows almost nothing about these would-be presidents other than that in toto they are a strange bunch. The media-starved peripheral candidates such as Kamala Harris and Cory Booker will go the way of the suffocated Beto O’Rourke until someone or something yanks Schiff offstage.
Each day that is wasted is another day that the new House majority did not, as it promised, address substantive issues. Since January 2018, it has not talked of infrastructure, recalibrated trade deals, budgetary compromises, drug prescription pricing, or anything else other than one iteration after another of attacking Trump. Certainly, if they really believed that Trump was an incompetent buffoon, the better strategy would have been to step aside, let him ruin the economy, and then run in 2020 against his incompetence.
Ironically, the longer Trump survives, the more likely he’ll grow stronger and dominate the news at the expense of the progressive front-runners. To get attention back from Schiff, the front-runners must become even shriller and crazier — from Bernie Sanders’s declaring an end to all deportations to Elizabeth Warren’s dreaming up an unhinged multi-trillion-dollar wealth tax to pay for “Medicare for all.” What will happen when these barnstorming senators are trapped in an impeachment farce in the Senate?
Schiff also knows that voters have an upcoming rendezvous with the reports of Michael Horowitz and John Durham. If sane, Schiff should hurry up; otherwise James Comey or Andrew McCabe might be indicted and smother his narrative. Horowitz is likely to have more criminal referrals, and Durham might well proceed with indictments — at precisely the time that Schiff is lecturing the nation that its president is a criminal who mysteriously was exonerated by a special counsel.
Schiff is also risking Trump exhaustion — the magical point at which the public tires of the serial psychodramas of the voting-machine ruse, the Electoral College–subversion gambit, removal of Trump by the 25th Amendment, the Logan Act, the emoluments clause, Mueller, Stormy, Cohen, the tax returns, recession, and now Ukraine — seasoned with 90 percent negative media coverage and celebrity outbursts about blowing up, decapitating, or incinerating Trump. In other words, the more Schiff pushes these serial whines, the closer he gets to Election Day, and the more the people shrug and think, “Enough already, just vote.”
Voters are also human. Schiff believes that the more chaos he creates, the more the collective public will fall into a fetal position, cover its ears, and scream, “Make Trump just go away.” But the opposite is more likely: At some point people sympathize not with the stoners of the declared public enemy, but with the stoned target who is ripped and bloodied by the mob. In the final scene from Braveheart, the once-hated Scottish hero William Wallace (Mel Gibson) is stretched, drawn and quartered, and variously tortured before an English crowd that’s hissing and calling for more blood — up until a point.
Once the kings’ torturers exhaust their repertoire of savagery, even the anti-Scottish crowd gets repelled and begins yelling “Mercy!”
So too, with Trump. After the Dems decided to wage a three-year-long presidential abortion, and attacked Trump’s wife, children, family, businesses, and associates, 24/7, the public has begun finally to wonder at what point enough is enough. People will begin to think the target of unhinged vituperation must be doing something right to warrant such unattractive enemies, and that he is therefore worthy of empathy.
It is perhaps cruel but nonetheless accurate to note that the more Adam Schiff, who has replaced AOC as the new face of the Democratic party, goes before the cameras, the more the transitory attention goes to his head, the more he lies, habitually proves unethical, and becomes morally compromised. And the more the public becomes repulsed by him.
In just this latest impeachment iteration, Schiff has already lied about his staff’s prior contacts with the “whistleblower,” read into the record a complete rewriting of the presidential call transcript, and leaked supposedly secret statements from his partisan witnesses. In other words, the more one sees and hears Adam Schiff, the more one is likely to dislike him — including his own party’s presidential candidates.
Nancy Pelosi wants to wrap up impeachment as soon as possible before the debates resume in earnest and the primaries start, before the Horowitz and Durham reports, before the bored public wonders where exactly is the smoking gun, and before Trump’s polls get into the high forties. But mostly she just wants to get the off-putting Schiff off the national stage and to end his career as the icon of current progressivism.
When Democratic inquisitors are reduced to lecturing the nation that “hearsay can be much better evidence than direct” testimony, and when Adam Schiff looks into the cameras and swears he has no idea who the whistleblower is, then it’s time to pack up the circus and leave town.
VDH
https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/11/trump-impeachment-inquiry-adam-schiff-working-against-the-clock/
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WHAT THOUGHT CRIMES ? (Guess from whom the public learned about the bad optics of the Bidens in Ukraine ?)
During special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, his legal “dream team” tried to make a secondary case that Donald Trump also obstructed efforts to prove Trump-Russian “collusion.” Trump was said to have advised his lawyers and other subordinates, past and present, not to cooperate fully with the Mueller investigation. Yet the special counsel did not pursue any actionable cases of egregious interference by the White House. Indeed, Mueller would never have concluded his $35 million, 22-month investigation had he not enjoyed cooperation from the White House. White House employees were questioned freely by the special counsel. Documents were released. When the special counsel’s exhaustive investigation into purported Trump-Russia collusion found no such crime, the fallback claim of obstruction arose. Trump allegedly wanted to curtail Mueller’s parameters of inquiry into something that was proven not to be a crime. Mueller found no grounds for a criminal referral on obstruction of justice. But he repeatedly hinted that Trump had thought about obstructing the non-crime of collusion.
In the Ukrainian melodrama, Trump is accused of the thought crime of considering the withholding of military assistance unless Ukraine investigated possible Ukrainian tampering in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and also former vice president Joe Biden’s intervention in Ukrainian politics on behalf of his son. Biden had bragged at a Council on Foreign Relations conference that his threats to withhold non-military assistance to Ukraine led to the dismissal of a prosecutor, Viktor Shokin. It turns out Shokin may have been considering an investigation of the energy company where Biden’s son Hunter had enjoyed a lucrative position on the board of directors.
Two questions arise from hours of impeachment inquiry testimony before the House Intelligence Committee:
One: Did Trump cut off military assistance, prompting the compliant Ukrainians to launch investigations to ensure that endangered military aid was not curtailed?
Two: Did Trump reverse prior U.S. foreign policy by cutting off military assistance, thereby threatening the security of Ukraine?
Regarding question No. 1, military assistance was delivered to Ukraine after a delay. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky never announced investigations of the Bidens or election tampering.
In response to question No. 2, the Obama administration’s policy was to deny significant military assistance to Ukraine. Even non-military aid was apparently leveraged by Biden to force the Ukrainians to fire a prosecutor whose role in looking into Hunter Biden’s company is still murky.
In other words, Trump is accused of thinking about cutting off aid as a lever to force Ukrainian investigations. Yet the prior administration never extended significant military aid and threatened to cancel non-military aid over a bothersome prosecutor.
That disconnect prompts another question: Is thinking about cutting off military aid to Ukraine a greater crime than declining to provide Ukraine with significant military aid?
Trump is also accused of the thought crime of contemplating bribery. Critics allege that Trump wanted Ukraine to do him a “favor” of inestimable value by launching those investigations.
Trump supposedly used the gifting power of the U.S. government to obtain a personal political benefit to his 2020 presidential candidacy.
But that premise is shaky on a number of grounds. Trump did not receive any such investigative help from Ukraine. Yet even if Ukraine had announced the investigations that Trump had sought, the fact that Joe Biden chose to run for president in 2020 does not exempt him from government scrutiny of his suspect behavior with regard to Ukraine when he was vice president.
Both Democrats and Republicans seem to agree that corruption is endemic in Ukraine, demanding constant vigilance as a condition for foreign aid. Moreover, the public did not learn about the bad optics of the Bidens in Ukraine from Trump-pressured Ukrainian leaks. Instead, Biden publicly bragged of his own clout in strong-arming the Ukrainians — and ostensibly about how tough he would be as a future president. Any benefit to Trump of showcasing Biden’s bad behavior came not from thinking about pressuring Ukraine, but from Biden’s own braggadocio.
Joe Biden, not Donald Trump, smeared Joe Biden’s reputation.
Trump has been accused of thought crimes, not actual crimes. Trump can be indiscreet, even crude, in his speech. But alleged bad thoughts are not crimes — at least not outside George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984.
VDH
https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/11/trump-impeachment-inquiry-alleged-bad-thoughts-not-crimes/
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WHAT WARNING TO AMERICAN DEMOCRATS ? (A Democratic Party that veers to the Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren left could let Mr. Trump win again by frightening suburban voters who dislike the President personally but don’t want socialism)
This vindicates Mr. Johnson’s gamble on throwing the Brexit question back to the voters by seeking a mandate for his revised deal with Brussels. Plenty of anti-Brexit politicians and commentators have argued since the 2016 referendum that the voters had been misinformed about Brexit, or hadn’t fully thought through the issue, or don’t want the specific type of Brexit Mr. Johnson proposes, or have changed their minds. Mr. Johnson took voters at their word that they wanted Brexit then and still want it now, and he was willing to buck the London intelligentsia in the bargain.
Labour’s thumping by Britain’s middle class is also a warning to American Democrats who think left-wing populism is the way to defeat Donald Trump’s right-wing populism. Corbynism left the middle of British politics to be filled by Mr. Johnson’s Tories. A Democratic Party that veers to the Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren left could let Mr. Trump win again by frightening suburban voters who dislike the President personally but don’t want socialism.
We should also thank British voters for their show of democratic vigor. Western democracies haven’t been functioning well of late, Westminster included. Mr. Johnson’s leadership, and his show of respect for Brexit voters, is proving that democracies can be moved to make a decisive choice. Mr. Johnson will have to reward that faith as he governs in a post-Brexit era, but his apparent victory offers a broader lesson for democratic leaders in this populist era.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-tory-lead-in-britain-11576196449
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FBI REPORT CLEARS FBI (Internet rumor with zero corroboration: How a “well-developed conspiracy” theory based on a report that Comey described as “salacious and unverified material that a responsible journalist wouldn’t report without corroborating,” became the driving news story in a superpower nation for two years)
The Guardian headline reads: “DOJ Internal watchdog report clears FBI of illegal surveillance of Trump adviser.” If the report released Monday by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz constitutes a “clearing” of the FBI, never clear me of anything. Holy God, what a clown show the Trump-Russia investigation was. Like the much-ballyhooed report by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, the Horowitz report is a Rorschach test, in which partisans will find what they want to find. Much of the press is concentrating on Horowitz’s conclusion that there was no evidence of “political bias or improper motivation” in the FBI’s probe of Donald Trump’s Russia contacts, an investigation Horowitz says the bureau had “authorized purpose” to conduct. Horowitz uses phrases like “serious performance failures,” describing his 416-page catalogue of errors and manipulations as incompetence rather than corruption. This throws water on the notion that the Trump investigation was a vast frame-up. However, Horowitz describes at great length an FBI whose “serious” procedural problems and omissions of “significant information” in pursuit of surveillance authority all fell in the direction of expanding the unprecedented investigation of a presidential candidate (later, a president).
There are too many to list in one column, but the Horowitz report show years of breathless headlines were wrong. Some key points:
The so-called “Steele dossier” was, actually, crucial to the FBI’s decision to seek secret surveillance of Page.
Press figures have derided the idea that Steele was crucial to the FISA application, with some insisting it was only a “small part” of the application. Horowitz is clear:
We determined that the Crossfire Hurricane team’s receipt of Steele’s election reporting on September 19, 2016 played a central and essential role in the FBI’s and Department’s decision to seek the FISA order.
The report describes how, prior to receiving Steele’s reports, the FBI General Counsel (OGC) and/or the National Security Division’s Office of Intelligence (OI) wouldn’t budge on seeking FISA authority. But after getting the reports, the OGC unit chief said, “receipt of the Steele reporting changed her mind on whether they could establish probable cause.”
Meanwhile, the OI unit chief said Steele’s reports were “what kind of pushed it over the line.” There’s no FISA warrant without Steele.
Horowitz ratifies the oft-denounced “Nunes memo.”
Democrats are not going to want to hear this, since conventional wisdom says former House Intelligence chief Devin Nunes is a conspiratorial evildoer, but the Horowitz report ratifies the major claims of the infamous “Nunes memo.”
As noted, Horowitz establishes that the Steele report was crucial to the FISA process, even using the same language Nunes used (“essential”). He also confirms the Nunes assertion that the FBI double-dipped in citing both Steele and a September 23, 2016 Yahoo! news story using Steele as an unnamed source. Horowitz listed the idea that Steele did not directly provide information to the press as one of seven significant “inaccuracies or omissions” in the first FISA application.
In fact, far from confirming the Steele material, the FBI over time seems mainly to have uncovered more and more reasons to run screaming from Steele, to wit:
The “Steele dossier” was “Internet rumor,” and corroboration for the pee tape story was “zero.”
The Steele report reads like a pile of rumors surrounded by public information pulled off the Internet, and the Horowitz report does nothing to dispel this notion.
At the time the FBI submitted its first FISA application, Horowitz writes, it had “corroborated limited information in Steele’s election reporting, and most of that was publicly available information.” Horowitz says of Steele’s reports: “The CIA viewed it as ‘internet rumor.’”
Worse (and this part of the story should be tattooed on the heads of Russia truthers), the FBI’s interviews of Steele’s sources revealed Steele embellished the most explosive parts of his report.
The “pee tape” story, which inspired countless grave headlines (see this chin-scratching New York Times history of Russian “sexual blackmail”) and plunged the Trump presidency into crisis before it began, was, this source said, based a “conversation that [he/she] had over beers,” with the sexual allegations made… in “jest”!
Steele in his report said the story had been “confirmed” by senior, Western hotel staff, but the actual source said it was all “rumor and speculation,” never confirmed. In fact, charged by Steele to find corroboration, the source could not: corroboration was “zero,” writes Horowitz.
Meanwhile the Steele assertions that Russians had a kompromat file on Hillary Clinton, and that there was a “well-developed conspiracy of coordination” between the Trump campaign and Russians, relied on a source Steele himself disparaged as an “egoist” and “boaster” who “may engage in some embellishment.” This was known to the FBI at the start, yet they naturally failed to include this info in the warrant application, one of what Horowitz described as “17 significant errors or omissions” in the FISA application.
I’ve written about how reporters used sleight of hand to get the Steele dossier into print without putting it through a vetting process. What Horowitz describes is worse: a story about bad journalism piled on bad journalism, balanced on a third layer of wrong reporting.
Steele in his “reports” embellished his sources’ quotes, played up nonexistent angles, invented attributions, and ignored inconsistencies. The FBI then transplanted this bad reporting in the form of a warrant application and an addendum to the Intelligence Assessment that included the Steele material, ignoring a new layer of inconsistencies and red flags its analysts uncovered in the review process.
Then, following a series of leaks, the news media essentially reported on the FBI’s wrong reporting of Steele’s wrong reporting.
The impact was greater than just securing a warrant to monitor Page. More significant were the years of headlines that grew out of this process, beginning with the leaking of the meeting with Trump about Steele’s blackmail allegations, the insertion of Steele’s conclusions in the Intelligence Assessment about Russian interference, and the leak of news about the approval of the Page FISA warrant.
As a result, a “well-developed conspiracy” theory based on a report that Comey described as “salacious and unverified material that a responsible journalist wouldn’t report without corroborating,” became the driving news story in a superpower nation for two years. Even the New York Times, which published a lot of these stories, is in the wake of the Horowitz report noting Steele’s role in “unleashing a flood of speculation in the news media about the new president’s relationship with Russia.”
No matter what people think the political meaning of the Horowitz report might be, reporters who read it will know: Anybody who touched this nonsense in print should be embarrassed.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/political-commentary/horowitz-report-steele-dossier-collusion-news-media-924944/
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PEE PEE TAPE (What Russia truthers and peelievers’ hatchet job on Trump ?)
The Steele report reads like a pile of rumors surrounded by public information pulled off the Internet, and the Horowitz report does nothing to dispel this notion. At the time the FBI submitted its first FISA application, Horowitz writes, it had “corroborated limited information in Steele’s election reporting, and most of that was publicly available information.” Horowitz says of Steele’s reports: “The CIA viewed it as ‘internet rumor.’” Worse (and this part of the story should be tattooed on the heads of Russia truthers), the FBI’s interviews of Steele’s sources revealed Steele embellished the most explosive parts of his report. The “pee tape” story, which inspired countless grave headlines (see this chin-scratching New York Times history of Russian “sexual blackmail”) and plunged the Trump presidency into crisis before it began, was, this source said, based a “conversation that [he/she] had over beers,” with the sexual allegations made… in “jest”! Steele in his report said the story had been “confirmed” by senior, Western hotel staff, but the actual source said it was all “rumor and speculation,” never confirmed. In fact, charged by Steele to find corroboration, the source could not: corroboration was “zero”.
Rolling stone
The last three U.S. presidents have seen some of their opposition unite under the banner of really juicy conspiracy theories: for Bush, it was that 9/11 was an inside job; for Obama, it was that an ineligible foreign national became commander-in-chief, possibly as a sleeper agent for The Muslims; for Trump, it’s that a hostile foreign power installed an illegitimate president who would do its bidding, thanks to humiliating blackmail material. Those first two conspiracy theories have been beaten down by time and vigorous debate — with experts and institutions meticulously fighting the sexy, imaginative narratives of their opponents. Yet the Russia conspiracies continue to thrive, because the experts and the institutions haven’t admitted the obvious conclusion to draw from the evidence. The experts and institutions remain true believers! Just this week, the star lawyer for House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry refused to disavow his promotion of the most salacious, popular element of the conspiracy theory. Let that sink in: someone who is telling the American people to trust his judgment for the removal of an American president, while testifying under oath to Congress, held fast to a lurid sex fantasy that any reasonable adult can see has been 100% disproven.
I’m talking about the infamous “pee tape,” of course. This week, it was finally decapitated, burned, and buried, thanks to the DOJ Inspector General’s review of the FBI’s “Crossfire Hurricane” campaign surveillance. The most succinct summary of this development comes from Rolling Stone‘s Matt Taibbi, no friend to Breitbart or Trump:
The Steele report reads like a pile of rumors surrounded by public information pulled off the Internet, and the Horowitz report does nothing to dispel this notion.
At the time the FBI submitted its first FISA application, Horowitz writes, it had “corroborated limited information in Steele’s election reporting, and most of that was publicly available information.” Horowitz says of Steele’s reports: “The CIA viewed it as ‘internet rumor.’”
Worse (and this part of the story should be tattooed on the heads of Russia truthers), the FBI’s interviews of Steele’s sources revealed Steele embellished the most explosive parts of his report.
The “pee tape” story, which inspired countless grave headlines (see this chin-scratching New York Times history of Russian “sexual blackmail”) and plunged the Trump presidency into crisis before it began, was, this source said, based a “conversation that [he/she] had over beers,” with the sexual allegations made… in “jest”!
Steele in his report said the story had been “confirmed” by senior, Western hotel staff, but the actual source said it was all “rumor and speculation,” never confirmed. In fact, charged by Steele to find corroboration, the source could not: corroboration was “zero,” writes Horowitz.
You got that? Steele took a joke he heard about Trump (golden showers from Russian hookers), stuffed it into a grave-sounding Word document, and bluffed that it was “confirmed.” And, knowing there was nothing there, watch how former FBI Director James Comey continued to blow smoke as though this thing had any credibility whatsoever — more than a year later:
Comey’s book — and the subsequent press tour — is a main reason why New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait said he went from a pee tape skeptic to a “peeliever”…
https://www.breitbart.com/the-media/2019/12/14/dulis-the-pee-tape-hoax-is-finally-absolutely-dead-its-time-to-brand-the-rushers-who-pushed-it
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WITHOUT TRUMP (On this day of impeachment infamy: Like the angel in Capra’s It’s a wonderful life, Mark Langfan shows his fellow Jews how terrible life in America and in Israel would have been for them if Trump had never been president)
Otherwise, we would have had a President Hillary Clinton who would have continued President Obama’s pushing of Israel into the sea. We would have seen a Palestinian terror state planted in the heart of Israel armed with chemical katyusha rockets that would have annihilated Tel Aviv and Israel. We would have seen a second Holocaust in 80 years.
Iran is country that has sworn to annihilate Israel and mass murder 6 million Israeli Jews. President Trump’s sanctions have slowed Iran’s Middle East hegemony and loosed Iran’s grip on the Arabs where the Arabs are beginning to see Iran as their mortal enemy and enslaver, not Israel. Without President’s Trump’s courageous actions, Iran would have perfected their poisonous enslavement of the Middle East Arabs to a unbreakable stranglehold just as Hitler had gained a stranglehold over Europe. Such an Iranian terrorist state hegemony over the Persian Gulf’s oil would have exposed the world to a nuclear armed terrorist state in control of 56% of the world’s oil supply.
Israeli and American Jews are clueless. Jews “think” the “settlements” mean the Israeli towns inside the “West Bank.” The reality is the Arabs think Tel Aviv is as much of a “settlement” as Efrat. By Jews essentially admitting that Efrat is a “settlement,” they don’t realize that they delegitimize every square meter, every grain of sand, of Israel’s very existence. By Jews agreeing that Shiloh is an “obstacle to Peace,” they are admitting that East Jerusalem is also an obstacle to peace, and then Jaffo is an obstacle to peace, and the Israel’s very existence is an obstacle to peace. President Trump flipped the script and declared that Israeli settlements “are not an obstacle” to peace. Rather, Palestinian payments to genocidal mass murdering terrorists is an obstacle to peace.
The Chicken Little state department gnomes clucked that the sky would fall and the world would fall off its axis if President Trump moved the embassy to Jerusalem. In the end, nothing happened. The Palestinians made hysterical threats before and after the move, and no one cared; virtually no demonstrations in the Arab street, little Arab condemnation. Instead, thousands of Arabs were slaughtered by Iranian militias in Iraq and Iran. President Trump showed what it means to be a proud American President who leads, and who believes in what he has promised. Dayenu. That would have been enough.
People forget but Rabin was within inches of ceding the Golan Heights to the mass murdering Beshir Assad’s mass-murdering father Hafez Assad. A Syria Golan Heights and a Hezbollah South Lebanon would have meant an Arab decapitation of the Hula Valley and Kiryat Shemona. As it is, Kiryat Shemona is in a vise-grip of a possible siege attack where Kiryat Shemona could be cut off from Israel. Thanks to Ehud Barak’s betrayal of South Lebanon granting it to Hezbollah, Hezbollah now has 100,000 missiles which will significantly delay any saving counter-attack to reach a cut-off Kiryat Shemona. Again, President Trump has given Israel the vital security it needs to withstand Islamic terrorists funded by Iran that are intent on murdering as many Jews they can get their hands on.
I could go on and on, and on, about all the blessings and security President Trump has brought the Jews. But, on this day of infamy, on this day where President Trump has been falsely and criminally attacked by a bunch of Jewish hooligans, I want to thank G-d for President Trump for President Trump just being President Trump.
Dayenu. that would have been enough.
Mark Langfan
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/24905
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CONVINCED BY AN ANGEL THAT THE LIVES OF THE PEOPLE AROUND HIM WOULD BE WORSE IF HE HADN’T BEEN BORN
Seventy years ago, RKO Radio Pictures rush-released a film for the holiday season. It’s a Wonderful Life starred James Stewart as George Bailey, a savings and loans manager, who’s down on his luck and contemplates suicide, until convinced by an angel that the lives of the people around him would be worse if he was dead…
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/2TYK2NfhJ6pmDqW8rfT4LCf/its-a-wonderful-life-from-festive-flop-to-christmas-classic
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UN MONDE DE CAUCHEMAR D’OU SON ACTION EST ABSENTE
Emmanuel Bourdieu prend l’exemple de La vie est belle (F. Capra, 1946), où le héros est confronté à un monde identique en tout point au monde réel, à ceci près qu’il n’y existe pas. La signification morale du film est tout entière dans ce moment sceptique; le héros voit un monde de cauchemar d’où son action (positive) est absente. Il réintègre et accepte le monde à partir de cette expérience.
Sandra Laugier
https://bit.ly/2S7Kp4d
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PRESIDENT FOR THE COMMON MAN (Trump city: People here love that Trump doesn’t « sugarcoat » anything; they feel he understands them, even though he’s a billionaire)
« Donald Trump’s got all the money he’ll ever need. Trump will be a president for the common man. »
Steve Mays
« I believe he wants to take care of us, the little people. I think he’s going to quit giving money to all these other countries and take care of America. I truly do. »
Donna Coomer
« I voted for Trump 100%. It’s the most hopeful I’ve been in a long time now that he’s in there. »
Barbara Puckett
Trump won 81% of the vote in Beattyville. People here love that Trump doesn’t « sugarcoat » anything. They feel he understands them, even though he’s a billionaire.
« Donald Trump’s got all the money he’ll ever need, » says Steve Mays, judge-executive for the county and life-long Beattyville resident. The 49-year-old says he’s never been more excited about a president than he is now. « Trump will be a president for the common man. »
What Trump will do for the little guy is on everyone’s minds in Beattyville. The town earned the unfortunate distinction of being the « poorest white town in America » from 2008 to 2012. Depending on which metric you look at, it still ranks among the most impoverished in the country.
« This whole area’s been neglected, » laments Mays, who hopes Trump will visit the region. He wouldn’t be the first president to stop by. Beattyville isn’t far from the dilapidated cabin where President Lyndon Johnson declared a war on poverty in 1964. Locals feel the area has been in a « slow decay » ever since.
Beattyville residents want jobs, especially ones that pay more than the minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. They think if anyone can bring jobs back, it’s Trump.
Hope Trump will bring the jobs
« If you got a job here in Beattyville, you’re lucky, » says Amber Hayes, a bubbly 25-year-old mom of two, who also voted for Trump. She works at the county courthouse, but is paid by the Kentucky Transitional Assistance Program (K-TAP), a form of welfare.
Coal, oil and tobacco made Beattyville a boom town in the 1800s and much of the 1900s. Locals like to bring up the fact that Lee County — where Beattyville is located — was the No. 1 oil-producing county east of the Mississippi at one time.
« Growing up in the ’70s? Yeah, this was the place to be, » says Chuck Caudhill, the general manager of the local paper, The Beattyville Enterprise. He calls the town the « gem of eastern Kentucky. »
Today, the town is a ghost of its former self. The vast majority of Beattyville residents get some form of government aid — 57% of households receive food stamps and 58% get disability payments from Social Security.
« I hope [Trump] don’t take the benefits away, but at the same time, I think that once more jobs come in a lot of people won’t need the benefits, » says Hayes, who currently receives about $500 a month from government assistance. She’s also on Obamacare.
Time for a coal revival?
The coal and oil jobs are almost all gone, but already there’s buzz Trump is reviving the industry.
Donna Coomer is the manager of a busy Valero gas station in the heart of Beattyville. She knows the names of most people who come in and makes small-town chatter with folks. Mere days after Trump’s inauguration, she heard coal trucks were rumbling again.
« Someone told me this morning that in eastern Kentucky the coal trucks are already out and about, » Coomer told CNNMoney, beaming. She voted for Obama but feels he was just a good talker who did little for Kentucky. Trump got her vote this time. She’s praying for the new president.
It will be hard for Trump to revive the coal jobs, even if he does scale back environmental regulations on the industry. Top coal executive Robert Murray recently told CNNMoney coal employment « can’t be brought back to where it was before the election of Barack Obama. »
After the energy jobs evaporated, Beattyville was kept alive by a private prison and a clothing factory, Lion Apparel, that made firefighter suits. Then those jobs went away during President Obama’s tenure.
All that’s left are a few grocery stores, gas stations and small businesses. And drugs.
A town struggling with drug addiction
Rugged explorer Daniel Boone made this part of Kentucky famous in the late 1700s around the time of the Revolutionary War. The rolling hills and forests are still as picturesque as when Boone found them. Rock climbers come from all over the world to tackle the area’s peaks and natural bridges.
But today it’s also easy to come by heroin and cocaine in Kentucky’s hills. Almost every family CNNMoney met in Beattyville had been impacted by drugs.
Puckett and her husband are currently raising a great niece and nephew because their biological parents are drug addicts. The situation is so common in Beattyville that the local elementary school runs a support group for grandparents raising grandkids.
Caudhill estimates that 40% of kids in the area don’t live with their birth parents because of drugs.
« We need help. Eastern Kentucky is beautiful, but it needs help, » says Patricia « Trish » Cole. Her son died of an overdose when he was 27. Pictures of him are all around her living room. She’s normally quick to smile, but she gets choked up when his named is mentioned. She has a tattoo on her chest that reads: « Can’t keep your arms around a memory. »
Cole saves lives as an EMT for the local ambulance company. She estimates 80% of the ambulance runs she makes now are for drug-related issues. The day after her son died, she had to go get a young man who overdosed out of a closet.
Cole is one of the few people in town who voted for Hillary Clinton. She’s skeptical a billionaire will remember her people, but she’s willing to « give him a chance. »
Is a ‘Trump Turnaround’ possible?
Patricia « Trish » Cole is a grandma and EMT with a big smile. She is one of the few in Beattyville, Kentucky who didn’t vote for President Trump, but she’s willing to give him a chance.
Harold Shouse thinks about the new president every morning around 4:30am. That’s when he and dozens of others in Beattyville stop at the gas station for a coffee before driving an hour or more to work in Winchester or Lexington where there are more jobs.
Shouse has worked construction all of his life. He was a mason for the county government in Beattyville for about a decade but never got paid more than $11.25 an hour.
« Most people who live in this area are in same shape, » Shouse, a Trump supporter, says.
Shouse drives far for a $32-an-hour wage, but he wished there were decent jobs closer to his beloved hills. He and his wife bought a cedar cabin on top of a hill. They raised three daughters there and seven dogs. He’s a big fan of Trump’s idea to improve roads and bridges. If Trump does that, he thinks more businesses will come.
« We’re an hour from the closest interstate, » says Cole, the EMT who is also out on the roads daily. « The roads here are bad. We have two lane roads. »
The internet is another problem. Cell reception is hit or miss, and many homes and schools only got decent internet access in the past year or two. The local government is trying to find people jobs they can do at home on computers, but that requires reliable internet.
People in Beattyville hear about the low 4.8% unemployment rate in America, but they don’t see jobs returning in their town.
Trump has promised to create 25 million jobs, the most of any president. Experts say that will be nearly impossible to do nationally. But there are even more challenges to bringing jobs back to places like eastern Kentucky, which struggle with drugs, a remote location and many families on government aid.
Beattyville’s best hope
From the outside, it’s easy to wonder why people in Beattyville don’t just move somewhere else.
But out of all the people CNNMoney met in Beattyville, only one wanted to leave. The rest are drawn to the beauty of the place and the friendly community.
« I’m country to the core, » laughs Puckett. He husband of 39 years nods beside her.
Judge executive Mays puts it this way: « We’re perceived as a hillbilly, backwoods, all this and that. But we’re a good people. »
If there were simple solutions for eastern Kentucky’s economy, they probably would have been done already. Former President Jimmy Carter and his wife Rosalynn helped build Habitat for Humanity homes in Beattyville in the late 1980s. It was another small effort that has helped, but not fundamentally changed, the region.
President Trump talks about substantial change. That’s what has people in America’s poorest white town fired up.
« I believe he wants to take care of us, the little people, » says Coomer, the gas station manager. « I think he’s going to quit giving money to all these other countries and take care of America. I truly do. »
https://money.cnn.com/2017/02/06/news/economy/donald-trump-beattyville-kentucky/index.html
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SPOT THE ERROR ! (Throwing bipartisan caution to the wind: Behind the oaths, prayers and references to the Founding Fathers, rule of law, checks and balances and Constitution, how black widow Pelosi’s suicidal impeachers plunged America into a nightmare that could turn out to be their own)
« Impeachment is so divisive to the country that unless there’s something so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan, I don’t think we should go down that path. »
Nancy Pelosi
“I don’t think there’s anything more divisive we can do than to impeach a president of the United States, and so you have to handle it with great care. It has to be about the truth and the facts to take you to whatever decision has to be there. It should by no means be done politically.”
Nancy Pelosi
It is said there are two things you should never watch being made: sausage and government budgets. Now we can add impeachment to the list of stomach-turning sights to avoid.
The arcane rules, phony cordiality and debates over the second sentence in paragraph G of Point Six were bad enough, but the nausea meter hit the roof when Nancy Pelosi took the microphone. Wearing a funereal black dress, she stood next to a cardboard American flag and recited the Pledge of Allegiance.
