Tag Archives: Russia

Why Did Impeachment Take So Long?

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Since Donald Trump first announced his candidacy for president, we have suffered through a litany of high crimes and misdemeanors that should have disqualified him from holding any public office…let alone the most powerful in the world.

We have heard him brag about sexually assaulting women.
We have heard him ridicule a reporter for his disability.
We have heard him disparage a Gold Star family.
We have heard him ask Russia to provide dirt on his political opponent.
We have heard him dishonor a military veteran and former POW for having the misfortune of being captured.
We have heard and read charges from more than 20 women who have claimed he raped or sexually assaulted them.
We have learned that he had extramarital affairs with two women and illegally paid them to be silent.
We have heard a woman accuse him of raping her when she was 13 years-old.
We have learned that he and his campaign clearly colluded with Russia during the 2016 election.
We have learned that he and his campaign had 272 contacts with Russian operatives.
We have learned that he attempted to suborn perjury of potential witnesses against him.
We have learned that he engaged in at least 10 clear instances of obstruction of justice.
We have witnessed his cloying deference to Vladimir Putin and numerous other dictators who are rivals to our nation and to democracy.
We have seen and heard his attacks on our most loyal allies.
We have seen him funnel millions of dollars into his own properties for his weekly golf trips and junkets.
We have seen international leaders pour money into his properties in clear violation of the Constitution’s emoluments clause.
We have seen his campaign refuse to reimburse numerous cities for expenses related to his campaign rallies.
We have seen him nominate numerous unqualified people to lifetime appointments as judges.
We have seen his administration separate hundreds of refugee children from their parents and cage hundreds more in squalid conditions.
We have seen an unending parade of sycophants appointed to his cabinet and government agencies.
We have heard him tell thousands of lies about anything and everything.
We have seen him attempt to bully and threaten any and all of his political opponents.
We have seen him unconstitutionally assert executive privilege to prevent the testimony of anyone associated with his administration to prevent legitimate congressional oversight of his actions.
We have seen his efforts to use campaign funds to buy the loyalty of his party’s congressmen and senators.
We have heard him openly ask China for dirt on a political opponent.
We have read the transcript of his phone call with the Ukrainian president during which he offered to release military aid in exchange for dirt on a political opponent.

All of these things would be considered reprehensible behavior for any public employee. And many of them rise to the level of high crimes and misdemeanors as envisioned by our nation’s Founding Fathers. But only the last – albeit a clear example of abuse of power – has led Congress to formally open an impeachment inquiry. Given all of the prior instances of criminal behavior, treachery and corruption, one has to ask: Why this? Why now?

Trump never should have been seated in the Oval Office in the first place. After all, it’s only because of the archaic Electoral College and outside interference that he was named the winner of the 2016 election. He should have been impeached and removed from office months ago. It says a lot about the state of our government that he hasn’t been.

It says even more about the putrid state of the Republican Party that continues to support him.

The Shutdown Is Not A Negotiating Tactic. It’s The Goal.

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It seems that most Americans and much of the media believe that the shutdown is the result of a failed negotiation between Trump and Congressional Democrats. But, in reality, the great dealmaker has not been negotiating in good faith all along. Indeed, his latest “proposal” was to offer Democrats things that he has previously taken away – DACA protections, immigration judges, etc.

Prior to this January, if Trump wanted $5.7 billion to fund his wall, all he had to do was ask. The Trump sycophants in the Republican-controlled House and Senate have given him everything he wanted. As evidenced by the Trump tax cuts, which have resulted in nearly $2 trillion in additional debt, they certainly weren’t worried about fiscal constraint. And, if Trump and the GOP really wanted to end the shutdown, they could do it today by voting on the budget bill that has already been passed by the House and was previously passed in the Senate by a unanimous voice vote. Or they could accede to the Democrats’ wishes and negotiate funding for increased border security where it would do the most good – at legal ports of entry. That, after all, is where the majority of illicit drugs enter our country in trucks, shipping crates and private vehicles. And they could use the funds to step up the monitoring of the people who enter our country legally and simply overstay their visas. Those people represent approximately half of undocumented immigrants. The Republicans’ failure to do so shows that the shutdown isn’t really interested in border security.