I would have counted her more honest if she had pledged her allegiance to a Democratic donkey.
As the leader of a party that has marinated its mind in unadulterated hatred of President Trump, Pelosi bears unique responsibility for this calamity. She could have stopped it.
Indeed, for months she did. Soon after Democrats took the House in last year’s midterms, the asinine calls for impeaching Trump that began immediately following his 2016 election reached a level she could not ignore.
Publicly and privately, Pelosi repeatedly and wisely said no, arguing it would tear America apart unless there was a bipartisan consensus.
“Impeachment is so divisive to the country that unless there’s something so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan, I don’t think we should go down that path,” she told the Washington Post in March.
The smart bet was that she expected special counsel Robert Mueller to deliver the goods on collusion that would push the public and members of the GOP into the impeachment camp. Then she would be all in.
But Mueller came up empty, and at first blush, it seemed his finding of no collusion in April would be the end of it. The cloud over Trump was lifted and surely Washington would get back to a normal level of partisanship.
It was not to be, with the end of Mueller only temporarily quieting the Dems’ clamor. By early June, the pressure was growing again, with more than 50 of Pelosi’s members openly agitating for impeachment, and many others in silent agreement. They didn’t have honest cause, just raw hatred.
“I don’t think there’s anything more divisive we can do than to impeach a president of the United States, and so you have to handle it with great care,” Pelosi told CNN on June 16. “It has to be about the truth and the facts to take you to whatever decision has to be there. It should by no means be done politically.”
Behind the scenes, the intra-party civil war raged, with the most virulent Trump haters twisting the arms of those who merely disliked him. The latter group included many of the 31 freshmen Dems elected in 2018 in districts Trump had carried in 2016.
It is worth noting there is more than a little irony in their victory, which took place during the height of the Russia, Russia, Russia scare. Dems, with the help of a biased media, pointed repeatedly to anonymous leaks suggesting Mueller would reveal Trump to be a traitor, making it the greatest scandal in national history.
It all turned out to be a “bogus narrative,” as Attorney General Bill Barr calls it, but the Trump-traitor narrative was very helpful to Dem candidates at the time. The midterms might have turned out differently had Mueller finished earlier or never been appointed.
At any rate, by last Sept. 24, with the 2020 election fast approaching and her icy relationship with Trump now a bonfire, Pelosi suddenly flip-flopped on impeachment. Her ostensible reason centered on the unverified claims of an anonymous whistleblower regarding Trump’s phone call with the president of Ukraine. The call, she was assured by the media and Rep. Adam Schiff, would amount to a smoking gun.
“The actions of the Trump presidency revealed dishonorable facts of betrayal of his oath of office and betrayal of our national security and betrayal of the integrity of our elections,” she declared.
It felt like a fill-in-the-blank speech, one she had on the shelf ready to go as soon as she had an excuse to use it.
Twenty-four hours later, Trump released the transcript of the Ukraine call and it was benign in comparison to her inflammatory accusation. If only Pelosi had waited another day.
But it was too late. Confident that she had the votes now that most if not all of the 2018 winners would be with her, she erased her previous red lines about bipartisanship, took the plunge — and plunged America into a nightmare that continues.
Watching the so-called debate Wednesday, I was struck by how the impeachers, desperate to inflate their base partisan passions into something noble, have cheapened our nation’s history and language.
They resembled Grade B actors performing for the cameras, their rehearsed references to oaths, prayers, the Founding Fathers, the rule of law, checks and balances and the Constitution itself all sounding contrived. Rather than reflecting actual gravitas, the words were trotted out to create the appearance of it.
That was consistent with Pelosi’s latest demand that her members stay “solemn” in public, so as not to give the impression that they were gloating and joyful. In other words, hide how you really feel so we can fool more people into joining us.
Only the damage to America is real.
https://nypost.com/2019/12/18/nancy-pelosis-stomach-turning-impeachment-charade-damages-america-goodwin/
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WHAT SUICIDAL DEMOCRATS ? (While Trump’s laughing all the way to reelection courtesy of the impeachment show trial deluded Democrats, dumb liberal celebrities and shockingly-biased media are pushing on him, Nancy Pelosi may need to keep that black dress and mournful face for next November, Piers Morgan says)
‘Merry Impeachmas from the WAPO team!’
Rachael Bade (Washington Post’s Congress reporter and CNN political analyst)
The Washington Post’s Congress reporter and CNN political analyst Rachael Bade certainly showed us who she was with her social media post celebrating President Trump’s impeachment yesterday.
‘Merry Impeachmas from the WAPO team!’ she exclaimed excitedly, alongside a beaming photo of herself partying in a Washington restaurant with a group of co-workers, most of whom are also CNN analysts.
After an immediate deluge of criticism for this startlingly partisan tweet, Bade deleted her tweet and explained it was ‘being misinterpreted by some as an endorsement of some kind..’
Of course, all it did was confirm what has been self-evident since the day Trump won the 2016 Election: most of America’s mainstream hates him and is absolutely thrilled to see him impeached.
So, of course, are the Democrats, which was obvious when they exploded into raucous cheering in the House of Representatives as their leader Nancy Pelosi solemnly announced Trump’s fate – before she frantically silenced them like a crazed kindergarten teacher.
Pelosi herself was dressed in funereal black and bore a face of unrelenting gravity – with a slash of blood-red lipstick.
As she keeps reminding us, this impeachment brings her no pleasure whatsoever, and she is praying regularly for Donald at this difficult time.
Oh pur-lease…. spare me this pious, disingenuous nonsense.
The truth is that she and her party have been plotting this since Trump set foot in the White House.
They couldn’t beat him at the ballot box in 2016 and fear they won’t be able to beat him at the ballot box in 2020.
So, they’ve concluded impeachment may be their only route to stop him.
Yet as I have repeatedly said, it is an act of extraordinary stupidity and self-harm.
And never was this more apparent than in the moment of its happening.
Yesterday was one of the most pointless, farcical days in the history of America’s Congress.
For hour after tortuous hour, the representatives of the world’s greatest superpower filed up to have their moment in the sun.
Or rather, in the glare of TV cameras.
They raged, they sighed, they rolled their eyes, they wiped away fake tears, they invoked every great American historical figure they could think of, they told their personal stories of family courage… and so they banged on, sucking the very life out of the holiday season with every indignant self-aggrandizing breath.
But what did any of it achieve?
The Democrats were always going to win this impeachment vote because they control the House.
All their members ranted against Trump and the Republicans – and all the Republicans ranted in support of him and against the Democrats.
Unlike Bill Clinton’s impeachment, there was no deviation from party ranks.
This was a 100% partisan pleasure-dome, though the only people deriving any actual pleasure from the unedifying spectacle were the politicians lapping up TV exposure to tens of millions of Americans like ravenous parched camels arriving at an oasis after weeks of traipsing across the Sahara Desert.
Meanwhile, their supposed victim was at a rally chuckling to his base: ‘This doesn’t feel like an impeachment to me, does it to you?’
No, frankly.
It feels like a pathetic joke at America’s expense.
A pantomime, in fact.
In Britain right now, it’s peak pantomime season.
Pantos are musical comedy theater shows featuring good guys, bad guys, cross-dressing dames, risqué jokes, and lots of jovial warning chants from the audience of ‘BEHIND YOU!’
They’re ridiculous laughable affairs, yet not quite as ridiculous or laughable as this impeachment process.
Let’s be absolutely clear: Trump’s not going to be convicted.
He’s going to be comfortably acquitted in any trial by a Republican-dominated Senate.
It would take 20 Republicans to flip to find him guilty, and there’s more chance of me being elected Pope than that happening.
And that’s assuming the impeachment even reaches the Senate.
Ms Pelosi has hinted she may not actually both sending it over…so foregone is the conclusion.
This is therefore a staggeringly futile exercise of unprecedented proportions.
Yet that hasn’t stopped all the usual half-witted bunch of obsessive Trump-loathing celebrities exploding with false dawn ecstasy as they proclaim it as the end of their nemesis.
From Bette Midler and Cher to John Legend and Amber Tamblyn, they raced to spew their glee all over Twitter.
To which my response is this: what are you clueless clowns all celebrating?
Are you just too dumb to see what’s actually happening here?
Do you not understand it all ends in a big loss for Trump-haters and a big win for Trump?
This impeachment only plays out one way: if it goes to full Senate trial then sometime in early 2020, Trump will be cleared of wrongdoing and will instantly go on one of the planet’s longest and most tormenting victory laps.
As with the ill-fated Mueller Report into supposed Russia collusion that never happened, Trump will simply proclaim it as another fake news witch hunt.
His base will fire up even more than they already are, the Democrat base will fire down in abject dismay, and all the momentum for the 2020 Election will swing behind the President.
If the US economy continues to roar in the way it’s currently doing, with stock markets hitting record highs and unemployment numbers hitting record lows, then Trump will storm towards another win next November like an unstoppable King Kong.
Impeachment was intended by the Founding Fathers to be the ultimate check and balance on a president gone rogue.
I keep hearing this is the ‘worst’ impeachment in American history, because Trump’s behavior over the Ukraine affair is so overtly terrible.
But it’s really not.
His supposed ‘quid pro quo’ phone call to Ukraine’s new president was reckless and stupid, and he deserves to be criticized for it.
But it wasn’t a ‘high crime’.
Not least because the ‘crime’ – Trump withholding US military aid until Ukraine launched an investigation into alleged corruption involving the Bidens – never actually occurred.
There was no investigation launched, and the aid was soon handed over.
The bottom line is that for many Americans, this is a hard-to-understand scandal involving something that didn’t happen involving a leader they’ve never heard of in a country they know little about.
That’s why the latest polls show plunging support for impeachment.
That’s why the Democrats don’t have a cat in hell’s chance of it succeeding.
That’s why Nancy Pelosi will need to keep that black dress and mournful face for next November.
And that’s why Trump’s laughing all the way to re-election.
As he’ll be saying to himself today: Merry Impeachmas!
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7809571/PIERS-MORGAN-Merry-Impeachmas-alright-President-Trump-not-deluded-Democrats.html
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ALLO, MAMAN, BOBO !
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DOWN IN THE BAYOU
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WHAT CONTINUATION OF THE ENDLESS ATTACKS ON THE PEOPLE ? (Spot the error when you realize the Obama administration’s law enforcement and intelligence officials were actually from day one leaking secrets designed to embarrass the new president and kill his administration in its infancy ?)
“Let me tell you: You take on the intelligence community — they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you,”
Sen. Chuck Schumer (Jan. 2017)
“The Campaign to Impeach President Trump Has Begun.”
Washington Post (Inauguration Day)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/01/20/the-campaign-to-impeach-president-trump-has-begun/
« Leakers and whistleblowers won’t hesitate. What Morell and other intelligence veterans are too decorous to mention is that Trump’s treatment of his spies will also come back to bite him in the form of leaking and whistleblowing. The intelligence community doesn’t leak as much as the Pentagon or Congress, but when its reputation is at stake, it can do so to devastating effect. »
Daniel Benjamin (former Coordinator for Counterterrorism at the State Department 2009-2012)
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/01/how-trumps-attacks-on-us-intelligence-will-come-back-to-haunt-him-214622
“Our nation was turned on its head for three years based on a completely bogus narrative that was largely fanned and hyped by a completely irresponsible press.”
Attorney General Bill Barr
With a likeness to the Uncle Sam “I want you” poster, the disrupter in chief reaffirms in 14 words the belief of Trump Nation that the political establishment, the media, the permanent bureaucracy and yes, the deep state, are trying to crush him and them. The president tweeted the image the day House Democrats voted to impeach him, and hours after his raucous rally in Michigan that evening. The tweet included no added comment because none was needed. The message is clear: I am all that stands between you and the barbarians at the gate. If I fall, you are next.
Critics regard it as fear-mongering, and there is no denying that the president wanted to rally his base, lest it be discouraged by the day’s events. Yet Trump’s oblique reference to a weaponized and powerful adversary is hardly unfounded, with a partisan, flimsy impeachment the latest example. The tweet’s siren call to believers is a shorthand way of saying that impeachment is just a continuation of the endless attacks against us.
Indeed, his presidency effectively begins with a prophecy of those attacks, one that came 17 days before Trump took the oath.
“Let me tell you: You take on the intelligence community — they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you,” Sen. Chuck Schumer said on MSNBC.
It was an incredible thing to say in a nation where the people are supposedly sovereign, but soon it would become clear that Schumer knew what he was talking about, which still raises questions.
How did he know the FBI, CIA and others were going after Trump?
Did he warn them against meddling in politics? Did he alert prosecutors?
If so, nobody did anything because it was quickly obvious that law enforcement and intelligence officials in the Obama administration were leaking secrets designed to embarrass the new president — and kill his administration in its infancy.
The effort never stopped, with impeachment launched when a man identified by the media as CIA officer Eric Ciaramella filed a complaint about Trump’s July 25 call with the president of Ukraine.
Most of the period between Schumer’s warning and the Ukraine complaint was dominated by the two-year slog of special counsel Robert Mueller. It, too, made lots of noise and the Democrat/media frenzy created the clear implication that Trump would be formally charged with helping Russia tip the 2016 election.
Of course, Mueller found no such evidence, but he still hurt the president.
The probe was a black cloud hanging over the White House during the 2018 midterm campaign, and thus likely played a role in Dems winning the House majority — the majority they would use to impeach the president.
Thus, Mueller’s team struck out legally, but helped Dems score big politically. So much for its integrity.
More recently, added confirmation that Schumer was right has come in spades. Thanks to reports from the Justice Department’s inspector general, we know there was rampant misconduct and political bias at Jim Comey’s FBI.
We learned through texts that top agent Peter Strzok, who said he could “smell” Trump voters in a Walmart, had exchanges with his office paramour about stopping Trump, including references to an “insurance policy” in case Trump won. J. Edgar Hoover would blush at the audacity.
A second probe scorched the FBI’s handling of the FISA applications to spy on Trump campaign associate Carter Page. Although the probe found no direct evidence that anti-Trump bias was a factor, it did reveal that all the omissions, failures and mistakes worked against Trump, with even exculpatory evidence against Page intentionally withheld.
Thankfully and finally, the fallout from those findings is picking up speed, with the top FISA judge questioning the FBI’s “candor” and saying the flawed submissions “calls into question whether information contained in other FBI applications is reliable.”
Even bigger fish could be on the grill in a separate probe. Other top officials in the Obama administration, CIA head John Brennan and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, are reportedly under scrutiny by US Attorney John Durham, who is conducting a criminal investigation of the spying effort against Trump.
The New York Times reported that Durham is gathering Brennan’s emails and documents in a focus on his congressional testimony about the use of the Hillary Clinton-financed Steele dossier in the government finding that Russia tried to help Trump in 2016.
To understand the import of the investigation, it pays to recall that Brennan, Clapper, Comey and his former top deputy, Andrew McCabe, have for years appeared on hate-Trump TV to accuse him of treason and other crimes, as has Clinton.
None of those charges was true, but the endless attacks on Trump from former insiders are unprecedented, and reflect badly on the institutions they led and the government as a whole. All these false charges were amplified by a media that ignored basic fairness.
Attorney General Bill Barr offers the best overview of this unholy alliance, saying, “Our nation was turned on its head for three years based on a completely bogus narrative that was largely fanned and hyped by a completely irresponsible press.”
Barr also says the question of whether anti-Trump bias led to FBI misconduct is still open. He also says Durham’s probe will not be limited to that agency or even to the United States.
So Schumer’s warning hit the bull’s-eye — but uncharacteristically, he’s been shy about taking credit.
Is he afraid of the intelligence agencies, or is he OK with the officials playing politics because Trump was the target? If the latter, he joins a crowd who fancy themselves liberals of integrity, but who are comfortable with abuses of power and double standards against Trump.
Even impeachment was not the grand, noble process the Founders envisioned, despite Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s efforts to dress up a dirty trick. Under her, impeachment proved that the House, like the FBI, CIA and the media, has corrupted itself in a bid to destroy Trump and delegitimize his presidency.
In his bristling letter to Pelosi, Trump cited numerous examples where Dems talked of impeachment long before Ukraine, including a Washington Post story on Inauguration Day that said, “The Campaign to Impeach President Trump Has Begun.”
Trump also highlighted the quote that, for my money, is the matching bookend to Schumer’s “six ways from Sunday” prophecy. This one came from Rep. Al Green from Texas, who said last May he was “concerned if we don’t impeach this president, he will get reelected.”
Can’t have that. Whatever it takes, can’t have that.
Michael Goodwin
https://nypost.com/2019/12/21/donald-trumps-theyre-after-you-tweet-says-it-all-goodwin
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WHY TRUMP WAS RIGHT ABOUT MC CAIN AFTER ALL ( » I had no idea which if any were true « and « it all seemed too strange a scenario to believe at first, but I did what duty demanded I do »)
« Sir Andrew … told me he knew a former MI6 officer by the name of Christopher Steele, who had been commissioned to investigate connections between the Trump campaign and Russian agents as well as potentially compromising information about the President-elect that Putin allegedly possessed. Steele had prepared a report that Wood had not read and conceded was mostly raw, unverified intelligence, but that the author strongly believed merited a thorough examination by counterintelligence experts. Steele was a respected professional, Wood assured us, who had good Russian contacts and long experience collecting and analyzing intelligence on the Kremlin. (…) I was skeptical that Trump or his aides had actively cooperated with Russia’s interference. And I certainly did not want to believe that the Kremlin could have acquired kompromat on an American President. (…) Our impromptu meeting felt charged with a strange intensity. No one wise-cracked to lighten the mood. We spoke in lowered voices. The room was dimly lit, and the atmosphere was eerie. It all seemed too strange a scenario to believe at first, but even a remote risk that the President of the United States might be vulnerable to Russian extortion had to be investigated. (…) The allegations were disturbing, but I had no idea which if any were true. I could not independently verify any of it, and so I did what any American who cares about our nation’s security should have done. I put the dossier in my office safe, called the office of the director of the FBI, Jim Comey, and asked for a meeting. (…) I did what duty demanded I do, anyone who disagrees with his decision can « go to hell. »
John McCain
https://bit.ly/2Q0U37p
The late Sen. John McCain provided intimate details of how he obtained the infamous so-called Steele dossier in his 2018 book, « The Restless Wave. »
The Republican senator was attending an annual security conference in Halifax, Nova Scotia shortly after the presidential election in November 2016 when retired a British diplomat approached him.
According to McCain, he didn’t recall ever having a previous conversation with Sir Andrew Wood, but may have met him before in passing. Chris Brose, a staff member on the Senate Armed Services Committee, and David Kramer, a former assistant secretary of state with Russian expertise, joined McCain and Wood in a room off the main conference hall.
After discussing Russian election interference for a few minutes, Wood explained why he’d approached McCain in the first place.
« He told me he knew a former MI6 officer by the name of Christopher Steele, who had been commissioned to investigate connections between the Trump campaign and Russian agents as well as potentially compromising information about the President-elect that [Russian President Vladimir] Putin allegedly possessed, » McCain wrote.
Wood told McCain that Steele had compiled a report, while careful to note the information was unverified, which the former British spy « strongly believed merited a thorough examination by counterintelligence experts. »
« Our impromptu meeting felt charged with a strange intensity, » McCain wrote. « No one wise-cracked to lighten the mood. We spoke in lowered voices. The room was dimly lit, and the atmosphere was eerie. »
It all seemed « too strange a scenario to believe » at first, he wrote, but the six-term senator felt that « even a remote risk that the President of the United States might be vulnerable to Russian extortion had to be investigated. »
After further discussion, the group agreed to send Kramer to London to meet Steele. When Kramer returned from the meeting and told McCain that Steele seemed to be a reputable source, the Republican senator agreed to receive a copy of the dossier.
« The allegations were disturbing, but I had no idea which if any were true, » McCain said. « I could not independently verify any of it, and so I did what any American who cares about our nation’s security should have done. I put the dossier in my office safe, called the office of the director of the FBI, Jim Comey, and asked for a meeting. »
McCain ultimately turned the dossier over to Comey in a meeting on December 9, 2016 that he said lasted about 10 minutes.
« I did what duty demanded I do, » McCain wrote, adding that anyone who disagrees with his decision can « go to hell. »
The Trump-Russia dossier alleges the Kremlin has been « cultivating, supporting, and assisting » Trump for years under the watchful eye of Putin. The most salacious allegation claims Trump once paid Russian prostitutes to perform sexual acts in front of him that involved urination in a Moscow hotel. Trump has dismissed the dossier as « fake » and « phony. »
In general, the concern surrounding the dossier is that, if it were all true, the Russian government could have enough incriminating evidence on Trump to make him vulnerable to blackmail, though the president has fervently pushed back against this perception.
Some details within the dossier have been verified, but much of it remains unconfirmed. With that said, it continues to be one of the most controversial topics of conversation regarding the Trump campaign’s alleged collusion with Russia.
McCain wrote that he suspects Wood approached him about the Steele dossier because he has been such a persistent, staunch critic of Putin over the years, and that he would « take their concerns seriously. »
The Arizona senator’s last book, which he co-wrote with Mark Salter, came out in May 2018.
https://www.businessinsider.fr/us/how-john-mccain-received-steele-dossier-trump-russia-2018-5/
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WHAT WITCH HUNT ON TRUMP ? (Straight out of a bad John Le Carre novel: Obama officials were reasonably confident Clinton would win: once she lost, the calculus changed)
Later, in April 2016, Marc Elias — a top Democratic campaign lawyer — retained Fusion GPS through his firm of Perkins Coie on behalf of both Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee. Perkins Coie, at Elias’s behest and with the bills ultimately paid by Clinton and the DNC, continued to fund Fusion’s work through the end of October 2016, though the people involved say that neither the campaign nor the DNC was aware of the details of Fusion’s work.
Fusion, in turn, subcontracted with Christopher Steele, a retired MI-6 officer with considerable expertise on Russian matters, to use his contacts in Moscow to find what he could about Trump’s connections to the Russian government. That work led to the compilation of Steele’s dossier, written up in the style of an intelligence report and based on unnamed sources, that contained a variety of serious charges against Trump.
Steele’s dossier circulated in the media during the fall of 2016, but news organizations largely failed to verify any of its key claims. Steele also shared the document with the FBI, where it was apparently taken at least somewhat seriously in light of Steele’s record as an intelligence professional, and the existence of the dossier was subsequently revealed by David Corn of Mother Jones on October 31.
The Steele dossier became a big deal during the transition
Corn’s story did not play a particularly large role in what remained of the election campaign, and though the Clinton campaign certainly threw some Russia-related charges at Trump, the issue was not a centerpiece of her message.
That swiftly changed in the wake of Trump’s unexpected victory. The Obama administration had to an extent downplayed what it knew about Russia’s election-related activities during the course of the campaign, trying to keep partisan politics separate from a national security issue.
Officials were also reasonably confident that Clinton would win. Once she lost, the calculus changed to an extent, and the administration began to pull back the curtain on the extent of Russian activism around the election.
But to say that the Russian government invested resources in boosting Trump’s fortunes is not to say that Trump was a pawn of the Kremlin.
The notion that Trump was in some sense in cahoots with the Russians had, however, been widely bandied about in a range of contexts for months — we know now that back in June 2016, even House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy was joking that Trump was on Putin’s payroll — and was part of liberals’ desperate fantasy that a group of rogue “Hamilton Electors” would somehow step in and block Trump from taking office.
It was in this context that BuzzFeed decided to bring the public in on what had been circulating for a while in media circles and publish the full dossier on January 10, 2017.
The dossier, compiled by a credible person though lacking any kind of independent verification, charged that Trump was in fact under the influence of Russian intelligence services, who had a longstanding relationship with the president-elect and had also compiled salacious blackmail material on him.
The Steele dossier makes six major collusion claims, none proven
One core claim of the Steele dossier, contentious during the course of the 2016 campaign but widely agreed upon now: There was, in fact, a multifaceted Kremlin-directed influence campaign aimed at boosting Trump’s electoral fortunes.
An official US intelligence community assessment released in January says that was the case, the Senate Intelligence Committee’s investigations have reached the same conclusion, and even though Trump personally continues to dispute this, people he has appointed to top intelligence jobs agree that it’s true.
The dossier of course goes well beyond that, to make six major claims about Trump’s ties to Russia that really haven’t been borne out by any subsequent reporting or investigation that we know of.
1) Trump had cooperated with Russian authorities for years.
A core claim of the dossier is that Russia “had been feeding Trump and his team valuable intelligence on his opponents,” including Clinton, for “several years” before 2016, and that in exchange, Trump’s team fed the Kremlin intelligence on Russian oligarchs and their families “for at least eight years.”
The premise of this theory, that many Russian nationals have bought Trump-branded properties and thus he might be in a position to offer useful information to Russian authorities, is clearly correct, but nothing like it has been shown to be true.
2) Trump is vulnerable to Russian blackmail on sexual matters.
The dossier states that during a trip to the Moscow Ritz-Carlton, Trump hired prostitutes to “perform a ‘golden showers’ (urination) show in front of him”, “defiling” the presidential suite bed in which the Obamas had previously slept, with the implication being that Russian intelligence taped this and that it was one of several forms of “kompromat” the Russians have on Trump.
Nothing like this has been proven.
3) There was a “well-developed conspiracy of cooperation” between Trump and Russia.
Steele describes a Trump-Russia “conspiracy,” managed by Paul Manafort, with Carter Page serving as intermediary until Manafort’s firing in August 2016, after which point Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen played an increasingly large role in managing the “Kremlin relationship.”
This is broadly similar to some things that have been demonstrated later, but totally different in the details.
4) Trump’s team knew and approved of Russian plans to deliver emails to WikiLeaks, and offered them policy concessions in exchange.
The dossier claims that Trump and his campaign team had “full knowledge and support” of Russia’s leak of the DNC emails to WikiLeaks, and that in return, Trump’s team “had agreed to sideline Russian intervention in Ukraine as a campaign issue.”
This is obviously a subject of ongoing investigation, but none of the conversations about Russian dirt on Clinton that have come to light so far demonstrate what the dossier claims.
5) Carter Page played a key role in the conspiracy.
The dossier says that according to an “ethnic Russian associate” of Trump’s, Carter Page had “conceived and promoted” the idea that the DNC emails to WikiLeaks should be leaked during the Democratic convention, “to swing supporters of Bernie Sanders away from Hilary Clinton and across from Trump.”
It also says Page met senior Russian official Igor Diveykin to talk kompromat on Clinton, and met with Igor Sechin to discussion financial payoffs to Page and others via the privatization of the Russian company Rosneft.
Page has denied under oath having met either Diveykin or Sechin, and there’s no indication he had anything to do with the timing of the WikiLeaks release.
6) Michael Cohen played a key role in the conspiracy.
The dossier says that after Paul Manafort was fired, Cohen traveled to a European Union country (later reports claim it was the Czech Republic) in late August or early September to meet with Russian officials, and that the meeting took place under the cover of a Russian NGO, Rossotrudnichestvo.
One topic of this meeting was “coverup and damage limitation” around Manafort’s Ukrainian work and efforts to “prevent the full details of Trump’s relationship with Russia being exposed.” According to the dossier, after August, Cohen continued to manage Trump’s relations with Russia, but after this point, contacts were made to Russia’s “trusted agents of influence” instead of officials.
Cohen also supposedly discussed how to make “deniable cash payments” to hackers working under Kremlin direction, and how to cover up those operations.
Cohen’s purported proof that he’s never been to Prague — showing a passport that lacks a Czech Republic stamp — is unconvincing because he could have traveled to Prague via another Schengen area country and might have multiple passports. But none of this has been proven…
https://www.vox.com/2018/1/5/16845704/steele-dossier-russia-trump
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WHAT EFFECT OF THE IMPEACHMENT CIRCUS ON THE 2020 US ELECTION ? (You cannot remove a president with a 42 to 45% job approval rating unless you want all hell to break loose)
« You cannot remove a president with a 42 to 45% job approval rating unless you want all hell to break loose. (…) Richard Nixon’s polls were at 22%. (…) You don’t remove a president who has this kind of support. »
John Zogby
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SOW THE WIND, REAP THE WHIRLWIND ! (Guess who just pulled another decisive blow against Iran’s rogue adventurism ?)
At the direction of the President, the U.S. military has taken decisive defensive action to protect U.S. personnel abroad by killing Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force, a U.S.-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization. General Soleimani was actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service members in Iraq and throughout the region. General Soleimani and his Quds Force were responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American and coalition service members and the wounding of thousands more. He had orchestrated attacks on coalition bases in Iraq over the last several months – including the attack on December 27th – culminating in the death and wounding of additional American and Iraqi personnel. General Soleimani also approved the attacks on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad that took place this week. This strike was aimed at deterring future Iranian attack plans. The United States will continue to take all necessary action to protect our people and our interests wherever they are around the world.
US state department
https://www.defense.gov/Newsroom/Releases/Release/Article/2049534/statement-by-the-department-of-defense/
Officials said the strike also killed Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy commander of Iran-backed militias known as the Popular Mobilization Forces. An official with an Iran-backed paramilitary force said Friday that seven people were killed by a missile fired at Baghdad International Airport, blaming the United States. The official with the group known as the Popular Mobilization Forces said the dead included its airport protocol officer, identifying him as Mohammed Reda.
A security official confirmed that seven people were killed in the attack on the airport, describing it as an airstrike. Earlier, Iraq’s Security Media Cell, which releases information regarding Iraqi security, said Katyusha rockets landed near the airport’s cargo hall, killing several people and setting two cars on fire.
The security official said the bodies of those killed in the airport attack Friday were burned and difficult to identify. The official added that Reda may have been at the airport to pick up a group of “high-level” visitors who had arrived from a neighboring country. He declined to provide more information.
The attack came amid tensions with the United States after a New Year’s Eve attack by Iran-backed militias on the US Embassy in Baghdad. The two-day embassy attack which ended Wednesday prompted Trump to order about 750 US soldiers deployed to the Middle East. The breach at the embassy followed US airstrikes on Sunday that killed 25 fighters of the Iran-backed militia in Iraq, the Kataeb Hezbollah. The US military said the strikes were in retaliation for last week’s killing of an American contractor in a rocket attack on an Iraqi military base that the US blamed on the militia. US officials had earlier suggested they were prepared to engage in further retaliatory attacks in Iraq.
https://www.news18.com/news/world/rogue-adventurism-iran-slams-foolish-escalation-as-us-airstrike-kills-iran-guards-commander-qasem-soleimani-2443977.html
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WHO DO YOU WANT ANSWERING THE PHONE ?
« 3 a.m. There is a phone in the White House and it’s ringing. Who do you want answering the phone? »
Hillary Clinton ad (2008)
« President Trump just tossed a stick of dynamite into a tinderbox, and he owes the American people an explanation of the strategy and plan to keep safe our troops and embassy personnel, our people and our interests, both here at home and abroad, and our partners through the region and beyond. ”
Joe Biden
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BIGGER THAN BIN LADEN
« Make no mistake – this is bigger than taking out Osama Bin Laden. »
Ranj Alaaldin
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QUAND ON JOUE AVEC LE FEU, ON SE BRULE !
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WILL SOLEIMAN PAY A PRICE ?
Iran’s Soleimani, who helped kill US troops, breaks UN sanctions to meet w/ fellow thug Putin. Will he pay a price?
John McCain
http://foxnews.com/politics/2015/
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WHAT CLEAN WIN FOR TRUMP ? (Iran is weaker today than it was when Trump became president and Soleimani strike allowed for red lines and deterrence to be reestablished)
We’re obviously in a de-escalating mode, for two reasons. The first is for the last year as the Americans were destroying the Iranian economy, Iran was responding and didn’t know what the red lines were. Didn’t know what would get Trump to react or not. They hit tankers, they hit American drones, big ones. They took out 50% of Saudi oil and the U.S. didn’t react. So much so that the Saudis ended up having to negotiate with Iran on the sidelines because, « The Americans aren’t helping us. What do we do? »
So finally they go and they attack a U.S. base in Kirkuk in northern Iraq. They go after the U.S. embassy in Baghdad and the supreme leader of Iran has the temerity to tweet and say the U.S. can’t do anything. And, you know, the United States, President Trump, responded. Responded very significantly and has shown what the red lines are. And has shown that he’ll escalate. And, frankly, that at some point needed to be done. Did it need to be done by actually killing Soleimani? I think you could have done it very modestly, but it sent a strong message and the Iranians are vastly weaker than the United States. They’re not suicidal. So their response has been the minimum possible military engagement against the Americans.
That is wildly de-escalatory. It’s also been supported by a statement by the foreign minister saying we’re going to escalate. If you do anything about this. In other words, « Please, let’s now stop. We don’t want war. » There’s a real opportunity for diplomacy if Trump wants it and is capable of taking it. But for now, let’s be clear, this is a much more powerful United States showing the Iranians that you are not going to come after the U.S. directly.
Literally, the United States has killed the head of Iran’s military in the cabinet and the response has been, you know, virtually nothing. That doesn’t mean that Iran is no longer a major antagonist of the United States in the region or that we’ve ended our fights. There’s no mission accomplished moment, God forbid. No one should be taking victory laps here. But this is a win for Trump. And it’s clear that it is.
The question is, I never thought Trump wanted to wag the dog. If he wanted war with the Iranians, he’s had plenty of opportunities to move in that direction. Especially after the Saudis were hit. When the drone was taken out, the Secretary of Defense was trying to get Trump to bring fighter jets, manned, to be escorting drones when they were engaged in those surveillance missions and Trump said no because he didn’t want to get stuck in a war. So he wasn’t about wagging the dog. If he’s doing anything, he’s likely to pet the dog.
That means he wants to come to deals and announce they’re the best deals ever. That’s what he tried to do with the Taliban on the 9/11 anniversary with Camp David.
What he’s tried to do with the North Koreans, which also have not worked, but it’s also what he has wanted to do with Iranians. In the middle of all this escalation, when the U.N. was going on, he was trying to call the Iranian president to say, hey, let’s make a deal. I’m certain that Trump would love to do diplomacy.
There’s no coherent strategy but there’s consistency. Don’t hit Americans. Don’t care as much about the allies. Can’t develop nukes. Don’t like anything Obama did.
They are moving away from the nuclear deal but it’s like if you get a speed limit 65, it’s not like they’re going 120. They’re saying we’ll go 75. Don’t ticket us. We want to go back to the deal. But they’re careful about their escalation. I think Trump wants something that looks like the Iranian deal but has a couple of additional measures to it. It would not end after 15 years. It wouldn’t have a sunset clause. It would continue to go. It’s also something that would probably include some level of inspections or something around Iranian ballistic missile development, for example. So it would be a little broader than what Kerry and Obama got done. The U.S. would be negotiating that from a position of strength. Iran is weaker today than it was when Trump became president. If he wants that opportunity, he certainly has a window for it.’
Ian Bremmer (Time)
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2020/01/08/ian_bremmer_iran_is_weaker_today_than_it_was_when_trump_became_president.html
J’aimeJ’aime
UNPREDICTABLE TRUMP DID IT AGAIN (With a little help from his Democrat enemies: When Sanders said this week, “I believe the first course of action is for the Congress to take immediate steps to restrain President Trump from plunging our nation into yet another endless war,” he essentially told Iran to hold back)
“We must, as a nation, be more unpredictable. We are totally predictable. We tell everything. We’re sending troops. We tell them. We’re sending something else. We have a news conference. We have to be unpredictable. And we have to be unpredictable starting now.”
Donald Trump (April 2016)
For the next three years, Trump — predictably — pulled out of the nuclear agreement with Iran, then — unpredictably — refrained from acting against Iran after a series of provocations. But then he ordered the killing of a top Iranian general. Reportedly, his team was surprised by his decision. Perhaps Soleimani thought he was immune to assassination. Perhaps Iranian leaders thought the United States no longer had the will to take a risk in the fight against them.
Trump took that risk. His critics, who say the decision to kill Soleimani might lead to war, aren’t wrong. Iran could test the resolve of the U.S. by retaliating. Trump might surprise them by showing he has the resolve they thought he lacked. This could lead to a war no one intended.
Is resolve a cause of war or a foundation of stability? Sometimes it’s one and sometimes it’s the other. Is unpredictability a cause of war or a foundation of stability? Sometimes it’s this and sometimes it’s that. The Cold War was an era of greatly needed predictability, lest miscalculation lead to nuclear war. Hence, the first Bush, a Cold War era graduate, was a predictable president. He told Iraq what he was going to do next every step of the way — then responded to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in a predictable fashion.
As defense minister, Arens argued that Israel’s failure to respond to Iraqi Scud missiles would erode Israel’s power of deterrence against its neighbors. As far as I can tell from conversations I had with him over the years, he continued to believe the war indeed harmed Israel’s deterrence. Arens and the leaders of Israel’s military wondered during and after the war if Iraq indeed had any chemical or biological weapons capable of reaching Israel. If so, why didn’t Hussein use them? Was he deterred by Israel’s rumored weapons of mass destruction and afraid to cross a line?
It is not easy to measure the degree to which deterrence is effective.
Iran probably isn’t worried about a possible U.S. invasion. But it likely is worried today more than it was a week ago, and must consider its next moves much more carefully. Trump’s surprise was an act of deterrence and like every such act, it carries risks. If the enemy is not deterred, one must double down or back down. When one doubles down, one exposes oneself to overreach. Documents seized in Iraq after the 2003 U.S. invasion demonstrated how Hussein deterred and erred. He wanted the world (especially Iran) to believe he had weapons of mass destruction. His success in his quest to deter Iran opened the door for the invasion of the American-led coalition.
Yet, all concerned parties who rightly worry about the prospect of war ought to remember that the U.S. is much stronger than Iran. Iran should be more worried about possible miscalculation and unexpected escalation of hostilities. The president has said he isn’t seeking to fight a war in the Middle East but is prepared to act. The more Iran’s leaders believe retaliation against the U.S. might lead to war, the less likely they are to respond. The best way for the U.S. to avoid war is to lead Iran to think it’s prepared to fight, which is what Trump stated.
Ironically, Trump’s Democratic rivals inadvertently helped him send the same message to Iran. When Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said this week, “I believe the first course of action is for the Congress to take immediate steps to restrain President Trump from plunging our nation into yet another endless war,” he essentially told Iran to hold back. His message to Iran could be taken as: Wait for us and get better terms of negotiation; wait for us and get a more predictable policy; wait for us because we are much more opposed to war than Trump.
Oddly, this also is a message that might give Iran a reason to avoid retaliation. Why retaliate now and risk escalation before the November election?
What is the U.S. trying to achieve by deterrence? Trump doesn’t want Iran to attack U.S. forces. That’s a good reason to send a decisive signal that retaliation is unacceptable. But what if Iran avoids action against American forces? Would that be enough to calm the Trump administration?
The United States puts pressure on Iran through economic sanctions and that pressure seems to be working. Iran’s economy is hobbled; Iranians have protested fuel hikes and their leaders, starting last fall in multiple cities. Still, Iran isn’t backing down. It announced that it no longer is committed to the limitations of the nuclear agreement (after Soleimani’s death, European Union leaders aren’t hopeful the pact can be saved). It keeps its operations running in Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and elsewhere. If deterrence means it can still do all these things, as long as it doesn’t hurt Americans, that’s a path Iran might take.
However, there needs to be more than that if the goal is to curb Iran’s disruptive policies of expansionist radicalism. There needs to be action against Iranian forces and programs. Israeli leaders are worried about Iran’s Precision Missile Project. This project aims to make the next war — the one that could come in 2020 — much more painful than the one in 1991. At that time, Iraqi missiles were primitive, inaccurate and in most cases, ineffective. Today, Iran’s missiles likely will be accurate and effective. They will hit their targets, killing and maiming thousands of Israelis, making the war traumatic and more like the 1973 Yom Kippur War than the 1991 Persian Gulf War.
The INSS, in somewhat cryptic language, recommended Israel “reduce the gap of expectations of the public about the characteristics of the war and its possible consequences.” In a conversation with intelligence expert professor Uri Bar Joseph three weeks ago (available on my podcast on jewishjournal.com), the language was more direct: Bar Joseph believes Israelis aren’t ready for war. They think a war against Iran will be like the Persian Gulf War, or like an operation against Hamas in Gaza — some disruption to life, but just a few casualties from incoming missiles. He believes the actual war and its high cost will shock Israelis to the core.
The leaders of Iran thought the United States no longer had the will to take a risk in the fight against them.
So what is next?
Iran must decide if, how and when to respond to the Soleimani killing.
Trump must decide what happens if Iran escalates, and what happens if it doesn’t. In this case, options are clearer, as they are with Israel and other Arab countries that must decide how to act if Iran doesn’t escalate and moves forward with its programs of expansion, missile accuracy and nuclear development.
As senior officials in Jerusalem and Washington, D.C. ponder their next moves, their calculations are based on the assumption that Iran — as academic and writer Walter Russel Mead defined it from his conversation with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo — “is in a box.” The United States and Israel believe the combination of America’s moves to exclude Iranian oil from world markets, Israel’s constant harassment of Iranian forces, and the proved effectiveness of U.S. sanctions forces Iran to make hard choices as it struggles to live in this box. They also believe that what Trump did last week will somewhat deter Iran from trying violent means to release itself from this box.
In the Middle East, a thick plot only thickens.
Shmuel Rosner
https://jewishjournal.com/cover_story/309336/what-the-soleimani-killing-means-for-the-future-of-iranian-radicalism/
J’aimeJ’aime
THE TEHRAN EMPEROR HAS NO CLOTHES (And it took an outsider who often doesn’t know when to keep quiet and can’t stay off Twitter to expose the 40 years of America’s willed blindness and unwillingness to protect Americans from Iranian terror)
« The Arabs need to take a page out of the playbook of the Quds Force.”
Barack Hussein Obama
It’s no coincidence that in the wake of the targeted killing of Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani, Iran’s most important military proxy has begun taking credit for terror attacks committed nearly four decades ago. For example, Hezbollah-affiliated media and activists are laying public claim to the organization’s responsibility for bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in October 1983, which killed 241 Marines. So why now?
The answer is, to scare Americans now that Donald Trump has thrown the regime in Tehran off balance by changing the 40-year-old rules of the game. The United States always knew that Hezbollah was responsible for the Marine barracks attack and that the Lebanese militia was armed, trained, funded and directed by Iran. President Reagan’s decision not to respond directly to the attack was part of a tacit agreement that America and the Islamic Republic entered into during the 1979 U.S. Embassy takeover in Tehran. It mirrored similar arrangements with the Soviet Union in which neither superpower held the other directly accountable for the actions of proxies in order to reduce the likelihood of a nuclear cataclysm.
Yet, unlike the Soviet Union, the Islamic Republic was hardly a globe-spanning nuclear superpower. It was merely a hostile local power that threatened the American regional security order through terror attacks. Washington’s response was to look away, under the theory that it was beneficial to the larger order to pretend, in public, that rules still existed. In turn, Iran was happy to play make-believe and accumulate prestige and leverage.
The terms of this weird deal held fast for the next four decades, through the end of the Cold War, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the First and Second Gulf Wars, Bush’s occupation of Iraq, Obama’s Iran deal, and other local and global milestones. Washington wouldn’t hold the clerical regime accountable for the violent proxies that it funded, armed, trained, and directed. In exchange, Iran and its partners would refrain from embarrassing the Americans by boasting about the murders they committed. The founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, famously said that America couldn’t do a damn thing. It is more accurate to say our elected officials wouldn’t do a damn thing.
Donald Trump put an end to that arrangement by commingling the dust of Soleimani together with that of one of his chief Arab lieutenants, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, head of one of Iran’s Iraqi terror proxies. Now that Trump is holding Iran accountable for the actions its proxies take in its name, the leverage gained by helping America play make-believe is gone. Iran and its allies now feel liberated to bathe publicly in the blood of Americans and warn that more violence is coming their way.
The problem for Iran is that it isn’t actually all that powerful. For all the concern over retaliation, Trump’s trashing of the old rulebook has stripped Iran of the most important instrument in its arsenal—“plausible deniability.”
Iran’s ability to respond to the U.S. was already limited by the fact that its conventional military forces are old and rusting away. Yes, IRGC speedboats can harass, and target, the U.S. Navy in the Persian Gulf. But it can’t move large land forces into Iraq, never mind drop them into Florida or Alaska.
A good measure of Iran’s military weakness is that Qassem Soleimani was commander not of its regular army but rather the Quds Force, the expeditionary unit of Iran’s parallel military structure, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). The Quds Force is relatively small, with estimates ranging from 3,000 to 15,000 fighters–i.e., a force the size of Hezbollah. For protracted campaigns like the Syria war, the Quds Force relies on what Israeli analyst Shimon Shapira calls the Shiite International—paid militias drawn from Middle East and Central Asian countries with Shiite populations, like Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan.
The threat that Iran poses to a superpower America is “asymmetric”—kidnappings, embassy attacks, hijackings, bombings, etc., typically conducted by Iranian proxies. The military experts and political scientists who coined the term usually fail to note that the ability to wage “asymmetric” warfare is wholly dependent on an adversary’s willed blindness. If Iran’s targets decide to unsubscribe to the fiction that the Islamic Republic is not directly responsible for the actions of its proxies, Iran is rendered virtually powerless–with terror attacks being met with direct military hits on Iranian bases, airfields, ports, power plants, dams, and other infrastructure.
It is only because Americans and other Western powers have declined to call out Iran and have instead appeased it, that an obscurantist regime whose major exports are energy, pistachios—and terror, of course—appears like a formidable adversary.
In making Iran accountable, Trump has knocked Iran down to its natural size—and likely made Americans safer from Iranian aggression than they have in fact been at any point in the last 40 years, during which Iranian proxies have repeatedly killed large numbers of Americans. Killing Soleimani is a much more important operation than those targeting ISIS leader al-Baghdadi and even bin Laden, since it will likely shape the future actions of a state, not the leadership rotation of terror groups.
Iranian-backed terror isn’t a stubborn, unchanging fact of the international landscape, except to the degree that we made it so. The policy of appeasement that began in 1979, with the embassy takeover, culminated in the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) when the Obama administration flooded Soleimani’s war chests with hundreds of billions of dollars and legitimized Iran’s “right” to a large-scale nuclear weapons program. In line with the decadeslong U.S. policy of augmenting the Iranian threat in order to avoid taking action against it, Obama said the only alternative to giving Iran the bomb was war.
Donald Trump was vilified when he exited the Iran deal in May. But in the eyes of the foreign policy establishment, he committed an even graver sin by exposing the 40-year-old lie that U.S. policymakers, right and left, had cultivated to rationalize their collective unwillingness to protect Americans from Iranian terror.
* * *
So why did U.S. officials treat Iran differently than any other country, even at the expense of thousands of American lives? There is the U.S. investment in maintaining the appearance of a rules-based order led by America, of course. On a deeper, less strategic level, there was the guilt and self-pity of America’s ruling elites, and the habits of magical thinking that resulted.
Power makes people vain. When it is handed down to them, it often makes them resentful, too. In 1979, when Iranian students took over the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, the Western intelligentsia saw it as the righteous revenge of the wretched of the earth—and confirmation of their own political exertions spent on college campuses from Berkeley to Paris the previous decade. The Iranian revolution was evidence to our ruling class of how much their fathers had gotten wrong—and thus proof of their own virtue.
It required no national security acumen or regional expertise to see that the “students” were a ruse. Khomeini was clearly in charge—he was, after all, the supreme leader. No one seized the U.S. Embassy, kidnapped 52 Americans in the center of Tehran, and held them for over a year, without his approval.
The hostage crisis showed the regime in Tehran that so long as it didn’t pierce the veil and take direct, unmistakable, on-the-record responsibility for its actions, Washington would stick with the cover story. And even though the hostage crisis crippled Jimmy Carter, it was his successor, Ronald Reagan, who not only failed to retaliate after the hostages were freed, but then also granted the Iranians impunity when under cover of Hezbollah, they bombed the U.S. Embassy in Lebanon in April 1983. Six months later, they bombed the Marine barracks. In December of that year, the Iranians employed Lebanese and Iraqi proxies to bomb the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait. Muhandis, killed last week with Soleimani, is believed to have planned the attack.
To free the Iranian proxies apprehended by Kuwaiti authorities, Hezbollah embarked on an almost decadelong campaign of assassinations and kidnappings, taking dozens of Americans hostage in Beirut, including the president of the American University in Beirut, David Dodge, who was transferred for a time to Tehran’s infamous Evin prison. Hezbollah then assassinated Dodge’s AUB colleague Malcolm Kerr.
U.S. officials even had scholarly support to rationalize their failure to hold Iran accountable. During the 1990s, Middle East experts promoted a thesis holding that the clerical regime in fact had little to do with Hezbollah. According to the “Lebanonization” thesis, Hezbollah was a homegrown resistance movement that came into being as a local response to Israel’s 1982 occupation of Lebanon. In fact, as Tablet colleague Tony Badran has written, Hezbollah was seeded in Lebanon in the mid-’70s by “Iranian revolutionary factions opposed to the shah.” U.S. policymakers preferred the fiction that Hezbollah was a homegrown product because it supported both their emotional needs and their policy goals: The West had earned the righteous anger of the natives, and there was nothing to be done except atone by way of offering human sacrifices.
In 1996, Iran’s proxy in Saudi Arabia, Hezbollah al-Hijaz, bombed the Khobar Towers, killing 19 U.S. Air Force personnel. The Clinton administration’s hopes for rapprochement with Tehran under the leadership of so-called reformist President Mohammad Khatami required the U.S. to pretend Iran was not responsible.
Between 2003 and 2011, according to a State Department assessment, Iran and its Shiite allies were responsible for killing more than 600 U.S. servicemen in Iraq. The body count doesn’t include the U.S. servicemen killed by the Sunni fighters ushered from Damascus international airport to the Iraqi border by Bashar Assad’s regime in Syria, Iran’s chief Arab ally. Yet George W. Bush reportedly passed up opportunities to kill Soleimani, deciding against opening a third front against Iranian terrorists that might endanger his doomed “Freedom Agenda.”
There was even less of a chance Obama would kill Soleimani, though his administration reportedly had him in the crosshairs, too. Soleimani was the key to the JCPOA, Obama’s crowning foreign policy achievement. He admired Soleimani, a hard man who got things done. Rather than stop the Quds Force commander, Obama told Arab allies that “they need to take a page out of the playbook of the Quds Force.”
The former president’s conviction was simply the result of what American officials had been saying since 1979. Therefore, Obama counted on Soleimani’s ability to control the ground in Syria and help America stabilize the region. Yet only weeks after Obama diplomats and Iran agreed to the JCPOA in July 2015, Soleimani was in Moscow petitioning Vladimir Putin for assistance in Syria. In spite of the billions of dollars in sanctions relief that Obama had granted Iran, and the $1.7 billion in cash the U.S. shipped directly to the IRGC, the Quds Force and the Shiite international were on the verge of losing the war to rebels in pick-up trucks.
Six U.S. administrations were complicit in turning Iran into a regional power. In that context, the Obama administration’s decision to flood Iranian war chests with cash and recognize its right to build a nuclear bomb was the logical culmination of the rot eating away at the Beltway for four decades. It was perhaps to be expected that an outsider who often doesn’t know when to keep quiet, and can’t stay off Twitter, would be the one to sing out like the boy in the fairy tale. It’s true, the emperor has no clothes. The rules have changed but that doesn’t mean the Iranians won’t be looking for revenge.
It’s no coincidence that in the wake of the targeted killing of Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani, Iran’s most important military proxy has begun taking credit for terror attacks committed nearly four decades ago. For example, Hezbollah-affiliated media and activists are laying public claim to the organization’s responsibility for bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in October 1983, which killed 241 Marines. So why now? The answer is, to scare Americans now that Donald Trump has thrown the regime in Tehran off balance by changing the 40-year-old rules of the game. The United States always knew that Hezbollah was responsible for the Marine barracks attack and that the Lebanese militia was armed, trained, funded and directed by Iran. President Reagan’s decision not to respond directly to the attack was part of a tacit agreement that America and the Islamic Republic entered into during the 1979 U.S. Embassy takeover in Tehran. It mirrored similar arrangements with the Soviet Union in which neither superpower held the other directly accountable for the actions of proxies in order to reduce the likelihood of a nuclear cataclysm.
Yet, unlike the Soviet Union, the Islamic Republic was hardly a globe-spanning nuclear superpower. It was merely a hostile local power that threatened the American regional security order through terror attacks. Washington’s response was to look away, under the theory that it was beneficial to the larger order to pretend, in public, that rules still existed. In turn, Iran was happy to play make-believe and accumulate prestige and leverage.
The terms of this weird deal held fast for the next four decades, through the end of the Cold War, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the First and Second Gulf Wars, Bush’s occupation of Iraq, Obama’s Iran deal, and other local and global milestones. Washington wouldn’t hold the clerical regime accountable for the violent proxies that it funded, armed, trained, and directed. In exchange, Iran and its partners would refrain from embarrassing the Americans by boasting about the murders they committed. The founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, famously said that America couldn’t do a damn thing. It is more accurate to say our elected officials wouldn’t do a damn thing.
Donald Trump put an end to that arrangement by commingling the dust of Soleimani together with that of one of his chief Arab lieutenants, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, head of one of Iran’s Iraqi terror proxies. Now that Trump is holding Iran accountable for the actions its proxies take in its name, the leverage gained by helping America play make-believe is gone. Iran and its allies now feel liberated to bathe publicly in the blood of Americans and warn that more violence is coming their way.
The problem for Iran is that it isn’t actually all that powerful. For all the concern over retaliation, Trump’s trashing of the old rulebook has stripped Iran of the most important instrument in its arsenal—“plausible deniability.”
Iran’s ability to respond to the U.S. was already limited by the fact that its conventional military forces are old and rusting away. Yes, IRGC speedboats can harass, and target, the U.S. Navy in the Persian Gulf. But it can’t move large land forces into Iraq, never mind drop them into Florida or Alaska.
A good measure of Iran’s military weakness is that Qassem Soleimani was commander not of its regular army but rather the Quds Force, the expeditionary unit of Iran’s parallel military structure, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). The Quds Force is relatively small, with estimates ranging from 3,000 to 15,000 fighters–i.e., a force the size of Hezbollah. For protracted campaigns like the Syria war, the Quds Force relies on what Israeli analyst Shimon Shapira calls the Shiite International—paid militias drawn from Middle East and Central Asian countries with Shiite populations, like Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan.
The threat that Iran poses to a superpower America is “asymmetric”—kidnappings, embassy attacks, hijackings, bombings, etc., typically conducted by Iranian proxies. The military experts and political scientists who coined the term usually fail to note that the ability to wage “asymmetric” warfare is wholly dependent on an adversary’s willed blindness. If Iran’s targets decide to unsubscribe to the fiction that the Islamic Republic is not directly responsible for the actions of its proxies, Iran is rendered virtually powerless–with terror attacks being met with direct military hits on Iranian bases, airfields, ports, power plants, dams, and other infrastructure.
It is only because Americans and other Western powers have declined to call out Iran and have instead appeased it, that an obscurantist regime whose major exports are energy, pistachios—and terror, of course—appears like a formidable adversary.
In making Iran accountable, Trump has knocked Iran down to its natural size—and likely made Americans safer from Iranian aggression than they have in fact been at any point in the last 40 years, during which Iranian proxies have repeatedly killed large numbers of Americans. Killing Soleimani is a much more important operation than those targeting ISIS leader al-Baghdadi and even bin Laden, since it will likely shape the future actions of a state, not the leadership rotation of terror groups.
Iranian-backed terror isn’t a stubborn, unchanging fact of the international landscape, except to the degree that we made it so. The policy of appeasement that began in 1979, with the embassy takeover, culminated in the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) when the Obama administration flooded Soleimani’s war chests with hundreds of billions of dollars and legitimized Iran’s “right” to a large-scale nuclear weapons program. In line with the decadeslong U.S. policy of augmenting the Iranian threat in order to avoid taking action against it, Obama said the only alternative to giving Iran the bomb was war.
Donald Trump was vilified when he exited the Iran deal in May. But in the eyes of the foreign policy establishment, he committed an even graver sin by exposing the 40-year-old lie that U.S. policymakers, right and left, had cultivated to rationalize their collective unwillingness to protect Americans from Iranian terror.
* * *
So why did U.S. officials treat Iran differently than any other country, even at the expense of thousands of American lives? There is the U.S. investment in maintaining the appearance of a rules-based order led by America, of course. On a deeper, less strategic level, there was the guilt and self-pity of America’s ruling elites, and the habits of magical thinking that resulted.
Power makes people vain. When it is handed down to them, it often makes them resentful, too. In 1979, when Iranian students took over the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, the Western intelligentsia saw it as the righteous revenge of the wretched of the earth—and confirmation of their own political exertions spent on college campuses from Berkeley to Paris the previous decade. The Iranian revolution was evidence to our ruling class of how much their fathers had gotten wrong—and thus proof of their own virtue.
It required no national security acumen or regional expertise to see that the “students” were a ruse. Khomeini was clearly in charge—he was, after all, the supreme leader. No one seized the U.S. Embassy, kidnapped 52 Americans in the center of Tehran, and held them for over a year, without his approval.
The hostage crisis showed the regime in Tehran that so long as it didn’t pierce the veil and take direct, unmistakable, on-the-record responsibility for its actions, Washington would stick with the cover story. And even though the hostage crisis crippled Jimmy Carter, it was his successor, Ronald Reagan, who not only failed to retaliate after the hostages were freed, but then also granted the Iranians impunity when under cover of Hezbollah, they bombed the U.S. Embassy in Lebanon in April 1983. Six months later, they bombed the Marine barracks. In December of that year, the Iranians employed Lebanese and Iraqi proxies to bomb the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait. Muhandis, killed last week with Soleimani, is believed to have planned the attack.
To free the Iranian proxies apprehended by Kuwaiti authorities, Hezbollah embarked on an almost decadelong campaign of assassinations and kidnappings, taking dozens of Americans hostage in Beirut, including the president of the American University in Beirut, David Dodge, who was transferred for a time to Tehran’s infamous Evin prison. Hezbollah then assassinated Dodge’s AUB colleague Malcolm Kerr.
U.S. officials even had scholarly support to rationalize their failure to hold Iran accountable. During the 1990s, Middle East experts promoted a thesis holding that the clerical regime in fact had little to do with Hezbollah. According to the “Lebanonization” thesis, Hezbollah was a homegrown resistance movement that came into being as a local response to Israel’s 1982 occupation of Lebanon. In fact, as Tablet colleague Tony Badran has written, Hezbollah was seeded in Lebanon in the mid-’70s by “Iranian revolutionary factions opposed to the shah.” U.S. policymakers preferred the fiction that Hezbollah was a homegrown product because it supported both their emotional needs and their policy goals: The West had earned the righteous anger of the natives, and there was nothing to be done except atone by way of offering human sacrifices.
In 1996, Iran’s proxy in Saudi Arabia, Hezbollah al-Hijaz, bombed the Khobar Towers, killing 19 U.S. Air Force personnel. The Clinton administration’s hopes for rapprochement with Tehran under the leadership of so-called reformist President Mohammad Khatami required the U.S. to pretend Iran was not responsible.
Between 2003 and 2011, according to a State Department assessment, Iran and its Shiite allies were responsible for killing more than 600 U.S. servicemen in Iraq. The body count doesn’t include the U.S. servicemen killed by the Sunni fighters ushered from Damascus international airport to the Iraqi border by Bashar Assad’s regime in Syria, Iran’s chief Arab ally. Yet George W. Bush reportedly passed up opportunities to kill Soleimani, deciding against opening a third front against Iranian terrorists that might endanger his doomed “Freedom Agenda.”
There was even less of a chance Obama would kill Soleimani, though his administration reportedly had him in the crosshairs, too. Soleimani was the key to the JCPOA, Obama’s crowning foreign policy achievement. He admired Soleimani, a hard man who got things done. Rather than stop the Quds Force commander, Obama told Arab allies that “they need to take a page out of the playbook of the Quds Force.”
The former president’s conviction was simply the result of what American officials had been saying since 1979. Therefore, Obama counted on Soleimani’s ability to control the ground in Syria and help America stabilize the region. Yet only weeks after Obama diplomats and Iran agreed to the JCPOA in July 2015, Soleimani was in Moscow petitioning Vladimir Putin for assistance in Syria. In spite of the billions of dollars in sanctions relief that Obama had granted Iran, and the $1.7 billion in cash the U.S. shipped directly to the IRGC, the Quds Force and the Shiite international were on the verge of losing the war to rebels in pick-up trucks.
Six U.S. administrations were complicit in turning Iran into a regional power. In that context, the Obama administration’s decision to flood Iranian war chests with cash and recognize its right to build a nuclear bomb was the logical culmination of the rot eating away at the Beltway for four decades. It was perhaps to be expected that an outsider who often doesn’t know when to keep quiet, and can’t stay off Twitter, would be the one to sing out like the boy in the fairy tale. It’s true, the emperor has no clothes. The rules have changed but that doesn’t mean the Iranians won’t be looking for revenge.
https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/296604/iran-and-america-are-suddenly-both-naked
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BACK WHEN OBAMA HELD UP SOLEIMANI AS AN EXAMPLE FOR THE ARAB WORLD
With more than a hint of admiration for the skill and professionalism of Qassem Soleimani and the IRGC’s Qods Force, Obama noted that Iran has consistently excelled at this type of sub-state conflict. And that’s when he let loose with this little gem: The Arabs, according to the president of the United States, need to learn from Iran’s example. In fact, they need to take a page out of the playbook of the Qods Force — by which he meant developing their own local proxies capable of going toe-to-toe with Iran’s agents and defeating them. The president seemed to marvel at the fact that from Hezbollah to the Houthis to the Iraqi militias, Iran has such a deep bench of effective proxies willing to advance its interests. Where, he asked, are their equivalent on the Sunni side? Why, he wanted to know in particular, have the Saudis and their partners not been able to cultivate enough Yemenis to carry the burden of the fight against the Houthis? The Arabs, Obama suggested, badly need to develop a toolbox that goes beyond the brute force of direct intervention. Instead, they need to, be subtler, sneakier, more effective — well, just more like Iran. A brief time-out for some commentary: Are you feeling better yet? After all, what could possibly go wrong? Remember how well things went the last time Saudi Arabia unleashed the dogs of Sunni jihad to fight Soviet communism, Iran’s Islamic Revolution, and other such evils? Billions spent around the world to bankroll extremist mosques, madrassas, and charities. The Taliban. Bin Laden. Al Qaeda. 9/11. We’re still living with the blowback. Think about it. Feeling threatened, desperate, uncertain of U.S. support, and in an existential death match with an intensely sectarian Shiite Iran, who do you think the Wahhabis are most likely to turn to as potential proxies in a pinch? AQAP in Yemen? Jabhat al-Nusra in Syria? The Islamic State in Iraq? Impossible, you say? Maybe. But maybe not. The past isn’t necessarily prologue, but it’s certainly reason to proceed very, very cautiously. The president appears to have a special infatuation with the relatively low cost, under-the-radar utility of black ops, covert action, and paramilitary activities. He also seems eager, even desperate, to ease the burdens of U.S. global leadership by compelling difficult allies to step up and police their own neighborhoods. Combine these impulses together and it all sounds great in theory as a means of countering Iran. But this is the Middle East and the coming jihad vs. jihad sectarian conflagration is only just getting started. So be careful what you wish for.
John Hannah
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MOST LIKED IN PERSIA (Spot the error: guess who just made the most liked Persian tweet in history ?)
به مردم شجاع و رنج کشیده ایران: من از ابتدای دوره ریاست جمهوریم با شما ایستادهام و دولت من همچنان با شما خواهد ایستاد. ما اعتراضات شما را از نزدیک دنبال می کنیم. شجاعت شما الهام بخش است.
Donald J. Trump
✔
@realDonaldTrump
317K
10:46 PM – Jan 11, 2020
« This tweet by @realDonaldTrump with more than 100k likes is already the most liked Persian tweet in the history of Twitter. A strong show of support by Iranians for Trump’s Iran policy, something the MSM does not and will not report. »
Saeed Ghasseminejad (Foundation for Defense of Democracies)
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/trump-tweet-in-farsi-the-most-liked-persian-tweet-in-history-of-twitter
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TROIS VICTOIRES DE TRUMP ET UN DESASTRE MEDIATIQUE (Quand au Moyen-Orient, en Europe et en Amérique ou même face à la Chine, Trump obtient plus que tous ses prédécesseurs avant lui, devinez quel désastre ne voient pas nos experts médiatiques ?)
La politique internationale de Donald Trump est un désastre s’agissant du Moyen-Orient, de l’Europe et de l’Amérique -le président ayant même réussi à se mettre à dos ses voisins les plus proches. S’il est un pays où son action n’aura peut-être pas été vaine, c’est la Chine. Certes, l’accord commercial conclu ce mercredi n’apporte pas le moindre progrès structurel. Pékin continuera de subventionner ses entreprises et d’imposer des transferts technologiques aux entreprises occidentales. Les questions de cybersécurité, pourtant centrales, sont renvoyées à plus tard. La déception est d’autant plus légitime que Washington n’a aucune chance d’obtenir davantage cette année. Il n’y aura pas de seconde étape avant la présidentielle américaine de novembre. Mais Donald Trump n’a pas failli pour autant. Son offensive anti-Pékin présente au moins trois mérites. Le premier est de lui avoir arraché des concessions à effet immédiat extrêmement importantes. En s’engageant à acheter pour 200 milliards de dollars de produits américains, les Chinois donnent la preuve que les sanctions douanières font mouche. Certains accusent le président américain de jouer les marchands de tapis et de se contenter d’annonces court-termistes. C’est vrai. Mais par cette stratégie, il obtient plus que tous ses prédécesseurs avant lui, au premier rang desquels Barack Obama qui n’a jamais récolté les fruits de son engagement constructif et de ses efforts de persuasion. Avec ces promesses d’achats, Donald Trump a également obtenu que la Chine favorise les Etats-Unis au détriment des autres puissances exportatrices mondiales. Le soja que Pékin achètera aux agriculteurs de l’Iowa représente autant de « business » en moins pour les Australiens, les Brésiliens et les Vietnamiens. Cela pourrait constituer une violation des règles mondiales du commerce. Mais quoi de mieux pour galvaniser les électeurs du Midwest, tenants de « l’America first »? Ce qui nous mène à sa troisième victoire, de loin la plus importante : sa victoire politique. A dix mois de l’élection présidentielle, le président réussit à arracher des symboles forts. Cette semaine, la Chine a reconnu que son excédent commercial vis-à-vis des Etats-Unis avait chuté de plus de 8% l’an dernier. La conclusion de l’accord commercial, aussi imparfait soit-il, permet de mettre en sourdine ses difficultés juridiques au Congrès. Si cela peut garantir sa réélection, Donald Trump aura fait preuve, une fois de plus, d’un formidable flair politique.
Lucie Robequain
https://www.lesechos.fr/idees-debats/editos-analyses/commerce-les-trois-victoires-de-trump-1163308
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BUMP ON THE MULLAHS’ ROAD TO NOWHERE (Guess who in one master blow has finally put a stop to the mullahs’ old survival recipe of 1 million war dead, 15,000 executions, 8 million exiles, oil money dependence, cheap refugee labor and foreign mercenaries?)
No matter what gloss the ruling clerics might try to put on current events in Iran, one point is clear: their Islamic Republic is in trouble. Deep trouble. This is, of course, not the first time that the system hastily put together by a bunch of mullahs and their leftist allies hits a bump on its road to nowhere. Even in its first year the Islamic Republic faced huge protest movements in Tehran and other major cities and had to use force to crush rebellions by Iranian-Kurdish and Turcoman communities.
According to best estimates, to remain in place the Islamic Republic has executed more than 15,000 people and driven more than 8 million Iranians into exile. And all that not to mention the eight-year war that the late Ayatollah, Ruhallah Khomeini, provoked with Iraq under Saddam Hussein. Despite all that the regime managed to survive thanks to a number of factors.
The first of those was that the Islamic Republic had at its disposal a large amount of cash earned from oil exports. The steady rise in oil prices meant that in its first 30 years of existence the Islamic Republic earned more than 20 times the money that Iran had made ever since it started exporting oil in 1908.
That ready source of cash meant that the new rulers of Iran did not need the citizenship for any of the ordinary things citizens in normal countries are needed for. The government did not depend on the people for revenue through taxation.
At the same time, it did not need citizens to win elections as candidates were approved beforehand. Nor did the government need the citizens to work to keep the economy going. Over four million refugees from Afghanistan, Iraq and former Soviet Azerbaijan provided a huge source of cheap labor.
When it came to needing citizens to fight for the regime, citizens were again not indispensable as the regime succeeded in hiring mercenaries in a number of neighboring countries, notably Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Lebanon.
It was that scheme of proxy wars that turned the late General, Qassem Soleimani, into a hero of the Islamic Republic. In fact, Soleimani did not need any military expertise. All he needed to do was to act as a cash machine for his proxy warriors.
Today, however, the oil cow is giving the mullahs much less milk than before. In fact, the regime’s hope is to secure something around 60 billion US dollars a year to cover its basic expenses. The existing war chest, built over the years, won’t cover those basic expenses for more than a year from now.
The other important element in the regime’s strategy was certainly that, whatever it did at home or abroad, its putative foes would always shy away from taking strong action against it, preferring dialogue and compromise.
Tehran always knew that whatever it did against outside powers it always had the option of surrendering at five minutes to midnight. Today, that option is also fading. I doubt that even the lily livered Europeans would now settle for just a friendly smile and a promise of future good behavior from Tehran. President Hassan Rouhani and his “New York Boys” may still hope to see a US Democrat in the White House soon. But even if that happens, I doubt that any future US president would repeat the mistakes made by Barack Obama.
Even an opportunist power like Russia is no longer prepared to play the game according to the rules fixed by the mullahs. The mullahs’ total disregard for international law and norms of behavior, tragically demonstrated with the shooting down of the Ukrainian jetliner in Tehran makes it hard for even dyed-in-wool anti-Americans in the West and elsewhere to continue as apologists for an incompetent, corrupt and cruel regime.
The next item in the mullahs’ scenario was to wrap themselves in patriotic colors and demand that Iranians forgive their peccadillos in the name of raw nationalism. Rouhani’s closest associate Muhammad Javad Zarif, acting as foreign minister, often uses tropes as “Iran’s 7,000-year civilization” and claims that “we were masters of the world long before Americans appeared on the map. However, that trick isn’t working either. Most Iranians, including many regime apologists in the West, know that the regime’s core ideology, Khomeinism, is built on a profound hatred of all things Iranian.
The mullahs’ recent attempt at marketing Gen. Soleimani as an Iranian hero, a kind of nationalist icon, has proved a failure as posters lamenting his demise are torn down and/or effaced by protesters in the country.
Soleimani was a cash dispensing machine that never asked Iranians for permission to spend their money abroad. The scheme he ran was never discussed anywhere, even in the regime’s own institutions, let alone any public forum. Nor was he answerable to anyone but “Supreme Guide” Ali Khamenei who, if Soleimani’s only press interview is believed, never bothered to go into any details.
Another feature of the regime’s survival scenario was to foment false hopes by fielding supposedly “reformist” figures capable of replacing the regime’s frown with a smile to please some Iranians and many gullible foreigners. Today, however, that trick is also hard to repeat, especially as more and more players in the “reform-seeking” game realize that they have been taken for a ride.
When everything else failed the mullahs knew that they could hang on to power by mass killings and widespread arrests. Each time they used that trick they managed to buy a few more years. This time, however, may be different. The current wave of protests was launched just days after the crushing of the previous national uprising. The previous round of protests seemed divided between a demand for straight regime change or demand for cosmetic moves, including resignation of top officials.
The latest protests, however, are clearly focused on a demand for regime change, even by some former “reform-seekers”. All this means that the regime’s classical recipe for survival isn’t working as before. For the first time, more and more Iranians are beginning to contemplate regime change not as merely a desirable slogan but as a practical strategy to lead the nation out of the impasse created by Khomeinism.
Amir Taheri
https://aawsat.com/english/home/article/2086851/amir-taheri/iran-why-old-recipe-does-not-work
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LES CHIENS ABOIENT, LA CARAVANE PASSE
« Trump arrive à Davos pour montrer que pendant que les démocrates s’obstinent à faire ce qu’ils ont fait depuis le début de sa présidence à savoir une tentative de délégitimation et de destruction de sa présidence, lui continue à faire le boulot de président ».
Laure Mandeville
https://www.emissionreplay.fr/c-dans-l-air/l-accuse-trump-fanfaronne-a-davos-815063
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WHAT ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION PROBLEM ? (And guess who’s finally fixing it ?)
“The most scandalous event in the history of public policy in the United States in the last 50 years has been the bi-partisan toleration of illegal entry of approximately a million unskilled workers and their families, for 20 years. »
Conrad Black
https://www.kitco.com/news/video/show/VRIC-2020/2671/2020-01-20/Conrad-Black-Trump-is-reversing-the-most-scandalous-event-in-US-policy-Part-1
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SPOT THE ERROR ! (49/49: Trump climbs to highest job approval rating of his presidency amid impeachment trial)
Among registered voters his approval on handling the economy stands at 58/36. That’s a big number for any president but yuuuge for a figure like Trump, about whom opinion is normally insanely polarized. Even some Trump-hating Dems and indies can’t deny him credit. The economy also happens to be the issue, of course, that perennially scores at the top of voters’ list of priorities when they go to vote in presidential elections. It’ll be hard to bet against him in a tight race if this is how he’s rating in November.
It’s not just ABC/WaPo that finds Americans’ satisfaction with the economy peaking. New from Gallup:
That +40 net on economic confidence is the biggest number since the final few months of the Clinton administration. Dubya never touched it. Obama, saddled with the Great Recession when he took office, never quite got there. Not coincidentally, with economic satisfaction skyrocketing, satisfaction with the state of the country is skyrocketing too:
That’s the biggest number since 2005. This result is a bit more partisan than the others:
Forty-five percent (45%) of Likely U.S. Voters think the country is heading in the right direction, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey for the week ending January 16, 2020. This week’s finding is up five points from a week ago, and is the highest finding since February 2017. By comparison, this number ran in the mid- to upper 20s for much of 2016, President Obama’s last full year in office…
https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/archive/mood_of_america_archive/right_direction_or_wrong_track/january_2020/right_direction_wrong_track_jan20
The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Friday shows that 49% of Likely U.S. Voters approve of President Trump’s job performance. Forty-nine percent (49%) disapprove.
https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/trump_administration/prez_track_jan24
Forty-five percent (45%) of Likely U.S. Voters think the country is heading in the right direction, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey for the week ending January 16, 2020. This week’s finding is up five points from a week ago, and is the highest finding since February 2017. By comparison, this number ran in the mid- to upper 20s for much of 2016, President Obama’s last full year in office.
https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/archive/mood_of_america_archive/right_direction_or_wrong_track/january_2020/right_direction_wrong_track_jan20
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SPOT THE ERROR ! (49/49: Trump climbs to highest job approval rating of his presidency amid impeachment trial)
Among registered voters his approval on handling the economy stands at 58/36. That’s a big number for any president but yuuuge for a figure like Trump, about whom opinion is normally insanely polarized. Even some Trump-hating Dems and indies can’t deny him credit. The economy also happens to be the issue, of course, that perennially scores at the top of voters’ list of priorities when they go to vote in presidential elections. It’ll be hard to bet against him in a tight race if this is how he’s rating in November.
It’s not just ABC/WaPo that finds Americans’ satisfaction with the economy peaking. New from Gallup:
That +40 net on economic confidence is the biggest number since the final few months of the Clinton administration. Dubya never touched it. Obama, saddled with the Great Recession when he took office, never quite got there. Not coincidentally, with economic satisfaction skyrocketing, satisfaction with the state of the country is skyrocketing too:
That’s the biggest number since 2005. This result is a bit more partisan than the others:
Forty-five percent (45%) of Likely U.S. Voters think the country is heading in the right direction, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey for the week ending January 16, 2020. This week’s finding is up five points from a week ago, and is the highest finding since February 2017. By comparison, this number ran in the mid- to upper 20s for much of 2016, President Obama’s last full year in office…
https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/archive/mood_of_america_archive/right_direction_or_wrong_track/january_2020/right_direction_wrong_track_jan20
The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Friday shows that 49% of Likely U.S. Voters approve of President Trump’s job performance. Forty-nine percent (49%) disapprove.
https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/trump_administration/prez_track_jan24
Forty-five percent (45%) of Likely U.S. Voters think the country is heading in the right direction, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey for the week ending January 16, 2020. This week’s finding is up five points from a week ago, and is the highest finding since February 2017. By comparison, this number ran in the mid- to upper 20s for much of 2016, President Obama’s last full year in office.
https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/archive/mood_of_america_archive/right_direction_or_wrong_track/january_2020/right_direction_wrong_track_jan20
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WHAT DOUBLE STANDARDS ? (Guess who looked the other way when Obama asked a foreign leader for a political favor and sacrificed the security of the US and its European allies for the sake of his own re-election ?)
“The case against Obama would have been far stronger than the case against Trump. … Where were the House managers then?”
Eric Herschmann
White House lawyer Eric Herschmann used Democrats’ own definition of “abuse of power,” laid down by House impeachment manager Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) last week, to show that Obama met all the elements of the standard. He began by playing the infamous March 2012 video of Obama caught on a “hot mic” telling then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev — a stand-in for Vladimir Putin — that he needed more “space” until he was re-elected, but would have more “flexibility” on missile defense afterwards. Medvedev agreed to give the message to Putin. In other words, Herschmann explained, Obama asked a foreign leader for a political favor, sacrificing the security of the United States and our European allies for the sake of his own re-election.
Herschmann recalled that when then-Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney — sitting in the Senate as one of Utah’s two delegates — made Russia the focus of his foreign policy in 2012, Obama mocked him.
Obama’s conduct, Herschmann said, met all of the Democrats’ elements of “abuse of power”: “1. The president exercises his official power … 2. To obtain a corrupt personal benefit … 3. While ignoring or injuring our national interest.”
Herschmann noted that Obama had also given up on missile defense in Eastern Europe in 2009, and that the request to Medvedev came in 2012. Following that, he pointed out, Russia invaded Crimea, seizing it from Ukraine, convinced that the Obama administration would never respond.
By their own standard, Herschmann concluded, Democrats should have impeached Obama, too.
“The case against Obama would have been far stronger than the case against Trump. … Where were the House managers then?” he said, accusing them of violating the principle of “equal justice” with their double standard.
In contrast, he pointed out, Trump had actually confronted Russia and armed the Ukrainians.
https://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2020/01/27/white-house-lawyer-obama-impeachment-russia/
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WHAT REALITY CHECK ? (Guess who just called out half a century’s worth of Palestinian lies and bad faith and guess what their answer was ?)
Even with all of our concerns, we must give a huge thank you to President Trump, Jared Kushner, Jason Greenblatt and US Ambassador to Israel David Freidman for their hard work in developing this plan based on reality.
What reality? The reality that it is impossible to talk about peace when the Palestinian Authority incites children to kill Jews! A reality where the Palestinian Authority pays terrorists and their families! A reality where Hamas has weapons and rockets to shoot at Israel whenever they want! While all the moral and enlightened people of the world ignored those, and many other evil transgressions of our “peace” partners, President Trump finally said stop! Stop all this evil, and then negotiations can begin. But until then, Israel will receive what will always remain a part of Israel, all the Jewish communities in the ancestral, biblical land of Judea and Samaria!
What does Israel receive: The USA recognizes that the Jordan Valley will remain part of Israel as Israel’s eastern border and therefore Israel can apply sovereignty there immediately. The USA also recognizes that all the communities in Judea and Samaria will remain a part of Israel and therefore Israel can apply sovereignty to those communities immediately as well.
This vision is unbelievable and totally reasonable, based on reality.
There are also some aspects of Trump’s vision that are potentially dangerous. While I believe the Arabs will never fulfill the conditions to even begin negoations, Trump has set a precedent of the establishment of a state called Palestine on Jewish land. That can potentially be extremely dangerous, especially if a Democrat is elected President next and decides to wave the conditions and force the recognition of that state. However, Israel can deal with that danger with careful negotiations with the Trump administration regarding the vision/plan.
Trump’s main points:
Jerusalem is Israel’s undivided capital
The USA will immediately recognize Israel as sovereign as all land in Judea & Samaria as set out in the vision
The days of suicide bombings and bus bombings are over. We will not compromise on Israeli security
Nobody will be expelled from their homes, neither Jew nor Arab
Netanyahu’s main points:
President Trump is the first leader to recognize Israel’s soveriegnty in Judea & Samaria
For too long the world has looked at the ancestral lands of Judea & Samaria, where the Jewish nation was born, as “occupied land”. President Trump has just burst that lie. He recognizes Israeli soveriegnty in all Jewish communities in Judea & Samaria
Israel will apply Israeli sovereignty in the Jordan Valley, in all the Jewish communities in Judea & Samaria and other areas
The USA recognizes that some of land in Judea & Samaria, outside of the Jewish communities, can be included in a state called Palestine, but only after negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Negotiations would only begin after the Palestinian Authority follows the following preconditions:
The Gaza strip must be demilitarized, meaning that Hamas must give up all its guns, rockets and munitions
Stop all payments to terrorists and their families
Stop all anti-Israel activities in the international courts
Stop all incitement against Israel (including in school textbooks and television programs)
Forbidden from joining any international organizations unless approved by Israel
Recognizing Israel as the Jewish state
Recognizing Israel’s new borders after Israel applies sovereignty to areas in Judea, Samaria and the Jordan Valley
Recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s undivided capital
No right of return for descendants of Arab refugees from the 1948 war (that the Arabs started to destroy Israel and throw the Jews into the sea!)
Just a reminder, Arafat, and then Abbas, have said no to every peace deal ever offered to them, including offers where Israel would have expelled almost every Jew from Judea & Samaria (Prime Minister Olmert agreed to that plan!). And this time, they boycotted all talks with President Trump’s team. Once again, Trump recognized this reality and did not give in to them, like other Presidents, but made them pay a price for their behavior. An extremely welcome change of behavior by a President. No longer punishing Israel to make concessions to an unwilling partner, but punishing the unwilling partner instead. Like I said, finally a dose of reality from a US President!
So How to React?
As Bezalel Smotrich, Minister of Transportation from the right-wing Ichud Haleumi party, posted tonight:
“Such is the salvation of Israel. Little by little. Light and darkness mixing together.”
“We made tremendous strides this evening, even if it is imperfect.”
“American recognition of the biblical and historical right of the Jewish people to the entire Land of Israel is a significant stage of fulfillment in the words of the Prophets. A nation cannot be occupiers of its own country!”
That is exactly my attitude as well. There is much to be grateful for. We still have much work to do, but this is an amazing first step.
Avi Abelow
https://israelunwired.com/trump-shocks-the-world-with-a-historic-peace-plan-based-on-reality/
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WHAT RETURN TO SANITY ? (Guess which supposedly village idiot has managed after 70 years and 13 US presidents to finally get things moving again with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict ?)
“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. »
Alcoholics anonymous
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been around for the entirety of Israel’s existence. For all of those 71 years, Israel has been oriented towards achieving comprehensive peace with its neighbors. And over the course of those seven decades, Israel has been paired with thirteen different US Presidents, yet none of them could facilitate peace.
What makes President Donald Trump so different?
Trump has shown a propensity to violate accepted norms. And when you have a conflict that has existed for so long, with all the players refusing to deviate from many assumptions – you need a leader who can operate outside those lines.
Previous failed attempts at a resolution were doomed by the fallacy that you can negotiate peace with people that are still committed to your destruction.
By not pandering to get both sides to the table, and laying out a vision of what it will take to create a lasting peace, Trump is drawing a realistic line that can lead to the resolution of the conflict.
Why does Israel intuitively trust Trump?
Trump has approached the conflict through a sober lens rooted in reality. By preventing US taxpayer funds from going to the families of terrorists (serving as motivation for future shahids) Trump has acknowledged that fostering a culture that rewards and idolizes terrorists is incompatible to peace. Shattering that dynamic is not ‘pro-Israel’ but merely a pre-requisite to achieving peace.
By acknowledging that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, Trump merely conceded reality and refused to maintain the dangerous fantasy that Jerusalem (which has served as Israel’s capitol since 1948) is up for debate.
This administration that has understood that the conflict existed long before Israel liberated Judea & Samaria and has not fallen for the falsehood that blames Israeli residents of Judea & Samaria for the perpetuating the conflict.
Why is it not a problem that Palestinians aren’t included?
Let’s rephrase that. How can peace be achieved if one of the parties is still committed to jihad against the other? Any plan that is presented without clear expectations for Palestinians to genuinely acknowledge the right of Israel to exist and de-militarization is doomed to failure (as the last 70 years has amply demonstrated). Laying out the terms of what it will take to achieve peace is something that has not been updated to the reality of 2020. We can no longer work with such an outdated operating system.
So why do it now?
It is clear that the Trump Administration recognizes this as the time to advance the vital interests of the United States to Israel and the Greater Middle East. There are new Middle Eastern alliances emerging that must be addressed.
The Trump Administration is also accepting the Israeli political stalemate as the default and recognizing it for the opportunity it can be.
Releasing the plan now will give the Israeli public a say – critical for the success of any peace plan. Each political party will assess the plan and offer their response of 0%, 50% 80%, or 100% support. The Israeli public will have their opportunity to respond on Election Day, March 2. This is extremely empowering to the Israeli voters and will also help clarify to the Palestinians, and the International community, where the Israeli public is on an acceptable resolution to the conflict.
Those who have criticized the Administration for ‘interfering with the election process’, are actually fearful that the major parties will embrace too many aspects of the Trump vision, thereby eviscerating their own long held (and failed) plans. If the Trump plan is even partially embraced, this would demonstrate that the Israeli public has completely moved on from the failed thinking of the last many decades, pushed by the DC/European based peace process industry. They would have you believe that releasing a plan for peace after the Israeli public votes is a more democratic process? Really?
The release of this plan has the chance to inject the Israeli elections with much more relevance and give the Israeli public a say in the process and thereby avoid a 4th election.
While we do not know the overall plan, it will likely be a vision for how to achieve peace, not a rigid proposal. This administration has taken a different approach than their predecessors and have actually met with the people who live in the disputed region, so it is not surprising if their outcome is different as well.
The key to actually ending the conflict is having the bravery to live in reality and allow any peace process that is proposed to be based on that truth. It is that need for courageous action that has stymied every US President – until now.
Oded Revivi
https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Trumps-peace-plan-is-a-realistic-vision-615573
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APRES TRUMP, LE DELUGE ! (Plutôt un président hypocrite qui reste constant dans sa politique et sa nomination de juges fédéraux que des ennemis de la liberté qui contrôlent les plus grands médias d’information et de divertissement, les écoles, les universités, la médecine, le droit et les grandes entreprises)
« La participation de Donald Trump [à la ‘Marche pour la vie’] est entièrement opportuniste. Il ne me semble pas qu’il ait des convictions morales solides. Il a découvert que les chrétiens conservateurs évangéliques le soutiennent, ils sont eux-mêmes pro-vie donc finalement il leur donne ce qu’ils veulent. Il est peut-être hypocrite à propos du droit à l’avortement, mais ce qu’il faut retenir, c’est qu’il a nommé des juges pro-vie à la Cour Suprême. Et je préfère avoir un président hypocrite qui reste constant dans sa politique sur l’avortement, qu’un président qui soit sincèrement pro-vie mais qui ne soit pas suffisamment engagé pour cette cause… George W. Bush était fermement engagé pour la vie également. Il ne faut pas oublier que les alliés de Trump comme ses ennemis adorent les exagérations pour parler de lui… Et encore une fois, l’essentiel est dans ce qu’il fait et non pas dans la sincérité de ses actions. (…) l’avortement n’est pas une nouvelle fracture, c’est une ligne de clivage depuis les années 1980 lors de la première campagne électorale de Ronald Reagan. Le fait que l’avortement demeure une fracture depuis toutes ces années est particulièrement intéressant: le pays a beaucoup évolué, même au sujet de la libération sexuelle. Un rapport de 2003 publié dans The Atlantic par Thomas B. Edsall intitulé «Blue Movie» montre de manière éloquente comment les questions de sexualité, incluant l’avortement, permettent de prédire avec précision le parti pour lequel les personnes interrogées vont voter. Depuis, les États-Unis sont devenus plus libéraux sur ces questions. La pornographie s’est répandue et est devenue largement accessible. Le mariage homosexuel a gagné un soutien majoritaire à une vitesse fulgurante et particulièrement auprès des jeunes. Après l’arrêt Obergefell qui déclare le droit constitutionnel du mariage homosexuel, pour les chrétiens la question des droits des homosexuels n’est plus centrée sur l’homosexualité elle-même mais sur la confrontation entre les droits LGBT et la liberté de conscience des croyants. Tous les vieux combats culturels concernant les questions de sexualité ont été perdus par la droite… à l’exception de l’avortement. Étrangement, l’opinion publique à propos de l’avortement n’a pas véritablement évolué depuis 1973. La plupart des Américains sont favorables à l’avortement, qui est légalisé, mais en y appliquant des restrictions. Alors qu’en 1973 l’arrêt Roe v. Wade prévoit un avortement sans restrictions. Ce qui est particulièrement intéressant, c’est que même si les «millennials» sont bien plus libres sur les questions de sexualité que les générations précédentes, et malgré le fait qu’ils sont la génération la plus laïque de l’histoire des États-Unis, l’opposition à un avortement sans restriction demeure forte parmi eux. Je ne suis pas certain d’avoir la clef d’explication de ce phénomène mais je pense que la technologie est un élément de compréhension. Les avancées des échographies ont permis aux gens de véritablement voir pour la première fois ce qui se passe dans l’utérus et de prendre conscience qu’ils n’y voient pas qu’un morceau de chair mais un être humain en train de se développer. Les miracles de la médecine actuelle qui sauve la vie de bébés nés grands prématurés sont plus parlants pour cette génération que les sermons des prêtres. (…) La probabilité de la réélection de Donald Trump dépend de sa capacité à rallier sa base et à convaincre les conservateurs qui rechignent à voter démocrate, mais qui n’avaient pas voté pour lui en 2016 à cause de doutes profonds sur sa personne. Trump n’a pas été aussi mauvais que ce que je craignais. Pour autant je ne crois pas qu’il a été un bon président. Néanmoins, je vais sûrement voter pour lui en 2020, et ce pour une bonne raison: le parti démocrate est extrêmement hostile envers les conservateurs religieux et sociétaux mais aussi envers nos libertés fondamentales. Leur combat pour la théorie du genre et l’extension maximale des droits de la communauté LGBT sont les principaux piliers du programme démocrate. Les activistes progressistes ont désigné les chrétiens conservateurs comme leur principal ennemi. Sur ces questions et sur la protection de la liberté d’expression, on ne peut pas leur faire confiance. Ils sont devenus les ennemis de la liberté. Il est clair que le nombre d’Américains qui est d’accord avec les traditionalistes sur ces questions diminue. Je crois que dans les mois et les décennies à venir, les juges fédéraux conservateurs que Trump a nommés seront les seuls à offrir une véritable sauvegarde de la liberté religieuse aux États-Unis. Les Républicains au Congrès et à la Maison Blanche n’ont pas vraiment agi en faveur du renforcement de la liberté religieuse contre les revendications des droits LGBT. Ils sont terrifiés à l’idée de passer pour bigots. Malheureusement, beaucoup de chrétiens américains ont eu des faux espoirs avec le Grand Old Party, en pensant qu’il suffisait de voter républicain pour gagner sur ces questions. En réalité, dans tous les domaines, académiques, médicaux, juridiques, dans les entreprises, les droits LGBT et l’idéologie du genre sont triomphants. Voter républicain est le seul moyen de ralentir cette «Blitzkrieg» progressiste et peut être à travers des biais juridiques y mettre fin dans le futur. Ce n’est pas grand-chose, mais c’est tout ce que nous pouvons faire pour le moment sur le front politique. (…) Il est vrai que Trump a la présidence, les Républicains tiennent la majorité au Congrès et pour ces deux raisons les Républicains nomment un certain nombre de juges fédéraux. C’est un élément important mais ce n’est pas suffisant face au pouvoir culturel immense que les progressistes détiennent de leur côté. Ils contrôlent les plus grands médias d’information et de divertissement, ils contrôlent les écoles et les universités, la médecine et le droit et aussi de manière assez improbable, les grandes entreprises. L’émergence d’un «woke capitalism», un capitalisme progressiste, est un des faits politiques les plus significatifs de la décennie. La majorité des conservateurs n’a pas conscience de leur puissance ni de la manière dont ils se sont clairement positionnés contre le conservatisme social. Ils sont encore attachés à l’ère reaganienne et à illusion que le monde des affaires est conservateur. Quand Ronald Reagan a été élu président en 1980, il a ouvert une nouvelle ère dans la politique américaine, dominée par la droite, plus précisément par les néolibéraux de la droite. Cette ère s’est achevée avec Obama et Trump, mais l’avenir n’est pas écrit. Si on avait dit à un électeur conservateur au moment de l’investiture de Reagan que 30 ans plus tard le christianisme serait déclinant en Amérique, que le mariage homosexuel et l’adoption seraient légaux, que la pornographie violente serait uniformément répandue et accessible à tous y compris aux enfants grâce aux smartphones, que les médecins seraient autorisés à retirer des poitrines féminines à des jeunes filles pour devenir des hommes transgenres, je pense que cet électeur ne croirait pas une seconde qu’un pays qui autorise cela puisse être véritablement conservateur. Et pourtant c’est la réalité de l’Amérique d’aujourd’hui. Si nous sommes un pays conservateur, pourquoi n’avons-nous pas eu un mouvement comme celui de la Manif pour tous, qui pourtant en France, au pays de la laïcité, a conduit des centaines de milliers de personnes dans les rues de Paris pour manifester? J’ai le sentiment que nous sommes plus un pays houllebecquien, même si les conservateurs ne veulent pas l’admettre. Les chrétiens traditionnels, catholiques, protestants, orthodoxes, ont perdu la guerre culturelle. Nous devons nous préparer à une longue période d’occupation et de résistance. C’est ce que j’appelle choisir l’option bénédictine. Même si mon livre s’est bien vendu aux États-Unis, proportionnellement il a eu plus de succès en Europe. En France, en Italie, en Espagne et dans d’autres pays européens mes lecteurs sont des catholiques de moins de 40 ans. Lorsque vous êtes aussi jeune et que vous allez encore à la messe, vous n’avez pas à être convaincu de la vérité du diagnostic que je porte sur le malaise culturel actuel. De même, vous n’avez pas besoin d’être convaincu de l’impuissance de l’église post-soixante-huitarde dans cette crise. En Amérique, les chrétiens n’ont pas encore vu pleinement cette vérité. Cela nous attend dans cette nouvelle décennie. Ce sera un choc douloureux mais nous ne serons pas en mesure de constituer une vraie résistance tant que nous n’accepterons pas cette réalité. Après Trump, le déluge. »
Rod Dreher
https://www.lefigaro.fr/vox/monde/rod-dreher-les-americains-sont-ils-redevenus-conservateurs-20200124
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WHAT OBAMA SCANDALS ? (State Department email, Operation Fast and Furious, IRS abuses, Benghazi, Hacking, Veterans Affairs, you name it, but most of all, the scandal of the media’s failure to cover the Obama administration critically)
• IRS abuses. Mr. Obama’s Internal Revenue Service did something Richard Nixon only dreamed of doing: It successfully targeted political opponents. The Justice Department then refused to enforce Congress’s contempt citation against the IRS’s Lois Lerner, who refused to answer questions about her agency’s misconduct.
• Benghazi. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others were killed in the attack on a U.S. diplomatic compound in Libya. With less than two months to go before the 2012 election, the State Department falsely claimed the attack was not a terrorist attack but a reaction to an anti-Muslim film. Emails from the secretary later showed that she knew the attack was terrorism. Justice Department prosecutors even convinced a magistrate judge to jail the filmmaker.
• Hacking. Mr. Obama presided over the biggest data breach in the federal government’s history, at the Office of Personnel Management. The hack exposed the personnel files of millions of federal employees and may end up being used for everything from identity theft to blackmail and espionage. OPM Director Katherine Archuleta, the president’s former political director, had been warned repeatedly about security deficiencies but took no steps to fix them.
• Veterans Affairs. At least 40 U.S. veterans died waiting for appointments at a Phoenix VA facility, many of whom had been on a secret waiting list—part of an effort to conceal that between 1,400 and 1,600 veterans were forced to wait months for appointments. A 2014 internal VA audit found “57,436 newly enrolled veterans facing a minimum 90-day wait for medical care; 63,869 veterans who enrolled over the past decade requesting an appointment that never happened.” Even Mr. Obama admitted, in a November 2016 press conference, that “it was scandalous what happened”—though minutes earlier he boasted that “we will—knock on wood—leave this administration without significant scandal.”
All of these scandals were accompanied by a lack of transparency so severe that 47 of Mr. Obama’s 73 inspectors general signed an open letter in 2014 decrying the administration’s stonewalling of their investigations.
One reason for Mr. Obama’s penchant for secrecy is his habit of breaking rules—from not informing Congress of the dubious prisoner swap involving Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl and the Taliban, to violating restrictions on cash transfers to Iran as part of a hostage-release deal.
The president’s journalistic allies are happily echoing the “scandal-free” myth. Time’s Joe Klein claims Mr. Obama has had “absolutely no hint of scandal” in his presidency. The media’s failure to cover the Obama administration critically has been a scandal in itself—but at least the president can’t be blamed for that one.
https://www.heritage.org/political-process/commentary/obamas-scandal-free-administration-myth
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LOOK AT THE BRITISH LABOUR PARTY ! (Guess who just warned his fellow democrats on their upcoming self-inflicted disaster with their Sanders-led Corbynization ?)
“The polling averages have not been very good the last 10 days and I’ve seen some pretty good polls that show enthusiasm among Democrats is not as high as we might like it. This is not going particularly well, so far and why is Tom Perez still the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, I have no idea. This party needs to wake up. (…) Look at the British Labour Party. We’re like talking about people voting from jail cells. Alright, we’re talking about not having a border. I mean, come on people. Of course I would vote for him [Sanders], but I don’t want the Democratic Party of the United States to be the Labour Party of United Kingdom. We had the highest turnout in 2018 since women were granted the right to vote. We had the biggest margin. We ran a smart campaign and it worked. It matters who the candidate is. It matters what the party chooses to talk about. I mean, I’m 75 years old why am I here doing this? Because I am scared to death that’s why. Let’s get relevant, people, here for sure…All the Sanders people were taking pictures wishing Jeremy Corbyn the best. (…) the press corps went AOC crazy…We got to decide what we want to be. Do we want to be an ideological cult or do we want to have a majoritarian instinct to be a majority party?…The urban core is not going to get it done. What we need is power. You understand? That’s what this is about. Without power you have nothing. You just have talking points.”
James Carville (former Bill Clinton campaign manager)
https://hotair.com/archives/john-s-2/2020/02/04/james-carville-panics-sanders-scared-death-want-ideological-cult/
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WE CELEBRATE FAITH
« In America, we don’t punish prayer. We don’t tear down crosses … we don’t muzzle preachers and pastors. We celebrate faith, cherish religion, lift our voices in prayer and raise our sights to the glory of God. »
President Trump
https://www.jpost.com/American-Politics/US-President-Donald-Trump-delivers-State-of-the-Union-address-watch-live-616560
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LUCKIEST PRESIDENT EVER ! (And, if Democrats continue ttrend of ineptitude — there’s more — Trump will escape with another term in office come November)
Dang, if he didn’t do it again: Donald Trump slid out the back door and won the Iowa caucuses Monday night, thanks to a vote-counting app apocalypse, and he’s set to be acquitted on the two impeachment charges leveled against him.
Wedged in between these two pranks of the Fates, Trump delivered his State of the Union address, racking up points for a still-vibrant economy and fresh trade deals with China, Canada and Mexico. And, of course, reminding Americans that Democrats can’t win for losing.
Forget Ronald Reagan, the Teflon president, to whom no bad thing ever stuck. Forget the Comeback Kid, President Bill Clinton, who kept getting back up every time he was knocked down. For reasons as mysterious as the Iowa caucuses themselves, Trump may be the luckiest guy ever to hold the office. Despite being like the bank robber who practically leaves bread crumbs for the cops to follow, he never seems to get caught.
And, if Democrats continue their trend of ineptitude — there’s more — Trump will escape with another term in office come November. If he wants it.
Though he still falls short of exoneration, Trump doesn’t let such details interfere with his own reality. When the Mueller investigation failed to find evidence of a criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia, he insisted he was found “innocent.”
Likewise, the Senate’s inevitable acquittal of Trump won’t exonerate him, but he’ll surely claim that it does. From his perspective, the proof is glaringly obvious: He’s still president of the United States, isn’t he? Moreover, the chaos that has been ascribed to the Trump White House since day one looks like a Special Ops team compared with the Democrats’ recent unraveling.
Another folly has been playing out in Milwaukee, where two leaders of the host committee for the Democratic National Convention have been put on leave pending an investigation into what some staffers have described as a toxic work environment. Details of the alleged offenses haven’t been made available, but a statement from the chief executive of the Democratic National Convention Committee, Joe Solmonese, may have provided hints.
“The Democratic Party is firm in our belief that every person deserves to feel safe and respected at their place of work and we will always take seriously claims of bullying and workplace harassment,” Solmonese said. He added that the host committee’s board of directors “is moving forward with a plan to restore an office culture that aligns with the values and expectations of our party.”
Whatever that means.
The definitions of bullying and harassment could mean anything from #MeToo-ish to merely boorish. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that experienced politicos who have worked with the committee described a “toxic culture rife with power struggles, backbiting and mismanagement.” The two officials who have been put on leave, executive director Liz Gilbert and chief of staff Adam Alonso, were also accused of focusing on “accumulating power” rather than “promoting Milwaukee,” the Journal Sentinel reported. As of this writing, neither Gilbert nor Alonso has commented on the allegations.
Alonso and Gilbert are apparently veterans of controversy. While working full time for the host committee, the two were criticized for continuing to work for New Jersey Democrats. On Monday, the New Jersey Democratic Party dropped Alonso’s $15,000-per-month consulting arrangement.
Controversy is never far away from politics, no matter what the party. And, though the host committee is an independent civic group and not part of the Democratic National Convention Committee itself, it isn’t helpful when a workplace scandal implying inappropriate behavior suddenly surfaces. Without enthusiasm and high morale, organizing a convention and raising the millions of dollars needed to fund the event would be a sentence equal to a Siberian labor camp. Or, say, a short stint in the Trump White House.
These things can happen to anyone, obviously, and, well, apps fail and chads hang. But when they happen with such synchronicity with Trump’s sudden swell of sensational headlines, one may be inclined to gaze up into the night sky seeking answers. What starry misalignment or heavenly hoax is this?
If you’re a Trump supporter, on the other hand, the stars form constellations of pearl-studded streets, diamond fountains and thrones of gold, reaffirming the belief that, hallelujah, God sent Trump to make America great again.
There’s plenty of time for Democrats to get their act together and for Trump to pull another disqualifying caper. But for this all-important week, the story is that Trump is still winning — while Democratic candidates, who spent months of sweat and lucre in pursuit of a little lightning beneath their feet — waited in line to lose.
Trump might be the luckiest president to ever hold office
Kathleen Parker
WP
Feb. 5, 2020
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-won-the-iowa-caucuses-and-impeachment/2020/02/04/327c45c4-47a0-11ea-ab15-b5df3261b710_story.html
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THE TRUMP PLAN WILL NOT BRING PEACE (But it restores the truth and justice that are essential prerequisites of peace as nothing can be done until the Palestinians give up the very thing which forms their identity and without which they are nothing: their aim to liquidate the State of Israel)
Palestinians … have rejected every offer of a state previously made to them in 1937, 1947, 2000, 2008 and 2014. So is this latest deal anything more than Groundhog Day for the Middle East all over again? Yes, because this isn’t a deal. It’s an ultimatum … The big change is that … this isn’t a “peace process” in which both sides must progress in tandem with each other — a process that gave the Palestinians an effective veto even while they continued to wage their war of extermination against Israel. For the first time, here’s an American plan that puts the security of Israel first and foremost. It’s therefore the first time that the United States has unequivocally supported Israel’s future existence. For if a country cannot defend itself against enemies sworn to liquidate it, that country can’t survive. Yet until now, even U.S. administrations supposedly sympathetic to Israel imposed upon it requirements that undermined its security and defense against attack.
Other supposed allies, such as Britain or the European Union, have also paid mere lip service to Israel while denying the validity of its claim to the disputed territories in Judea and Samaria. Yet its claim to these territories is legal many times over, both under international laws of self-defense and through the international community’s decision in the 1920s to designate the whole of Palestine as the homeland of the Jews alone.
By denying Israel’s right to all the land, Britain and the rest of the west have effectively undermined the Jews’ entitlement to any of it.
The Trump plan has now swept aside that appeasement of evil, started by the British in the 1930s and which has been pursued by the American and Western foreign-policy establishment ever since.
Yet this proposal is far from being one-sided. On the contrary, it generously provides the Palestinians with a route to a state of their own consisting of most of the disputed territories (with sovereignty less limited than the conditions imposed by the allies on Germany after World War II). It is a highly detailed map for a two-state solution.
This has produced cries of dismay from Israelis for whom a Palestine state is anathema, and who view this as yet another reward being dangled for continued Palestinian terrorism and war. But this reward is entirely conditional upon the Palestinians giving up the very thing which forms their identity and without which they are nothing: their aim to liquidate the State of Israel.
Trump is telling the Palestinians to suck this up — or lose, because the Israelis are going to get what they need to survive regardless. Jared Kushner, one of the architects of this plan, says it’s the Palestinians’ last opportunity for a state.
But this assumes they want a state — which, of course, they don’t. That demand has always been a ruse to destroy Israel.
That’s why the Palestinians have always refused previous offers of a state and turned to violence instead; whereupon Israel has been pressured to offer them still more concessions. And that’s why the “peace process” has been in fact an engine of perpetual conflict.
Now the Palestinians’ bluff has been called. Once again they are responding with threats of more violence, because there are no circumstances in which they will ever accept the right of the Jews to their own ancestral homeland.
Increasingly shunned by the Arab world, their one hope of keeping alive this war of extermination lies in the support they continue to receive from the liberal west: Britain, the E.U. and increasing numbers of U.S. Democrats.
They robotically pump out the lies that the Palestinians tell. The lie that they, and not the Jews, are the indigenous people of the land. The lie that Israel illegally occupies that land. The lie that the Israelis oppress and persecute the Palestinians, whose only crime is to want their own state and whose claim to the land must therefore be given at least the same status as that of Israel.
The morally bankrupt equivalence between victim and aggressor has kept this war going. It has now been repudiated by the Trump peace plan.
But the war of extermination against Israel will stop only if the rest of the west now ends its tacit support for it.
It will end only if the west stops funding it and instead makes all aid to the Palestinians conditional on ending their institutionalized incitement to violence against Jews, the salaries they pay the families of those who murder Israelis and their glorification of terrorism.
It will end only if the “human rights” community that wages “lawfare” against Israel is now exposed as the sham that it is for hijacking the language, eviscerating the concepts of law and justice and grotesquely turning “human rights” into murderous wrongs.
Perhaps the Trump plan’s most important achievement is to put on record the truth about the Jews’ unique rights to the land of Israel. As it states, the areas that Israel is being asked to yield to the Palestinians nevertheless constitute “territory to which Israel has asserted valid legal and historical claims, and which are part of the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people.”
As for the loud protests that Israel is being allowed to “annex the West Bank,” professor of international law Eugene Kontorovich has tweeted that the United States is not proposing to recognize Israeli annexation of the territory; “it is recognizing that Israel has always had a legitimate claim on this land.” In other words, the application of Israeli sovereignty is to be based on its pre-existing rights to the land.
The most intractable element of these pre-existing Jewish rights is Jerusalem, which Israel will never allow to be divided again but to which the Palestinians lay claim as their state’s intended capital. The plan audaciously resolves this apparently insoluble conundrum by stating that the Palestine capital should be located “in all areas east and north of the existing security barrier,” including Kafr Aqab, the eastern part of Shuafat and Abu Dis, and which could be named Al Quds.
In other words, the Trump team has simply redefined Jerusalem to exclude those Arab areas of the city beyond the security barrier. This would enable the Palestinians to tell themselves their capital is Jerusalem, while Israel will have ceased to regard that area as Jerusalem at all.
Of course, the Palestinians would never agree to this. “Al Quds” to them centers on their illegitimate appropriation of Temple Mount — the most sacred site in Judaism.
But the plan states the all-important historical truth denied by the Palestinians because it vitiates their entire claim to the land — that Jerusalem was the political center of the Jewish people under King David, and has remained their spiritual center and the focus of their religious beliefs for nearly 3,000 years.
The Trump plan won’t bring peace; however, it restores the truth and justice that are essential prerequisites of peace. Crushing the lethal and poisonous fantasies about Israel and the Jewish people, as well as taking a hard-headed approach to Palestinian intentions, it replaces illusions by reality.
That’s no small achievement. Now it’s up to the rest of the world.
Melanie Phillips
https://www.melaniephillips.com/palestinians-bluff-called-over-to-you-world
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ARAUD SUR LE BAUDET, C’EST FINI ! (Quel effet Trump quand le seul débat ne porte désormais plus sur le fond, mais sur la méthode et sur la forme)
« Après le Brexit et cette élection, tout est désormais possible. Un monde s’effondre devant nos yeux. Un vertige. C’est la fin d’une époque, celle du néolibéralisme. Reste à savoir ce qui lui succédera. »
Gérard Araud (9 nov. 2016)
https://www.20minutes.fr/high-tech/1958443-20161109-victoire-trump-tolle-apres-deux-tweets-ambassadeur-francais-etats-unis
L’establishment américain dans son ensemble, démocrates et républicains confondus, espère qu’après quatre ans ou, horreur, huit ans, le cauchemar que représente Trump se dissipera du jour au lendemain et que la vie politique reprendra son cours « normal ». J’ai passé plus de deux ans à Washington à les écouter exprimer inlassablement leur indignation devant le comportement d’un président dont, fondamentalement, ils contestent la légitimité. Pour eux, son élection ne fut qu’un hasard désastreux ou le résultat de l’ingérence russe. Ils refusent d’admettre que, derrière sa personne, se profile une crise profonde de la société américaine qui ne cessera pas d’exercer ses effets lorsqu’il quittera le pouvoir ; ils refusent tout autant de voir qu’en politique étrangère, d’Obama à Trump, les continuités l’emportent sur les ruptures, l’un et l’autre ayant compris la lassitude du pays pour les engagements extérieurs.
À l’intérieur, Trump a réalisé l’union des victimes de la globalisation et des Blancs angoissés de la perte de l’identité américaine ; des Gilets jaunes et de La Manif pour tous, pour parler en termes français. Or les premiers vont continuer à souffrir de la robotisation et de la progression de l’intelligence artificielle, qui suppriment les emplois de la classe ouvrière et de la classe moyenne inférieure : plus de 4,5 millions d’Américains conduisent des camions. Que deviendront-ils à l’ère des véhicules sans chauffeur ? Quant aux seconds, ils vivent déjà dans un pays où la majorité des enfants qui naissent n’est plus blanche, et ils savent qu’ils perdront la majorité en 2050. Après la légalisation de l’avortement, que beaucoup n’acceptent pas, après celle du mariage gay, ils assistent, incrédules et hostiles, aux revendications des transgenres et se sentent de plus en plus étrangers aux convictions et au mode de vie des élites.
Rébellion. Nulle raison que d’autres leaders politiques ne tentent pas de reprendre le flambeau de Trump pour galvaniser les uns et les autres. Après tout, il a tracé la voie et a indiqué le mode d’emploi. Nulle raison non plus que les démocrates restent sourds aux revendications de leurs anciens électeurs dans les déserts désindustrialisés du Midwest – qui ont voté Trump en 2016 par désir de changement après avoir voté Obama en 2008 et 2012 pour Obama pour la même raison. Ils ne peuvent oublier que Trump a été élu parce qu’il a remporté le Wisconsin, le Michigan et la Pennsylvanie, trois États industriels qui votaient pour le candidat démocrate depuis trente ans et plus. En d’autres termes, républicains et démocrates vont devoir continuer à faire face à la rébellion des électeurs dont Trump a su comprendre et capter la colère, une rébellion qui n’a aucune raison de s’éteindre avec son départ de la Maison-Blanche.
Les républicains, les premiers, ont changé leur fusil d’épaule et se sont « trumpifiés » : de conservateurs ils sont devenus populistes, indifférents au libre-échange et à la rigueur budgétaire qu’ils prônaient hier et oublieux d’un interventionnisme dont ils se faisaient les avocats. Une nouvelle droite américaine, protectionniste, nationaliste, identitaire et néo-isolationniste se fait jour ; elle répond trop aux instincts de l’électorat républicain pour disparaître avec Trump. À gauche, on attend encore la réponse que proposera le Parti démocrate. Une chose est sûre : la synthèse centriste de Clinton et d’Obama est dépassée ; elle survivra peut-être un temps si Biden est élu, mais même lui doit donner des gages à la gauche ; une gauche dont le succès de Sanders et de Warren prouve le dynamisme. À la droite, qui est allée vers la droite, répondra inévitablement une gauche plus affirmée, pour laquelle l’impôt et le rôle de l’État ne sont plus tabous.
Protectionnisme. La première victime en sera le libre-échange, identifié, dans l’opinion publique, comme le principal responsable des malheurs de l’Amérique profonde, quoi qu’en disent les experts. Il sera difficile pour un président démocrate de lever les droits de douane qu’a imposés Trump contre la Chine ou l’Europe sans une bonne raison à présenter à une opinion publique qui les soutient et aux syndicats qui s’en félicitent ; il lui sera impossible de revenir aux accords de libre-échange que prônait Obama. Le protectionnisme est de retour et le restera. Plus généralement, Trump a redonné sa priorité à une Amérique oubliée, coincée entre les scintillements de New York et les promesses de la Silicon Valley, une Amérique blanche ravagée par l’épidémie des opiacés dont l’espérance de vie diminue, une Amérique des friches industrielles qui refuse de mourir, une Amérique où la pratique religieuse reste élevée et qui est attachée à ses valeurs. La classe politique américaine ne pourra plus en détourner les yeux. Les États-Unis d’après Trump vont devoir s’occuper d’eux-mêmes et moins du monde qui les entoure.
Zigzags. Mais Trump, c’est aussi un style. Il ne recule devant aucune exagération, il accumule les contre-vérités, il insulte ses adversaires ; le respect humain, la dignité personnelle et les usages lui sont parfaitement indifférents. Déjà, des candidats républicains l’imitent ; le niveau du débat politique s’est affaissé en deux ans entre l’indignation parfois hystérique des uns et l’indifférence à la vérité des autres. On n’argumente plus ; on crie et on ment ; le racisme pointe son nez. Le pire est que l’électorat paraît s’en satisfaire. La démocratie américaine a des institutions solides, mais le pacte, fait de civilité, de conventions et de collaboration – nécessaire au fonctionnement d’un système présidentiel où législatif et exécutif doivent coopérer – est brisé. N’en reste que le rapport de force le plus brutal entre deux Amérique hostiles qui n’ont plus rien à se dire et s’affrontent dans une guerre civile virtuelle. Sera-t-il possible de les réconcilier ? Sera-t-il possible d’éviter des violences ? Cette question si étrange ne l’est malheureusement pas.
En politique étrangère, l’incohérence de la méthode de Trump dissimule la cohérence de la vision. Trump s’inscrit dans un courant de pensée bien américain, l’isolationnisme, qui s’était effacé, en 1945, devant la nécessité de faire face à la menace soviétique puis, à droite, devant le néoconservatisme et, à gauche, l’interventionnisme libéral. Il ne s’agit pas de revenir aux années 1930 – la technologie et l’économie ne le permettent pas – mais de libérer les États-Unis des contraintes extérieures – droit international et alliances – qui limitent leur liberté d’action, de n’intervenir que pour la défense de leurs intérêts essentiels et de jouer des rapports de force qui, la plupart du temps, sont en leur faveur.
Oublions la vulgarité du discours, oublions aussi les zigzags du personnage, et on en déduit une politique étrangère adaptée à un monde où le retour du jeu des grandes puissances impose un reformatage des ambitions extérieures des États-Unis. Le temps du gendarme du monde est passé. Force est de reconnaître qu’avant Trump Obama avait déjà esquissé le mouvement d’un retrait relatif des États-Unis des affaires du monde : dans les crises en Ukraine comme en Syrie, il avait refusé d’engager la puissance américaine, en sous-traitant le règlement de la première à la France et à l’Allemagne et en limitant dans la seconde l’intervention américaine au minimum malgré les pressions des alliés. En Libye, il avait soutenu, de mauvais gré d’ailleurs, la France et le Royaume-Uni et s’était rapidement retiré. Trump n’y met pas les formes mais reste dans la même logique. Un président démocrate paiera sans doute les Européens de mots pour les rassurer, mais on peut douter qu’il aille au-delà. Non que la Russie ait soudain carte blanche pour envahir les États baltes, mais il ne faudra pas attendre que les États-Unis se préoccupent de la sécurité de la périphérie européenne – de l’Ukraine au Sahel – si elle ne les concerne pas directement. Les échecs irakien et afghan leur ont servi de leçon. Aux Européens d’en tirer les conséquences, comme le leur demande Emmanuel Macron – en vain jusqu’ici.
Pression. Trump, c’est souvent l’enfant du conte d’Andersen qui dit que l’empereur est nu. C’est ce qu’il a fait envers la Chine en dénonçant les pratiques de ce pays dans les relations internationales. On le chuchotait partout depuis longtemps, mais on n’osait pas en tirer les conséquences. Il l’a fait, à sa manière – qui est brouillonne mais non sans efficacité. Au-delà de l’épreuve de force sur les échanges commerciaux bilatéraux, les États-Unis se mettent en ordre de bataille pour une confrontation globale de long terme avec le seul pays qu’ils considèrent comme leur rival. Comme j’ai pu moi-même le constater, l’administration bénéficie là d’un large consensus dans les communautés du renseignement mais aussi des affaires et chez les démocrates eux-mêmes, qui concèdent parfois qu’Obama aurait dû réagir aux agissements chinois. Le seul débat porte sur la méthode, mais, quel qu’il soit, le prochain président ne reviendra pas aux errements du passé, il maintiendra la pression sur la Chine.
Enfin, le dernier enseignement de la présidence Trump et qui lui survivra, c’est l’affirmation de la puissance américaine, non seulement militaire, portée par un budget record, mais peut-être encore plus économique et financière. Paradoxalement, la crise de 2008, née aux États-Unis, a renforcé leur domination du système financier et économique mondial. Aucune économie ne peut survivre si elle est coupée de l’accès à la liquidité en dollars ; aucune entreprise ne le peut si elle est exclue du marché américain. Les sanctions contre l’Iran en sont une démonstration grandeur nature. Les entreprises européennes, sommées de choisir entre marché iranien et marché américain, n’ont pas hésité une minute, et l’UE en a été réduite à des gesticulations qui n’ont trompé personne. On peut évoquer la promotion d’une monnaie concurrente du dollar ; on peut menacer de contre-sanctions… Mais ni la Chine, ni la Russie, ni l’UE ne s’y risquent, et, en tout état de cause, elles n’y parviendraient pas avant longtemps. Rien ne peut compenser aujourd’hui l’accès au marché américain et aux liquidités de New York. Trump a prouvé que les États-Unis pouvaient étrangler un pays sans tirer un coup de feu, c’est-à-dire conduire une guerre sans risque. Voilà une révélation que n’oublieront pas ses successeurs.
En politique comme en physique, toute action suscite une réaction, surtout lorsqu’elle a été aussi brutale que la politique suivie par Trump. Parions donc qu’en 2021 ou en 2025 un président américain mettra de l’eau dans le vin aigre qu’il nous a servi. Mais il ne reviendra pas sur la réalité d’une Amérique qui, assurée de son pouvoir, sera prête à participer à la rivalité entre grandes puissances sur la base de la défense de ses intérêts et d’eux seuls ; une Amérique à la fois plus modeste dans ses ambitions et plus brutale dans leur promotion ; une Amérique plus nationaliste et moins universaliste.
Gérard Araud (ancien ambassadeur de France aux États-Unis)
https://www.lepoint.fr/monde/gerard-araud-trump-l-homme-qu-il-fallait-prendre-au-serieux-06-02-2020-2361517_24.php
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WHO’S IN CHARGE OF THIS MICKEY MOUSE OPERATION ANYWAY ?
« I refuse to suggest any Democrat can lose. I think we could run Mickey Mouse against this president and have a shot.”
Joe Biden
https://dailycaller.com/2020/02/11/biden-democrats-trump-win-mickey-mouse/
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WHAT VIRTUAL COUP TO DESTROY AN ELECTED PRESIDENT ? (Guess who dismantled U.S.-joint European missile defense to coax Putin into behaving during his reelection bid, forbid the shipment of anti-tank missiles to an endangered Ukraine, invited the Russians into Syria after a 40-year hiatus from the Middle East and spared no means to abort and sabotage the Trump presidency complete with fake Russian collusion accusations and constant media leaks ?)
Now that the four-and-a-half-month-long Ukraine impeachment bookend to the 22-month Mueller charade is over, it clearly accomplished nothing other than substantially raising the polls of both Donald Trump and the Republican Party. The public was reminded that Representative Gerald Nadler (D-N.Y.) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) are every bit as childish, peevish, and absurd as Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.).
So, we are now back to the existential issue of the entire Trump phenomenon: to what degree did the Hillary Clinton campaign collude with high-ranking Obama officials, and the top echelons of the FBI, CIA, and the national intelligence apparatus, to surveil, defame, and hope to derail Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign by unlawful means?
Who in the federal government then continued Clinton’s efforts after the 2016 election to disrupt and indeed attempt to destroy the Trump transition and presidency?
Eventually, someone will sort out whether that post-election effort on the part of federal officials to abort the Trump presidency, abetted by the media and #TheResistance, was a simple follow-up to the Clinton-DNC-Perkins Coe-Fusion GPS collusion against candidate Trump—or a sick preemptive attempt of the administrative state to smear Trump as a “Russian asset” because of their worries about the exposure of their own prior criminality and Trump’s iconoclastic agenda.
But for now, the following statements are irrefutable.
Donald Trump, in concrete ways, has been far harder on Russia than was the “reset” Obama presidency, and far more helpful to Ukraine than Team Obama ever was. Trump armed the Ukrainians. He upped sanctions against Russia. He ordered lethal retaliation against Russian mercenaries in Syria. He vastly increased U.S. oil and gas production to Russia’s detriment. He jawboned Germany about its fuel dependence on Moscow. He coerced NATO to spend more on defense. He got out of an asymmetrical missile treaty with Russia. He is rebuilding the U.S. military.
Unlike his predecessor, Trump did not dismantle U.S.-joint European missile defense in order to coax Putin into behaving during his reelection bid. He did not push a big plastic red reset button in Geneva to mark outreach to Putin, in rejection of prior Bush sanctions on Russians. He did not forbid the shipment of anti-tank missiles to an endangered Ukraine. He did not invite the Russians into Syria after a 40-year hiatus from the Middle East.
So the libel of Russian collusion was absurd from the get-go.
It originated in 2015-16 when the deep state was terrified over the then unlikely possibility of a President Donald Trump. The “collusion” ruse involved the chief players of federal law enforcement and national intelligence agencies. All, of course, had assumed Hillary Clinton would be president and their extralegal efforts to “insure” her victory would soon be commensurately rewarded, regardless of the illegality and unethical behavior required. And both crimes and amorality were most certainly involved.
See No Evil, Hear No Evil
The FBI and the Justice Department deliberately misled Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court judges to spy on an American citizen as a way to monitor others in the Trump campaign. That crime is a charitable interpretation of Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report, given that supposedly intelligent federal judges were told that the evidence for such state espionage was based on the “opposition research” of the 2016 campaign. And yet apparently in see-no-evil, hear-no-evil fashion, not one of the squishy judges ever asked the U.S. government, who exactly had paid for the Steele Dossier and why? After all, who was the “opposition” to Trump in late 2016?
Top Obama officials, such as Samantha Power and Susan Rice, in a panic over the Trump candidacy and then victory, requested the unmasking of scores of redacted names of those surveilled by intelligence agencies. Some of those names mysteriously, but certainly illegally, were leaked to the media with the intent of defaming them.
When Adam Schiff’s pernicious role in jump-starting the impeachment is finally fully known, he will likely be revealed as the prime schemer, along with minor Obama officials buried within the Trump National Security Council, dreaming up the entire Ukraine caper of the “whistleblower.”
Over the past three years during the Russian and Ukrainian farces, Schiff variously lied to the public about impending “bombshell” revelations of Trump “collusion.” His minority House Intelligence Committee memo outrageously alleged that the Steele dossier was accurate and truthful and yet was not the prime evidence for the granting of FISA warrants—two more lies exposed by Horowitz.
Schiff rigged the initial House impeachment hearings to exclude transparency and bipartisan access to witnesses. He read a false version of the Trump conversation with the Ukrainian president into the congressional record. He secretly data mined his own colleagues’ communications. And to the very last moments of the entire fraud, even in his dotage, he was still babbling in the Senate about the long-ago discredited “Russian collusion” and again stringing together absurd fantasies of Trump wishing to sell Alaska to the Russians.
Justice for the Wrongdoers?
Schiff was given a great gift with a quick Senate acquittal. If he had been called as a fact witness, he either would have had to lie under oath to refute his earlier myths, or continue them and compound his falsities.
The Mueller investigation—500 subpoenas, 22 months, $35 million—was one of the great travesties in American investigatory history. It was cooked up by fired, disgraced—and furious—former FBI Director James Comey. By his own admission, Comey conceded that he leaked confidential memos of private conversations he had with the president to create a large enough media and political storm to force the naming of a special prosecutor to investigate “Russian collusion.”
Comey is not yet in jail, in part, because his cronies at the FBI, including the disgraced Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, post facto, announced that the leaked Comey versions of his one-on-one talks with the president of the United States were merely confidential rather than top secret and thus their dissemination to the media was not quite felonious.
The rest is history. Comey’s leaking gambit paid off. It led to the appointment of his long-time friend and predecessor, former FBI Director Robert Mueller. Mueller then delighted the media by appointing mostly progressive activist lawyers, some with ties to Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation, in what then giddy journalists called a “dream team,” of “all-stars” who in the fashion of a “hunter-killer” team would abort the Trump presidency. They would prove Trump was what former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper on television called a “Putin asset.”
In surreal fashion, the main players, under suspicion for seeding and peddling the fraudulent Steele dossier among the high echelons of the U.S. government and using such smears to cripple Trump—John Brennan, James Clapper, and Andrew McCabe—were hired by liberal CNN and MSNBC as paid analysts to fob off on others the very scandals that they themselves had created.
The proof of the pudding is in the eating, and the Mueller team finally had to concede that it was born out a conspiratorial hoax by finding after 88 weeks—punctuated by almost daily leaks to sympathetic progressive media—that there was no Trump-Russian collusion to warp the 2016 election. Nor did it find actionable obstruction of justice on the part of Trump to thwart the investigation of what was admittedly a non-crime.
Yet Mueller’s team was marred with problems from the outset. The amorous and textually promiscuous pair of Peter Strzok and Lisa Page were both fired for their rank partisanship, although Mueller and his team initially hid the reasons for their departures and staggered their firings to suggest a natural rotation. Mysteriously, hundreds of their incriminating texts have disappeared from FBI smart devices—a weirdness reminiscent of the FBI’s willingness not to examine Hillary Clinton’s computers that were hacked, as well as apparent unconcern that she destroyed thousands of subpoenaed emails.
Eric Clinesmith, another FBI lawyer, was fired by Mueller inter alia for his left-wing biases and tweeting out “Viva le [sic] Resistance”—as in long-live the World War II-like progressive resistance against the fascist and foreign occupier Trump. Clinesmith, according to the inspector general, altered an email presented as evidence before a FISA court to warp the request to surveil Carter Page. If there is any justice left in this sordid mess, he will end up in jail.
Four Years of Fakery
The end of the Mueller team was equally unceremonious. Mueller himself proved enfeebled in an embarrassing testimony before House committees, marked by the stunning admission he really had no idea what Fusion GPS was—the Glenn Simpson monstrosity that had hired the charlatan Christopher Steele, spawned the collusion myth and compromised top Justice Department officials such as Bruce Ohr, whose spouse worked for Simpson on the dossier.
When Mueller’s legal ramrod, progressive Andrew Weissman, finished up running the day-to-day operations of the “Mueller investigation,” in parody fashion he went to work—but of course—as a paid analyst for CNN where he no longer publicly had to suppress his loathing of the former target of his investigations.
The net effects of the Mueller and Horowitz investigations were variously to exonerate Trump, to expose a corrupt Justice Department, CIA, and FBI, to illustrate how the government hounded and ruined the lives of minor 2016 Trump campaign officials with largely process convictions and plea-bargained confessions, and to explain the peremptory resignations of more than a dozen top Washington officials of James Comey’s FBI—as well as the railroading of General Michael Flynn.
Some of that skullduggery and more are currently the subjects of a criminal investigation by U.S. Attorney John Durham. The American public has been assaulted for four years by an array of fake scandals, fake bombshells, and fake televised analyses that camouflaged a systematic and terrible assault on our constitutional freedoms.
But soon the worm may turn. The real scandal is back on the horizon, and at last, we may learn that no one is above the law, and most certainly not a group of smug and mediocre apparatchiks who assumed they had the moral right to destroy a presidential candidate and later an elected president.
In sum, this real scandal, dormant for over four years, had been overshadowed by a series of progressive-government-media driven melodramas, aimed at both injuring the Trump presidency—and, in preemptive fashion, shielding a virtual coup to destroy an elected president.
VDH
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BLAMED IF YOU DO, BLAMED IF YOU DON’T (Spot the error when after accusing him of abandoning the Kurds, Congress tries again to militarily hem in America’s most isolationist president ?)
The U.S. Senate voted Wednesday to advance a War Powers resolution which would limit President Donald Trump’s ability to use military action against Iran without approval from Congress. The vote was bipartisan, 51-45, with eight Republicans voting with Democrats. The eight Republicans in favor of the resolution included Utah Sen. Mike Lee, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, Maine Sen. Susan Collins, Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander, Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy, Kansas Sen. Jerry Moran, Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, and Indiana Sen. Todd Young. The resolution could be vetoed by Trump, as he vetoed a War Powers resolution in 2019…
https://dailycaller.com/2020/02/12/senate-passes-war-powers-measure-tim-kaine/
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OUT-ISOLATING THE ISOLATIONIST
President Trump vetoed a bipartisan resolution on Tuesday that would have forced an end to American military involvement in Saudi Arabia’s civil war in Yemen, rejecting an appeal by lawmakers to his own deeply rooted instincts to withdraw the United States from bloody foreign conflicts.
The veto, only the second time Mr. Trump has used his power to block legislation passed by both houses of Congress, strikes down a resolution that invoked the War Powers Act to distance the United States from a four-year conflict that has killed thousands of civilians and resulted in a widespread famine.
The measure was a rebuke of Mr. Trump’s support for Saudi Arabia even after the killing of the dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi. It was opposed by several of the president’s top advisers, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and the national security adviser, John R. Bolton, according to people who spoke with White House officials.
“This resolution is an unnecessary, dangerous attempt to weaken my constitutional authorities, endangering the lives of American citizens and brave service members, both today and in the future,” Mr. Trump said in his veto message.
The veto came only a month after Mr. Trump similarly rejected a bipartisan measure that would have overturned his declaration of a national emergency at the southwestern border. Congress failed to override that veto and appears similarly unlikely to muster the votes to override the Yemen veto.
Mr. Trump has spoken out for years against American military entanglements, whether in Iraq, Afghanistan or Syria. He has clashed with his generals over the timetable for withdrawing troops from Afghanistan and Syria.
In his veto message, Mr. Trump said he agreed with Congress that “great nations do not fight endless wars.” He noted that the United States was negotiating to end its involvement in Afghanistan and drawing down troops in Syria, after what he said was the conquest of 100 percent of the territory once held by the Islamic State.
Yemen, however, is a different situation, he declared. The United States provides logistical support to the Saudi-led coalition against the Houthi rebels. It stopped its most direct military involvement: in-flight refueling of Saudi planes. And Saudi Arabia remains a staunch ally of the United States, the linchpin of its campaign to isolate Iran, which supports the Houthis in their uprising against the Yemeni government.
“We cannot end the conflict in Yemen through political documents,” Mr. Trump said. “Peace in Yemen requires a negotiated settlement.”
While Republicans like Mr. Paul and Mr. Meadows voted for the resolution, there were limits to how much they lobbied the president. Other Republicans, like Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, argued against the resolution as an attempt to hem in the president.
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QUEL KOMPROMAT RUSSE ?
« Benjamin Griveaux a été le premier participant. Mais l’activité de mon site ne fait que commencer. Les responsables politiques doivent être honnêtes. Ils doivent être clairs vis-à-vis de leurs électeurs. Notre objectif a été atteint avec Benjamin Griveaux et nous allons continuer. »
Piotr Pavlenski
https://www.lci.fr/politique/video-griveaux-a-ete-le-premier-piotr-pavlenski-l-homme-qui-revendique-la-diffusion-des-videos-intimes-promet-de-continuer-2145492.html
« Il y a plusieurs jeunes femmes – au moins deux – instrumentalisées ou de mèche avec le monsieur qui a fait ce site et certainement d’autres personnes qui sont en train de cibler des personnalités publiques qui vont les voir, qui essaient de les aguicher, qui leur envoient des photos, des vidéos, des messages suggestifs, qui viennent dans leurs réunions, qui tentent des contacts privés. Je dis que Benjamin Griveaux est tombé dans un piège (…) Ce n’est que le début. Il faut que le système judiciaire prenne ça en main (…) Ce qu’il faut viser, ce sont les investigateurs. Il est très probable que d’autres pièges aient été tendus à d’autres personnes par le même type de profils, peut-être de mèche, peut-être pas, mais cette méthode se généralise ».
Joachim Son-Forget
http://www.non-stop-people.com/actu/morandini-live/morandini-live-benjamin-griveaux-piege-joachim-son-forget-balance-video-180707
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SPOT THE ERROR ! (When the man vying for President Trump’s job is a a notorious and naive kowtower of China’s autocrats)
« The Communist Party wants to stay in power in China and they listen to the public. Xi Jinping is not a dictator. He has to satisfy his constituents or he’s not going to survive. The Chinese Communist Party looks at Russia and they look for where the Communist Party is and they don’t find it anymore. And they don’t want that to happen. So they really are responsive. »
Michael Bloomberg
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/firing-line/video/michael-bloomberg-jw87c2/
China is quickly becoming the most important U.S. foreign policy issue. As the Chinese government grows more repressive internally and more aggressive outwardly, the American people are waking up to the Chinese Communist Party’s efforts to undermine U.S. security, prosperity and freedom. New presidential aspirant Mike Bloomberg’s record on China shows he is the wrong person to guide our country in confronting this historic challenge.
The former New York mayor and his company Bloomberg LP are heavily invested in China and in the idea of accommodating the Chinese government – even if that means turning a blind eye to its realities. Bloomberg’s closeness to the Chinese leadership is surely an asset for his business, but it reveals a huge weakness in his bid to be president of the United States.
Bloomberg laid bare his blinkered view of how the Chinese leadership operates in a September interview with PBS’s Firing Line: “The Communist Party wants to stay in power in China and they listen to the public,” Bloomberg said. “Xi Jinping is not a dictator. He has to satisfy his constituents or he’s not going to survive.”
Bloomberg was arguing Beijing is committed to green environmental stewardship. The billionaire’s charitable foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, has worked for years to help finance Chinese green energy initiatives in cooperation with the Chinese government. Overall, China’s environmental policies are terrible, but they have made some progress on urban pollution.
But when challenged by host Margaret Hoover on whether he really believes Xi is “responsive” to the democratic will of his people, Bloomberg doubled down.
“The Chinese Communist Party looks at Russia and they look for where the Communist Party is and they don’t find it anymore. And they don’t want that to happen. So they really are responsive,” he said.
Let’s set aside for a moment the point that Russia is led by a former KGB officer who has returned it to Soviet-style authoritarianism. The notion the Chinese Communist Party is “responsive” to its people flies in the face of the severe repression underway in Xinjiang, where at least million of them are in camps, and Hong Kong, where authorities are responding to millions marching for their promised rights by storming universities.
In Hong Kong, what began as peaceful protests has become a de facto war about the future of democracy. Who are the Hong Kongers keeping the movement alive?
It’s no mystery why Bloomberg sees the Beijing leadership through rose-colored glasses. Next week, he will host a major international economic conference in Beijing attended by senior Chinese government and business leaders. Bloomberg wants the conference to out-influence the Davos World Economic Forum.
Last year, Bloomberg had to move the conference to Singapore after Beijing decided not to host it at the last minute. This was attributed to the rising tensions caused by the U.S.-China trade war. Chinese Vice President Wang Qishan still attended.
Bloomberg has personally lobbied against what he sees as Trump’s economic confrontation with China. He often argues Trump’s policy of using tariffs as pressure on Beijing is counterproductive and believes “we just have to find ways to work together,” with China.
In 2013, Bloomberg LP was caught in scandal when it was accused of killing Bloomberg News stories that revealed alleged corruption in China directly related to Xi Jinping’s family members. Bloomberg News denied suppressing the stories, but the New York Times reported that executives feared Bloomberg LP being kicked out of China. Several reporters and editors resigned in protest.
Ben Richardson, editor for Bloomberg’s Asia coverage, later told NPR that Bloomberg News leadership had told him stories about families of the Chinese Politburo were off-limits.
Bloomberg LP doesn’t make money in China only by selling terminals. Through its massive Bloomberg Barclays Global Aggregate Bond Index, Bloomberg LP is helping finance Chinese companies by sending billions of U.S. investor dollars into the Chinese bond market.
This year, the index began a 20-month plan to support 364 Chinese firms by directing an estimated $150 billion into their bond offerings, including 159 controlled directly by the Chinese government. Bloomberg, along with other Wall Street firms, is effectively supporting the Chinese government’s efforts to resist the U.S. government’s economic pressure, while exposing American investors to increased risk.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with hosting a conference in China or being close to Chinese leaders. Bloomberg’s view that the United States should overlook the bad behavior of the Chinese government and get along to do business is widely held on Wall Street. If he were elected president, he could disentangle himself from his businesses, as he did while serving as mayor of New York.
But if Bloomberg really believes what he says, his misreading of the Chinese government’s character and ambitions could be devastating for U.S. national security and foreign policy. He would be advocating for a naive policy of engagement and wishful thinking that has already been tried and failed.
Not to mention the fact that appeasing China is bad politics (and will likely remain so in 2020). Donald Trump Jr. called out Bloomberg’s comments about Xi on Twitter last week, saying “Yikes, I guess he’s trying to win over the NBA?!?”
Over the next 12 months, due mostly to the actions of the Chinese government, the crises in Xinjiang and Hong Kong are likely to get worse. More U.S. companies are going to face unfair punishment as the Chinese Communist Party clamps down on Americans’ free speech.
The United States needs a president who sees the China challenge clearly, who recognizes the Chinese government and the Chinese Communist Party for what they are, and who believes confronting that challenge head on is more important than making money and getting along. Mike Bloomberg is the wrong man for that job.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/11/13/michael-bloombergs-china-record-shows-why-he-cant-be-president/
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THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING AGAIN
« Use any opportunity to criticize Hillary and the rest (except Sanders and Trump — we support them).”
Russian Internet Research Agency (to its 13 US-based agents, 2017)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/inside-the-russian-effort-to-target-sanders-supporters–and-help-elect-trump/2019/04/11/741d7308-5576-11e9-8ef3-fbd41a2ce4d5_story.html
U.S. officials have told Sen. Bernie Sanders that Russia is attempting to help his presidential campaign as part of an effort to interfere with the Democratic contest, according to people familiar with the matter.
President Trump and lawmakers on Capitol Hill have also been informed about the Russian assistance to the Vermont senator, according to people familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence…
Despite Trump’s skepticism of Russian efforts to damage American democracy, officials in his administration have repeatedly warned that Russia has ongoing plans to interfere in U.S. elections and foster divisions among Americans, part of a strategic goal to undermine U.S. standing in the world. Some analysts believe that the Kremlin’s goal is to cause the maximum disruption within the United States, and it throws the support of its hackers and trolls behind candidates based on that goal, not any particular affinity for the persons running.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/bernie-sanders-briefed-by-us-officials-that-russia-is-trying-to-help-his-presidential-campaign/2020/02/21/5ad396a6-54bd-11ea-929a-64efa7482a77_story.html
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IT’S CHAOS THAT WE WANT !
“All of this is part of Russia’s much broader effort to cast democracies as feckless, ineffective, and corrupt. In other words, to dent democracy’s appeal.”
Jessica Brandt (Alliance for Securing Democracy)
it does speak to what experts say is Russia’s ultimate goal, which is less about Sanders and more about promoting chaos. The point has always been to find democracy’s loose seams, and pull…
https://www.wired.com/story/bernie-sanders-russia-chaos-2020-election/
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YOU MEAN TRUMP WAS RIGHT AFTER ALL ? (Guess who a month later suddenly acknowledges Solemani’s killing significantly deterred the Iranians from retaliating further against the US ?)
« The assassination of Qasem Soleimani and the downing of the airliner were both shocks to the Revolutionary Guard. Soleimani was a big loss for the Islamic republic, and the downing of the airliner, it blew the Guard’s entire credibility. The Revolutionary Guard, or IRGC, which was established to protect the Islamic republic, has to rebrand and rebuild its reputation, which takes time, especially with a population that has grown critical of the Islamic republic. And now the strategy is not to go to war with the United States but to test its limits step-by-step — and not to overreach.”
Saeid Golkar (University of Tennessee at Chattanooga)
“This is an organization that evolves, adapts and learns lessons. Qaani will be a bit more low-key than Soleimani, who won celebrity status by designing and executing a military strategy that helped secure Iran’s role as a regional power. Qaani has “been a part of the force for a while, and he’s done a lot of things with the Revolutionary Guard. He has dealt with intelligence and with operations, which positions him well. The Islamic republic and Revolutionary Guard are very concerned about domestic unrest. . . . You don’t go out and kill hundreds of people in 72 hours and shut down the Internet if you’re confident. None of this screams that this is a political system that is confident in itself.”
Ariane Tabatabai (Rand)
“For people like me, who did not support Soleimani, we were so angry and upset after the downing of the plane and the crackdown on protests in November. But even those who supported Soleimani were confused after the downing of the plane, and many became silent or felt like they had to explain themselves, the airline disaster demonstrated that the Revolutionary Guard does not have good military technology. »
Parisa (35, pharmaceutical sales representative in Tehran)
« The Revolutionary Guard is facing a support base problem, if not crisis, at home as even sympathizers and supporters are seeing so much corruption, repression, incompetency. The airline disaster in particular raised serious questions of competency, trust and legitimacy, even among the government’s core support base, which is partly why the Revolutionary Guard was finally compelled to come clean. »
Maysam Behravesh
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is facing crises on multiple fronts as it grapples with the killing of its chief military strategist, Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, and a domestic backlash over the downing of a passenger jet, according to analysts and officials in the region.
Soleimani’s death in a U.S. drone strike last month has forced the Revolutionary Guard to recalibrate its strategy and weigh the risk of further escalation in the conflict with the United States, they said. The group, Iran’s most powerful security force, with sway both at home and across the region, must also rebuild the domestic standing it lost because of its role in the airline disaster and in a crackdown on anti-government demonstrators in November, which left hundreds of protesters dead.
Publicly, the group’s leaders appear unbowed by the recent setbacks. Earlier this month, they unveiled new weapons technology that they said would let them develop a more advanced arsenal of ballistic missiles. Last week, U.S. Central Command said that the U.S. Navy intercepted a ship carrying Iranian-made weapons, cargo it said was destined for Iran-aligned Houthi rebels in Yemen.
The Revolutionary Guard also appeared to get a boost in Iran’s parliamentary elections on Friday, which produced a victory for hard-line candidates the group usually supports after many moderate politicians were barred from running.
But analysts and officials in the region say the Revolutionary Guard in fact now finds itself on the back foot, a notable change after successfully projecting its power in the Middle East over recent years.
Within Iran’s security apparatus, a struggle may already be underway to clip the Quds Force’s wings. According to Golkar, the Revolutionary Guard’s secretive counterintelligence department is likely investigating the security breaches that contributed to Soleimani’s killing in Baghdad last month.
Tensions between Iran and the United States have soared in recent years as the Trump administration pressured Tehran to roll back support for allied militias in places such as Iraq and Syria, and to abandon its ballistic missile program, which the White House says threatens U.S. allies in the region.
The U.S. decision to kill Soleimani came after a rocket attack on an air base hosting American forces in the Iraqi province of Kirkuk, which killed a U.S. contractor. The Trump administration blamed an Iran-backed group, Kataib Hezbollah, for the strike.
The targeted killing of Soleimani was followed by a direct Iranian missile attack on bases hosting U.S. troops in Iraq. Then, as it braced for a response, the Revolutionary Guard shot down a Ukrainian passenger jet mistaken for a hostile aircraft, killing all 176 people on board. The group denied involvement for days, sparking a wave of demonstrations in Iranian cities
That was the second time the Revolutionary Guard confronted widespread protests in recent months. In November, popular discontent over fuel prices boiled over into anti-government demonstrations.
In the fall, when the earlier protests flared, demonstrators chanted against the Revolutionary Guard, and one of its commanders was stabbed to death in a Tehran suburb, local media reported. Last month, masked gunmen killed the local commander of the Revolutionary Guard’s Basij paramilitary force in southwestern Iran…
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/irans-revolutionary-guards-wrestle-with-new-reality-after-killing-of-their-chief-military-strategist/2020/02/21/db35985c-53f1-11ea-80ce-37a8d4266c09_story.html
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YOU MEAN EVERYBODY ELSE WAS WRONG ON SOLEIMANI ?
David Muir: (42:59)
I want to turn to America’s role in the world and readiness to be commander-in-chief on day one. Just this week, you saw it, during the State of the Union, President Trump offered an indication of what he’ll tout on the campaign trail. He celebrated the US air strike that killed top Iranian general, Qasem Soleimani saying, “Soleimani was the Iranian regime’s most ruthless butcher, a monster who murdered or wounded thousands of American service members in Iraq.”
David Muir: (43:24)
Mayor Buttigieg, you’re the only veteran standing on this stage and while there is still debate about whether or not there was an imminent threat, there is no debate about whether or not Soleimani was a bad actor who was responsible for the deaths of many Americans. Given what you know about Soleimani, if your national security team came to you with an opportunity to strike, would Soleimani have been dead or would he still be alive under your presidency?
Pete Buttigieg: (43:45)
In the situation that we saw with President Trump’s decision, there is no evidence that that made our country safer. Look, I feel very strongly about the campaign of murder and mayhem that General Soleimani and his units have perpetrated. It’s also the case that if we learned nothing else from the war in Iraq, it’s that taking out a bad guy is not a good idea if you do not know what you were doing. This president has moved us this much closer to the brink of war, but it didn’t start with the Soleimani strike. It started with withdrawing us from the Iran nuclear deal that his own administration certified was working. And it’s time for us to recognize that every time a step is taken that moves us to the brink of war, that has incredibly serious consequences for those who serve.
Pete Buttigieg: (44:38)
By chance, just because I was traveling for the campaign, not long ago, I ran into somebody that I hadn’t seen since we were both serving, hadn’t seen since she was injured in an insider attack. And I saw her coming down the concourse in the airport wearing a Wounded Warrior Project tee shirt that said, “Some assembly required.” And when I asked her how she was doing, she up her knee and tapped on the part of her leg that they couldn’t save, tapped on the prosthetic and said the Navy had fixed her up just fine and then let me know that she was looking forward to an upcoming deployment.
Pete Buttigieg: (45:11)
The people in our uniform will do whatever the United States requires of them. What they deserve in return is a president who will actually read the intelligence, pay attention to the international security situation, consult with our allies, keep US politics out of it, and never commit our troops to a situation where they would have to go into harm’s way if there is an alternative.
David Muir: (45:35)
Mayor Buttigieg, let me just press further on this though, because president Trump has signal in a general election campaign, he will celebrate his willingness to order that strike. I’m asking if your national security team came to you and presented you with the opportunity, would you take the strike?
Pete Buttigieg: (45:52)
It depends on the circumstances. It depends if there was an alternative and it depends what the different effects would be. That’s my point. This is not an episode of 24. This is a situation that requires that you actually evaluate the entire intelligence picture. This president has insulted the intelligence community, but they put their lives on the line to gather the information that will help a decision maker evaluate whether or not something like that is justified. And I don’t think he even reads it.
Pete Buttigieg: (46:20)
And here we have a situation where the world, that one of the most volatile places in the world has just become more dangerous at the hands of a president who has no regard for the military, not only punishing a war hero today with what he did to Colonel Vindman, but pardoning war criminals in a way that undermines the entire sense of good order and discipline and military honor. We deserve a better commander-in-chief.
David Muir: (46:44)
Mayor Buttigieg, thank you. I do want to take this to Vice President Biden next because we know that the Obama Administration was aware of the threat that Soleimani posed, so was the Bush Administration before it. I’m asking tonight as commander-in-chief though, would you have ordered the strike?
Joe Biden: (46:59)
No. And the reason I wouldn’t have ordered the strike, there is no evidence yet of imminent threat that was going to come from him. Look what happened, his America First policies made America alone. You cannot think of a time, David, and as long as you’ve been alive when NATO has said to the United States of America and to Iran, made a moral equivalence and said, both of you stand down. We are alone now, alone in that region of the world, without friends, without support, without allies.
Joe Biden: (47:31)
And secondly, you saw what happened when that air raid, when those missiles were fired from Iran into Iraq at Al-Assad Airbase, 64 of our heroes were wounded. I don’t know what I would’ve done if my son were still there. I would have been so damn angry. I don’t know what I would’ve done. But here’s what happened, they had received traumatic brain injury. What did the president say? He said, “headaches,” “not bad,” “Headaches, that’s all they are.” This guy doesn’t deserve to be commander- in-chief for one more day.
David Muir: (48:02)
Mr. Vice President, thank you, Senator Sanders, you have called this, “assassinating a government official.” You would not have ordered the strike.
Bernie Sanders: (48:10)
Right. Look, here is the danger, David, there are very bad leaders all over the world. Kim Jong-un in North Korea is probably responsible for the death of hundreds of thousands of his people threatening all of Asia with nuclear weapons. You got Mohammad Bin Salman in Saudi Arabia who is a terrible murderer, who murdered Khashoggi in cold blood and dismembered his body. You have Putin in Russia who has been involved in political assassinations of his enemies. You got Xi in China who has put a million Muslims into concentration camps.
Bernie Sanders: (48:49)
You cannot go around saying you’re a bad guy, we’re going to assassinate you, and then you’re going to have, if that happens, you’re opening the door to international anarchy that every government in the world will then be subjected to attacks and assassination. What we have got to do, which Trump does not understand, is strengthen the State Department and our diplomatic capabilities, not just the military. What we have got to do is bring countries around the world together with our power and our wealth and say, you know what, let us sit down and work out our differences through debate and discussion at the UN, not through more and more war and the expenditures of trillions of dollars and the loss of God knows how many lives.
David Muir: (49:41)
Senator Sanders, thank you. This does take me to Afghanistan and to America’s longest war. Senator Warren, you recently said quote, “We have one general after another in Afghanistan who comes in and says, ‘We’ve just turned the corner,’ and then what happens? It’s all the same. Someone new comes in and says, ‘We’ve just turned the corner.’ You said, “So many say it. We’re going in circles.”
David Muir: (50:02)
We were on the ground in Afghanistan and Iraq in recent months and the generals told us that the US needs some US presence on the ground, US special forces some presence to go after ISIS and the terrorists. If your commander-in-chief, would you listen to the generals or do they fall into the category of the generals you’ve mentioned before?
Elizabeth Warren: (50:19)
No. Look, I sit on the Senate Armed Services Committee, so I get the briefings from the generals on a regular basis. I’ve been to Afghanistan, to Iraq. I’ve been to Jordan. I’ve been throughout the region. I’ve been there with John McCain. I’ve been there with Lindsey Graham to ask the hard questions about what’s happening, to ask our generals, to ask their generals to ask people who are on the ground. And the bottom line is, nobody sees a solution to this war. Nobody can describe what winning looks like. All they can describe is endless war.
Elizabeth Warren: (50:52)
And I realized there are people on this debate stage who are willing to say, yeah, we’ll leave our troops there for five more years, for 10 more years. Lindsey Graham has said he’s willing to leave troops for 100 more years. And yet, what has all these years of war brought us? Right now, the Afghan Government controls less than 60% of the land. People don’t have faith in it. It’s a corrupt government. The opium trade is higher than ever.
Elizabeth Warren: (51:20)
Look, we sent our troops in and they did their best. They were there for us, but we need to be there for them. And that means, not send our troops to do work that cannot be solved militarily. It is time to bring our combat troops home. It is time to stop this endless war in Afghanistan.
David Muir: (51:41)
Senator Warren, I want to press you on this. You just said, “combat troops.”
Elizabeth Warren: (51:45)
Yes.
David Muir: (51:45)
So if the generals came to you and said, we need US Special Forces, some footprint in Iraq and Afghanistan, would you listen? Would you leave them?
Elizabeth Warren: (51:53)
So I want to hear the plan, not just a, we need it now, we need it for the next day, we need it for the six months. And I want to know where our allies are. We all have an interest in dealing with terrorism and controlling terrorism, but that means it can’t just be the United States waging endless war. That does not make us safer. It does not make the region safer. It does not make the world safer. We should work with our allies in managing terrorism, but we need to end this war in Afghanistan. We cannot wait five more years, or 10 more years, or until we turn the corner 10 more times. We need to bring our combat troops home.
David Muir: (52:34)
Senator Warren, thank you. I want to take this to the Vice President because you have said of Senator Warren’s comments before that the United States should get out of the Middle East. You have said, “I quite frankly was surprised that I have never heard anyone say with any serious background in foreign policy that we should pull all troops out of the Middle East.” Is Senator Warren wrong on this?
Joe Biden: (52:54)
I’m not sure what she, if she wants to pull all troops out of the Middle East, but if she does want to put all troops out of the Middle East, we saw what happens when that happened.
Joe Biden: (53:02)
I helped put together a 61 nation group to take out ISIS by putting fewer than 5,000 forces along the Turkish border to see to it that they, and they lost 10,000, the Kurds, lost 10,000 lives. They defeated ISIS. They ended the caliphate and then the president on a whim dealing with a man I know very well, they’ve now, the guy running Turkey who is more of an autocrat now than a Democrat, and what happened? We pulled out and you saw what happened. You saw the end of the effort to be able to continue to contain, contain ISIS, number one.
Joe Biden: (53:37)
Number two, close your eye, everybody. Remember what you saw on television. You saw a woman standing up there holding up her baby, Kurd, saying, “Please don’t leave us.” And our military women and men standing at, going out in their [inaudible 00:53:49] Humvees with their heads down ashamed of what they did. It didn’t take a lot of men or men and women to do what needed to be done.
Joe Biden: (53:57)
And with regard Afghanistan, now I can say it because it was made public, I was totally against the whole notion of no nation building in Afghanistan. The only thing we should be doing is dealing with terrorism in that region. I’ve been in every part of Afghanistan, not in combat like my friend has, but in helicopter and/or on a vehicle in every part of it as senator and vice president. Here’s what I saw, there is no possibility of uniting that country, no possibility at all of making it a whole country. But it is possible to see to it that they’re not able to launch more attacks from the region on the United States of America. That’s a small footprint that we needed and I argued for that in the beginning.
David Muir: (54:38)
You mentioned Mayor Buttigieg. And I do want to take this to you next, mayor. Given your finish in Iowa, you’ve come under increasing scrutiny, attacks from opponents on experience. We’ve heard that theme even right here tonight. You have said on the Iraq War, for example. “I just don’t believe there is any justification for that vote.” You said, “It’s the difference between tenure and judgment.” That it’s the judgment that matters, not the time in Washington. Vice President Biden, as you know, voted yes. As commander-in-chief, do you believe your judgment would be better than the vice president’s?
Pete Buttigieg: (55:07)
I believe that I have the judgment to help us get through these situations where obviously the vice president made the wrong decision when it came to such an important moment in our foreign policy. And looking forward, we got to recognize just how much is going to be on the plate of the next president that is different in kind from what we have faced before. It’s not just about dealing with the aftermath of the war in Iraq, it’s about preventing a war with Iran. And not only do we have to undertake the military and counter terrorism activities that we’ve been doing throughout, the next president is going to have to restore the credibility of this country among our allies and among the international community.
Pete Buttigieg: (55:48)
At a moment when we are facing fundamentally different challenges from asymmetric warfare to cybersecurity threats, in President Trump’s imagination of a national security strategy is a big wall and a moat full of alligators. It’s a 17th century approach to keeping a place safe. What we have to do is be ready for the future and that means insisting not only on shoring up our relationships, but defining a strategy to keep the American people safe from fundamentally new challenges.
David Muir: (56:16)
Mr. Vice President, I’ll let you respond to his argument on judgment.
Joe Biden: (56:21)
I made a mistake and I said it 14 years ago. I trusted George Bush to keep his word. He said he was not going to go into Iraq. He said he was only using this to unite the United Nations to insist we get inspectors in to see what Saddam was doing. When we got elected, the president turned to me with the entire security apparatus and said, “Joe, I want you to organize getting 156,000 troops out of Iraq.” I did that. I did that.
Joe Biden: (56:46)
The other thing I want to point out too is that NATO is in fact going to crumble if we don’t beat Trump. NATO is in real trouble. We need NATO for more reasons than just physical security. We need NATO to make sure that we do not allow Russia to continue to have its influence in Eastern Europe in ways that it had before. It wasn’t just to stop the Soviet Union from coming into the United States, coming into Europe. It was to make sure that we did not have a kleptocracy taking over that part of the world, to unite Europe in our behalf. I know how to deal with them. I know every one of these world leaders by their first names. They call me. I talked to them and I believe I can get it done.
https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/new-hampshire-democratic-debate-transcript
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SPOT THE ERROR ! (When the man the Dems keep demonizing… keeps going up in the polls ?)
52% of likely US voters approve of President Trump’s job performance…
https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/trump_administration/prez_track_feb25
J’aimeJ’aime
200 MILLION BIGOTS AND IGNORANTS – AND COUNTING ! (Wreckingball presidency: What is so intelligent and enlightened, populists ask, about a foreign-policy establishment that failed to perceive that US trade policies were promoting the rise of a hostile Communist superpower with the ability to disrupt supplies of essential goods in a national emergency?)
This is not what his critics expected. At 49% overall job approval in the latest Gallup poll, and with 60% approval of the way he is handling the coronavirus epidemic, President Trump’s standing with voters has improved even as the country closed down and the stock market underwent a historic meltdown. That may change as this unpredictable crisis develops, but bitter and often justified criticism of Mr. Trump’s decision making in the early months of the pandemic has so far failed to break the bond between the 45th president and his political base. One reason Mr. Trump’s opponents have had such a hard time damaging his connection with voters is that they still don’t understand why so many Americans want a wrecking-ball presidency. Beyond attributing Mr. Trump’s support to a mix of racism, religious fundamentalism and profound ignorance, the president’s establishment opponents in both parties have yet to grasp the depth and intensity of the populist energy that animates his base and the Bernie Sanders movement. The sheer number of voters in open political rebellion against centrist politics is remarkable. Adding the Sanders base (36% of the Democratic vote in the latest Real Clear Politics poll average, or roughly 13% of the national vote considering that about 45% of voters lean Democratic) to the core Trump base of roughly 42%, and around 55% of U.S. voters now support politicians who openly despise the central assumptions of the political establishment.
That a majority of the electorate is this deeply alienated from the establishment can’t be dismissed as bigotry and ignorance. There are solid and serious grounds for doubting the competence and wisdom of America’s self-proclaimed expert class. What is so intelligent and enlightened, populists ask, about a foreign-policy establishment that failed to perceive that U.S. trade policies were promoting the rise of a hostile Communist superpower with the ability to disrupt supplies of essential goods in a national emergency? What competence have the military and political establishments shown in almost two decades of tactical success and strategic impotence in Afghanistan? What came of that intervention in Libya? What was the net result of all the fine talk in the Bush and Obama administrations about building democracy in the Middle East?
On domestic policy, the criticism is equally trenchant and deeply felt. Many voters believe that the U.S. establishment has produced a health-care system that is neither affordable nor universal. Higher education saddles students with increasing debt while leaving many graduates woefully unprepared for good jobs in the real world. The centrist establishment has amassed unprecedented deficits without keeping roads, bridges and pipes in good repair. It has weighed down cities and states with unmanageable levels of pension debt.
The culture of social promotion and participation trophies is not, populists feel, confined to U.S. kindergartens and elementary schools. Judging by performance, they conclude that people rise in the American establishment by relentless virtue-signaling; by going along with conventional wisdom, however foolish; and by forgiving the failures of others and having their own overlooked in return.
The blame game playing out over how the president has handled the coronavirus epidemic reflects the dynamics of this struggle. Mr. Trump’s establishment critics want a narrow fight over the dismal trail of bluster, evasions, missed opportunities and failed predictions that marked the president’s approach to the virus earlier in the year. Like many criticisms of Mr. Trump, these arguments against him are by and large correct and significant and it is part of the proper job of a free press to make them.
However, Mr. Trump’s supporters are not comparing him with an omniscient leader who always does the right thing, but with the establishment—including the bulk of the mainstream media—that largely backed a policy of engagement with China long after its pitfalls became clear. For Americans who lost their jobs to Chinese competition or who fear the possibility of a new cold war against an economically potent and technologically advanced power, Mr. Trump’s errors pale before those of the bipartisan American foreign-policy consensus.
The establishment’s massive, decades-long failure to think through the consequences of empowering Communist China and creating a trading relationship that, among other things, left the U.S. dependent on Beijing for pharmaceuticals is a much less excusable and more consequential error than anything Donald Trump has done in 2020—and it has a direct bearing on the mess we are in.
Attacks on the establishment aren’t always rational or fair. They can be one-sided and fail to do justice to the accomplishments the U.S. has made in the recent past. Populism on both the left and the right always attracts its share of snake-oil salesmen, and America’s current anti-establishment surge is no exception. But the U.S. establishment won’t prosper again until it comes to grip with a central political fact: Populism rises when establishment leadership fails. If conventional U.S. political leaders had been properly doing their jobs, Donald Trump would still be hosting a television show.
Unless the president’s opponents take the full measure of this public discontent, they will be continually surprised by his resilience against media attacks. And until the establishment undertakes a searching and honest inventory of the tangled legacy of American foreign and domestic policy since the end of the Cold War, expect populism to remain a potent part of the political scene.
Walter Russell Mead
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-virus-may-make-trump-stronger-11585149792
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60% BIGOTS AND IGNORANTS !
Americans give the president generally positive reviews for his handling of the situation, with 60% approving and 38% disapproving. Ninety-four percent of Republicans, 60% of independents and 27% of Democrats approve of his response….
https://news.gallup.com/poll/298313/president-trump-job-approval-rating.aspx
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NO TIME FOR XENOPHOBIA !
“We have, right now, a crisis with the coronavirus. This is no time for Donald Trump’s record of hysteria and xenophobia – hysterical xenophobia – and fearmongering to lead the way instead of science.”
Joe Biden (02/01/20)
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/481028-biden-slams-trump-for-cutting-health-programs-before-coronavirus-outbreak
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WHAT CHINA TRAVEL BAN ? (Guess who’s now supporting a racist and useless travel ban ?)
“We have right now a crisis with the coronavirus, emanating from China. A national emergency worldwide alerts. The American people need to have a president who they can trust what he says about it, that he is going to act rationally about it. In moments like this, this is where the credibility of the president is most needed, as he explains what we should and should not do. This is no time for Donald Trump’s record of hysteria and xenophobia – hysterical xenophobia – and fearmongering to lead the way instead of science.”
Joe Biden (Biden, Fort Madison, Iowa, Jan. 31, 2020)
Downplaying it, being overly dismissive or spreading misinformation is only going to hurt us and further advantage the spread of the disease. But neither should we panic, or fall back on xenophobia. Labeling COVID-19 a foreign virus does not displace accountability for the misjudgments that have been taken thus far by the Trump administration. »
Joe Biden
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/biden-seeking-project-competence-amid-crisis-announces-coronavirus-plan-n1156946
« Joe Biden supports travel bans that are guided by medical experts, advocated by public health officials, and backed by a full strategy. Science supported this ban, therefore he did too. Biden’s reference to xenophobia was about Trump’s long record of scapegoating others at a time when the virus was emerging from China and not a reference to the travel ban. »
Kate Bedingfeld (Biden’s deputy campaign manager)
Biden campaign says he backs Trump’s China travel ban
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/04/03/politics/joe-biden-trump-china-coronavirus/index.html
“The United States and other countries around the world have put in place unprecedented travel restrictions in response to the virus. These measures have not proven to improve public health outcomes, rather they tend to cause economic harm and to stoke racist and discriminatory responses to this epidemic. »
Democratic Rep. Eliot L. Engel
https://foreignaffairs.house.gov/2020/2/engel-statement-at-coronavirus-outbreak-subcommittee-hearing
« This is a virus that happened to pop up in China. But the virus doesn’t discriminate between Asian versus non-Asian. In our response we can’t create prejudices and harbor anxieties toward one population. We shouldn’t have an antagonistic relationship with the Chinese. We should be working hand in hand. Besides the diplomatic blowback, the travel ban probably doesn’t make sense, since the outbreak has already spread to several other countries. »
Rep. Ami Bera (D-Calif.)
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/02/04/coronavirus-quaratine-travel-110750
« We need to seriously reexamine the current policy of banning travel from China and quarantining returning travelers. All of the evidence we have indicates that travel restrictions and quarantines directed at individual countries are unlikely to keep the virus out of our borders. These measures may exacerbate the epidemic’s social and economic tolls and can make us less safe. Simply put, this virus is spreading too quickly and too silently, and our surveillance is too limited for us to truly know which countries have active transmission and which don’t. The virus could enter the U.S. from other parts of the world not on our restricted list, and it may already be circulating here. The U.S. was a target of travel bans and quarantines during the 2009 flu pandemic. It didn’t work to stop the spread, and it hurt our country. I am concerned that by our singling out China for travel bans, we are effectively penalizing it for reporting cases. This may diminish its willingness to further share data and chill other countries’ willingness to be transparent about their own outbreaks. Travel bans and quarantines will make us less safe if they divert attention and resources from higher priority disease mitigation approaches that we know are needed to respond to cases within the United States. … We often see, when we have emerging disease outbreaks, our first instinct is to try to lock down travel to prevent the introduction of virus to our country. And that is a completely understandable instinct. I have never seen instances in which that has worked when we are talking about a virus at this scale. Respiratory viruses like this one, unlike others–they just move quickly. They are hard to spot because they look like many other diseases. It’s very difficult to interrupt them at borders. You would need to have complete surveillance in order to do that. And we simply don’t have that. »
Dr. Jennifer Nuzzo (Johns Hopkins, Democrat House subcommittee hearing, Feb. 5 2020)
https://foreignaffairs.house.gov/hearings?ID=41B2E5E9-E5F8-4869-94F0-019DB3DFD037
NO FEAR AND STIGMA, PLEASE
« We reiterate our call to all countries not to impose restrictions inconsistent with the International Health Regulations. Such restrictions can have the effect of increasing fear and stigma, with little public health benefit. So far, 22 countries have reported such restrictions to WHO. »
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus
https://www.who.int/dg/speeches/detail/who-director-general-s-opening-remarks-at-the-technical-briefing-on-2019-novel-coronavirus
https://www.voanews.com/science-health/coronavirus-outbreak/beijing-denounces-international-restrictions-planes-china
WHAT NOT ONLY USELESS BUT TOO-LATE CHINA TRAVEL BAN ? (430 000 – 40 000 = 390 000)
Since Chinese officials disclosed the outbreak of a mysterious pneumonialike illness to international health officials on New Year’s Eve, at least 430,000 people have arrived in the United States on direct flights from China, including nearly 40,000 in the two months after President Trump imposed restrictions on such travel, according to an analysis of data collected in both countries. The bulk of the passengers, who were of multiple nationalities, arrived in January, at airports in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Seattle, Newark and Detroit. Thousands of them flew directly from Wuhan, the center of the coronavirus outbreak, as American public health officials were only beginning to assess the risks to the United States…Mr. Trump has repeatedly suggested that his travel measures impeded the virus’s spread in the United States. “I do think we were very early, but I also think that we were very smart, because we stopped China,” he said at a briefing on Tuesday, adding, “That was probably the biggest decision we made so far.” Last month, he said, “We’re the ones that kept China out of here.” But the analysis of the flight and other data by The New York Times shows the travel measures, however effective, may have come too late to have “kept China out,” particularly in light of recent statements from health officials that as many as 25 percent of people infected with the virus may never show symptoms. Many infectious-disease experts suspect that the virus had been spreading undetected for weeks after the first American case was confirmed, in Washington State, on Jan. 20, and that it had continued to be introduced. In fact, no one knows when the virus first arrived in the United States. During the first half of January, when Chinese officials were underplaying the severity of the outbreak, no travelers from China were screened for potential exposure to the virus. Health screening began in mid-January, but only for a number of travelers who had been in Wuhan and only at the airports in Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York. By that time, about 4,000 people had already entered the United States directly from Wuhan, according to VariFlight, an aviation data company based in China. The measures were expanded to all passengers from China two weeks later…
NYT
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2020/03/12/dr_anthony_fauci_travel_ban_to_china_absolutely_made_a_difference.html
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/government-response-coronavirus-fauci-backs-trump-travel-ban/story?id=69557417
WHAT BORDERS ?
Sanders also slammed President Trump’s response to the coronavirus outbreak – and said that he would not consider closing the border, no matter what. « If you had to, would you close down the borders? » Baier asked, referring to efforts to stop the spread of coronavirus. « No, » Sanders replied flatly. He went on to condemn xenophobia and suggest that scientists would need to outline the appropriate approach…
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/bernie-sanders-fox-news-town-hall-michigan
WHAT NO TRAVEL BAN ACT ?
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/486825-gop-leaders-call-on-pelosi-to-pull-travel-ban-bill-over-coronavirus
https://www.nytimes.com/…/opi…/china-travel-coronavirus.html
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WHAT CHINESE MALEVOLENCE AND UNWILLINGNESS TO PLAY BY THE RULES ? (Far from discrediting Trump’s approach, the Wuhan virus crisis vindicates his introduction of long overdue correctives to the overlooked costs of globalization and the dangers of giving away to the Chinese Communist Party control over one’s citizens’ health, communications infrastructure and sensitive personal data with its record of manipulation of multilateral organizations, stealing patented technologies and promotion of facial-recognition and surveillance standards around the world)
When a new coronavirus emerged in China and began spreading around the world, including in the United States, President Donald Trump’s many critics in the American foreign-policy establishment were quick to identify him as part of the problem. Trump had campaigned on an “America first” foreign policy, which after his victory was enshrined in the official National Security Strategy that his administration published in 2017. At the time, I served in the administration and orchestrated the writing of that document. In the years since, Trump has been criticized for supposedly overturning the post–World War II order and rejecting the role the United States has long played in the world. Amid a global pandemic, he’s being accused—on this site and elsewhere—of alienating allies, undercutting multinational cooperation, and causing America to fight the coronavirus alone.
And yet even as the current emergency has proved him right in fundamental ways—about China specifically and foreign policy more generally—many respectable people in the United States are letting their disdain for the president blind them to what is really going on in the world. Far from discrediting Trump’s point of view, the COVID-19 crisis reveals what his strategy asserted: that the world is a competitive arena in which great power rivals like China seek advantage, that the state remains the irreplaceable agent of international power and effective action, that international institutions have limited capacity to transform the behavior and preferences of states.
China, America’s most powerful rival, has played a particularly harmful role in the current crisis, which began on its soil. Initially, that country’s lack of transparency prevented prompt action that might have contained the virus. In Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak, Chinese officials initially punished citizens for “spreading rumors” about the disease. The lab in Shanghai that first published the genome of the virus on open platforms was shut down the next day for “rectification,” as the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reported in February. Apparently at the behest of officials at the Wuhan health commission, news reports indicate, visiting teams of experts from elsewhere in China were prevented from speaking freely to doctors in the infectious-disease wards. Some experts had suspected human-to-human transmission, but their inquiries were rebuffed. “They didn’t tell us the truth,” one team member said of the local authorities, “and from what we now know of the real situation then, they were lying” to us.
Now China’s propagandists are competing to create a narrative that obscures the origins of the crisis and that blames the United States for the virus. This irresponsible behavior and lack of transparency revealed what Trump’s National Security Strategy had identified early on: that “contrary to our hopes, China expanded its power at the expense of others.” Instead of becoming a “responsible stakeholder”—a term George W. Bush’s administration used to describe the role it hoped Beijing would play following China’s entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001—the Chinese Communist Party used the advantages of WTO membership to advance a political and economic system at odds with America’s free and open society. Previous National Security Strategy documents had tiptoed around China’s adversarial conduct, as if calling out that country as a competitor—as the 2017 document unequivocally did—was somehow impolite.
But at some point, an American administration needed to shift the conversation away from hopes for an imagined future China to the realities of the Communist Party’s conduct—which is hardly a secret. For the decade and a half prior to 2017, Republican and Democratic leaders publicly worried about China’s unwillingness to play by the rules, but were reluctant to deal head on with China’s authoritarian government and statist economy. The bipartisan U.S.-China Economic Security Commission has consistently called out China’s unfair practices. In 2010, President Barack Obama lambasted China before the G-20 for its currency manipulation. The need to compete effectively with the policies of the Chinese Communist Party is one of the few points of agreement between Trump and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Even as he seeks to find ways to conclude reciprocal trade agreements, his administration has not lost sight of China’s aggressive rise.
At least as controversial as Trump’s critique of China is his emphasis on the importance of sovereignty and his insistence that strong sovereign states are the main agents of change. But states are the foundation of democratic governance and, fundamentally, of security. It is the citizens of states who vote and hold leaders accountable. And it is states that are the foundation of military, political, and economic power in alliances such as NATO, or organizations like the United Nations.
Trump’s emphasis on protecting U.S. sovereignty brought to a boil a simmering national debate about the overlooked costs of globalization. A blind adherence to what the economist Dani Rodrik has called “hyper-globalization”—the idea that the interests of big corporations and the principle of market integration took precedence over widely shared prosperity and economic security—had come at the expense of domestic industries. For years, people who complained about these consequences were dismissed as isolationists or as being on “the wrong side of history.”
The coronavirus experience demonstrates that economic interaction does not occur in a vacuum of geopolitical competition. Dependence on China for crucial medical equipment throughout the pandemic has illuminated the dangers of a hyper-globalized economy. Experts had warned of American dependence on key drug ingredients from China. The Wall Street Journal has reported that China is the only maker of key ingredients for certain classes of drugs, including established antibiotics that treat a range of bacterial infections such as pneumonia. American reliance on Chinese suppliers for other pharmaceuticals and medical supplies is also worrisome. Americans should not depend on an authoritarian rival state for its citizens’ health—any more than the United States and other free and open societies should give Chinese companies, and by extension the Chinese Communist Party, control over communications infrastructure and sensitive personal data.
Many of President Trump’s critics in the foreign-policy community put great stock in the ability of multilateral and international organizations to constrain the misbehavior of China and other states. These organizations, at their best, promote concerted action against commonly recognized problems. But Trump’s critics tend to view them mainly in their idealized form and as the central instruments to solve global problems and advance values shared by all. In practice, though, how international organizations perform is profoundly influenced by power relationships among member states.
China’s leaders have become quite skillful at using these bodies to pursue their own interests. President Xi Jinping has made it a priority—as he put it in a 2018 speech—to “reform” and lead in the “global governance system,” viewing such efforts as integral to “building a modern, strong socialist country.” Despite its record of stealing patented technologies, China tried to lead the World Intellectual Property Organization, an effort thwarted by Washington. Chinese tech companies have also sought to induce the United Nations to adopt their facial-recognition and surveillance standards, to clear the way for the deployment of their technologies around the world.
The Trump administration’s National Security Strategy challenged the assumption that international organizations are always driven by a common global good. China’s undue influence in key international organizations was evident most recently, when the World Health Organization hesitated to declare COVID-19 a public-health emergency of international concern. WHO officials amplified Chinese officials’ early claims that the virus posed no danger of human-to-human transmission. The head of the organization even congratulated China’s top leadership for its “openness to sharing information.” Apparently seeking to avoid Beijing’s wrath, the WHO refused to respond to Taiwan’s early concerns about human-to-human transmission of the virus outbreak in Wuhan.
The COVID-19 experience, although far from over, has generated strong evidence that, while the WHO and other international organizations are of course important for information sharing and coordination, nations continue to do the heavy lifting. The United States remains the largest contributor to the WHO, paying about 15 percent of the organization’s budget—compared with China’s 0.21 percent. In early March, Trump signed a supplemental appropriations act that included $1.3 billion in additional U.S. foreign assistance for pandemic response. Most recently, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced an additional $274 million in emergency funding for at-risk countries. This aid does not come with the strings that China attaches to its aid.
Contrary to what critics argue, “America first” does not mean “America alone.” That Trump might be introducing needed correctives to the hyper-globalization pursued by earlier administrations is generating serious cognitive dissonance in some quarters. And the reality is that only one organization in the entire world has as its sole responsibility the American people’s safety. That institution is the U.S. government. Whether led by Republicans or Democrats—or by Donald Trump or anyone else—it should always put the American people first.
Nadia Schadlow, a former deputy national security adviser for strategy, is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/04/consider-possibility-trump-right-china/609493/
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WHAT CONTINUATION OF WAR BY OTHER MEANS ? (Biological Chernobyl: Guess who for weeks offered false data and proclaimed they had the outbreak under control while hoarding PPE and are now using it for soft power when the problems the rest of the world is facing are the direct result of their own policies ?)
“The same people that understood this virus had human-to-human transmission and was going to be a pandemic were at the same time vacuuming up every piece of PPE from the US, Brazil and Europe. They’re at war with the West. This story shows the world what Chinese citizens are dealing with. »
Steven Bannon (former White House chief strategist under Trump)
“It looks like a coordinated effort between the Chinese government and industry where they used to be nothing but exporters of this stuff but now they turned around and they’re importing it while banning all exports. What is most interesting to me, when we get through this crisis I think there’s rage, not just concern, but rage in Congress about China and from the American people that China is culpable one way or the other. »
Christian Whiton (former senior diplomacy and trade adviser to the George W. Bush and Trump administrations)
“We understand that China has engaged in policies to try and not only develop its own capabilities, but to do so at expense of producers around the world. At a time when demand was rising to deal with the crisis, China was marshaling all of the products for its own use. And now “they’re using it for soft power, essentially saying it’s a humanitarian gesture to try to curry goodwill with American people when some of the problems we’re facing are the direct result of Chinese policies.”
Michael Wessell
Leading US manufacturers of medical safety gear told the White House that China prohibited them from exporting their products from the country as the coronavirus pandemic mounted — even as Beijing was trying to “corner the world market” in personal protective equipment, The Post has learned.
Now, the Trump administration is weighing legal action against China over its alleged actions, a lawyer for President Trump said Sunday.
“In criminal law, compare this to the levels that we have for murder,” said Jenna Ellis, a senior legal adviser to Trump’s re-election campaign.
“People are dying. When you have intentional, cold-blooded, premeditated action like you have with China, this would be considered first-degree murder.”
Ellis said the options under consideration include filing a complaint with the European Court of Human Rights or working “through the United Nations.”
Executives from 3M and Honeywell told US officials that the Chinese government in January began blocking exports of N95 respirators, booties, gloves and other supplies produced by their factories in China, according to a senior White House official.
China paid the manufacturers their standard wholesale rates, but prohibited the vital items from being sold to anyone else, the official said.
Around the same time that China cracked down on PPE exports, official data posted online shows that it imported 2.46 billion pieces of “epidemic prevention and control materials” between Jan. 24 and Feb. 29, the White House official said.
The gear, valued at nearly $1.2 billion, included more than 2 billion masks and more than 25 million “protective clothing” items that came from countries in the European Union, as well as Australia, Brazil and Cambodia, the official said.
“Data from China’s own customs agency points to an attempt to corner the world market in PPE like gloves, goggles, and masks through massive increased purchases — even as China, the world’s largest PPE manufacturer, was restricting exports,” the official said.
Last week, Trump invoked the Defense Production Act to order St. Paul, Minnesota-based 3M to prioritize production of N95 respirators for the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Michael Wessell, a founding member of the federal US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, confirmed the situation and said the Chinese maneuvering had left American hospitals “starved of PPE to fight this crisis.”
“We understand that China has engaged in policies to try and not only develop its own capabilities, but to do so at expense of producers around the world,” said Wessell, formerly a top staffer to ex-US Rep. Dick Gephardt (D-Missouri).
“At a time when demand was rising to deal with the crisis, China was marshaling all of the products for its own use.”
Wessell said that “some of China’s actions are probably illegal, but to bring cases when you’re in the middle of the crisis does little good for the patients who are in the hospital on ventilators — and might not have been there had they had access to PPE.”
Wessell also said that while China had recently begun easing exports of PPE, “they’re using it for soft power, essentially saying it’s a humanitarian gesture to try to curry goodwill with American people when some of the problems we’re facing are the direct result of Chinese policies.”
Christian Whiton, a former senior diplomacy and trade adviser to the George W. Bush and Trump administrations, described Chinese control of PPE as “political warfare.”
“It looks like a coordinated effort between the Chinese government and industry where they used to be nothing but exporters of this stuff but now they turned around and they’re importing it while banning all exports,” said Whiton, now a senior fellow for strategy and trade at the Center for National Interest.
“What is most interesting to me, when we get through this crisis I think there’s rage, not just concern, but rage in Congress about China and from the American people that China is culpable one way or the other,” he added.
Honeywell said in a statement: “For the majority of the first quarter, China was experiencing the most acute effects of the COVID-19 crisis, so all of the masks from the facility in question were utilized for local consumption. Production at the facility in question remained under Honeywell management’s control throughout the coronavirus outbreak.”
3M did not respond to requests for comment Sunday, but in a statement issued last week, noted that it had just “secured approval from China to export to the U.S. 10 million N95 respirators manufactured by 3M in China.”
Steven Bannon, a former White House chief strategist under Trump and the host of the podcast “War Room: Pandemic,” said the behavior of the Chinese government was equivalent to a “biological Chernobyl.”
“The same people that understood this virus had human-to-human transmission and was going to be a pandemic were at the same time vacuuming up every piece of PPE from the US, Brazil and Europe,” said Bannon, who formerly lived in Shanghai when he ran on an online gaming company.
“They’re at war with the West. This story shows the world what Chinese citizens are dealing with,” he said.
The Chinese Embassy in Washington, DC, didn’t respond to a request for comment.
https://nypost.com/2020/04/05/trump-admin-weighs-legal-action-over-alleged-chinese-hoarding-of-ppe/
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QUAND TRUMP POINTE LA CHINE, DEVINEZ QUI L’IDIOT REGARDE ? (Critiquer Trump est trop facile et permet de continuer à ignorer les tabous et faux-semblants de l’ordre international sur lesquels brutalement celui-ci met le doigt)
« Il serait trop simple de se focaliser sur la méthode sans s’interroger sur le fond de la critique trumpienne. Comme souvent, celui-ci met le doigt brutalement sur des tabous et faux-semblants de l’ordre international. L’OMS n’a pas été exemplaire dans sa gestion de crise. Dans les premières semaines de l’épidémie, l’organisation a répété sans distance les éléments de langage de Beijing. Ainsi le 14 janvier, dans un tweet, l’OMS affirme «qu’il n’existe aucune preuve claire de transmission d’homme à homme». Le Dr Tedros a loué la réponse chinoise offrant, selon lui, «un nouveau standard» dans la lutte contre les épidémies, malgré l’opacité et les mensonges du régime chinois. Certes, les organisations internationales doivent, par définition, trouver un équilibre entre les intérêts des États qui les composent, en particulier les grandes puissances, mais la proximité entre la propagande chinoise et le langage officiel de l’organisation mérite débat. (…) critiquer la réponse de Trump est insuffisant et facile sans une réflexion exigeante sur la réforme de l’OMS et plus généralement des organisations internationales. Une fois le pic de la crise sanitaire passée, il faudra étudier, de façon indépendante, la performance de l’OMS et en tirer les conclusions. Les Européens peuvent jouer un rôle d’équilibre pour promouvoir cet effort de réforme. (…) Il existe un risque de fragmentation de l’ordre international. La crise du Coronavirus va accélérer des tensions et tendances préexistantes. Et la rivalité stratégique sino-américaine n’y échappera pas. C’est d’ailleurs l’un des rares sujets d’accord bipartisan à Washington. À la Conférence de Sécurité de Munich en février par exemple, la présidente de la Chambre de Représentants Nancy Pelosi, opposante démocrate à Trump, responsable de la procédure d’impeachment contre lui, mettait en garde les Européens contre l’adoption de la technologie 5G de l’opérateur chinois Huawei, répétant ainsi les mises en garde de l’administration républicaine. Les partisans d’un “découplage” économique avec la Chine sont renforcés dans l’administration tandis que certains suggèrent la mise en place d’organisations internationales alternatives composées des États-Unis et de leurs alliés, ou leur contournement pur et simple avec des arrangements ad hoc (ce qui est déjà le cas dans le domaine commercial). La Chine quant à elle, avec la mise en place de la Route de la Soie ou de la Banque Asiatique de Développement, crée ses propres rapports de dépendance avec ses partenaires, en dehors des institutions post 1945. (…) L’option d’un découplage sino-américain est peu réaliste au vu des interdépendances entre les deux pays, mais le coronavirus va renforcer les appels, à gauche comme à droite, à un reflux de la globalisation, déjà alimentés par les effets de la désindustrialisation de la Rust Belt du nord des États-Unis et l’exigence de la lutte contre le changement climatique. Par ailleurs, en Europe comme aux États-Unis, il faut s’attendre à une définition plus large de la souveraineté et de la sécurité nationale qui influera la sécurité alimentaire, les approvisionnements médicaux, la recherche scientifique, le digital, le rapatriement de certaines chaînes de productions. Réconcilier cette volonté de souveraineté avec l’exigence de coopération globale sera une tâche ardue pour les dirigeants au lendemain de la crise. »
Benjamin Haddad
https://www.lefigaro.fr/vox/monde/oms-trump-met-le-doigt-brutalement-sur-les-tabous-de-l-ordre-international-20200417
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ACTIONS SPEAK LOUDER THAN WORDS (As Biden and Democrats keep radicalizing, guess who despite his many flaws has turned out to be the steady hand at the helm of America and the world ?)
« The press takes Trump literally, but not seriously; his supporters take him seriously, but not literally. »
Salena Zito
« We need to judge Trump by his actions and not his words. »
Daniel Larison
« Trump’s obstinacy seems to have made him less susceptible to the pressures that traditionally induce GOP presidents to capitulate. »
David Harsanyi
« Nearly four years later, Trump’s character still troubles and repels me. If anything, his egotism, disloyalty, and bombast exceed those vices when he was a mere candidate. But, to my unending surprise, he has governed as a resolute conservative. His policies in the areas of education, taxes, deregulation, and the environment have been bolder than Ronald Reagan’s. His judicial appointments are the best of the past century (thank you, Leonard Leo). His unprecedented assault on the administrative state proceeds apace, ignoring predictable howls from the Washington establishment. Even his foreign policy has been conservative: demanding that allies contribute their fair share, confronting China and Iran, and singularly supporting Israel. Ironically, as David Harsanyi notes, a potential character flaw actually works to our advantage: « Trump’s obstinacy seems to have made him less susceptible to the pressures that traditionally induce GOP presidents to capitulate. » (…) Of course, I also disagree with Trump: protectionism, an indifference to public debt, a hostility toward allies, a soft-spot for Turkish strongman Erdoğan, and those dangerous meetings with Kim Jong-un. His unrestrained behavior interferes with proper government functioning. The tweets are a protracted liability. Of course, I also disagree with Trump: protectionism, an indifference to public debt, a hostility toward allies, a soft-spot for Turkish strongman Erdoğan, and those dangerous meetings with Kim Jong-un. His unrestrained behavior interferes with proper government functioning. The tweets are a protracted liability. But, of course, we all disagree with some of what every president does; more surprisingly, I agree with about 80 percent of Trump’s actions, a higher number than any of his predecessors’, going back to Lyndon Johnson. I have come to understand the wisdom in Salena Zito’s September 2016 witticism about Trump that « the press takes him literally, but not seriously; his supporters take him seriously, but not literally. » Or, as Daniel Larison notes, « We need to judge Trump by his actions and not his words. » I also agree with James Woolsey that Trump would be a much better prime minister than president. Slowly but inexorably over the past three years, my approval of the policies has outbalanced my distaste for the person. Finally, knowing that Joe Biden will represent the radicalized Democrats in November, I conclude that I will do my small part to help Trump get re-elected by writing, giving, and voting. I reached this conclusion reluctantly but unhesitatingly. Emotionally, esthetically, and intellectually, I would prefer to keep my distance from Trump and inhabit a neutral space between the parties, as in 2016. But I will vote for him as the politician who represents my conservative views. I urge other reluctant conservatives to do the same. »
Daniel Pipes
If I don’t say so myself, my #NeverTrump bona fides are pretty impressive. Trump and Cruz: guess which one I worked for. I watched in dismay as I helped the Ted Cruz presidential campaign, seeing Republican primary voters select Donald Trump out of a field of 16 viable candidates and make him president-elect. I signed an open letter committing to « working energetically to prevent the election of someone so utterly unfitted » to the presidency and wrote many articles lambasting Trump. I left the Republican party on his nomination and voted for Libertarian Gary Johnson in the general election. After the election, I hoped for Trump’s impeachment and President Mike Pence.
In 2016, two matters primarily worried me about Donald Trump: his character and his policies.
The character issue included unethical business practices (Trump University) , egotism (« I’m really rich »), litigiousness (3,500 lawsuits, or one every four days), bigotry (against Judge Curiel), and vulgarity (« Grab ’em by the p**sy »). His policies worried me even more: I saw unbridled impulsiveness and worried about neo-fascist tendencies (thus my nickname for him, Trumpolini). His 2004 statement, « I probably identify more as Democrat » suggested he would triangulate between Democrats and Republicans, going off in his own populist direction.
Nearly four years later, Trump’s character still troubles and repels me. If anything, his egotism, disloyalty, and bombast exceed those vices when he was a mere candidate.
But, to my unending surprise, he has governed as a resolute conservative. His policies in the areas of education, taxes, deregulation, and the environment have been bolder than Ronald Reagan’s. His judicial appointments are the best of the past century (thank you, Leonard Leo). His unprecedented assault on the administrative state proceeds apace, ignoring predictable howls from the Washington establishment. Even his foreign policy has been conservative: demanding that allies contribute their fair share, confronting China and Iran, and singularly supporting Israel. Ironically, as David Harsanyi notes, a potential character flaw actually works to our advantage: « Trump’s obstinacy seems to have made him less susceptible to the pressures that traditionally induce GOP presidents to capitulate. »
(Economic performance drives many voters to support or oppose a sitting president, but not me. Partly, because the president has only limited control; partly, because it’s a transient issue that matters much less than long-term policies.)
Of course, I also disagree with Trump: protectionism, an indifference to public debt, a hostility toward allies, a soft-spot for Turkish strongman Erdoğan, and those dangerous meetings with Kim Jong-un. His unrestrained behavior interferes with proper government functioning. The tweets are a protracted liability.
But, of course, we all disagree with some of what every president does; more surprisingly, I agree with about 80 percent of Trump’s actions, a higher number than any of his predecessors’, going back to Lyndon Johnson.
I have come to understand the wisdom in Salena Zito’s September 2016 witticism about Trump that « the press takes him literally, but not seriously; his supporters take him seriously, but not literally. » Or, as Daniel Larison notes, « We need to judge Trump by his actions and not his words. » I also agree with James Woolsey that Trump would be a much better prime minister than president.
Slowly but inexorably over the past three years, my approval of the policies has outbalanced my distaste for the person. Finally, knowing that Joe Biden will represent the radicalized Democrats in November, I conclude that I will do my small part to help Trump get re-elected by writing, giving, and voting.
I reached this conclusion reluctantly but unhesitatingly. Emotionally, esthetically, and intellectually, I would prefer to keep my distance from Trump and inhabit a neutral space between the parties, as in 2016. But I will vote for him as the politician who represents my conservative views. I urge other reluctant conservatives to do the same.
June 4, 2020 addendum: Judging by the responses to this article, I should have made clear one point that I simply assumed:
I once worried about Trump’s « neo-fascist tendencies. » Here is a paragraph I wrote in October 2016:
Expect him to treat the U.S. government as his personal property, as a grander version of the Trump Organization. He will disdain precedent and customs while challenging laws and authority. He will treat senators, justices, generals, and governors as personal staff who must fulfill his wishes – or else. He will challenge the separation of powers as never before.
But, in fact, Trump has taken no steps toward strongman rule nor transgressed the Constitution. I am especially impressed of late how, given the opportunity that COVID-19 offers for a power-grab, he has left the key decisions to the governors. He might fume about the limitations on his power but he has respected them as much as, say, Barack Obama did.
Therefore, this concern has vanished.
David Pipes
https://www.newsweek.com/reluctant-unhesitating-vote-donald-trump-opinion-1508271
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HOW TRUMP SAVED US FROM BOLTON (Talk about a backhanded way to help Trump’s reelection when his adviser-turned-archenemy comes up with a book that actually showcases not only Trump’s brilliance but… his extreme moderation in foreign policy !)
“It’s not clear to me that something equivalent to two more Iraq Wars would be better for the country. Here’s a man that makes Trump’s bellicose foreign policy look good. You don’t have to say Trump has done well to say America would be in a worse place if he listened to Bolton. »
Joshua Shifrinson (Boston University)
“In the places where those two men parted, it seems clear to me that Trump got it right. A lot of the ideas that [Bolton] holds have more currency in Washington than you would hope. Are the random [?] outbursts of an ill-informed, rich 70-plus-year-old white guy better than the views of the Republican establishment to which Bolton belongs? The answer is yes.”
Justin Logan (Catholic University)
“If that Iran attack had gone ahead, Trump would deservedly have shouldered the blame. But Trump deserves very little credit for pulling back after having dismantled so many off-ramps and gotten himself to the brink in the first place. Bolton’s approach to the world is a pure distillation of many of the worst impulses of the US foreign policy tradition: belligerence, overconfidence, greed, prejudice masquerading as sophistication. »
Heather Hurlburt (New America)
« On all these issues, but particularly missile defense, this can be solved but it’s important for him to give me space. (…) This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility. »
Barack Obama (March 2012)
« I explained why and how a preemptive strike against North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic-missile programs would work; how we could use massive conventional bombs against Pyongyang’s artillery north of the [Demilitarized Zone], which threatened Seoul, thereby reducing casualties dramatically; and why the United States was rapidly approaching a binary choice, assuming China didn’t act dramatically, of either leaving the North with nuclear weapons or using military force. The only other alternatives were seeking reunification of the Peninsula under South Korea or regime change in the North. »
John Bolton
“‘Too many body bags,’ said Trump, which he was not willing to risk for an unmanned drone — ‘Not proportionate,’ he said again. In my government experience, this was the most irrational thing I ever witnessed any President do. Trump had behaved bizarrely.”
John Bolton
« Do you want to do something historic? … We’re out. We’re not going to fight someone they’re paying. »
President Trump
“I’m the one that tempers him. That’s okay. I have different sides. I have John Bolton and other people that are a little more dovish than him.”
President Trump
After reading former National Security Adviser John Bolton’s tell-all book, it becomes exceedingly clear that President Donald Trump’s foreign policy is terrible — but Bolton’s is much, much worse.
Anyone who reads the 500-plus-page book will find their suspicions were correct: Trump’s approach to the world truly is that shambolic and dangerous. But there’s a twist: The author inadvertently offers readers hope that there’s been a major improvement — because the author himself is no longer in the White House.
By his own recounting, Bolton urged Trump to shy away from diplomacy and seek hardline positions against adversarial countries, namely in North Korea, Iran, and Venezuela. In one particularly disturbing passage, Bolton says it was “irrational” for Trump not to conduct an attack on Iran that could have led to tens to hundreds of civilian casualties, after it downed an unmanned American surveillance drone.
Had Trump taken Bolton’s advice more often, then, the US would be engaged in multiple conflicts across the globe. “It’s not clear to me that something equivalent to two more Iraq Wars would be better for the country,” Joshua Shifrinson, a US foreign policy expert at Boston University, said.
“Here’s a man that makes Trump’s bellicose foreign policy look good,” he added of Bolton.
Trump, the book makes clear, was the reason Bolton’s most aggressive plans were foiled. As scenes inside the West Wing show, it was because Trump had created a chaotic national security process in which little to nothing could get done. “What happened on one day on a particular issue often had little resemblance to what happened the next day, or the day after,” Bolton wrote. “Few seemed to realize it, care about it, or have any interest in fixing it.”
Trump appointed Bolton in April 2018 after watching his Fox News appearances. An infamous archnationalist hawk, Bolton believes firmly in exercising unilateral American power around the world and cutting ties to international institutions. Trump, Bolton alleges, used American power less in any ideological sense and more to boost his reelection prospects, even if that came at the expense of defending human rights abroad.
Still, Bolton did leave a mark. During his 17-month tenure, Bolton offered Trump advice to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal “as long as Iran’s current regime remained” and seek regime change in Venezuela — two policies that received condemnation across the ideological spectrum [?].
In many instances, Bolton and Trump did have the same views. They both called for increased defense spending at the expense of bolstering diplomatic power; maximized sanctions to bend adversaries to America’s will, a play that has yet to work everywhere they tried it; and curbed the influence of international institutions, harming America’s global reputation the process.
But the book’s true virtue is its surprising, unmistakable conclusion: Given the choice between having Trump or Bolton leading US foreign policy, Trump is clearly the better option.
Bolton tells us Trump is a bad foreign policy president
Before understanding just how bad Bolton’s foreign policy is, it’s worth taking a moment to see Trump’s worldview through the aide’s eyes.
On the whole, the critiques of Trump aren’t new, but they now carry more weight because Bolton — a top person by Trump’s side during high-level foreign policy discussions and summits — made them. It’s no surprise the White House now claims Bolton wasn’t “in the room” as often he says. But such a defense rings hollow, because as national security adviser he had his hands on the levers of power like few other officials in the administration.
Which is why it’s worth taking Bolton’s three main Trump critiques seriously.
First, that Trump has no real intellectual or ideological heft to his foreign policy. “His thinking was like an archipelago of dots,” Bolton wrote, “leaving the rest of us to discern — or create — policy.” He mostly liked that, though, because it gave him more room to maneuver within the administration. But he also found it frustrating, claiming the most important rift in US foreign policy is “the split between Trump and Trump.”
Second, that Trump is historically unfit and unprepared to lead America in the world. Trump often went into tough negotiations with foreign leaders with minimal understanding of the stakes, making his top aides fearful of what he would do, say, or concede. Such concerns were justified, especially when Trump signed a toothless, vague agreement with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Singapore or sided with Russian President Vladimir Putin over the US intelligence community on election interference.
In the North Korean case, per Bolton, Trump mainly wanted a grand spectacle of the first-ever meeting between the sitting leaders of Washington and Pyongyang. “He was prepared to sign a substance-free communiqué, have his press conference to declare victory, and then get out of town,” Bolton said the president told him.
Add to that Trump’s impulsiveness. One of the most shocking scenes in the book involves the president casually advocating for withdrawing the US from NATO solely to make a splash. Before the alliance’s 2018 summit, Trump rallied his aides: “‘Do you want to do something historic? … We’re out. We’re not going to fight someone they’re paying,’” referencing how Europeans trade and do business with neighboring Russia.
When Trump was actually in the meeting shortly afterward, he turned to Bolton and asked, “Are we going to do it?” Bolton talked him down from doing so, saying, “Go up to the line, but don’t cross it.” Trump ultimately obliged, but it goes to show just how close the US really came to leaving the political-military alliance America has benefited from for decades.
Third, and perhaps most importantly, Trump used his position atop the American government solely for his own purposes. One of the newsiest items in the book details how Trump turned a trade negotiation with Chinese President Xi Jinping into a discussion about the 2020 election:
He then, stunningly, turned the conversation to the coming US presidential election, alluding to China’s economic capability to affect the ongoing campaigns, pleading with Xi to ensure he’d win. He stressed the importance of farmers, and increased Chinese purchases of soybeans and wheat in the electoral outcome. I would print Trump’s exact words, but the government’s prepublication review process has decided otherwise.
Importantly, Trump and US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, who was in the room, deny that this happened. But it’s worth noting Trump already openly asked China for reelection support when he encouraged Beijing to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden.
These are damning accounts, and should provide even more pause about the state of American foreign policy. In a Sunday interview with ABC News, Bolton added there should also be doubt about the state of Trump’s presidency. “I don’t think he’s fit for office,” he told Martha Raddatz. “I don’t think he has the competence to carry out the job.”
Bolton, in other words, wants to leave readers with the sense Trump is a very bad president with very bad habits and very bad ideas. He succeeds in doing that, but Bolton also succeeds in showing he has some very bad ideas of his own.
Trump is right: American foreign policy would be worse if Bolton had his way
Trump is prone to exaggeration and lying, which is why it’s easy to dismiss his counterpunches that Bolton, left to his own devices, would have pushed the US into new wars.
Ironically, the person who makes the best case for Trump’s argument against John Bolton is John Bolton himself. The most surprising thing about Bolton’s book is how nonchalant he is about advocating war and denigrating diplomacy — and how he tried to impose that mindset on the president.
Even before Bolton became national security adviser, Trump sought his counsel on stemming North Korea’s nuclear program. Bolton describes how he detailed his view that a military attack would be the best course of action:
I explained why and how a preemptive strike against North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic-missile programs would work; how we could use massive conventional bombs against Pyongyang’s artillery north of the [Demilitarized Zone], which threatened Seoul, thereby reducing casualties dramatically; and why the United States was rapidly approaching a binary choice, assuming China didn’t act dramatically, of either leaving the North with nuclear weapons or using military force. The only other alternatives were seeking reunification of the Peninsula under South Korea or regime change in the North.
As national security adviser, Bolton worked fiercely inside the bureaucracy to stop Trump’s diplomatic effort with North Korea’s Kim. Not because of its (many) flaws, but because he inherently didn’t believe in diplomacy and would have preferred to launch a preventive attack that some regional experts say would have led to all-out war.
Trump also showed an inclination to open diplomatic channels with Iran, according to Bolton. “Trump mused that at some point he should meet with Iranian President [Hassan] Rouhani,” the former adviser wrote about what the president said during a meeting with his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron. This was a bridge too far for Bolton, who later typed up a two-sentence resignation letter if Trump ever met with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif.
Trump considered holding a meeting not only because he thought he could lower tensions, but also because he wanted a new, better Iran nuclear deal. Unsurprisingly, Bolton lobbied against such a policy in a Pentagon meeting:
I argued again that … there would be no “new” Iran deal and no “deterrence” established as long as Iran’s current regime remained. You could like it or not, but basing a policy on some other reality would not get us to any “end state” we sought.
Key in that passage is “as long as the current regime remained.” Before reentering government, Bolton consistently said he wanted regime change in Iran, and it appeared he held on to that belief as national security adviser. If Trump didn’t have some innate inclination to sign a new accord with Tehran, Bolton’s sentiments may have carried more weight.
Which may help explain why he was so angry Trump didn’t attack Iran last summer after the regime shot down a US surveillance drone. Trump at the last minute called off planned strikes on Iranian sites because he felt it wasn’t “proportionate.”
“‘Too many body bags,’ said Trump,” according to Bolton, “which he was not willing to risk for an unmanned drone — ‘Not proportionate,’ he said again.” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Bolton tried to change Trump’s mind to no avail.
Bolton clearly is still furious. “In my government experience, this was the most irrational thing I ever witnessed any President do,” he wrote. “Trump had behaved bizarrely.”
Let that sink in for a moment. The most irrational thing Bolton says he ever saw a president do wasn’t, for example, invade Iraq over weapons of mass destruction it didn’t have (Bolton was in the State Department at the time as the undersecretary of arms control and international security). No, he saves that designation for Trump’s decision not to put Iranian lives in danger over a downed pilotless aircraft.
Granted, striking Iranian military sites may not have directly led to an all-out fight, but it certainly would’ve made one more likely. Trump clearly saw that danger; Bolton didn’t. “In the places where those two men parted, it seems clear to me that Trump got it right,” said Justin Logan, a US foreign policy expert at Catholic University.
Of course, Bolton does have a bit more leeway to advocate for conflict. At the end of the day, Trump’s name would be the one tethered throughout history to a war — not Bolton’s.
“If that Iran attack had gone ahead, Trump would deservedly have shouldered the blame,” Heather Hurlburt, a US foreign policy expert at the New America think tank, told me. But, she noted, “Trump deserves very little credit for pulling back after having dismantled so many off-ramps and gotten himself to the brink in the first place.”
Still, what these episodes — and Bolton’s book writ large — make clear is that despite his predilection for very publicly ramping up tensions with other countries, Trump isn’t the one most hungry for armed conflict in his White House. Veterans of Washington’s foreign policy world are.
That’s a troubling insight.
Bolton’s book highlights the one big upside of Trump’s foreign policy
Trump is a national security hawk. He has increased US bombing rates around the world and killed top American adversaries, most famously Iran’s Qassem Soleimani in January. [?] But his greatest virtue as a foreign policy leader is his reticence to actually start a new war, his many threatening boasts notwithstanding.
“I disagreed strongly with many of his suggestions, as did others in the Administration,” Trump tweeted last September when announcing Bolton’s ouster. That echoed comments he’d said in May 2019 when he told reporters, “I’m the one that tempers him. That’s okay. I have different sides. I have John Bolton and other people that are a little more dovish than him.”
Bolton, like other traditional foreign policy thinkers, has relied far too often on American military might, an argument that even former secretaries of defense now make. “Bolton’s approach to the world is a pure distillation of many of the worst impulses of the US foreign policy tradition: belligerence, overconfidence, greed, prejudice masquerading as sophistication,” Hurlburt said.
In the past, presidents initially devoid of hawkish instincts — like George W. Bush — got convinced to launch invasions because of the hawkish advisers around them. Trump similarly surrounded himself with Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, but he has time after time stopped short of starting wars they wanted to wage.
And there will be future presidents who follow those impulses, with or without Bolton in the White House. Think, for instance, of a President Tom Cotton. If he were in charge now, his policies toward North Korea and Iran, among others, may have followed the Bolton playbook. “A lot of the ideas that [Bolton] holds have more currency in Washington than you would hope,” said Logan.
Make no mistake: War has a place in US foreign policy, and for good reason. It’s an essential element of statecraft, and a leader shouldn’t shy away from it when — and only when — absolutely necessary. But going to war for foolish reasons is the cardinal sin of foreign policy, and Bolton wanted to commit it all the time.
That Trump patently refused to consider all-out war a viable option when war wasn’t necessary, whereas Bolton clearly did, is an indictment of the foreign policy tradition the former national security adviser embodies. “Are the random outbursts of an ill-informed, rich 70-plus-year-old white guy better than the views of the Republican establishment to which Bolton belongs?” asks Logan. “The answer is yes.”
Again, it’s not to say Trump is a good foreign policy president — he’s far from that. But the book shows there are worse options out there. “You don’t have to say Trump has done well to say America would be in a worse place if he listened to Bolton,” Boston University’s Shifrinson said.
https://www.vox.com/2020/6/24/21300291/john-bolton-book-trump-review-room-foreign-policy
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WHAT DEAL OF THE CENTURY ? (Guess who singlehandedly overturned 50-plus years of counter-productive appeasement and incentivization of Palestinian terror and rejectionism ?)
The impending peace agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates is more than just a stunning diplomatic breakthrough. It represents a fundamental shift in the paradigm of peace-making.
For more than 50 years, that paradigm has been based on seemingly unassailable assumptions. The first of these was that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was the core dispute in the Middle East. Resolve it, and peace would reign throughout the region. The premise was largely dispelled by the Arab Spring of 2011 and the subsequent civil wars in Syria, Libya, Iraq, and Yemen. Still, a large body of decision-makers, especially from Europe and the United States, continued to regard a solution to Israel-Palestine as the panacea for many, if not most, of the Middle East’s ills. Then-secretary of state John Kerry’s intense shuttle diplomacy, which paralleled the massacre of half a million Syrians in 2012-14, proceeded precisely on this assumption.
The next assumption was that core of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was settlement-building in Judea/Samaria, East Jerusalem, and Gaza. Freeze it and the dispute would be easily mediated. This, theory, too, collapsed in the face of facts. Israel withdrew from Gaza, uprooting 21 settlements, in 2005, and then froze settlements for much of 2009-10. The conflict nevertheless continued and even worsened, but that did not prevent foreign policymakers from persisting in the belief that peace is incompatible with settlements.
And, in addition to ceasing construction in the territories, Israel was expected to give virtually all of them up. This was the third assumption — that peace with the Arab world could only be purchased with Israeli concessions of land. This belief is as old as Israel itself. The first Anglo-American peace plans — Alpha and Gamma — were predicated on Israeli concessions in the Negev and elsewhere. After 1967, the principle applied to areas captured by Israel in the Six Day War and, after the return of Sinai to Egypt in 1982, to Judea, Samaria, and Gaza. The same secretary of state Kerry repeatedly warned Israel that failure to forfeit those areas would result in its total international isolation.
Yet another assumption held that “everyone knows what the final agreement looks like.” With minor modifications and territorial swaps, this meant that a Palestinian state would be created along the pre-1967 lines with a capital in East Jerusalem. The Palestinians would give up the so-called right of return for Palestinian refugees, agree to end the conflict with Israel and to cease all further claims, and to accept the formula of “two states for two peoples.” Israel, in turn, would remove dozens of settlements, redivide its capital, and outsource West Bank security either to the Palestinians or some international source. Of all the assumptions, this was the most divorced from reality. Not a single aspect of it was achievable. In fact, no one knew what final agreement looked like.
Finally, successive peace-makers assumed that the Palestinians, as the weaker party, had to be rewarded, especially when they left the negotiating table. The Palestinian Authority could promote terror and reject far-reaching peace plans and in return receive major increments of aid, as well as increased international recognition. Not surprisingly, this reinforcing behavior merely incentivized the Palestinians to ramp up their support for terror and to keep rejecting peace.
But now comes the Israel-UAE agreement and overturns each of these assumptions. It shows that resolving the Israel-Palestinian conflict is nowhere near as important as countering the Iranian threat and stimulating Middle East development. It proves that, in order to achieve peace with a powerful Arab state, Israel does not have to uproot a single settlement or withdraw from a meter of land. It opens the way to alternative approaches to addressing the dispute, one that is not dependent on Israelis and Palestinians offering concessions that neither can ever make. And the agreement punishes, rather than rewards, the Palestinians for leaving the table. It will not be surprising if, in the coming weeks, the Palestinian Authority begins to intimate its willingness to return.
For more than half of a century, the paradigm of Middle East peace-making has proven highly resistant to change. Yet even the fiercest advocates of that belief-system must recognize the seismic shift that will take place once the UAE-Israel treaty is signed. Some will no doubt insist on adhering to disproven assumptions. Those who care about peace will abandon them.
Michael Oren
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/upending-the-rules-about-peace-in-the-middle-east/
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WHAT TRUMP MASTER STROKE ? (No peace, no land: Guess who in a single master stroke just unblocked 50-plus years of political impasse by finally punishing Palestinians for their systematic rejectionism, thus drastically reducing their leverage and ability to cause trouble and forcing them to finally realize they must internalize that times have changed ?)
According to Oren, the peace deal upended two core beliefs about the Israel-Arab conflict. The first is Land for Peace. The UAE deal is a peace deal that has no expectation that land will ever be exchanged. This is important, because it breaks expectations. This is why the Palestinian Arabs are so angry about the deal. The second assumption that has been overturned is that the “Palestinian” Israeli conflict is the core conflict where all other conflicts are rooted in. By making peace with Israel first, before any final agreement between the Palestinian Authority and Israel was reached, the UAE has essentially shredded the PA’s biggest leverage against Israel. As business and relations grow between the UAE and Israel, the PA will have less and less ability to stir up trouble…
https://israelunwired.com/the-palestinian-authority-must-internalize-that-times-have-changed/
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THERE WILL BE NO PEACE (Guess why there couldn’t be any peace between Israel and the Arab world under Obama and Kerry ?)
« There will be no separate peace between Israel and the Arab world. I want to make that very clear with all of you. I’ve heard several prominent politicians in Israel sometimes saying, ‘Well, the Arab world is in a different place now. We just have to reach out to them. We can work some things with the Arab world and we’ll deal with the Palestinians.’ No. No, no, and no. I can tell you that, reaffirmed within the last week because I’ve talked to the leaders of the Arab community, there will be no advanced and separate peace with the Arab world without the Palestinian process and Palestinian peace. Everybody needs to understand that. That is a hard reality. »
John Kerry
IL N’Y AURA PAS DE PAIX (Devinez pourquoi il ne pouvait pas y avoir de paix entre Israël et le Monde arabe sous Obama et Kerry ?)
« Il n’y aura pas de paix séparée entre Israël et le monde arabe. Je veux que cela soit très clair avec vous tous. J’ai entendu plusieurs politiciens de premier plan en Israël dire parfois: ‘Eh bien, le monde arabe est dans un endroit différent maintenant Nous devons juste leur tendre la main. Nous pouvons travailler certaines choses avec le monde arabe et nous traiterons avec les Palestiniens. Non, non et non. Je peux vous dire que, comme l’ont confirmé les conversations que j’ai eues avec des dirigeants de la communauté arabe la semaine dernière, il n’y aura pas de paix avancée et séparée avec le monde arabe sans le processus palestinien et la Paix palestinienne. Tout le monde doit comprendre cela. C’est une dure réalité. »
John Kerry
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WHY TRUMP HAD TO BE TAKEN OUT (How humiliating when it turns out Trump not only brought more peace to the Middle East in four years than all of his predecessors combined in forty, but he even made it look easy !)
« There will be no separate peace between Israel and the Arab world. I want to make that very clear with all of you. I’ve heard several prominent politicians in Israel sometimes saying, ‘Well, the Arab world is a different place now. We just have to reach out to them. We can work some things with the Arab world and we’ll deal with the Palestinians.’ No. No, no, no and no. …There will be no advanced and separate peace with the Arab world without the Palestinian process and Palestinian peace. Everybody needs to understand that. That is a hard reality. »
John Kerry (2016)
For 72 years, U.S. presidents sought to achieve peace between Israel and the Arab world. For 72 years, they largely failed. What for so long eluded presidents from Dwight D. Eisenhower to Barack Obama seems to have come effortlessly to President Donald Trump. In the space of just four months, together with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump has achieved four peace deals between Israel and Arab states—twice the number achieved by all his predecessors combined. Last Thursday, Trump announced Morocco has joined the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain and Sudan in the Abraham Accords normalization agreements with Israel. Three or four more Arab states are likely to join the circle of peace in Trump’s final weeks in office.
Not only has Trump brought more peace to the Middle East, more comprehensively and faster than all of his predecessors combined, but he made it look easy. Israel’s ties with its Abraham Accords partners are expanding massively by the day. Tourists from the UAE are streaming into the country. And with one in seven Israeli Jews descended from the Moroccan diaspora, the potential for business and cultural ties between Israel and Morocco is almost limitless.
Trump’s sundry Middle East peace deals are humiliating for his predecessors. Not only did they fail where Trump has succeeded, but they insisted that his achievements were impossible.
For instance, John Kerry, who as Barack Obama’s secretary of state oversaw the administration’s failed Middle East peace efforts, insisted back in 2016: « There will be no separate peace between Israel and the Arab world. »
Speaking at the Brookings Institution, Kerry continued emphatically:
« I want to make that very clear with all of you. I’ve heard several prominent politicians in Israel sometimes saying, ‘Well, the Arab world is a different place now. We just have to reach out to them. We can work some things with the Arab world and we’ll deal with the Palestinians.’ No. No, no, no and no. …There will be no advanced and separate peace with the Arab world without the Palestinian process and Palestinian peace. Everybody needs to understand that. That is a hard reality. »
The « several prominent politicians in Israel » certainly included Netanyahu. It was during the Obama administration that Netanyahu began developing close strategic ties with a number of Arab states—particularly Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. The sides came together due to mutual distress over the negative impact of Obama’s Middle East policies.
What was it about Obama’s policies that brought them together?
From the administration of Harry S. Truman onward, specific ideological articles of faith dictated U.S. policy on the Arab-Israeli conflict. Most importantly, the U.S. believed that Arab states would make peace with Israel only in exchange for Israeli concessions of land. Beginning with the Jimmy Carter administration, the « experts » embraced the theory that Israel had to give up land to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) as a precondition to any broader Arab acceptance of Israel.
A second pillar of U.S. policy toward the Middle East was forged shortly after Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution. From then on, all U.S. presidents sought to cut a deal with the Iranian regime, believing that the proper mix of carrots and sticks would convince the greatest state sponsor of terrorism to bury its hatchet against the U.S. Here too, the « expert » catechisms held sway.
What distinguished Barack Obama from all of his predecessors was his doggedness in wedding these dogmas into a collective ideology of American guilt. On the Palestinians, Obama viewed Israel as singularly culpable for a failed peace process that had seen the Palestinians hold fast to terrorism and repeatedly reject Israeli offers of Palestinian statehood. He was unmoved by the fact that Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip radicalized the Palestinians, instead of moderating them. As far as Obama was concerned, the U.S. had failed to bring peace because it hadn’t brought sufficient pressure on Israel to make it buckle.
As for Iran, while Obama’s predecessors were willing to disregard some U.S. interests to cut a deal with the mullahs, no one had entirely ignored reality. As Iran maintained its devotion to terror, pursued nuclear weapons and targeted the U.S. and its interests, Obama’s predecessors were thus forced to abandon their hopes for an accord.
Unlike them, Obama was committed to the belief that Iran’s animosity and hostile actions were rooted in past American bullying. Nothing could dissuade him from pursuing a nuclear accord with Tehran. Over two years of nuclear negotiations, Obama erased every U.S. redline, from barring Iran from enriching uranium to abiding by U.S. law that prohibited the transfer of funds to state sponsors of terrorism.
Having given up every condition, in July 2015 Obama and Kerry concluded a nuclear deal that guaranteed Iran would get atomic bombs within a decade and enriched the terror regime to the tune of $150 billion in sanctions relief—all while guaranteeing Iran a free hand in operating terrorist organizations like Hezbollah and expanding into neighboring states like Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen.
And then Trump was elected.
If Obama distinguished himself from his predecessors with his ideological zeal, Trump distinguished himself with his elevation of facts over ideology. Trump had a healthy disdain for expert dogmas that had repeatedly been proven false. Trump also believed the U.S. should side with its allies against its enemies, rather than court U.S. enemies at the expense of its allies.
When Trump entered office, he was confronted with the results of Obama’s ideologically rigid policies. A massively empowered Iran was waging war on U.S. allies through its various proxies across Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Gaza and Yemen, expanding its operations in Africa and Latin America, and cheating on the nuclear deal. The Islamic State, for its part, was in control of wide swaths of territory in Syria and Iraq.
Facing these forces of instability and war were the U.S. allies Obama had spurned—Israel, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the UAE, Morocco and others. To relieve the pressure and dangers to their national security interests wrought by Obama’s policies, these allies had quietly developed cooperative security ties. It was these ties that Kerry derisively dismissed when he insisted Arabs wouldn’t live in peace with Israel unless Israel first surrendered to the PLO.
Had Trump been less deferential to reality, he might have followed Kerry’s lead and ignored the ties that had grown between Israel and the moderate Sunni states, insisting instead that the Palestinians must immediately be mollycoddled. But Trump accepted reality as the basis for his Middle East policies, and he listened to America’s allies.
These allies buoyed Trump’s determination to make good on his campaign promise to abandon Obama’s nuclear deal and confront Iran’s nuclear brinksmanship and aggression—despite « expert » opinion counseling continued appeasement. Trump’s willingness to confront Iran and stand with America’s allies gained him an enormous amount of credibility with moderate Arab actors across the region. The same governments threatened by Obama’s embrace of Iran were empowered by Trump’s policies of confrontation with the ayatollahs. His unblinking support for Israel gave the Arab states confidence that Trump would stand with them, as well. These actions directly set the stage for the Abraham Accords, which took the working relations Israel and the moderate Sunnis had already forged and brought them to the level of open and formal ties.
Critics of the Accords argue that Trump’s peacemaking is little more than bribery. In exchange for peace with Israel, the UAE is receiving F-35 fighter jets. Morocco is receiving U.S. recognition of its sovereignty over Western Sahara, as well as advanced drones. Sudan is being removed from the list of state sponsors of terror. Likewise, Trump’s earlier recognition of Israel’s sovereignty over Jerusalem and the Golan Heights were often ridiculed as « gifts » to Israel that brought no tangible benefit to America.
What these criticisms fail to recognize is that these « payoffs » and « gifts » are actually tools for further regional stabilization and peace. America’s longstanding refusal to recognize Israel’s capital and its sovereignty over the Golan Heights kept open the question of America’s commitment to Israel’s long-term survival, and thereby empowered the forces of war and instability in the region.
By standing with U.S. allies, Trump empowered them and demoralized Iran and its proxies. U.S. allies, in turn, have been able to step up in their own defense against Iran and other shared threats, rather than leave the work to America. Trump found a way to expand American influence and security without exposing U.S. troops to danger or investing substantial American resources.
In regard to Morocco and the Western Sahara, for instance, in a September 2018 interview with this writer ahead of an official visit to Washington, Morocco’s Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita laid out the rationales for such recognition.
Iran was using its windfall profits from the nuclear deal to develop footholds along the Atlantic coast in Northern and Western Africa, he explained. Through Hezbollah, Iran was arming the Polisario Front in Western Sahara with advanced weapons. It was using Shia missionaries to radicalize Moroccan and West African youth. Hezbollah was laundering terror funds for Iran in West Africa, as well.
Bourita argued that U.S. recognition of Moroccan sovereignty in Western Sahara would stabilize the region and enable Morocco to work with its moderate neighbors to push out Iran and Hezbollah and end the war in Libya.
Recognition of Moroccan sovereignty wasn’t a payoff for peace. It was a means to ensure the success and expansion of peace throughout the region by strengthening America’s allies in their fight against America’s foes.
Now, as Iran gears up for a Biden presidency, it is again pushing forward aggressively, executing journalists and attacking Saudi oil tankers. Iran believes that without U.S. backing, Israel and the moderate Sunnis will stop confronting its various terror forces.
But this brings us to the most extraordinary aspect of the Moroccan-Israel accord, and what it tells us about the durability of Trump’s achievements. It was concluded after Trump’s political defeat. By supporting U.S. allies and opposing U.S. foes, Trump empowered the forces of peace and moderation in the Middle East to stop waiting for America, and to defend themselves and build peace together for their peoples and their region regardless of who is in the White House.
Caroline B. Glick
https://www.newsweek.com/trumps-legacy-peace-opinion-1554928
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POURQUOI IL FALLAIT EN FINIR AVEC TRUMP (Quelle humiliation quand on découvre que Trump a non seulement apporté plus de paix au Moyen-Orient en quatre ans que tous ses prédécesseurs réunis en quarante, mais en plus qu’il a fait ça les doigts dans le nez !)
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