I believe the government shutdown is what Trump and his minions wanted all along.

For Republicans and this outlaw administration, the shutdown serves a variety of purposes. First, it is a distraction from the Russia investigation that is nearing completion. Second, it deprives the incoming Democratic House members the necessary funds to staff their offices, thus potentially impeding their investigations into Trump world. Third, it offers the bully in the White House an opportunity to frustrate and blame Speaker Pelosi. Fourth, in the twisted mind of Trump, the majority of government workers are Democrats, so it’s mostly Democrats who are suffering the consequences. Fifth, if as I believe, Trump really is beholden to Putin, a shutdown throws Russia’s greatest adversary into chaos.

Finally, and most important, Republicans despise government. So the shutdown allows them to call back only those workers that are necessary to their cause. For example, while many in the EPA and Interior are furloughed, Republicans have called back only those Interior employees who are responsible for issuing drilling and mining permits for public lands.

We must all face the reality that the shutdown is a right-winger’s wet dream. The most extreme among them believe the federal government should only be responsible for law and order, the protection of private property and national defense. Anything else – Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, SNAP, WIC, HUD, the EPA, public education – is, in their minds, a waste of money and an unwelcome intrusion into their ability to plunder the national resources and squeeze money out of the populace.

Beyond Tribalism.

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Today, most Americans are members of a political tribe – Trump’s tribe, the Republican tribe, the Conservative tribe, the Libertarian tribe, the Democratic tribe, the Liberal tribe, the Evangelical tribe. But no matter which of the labels we prefer, we should find many issues upon which we can all agree.

On the most important issues, we should all be members of the same tribe – the American tribe.

So, for the time being, let’s set aside the questions of possible conspiracy between Russia and the Trump campaign and whatever Hillary Clinton was accused of doing or not doing. We should all be concerned that all of our intelligence-gathering agencies agree that Russia – one of our greatest rivals – interfered with our elections. If we, as Americans, are to have confidence in our elected leaders, we need to know that they were fairly elected.

In addition, there should be plenty of other areas of agreement among ordinary Americans. For example, we should all be worried that many of our longest-standing institutions – the press, FBI, CIA, justice system, educational system, science, even the truth – are under attack. Moreover, it should be abundantly clear that there is also an all-out attack on America’s working class.

Ideology aside, we should all be horrified that corporations and the very rich received 83 percent of the benefits from the most recent tax cuts – cuts resulting in deficits that will add multiple trillions to our national debt. We should all be concerned that the president ignores the Constitution’s emoluments clause by spending nearly every weekend at one of his resorts in order to charge taxpayers millions for the rooms needed for Secret Service, as well as government and foreign officials.

We should all be outraged over reports that the president’s longtime lawyer – his “fixer” – paid hundreds of thousands to buy the silence of women with whom he had affairs. And we should be even more troubled by reports that the same “fixer” was apparently selling access to the White House and accepting millions from a Russian oligarch.

We should be skeptical of Betsy Devos’s push to privatize education, thereby taking money away from public schools in order to finance parochial and private schools for the well-heeled. We should recoil at the dozens of reports detailing Scott Pruitt’s corruption and his rollback of environmental protections, thereby threatening clean air and water.

We should be angered by Steven Mnuchin’s use of government planes for his honeymoon and other private trips. We should be equally alarmed at Ryan Zinke’s taxpayer-funded vacations, his unjustified cuts to national monuments and his sweetheart deals for campaign donors who have placed bids for drilling rights on public lands. We should be universally sickened by Ben Carson’s plan to triple the cost of rent for poor Americans (many of them seniors) who live in public housing while others in government scheme to cut funding for food assistance, Medicaid, Medicare, SNAP and Social Security.

It cannot be stated often enough or strongly enough: This is not normal!

My Trump Obsession.

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Many of my friends and acquaintances have raised questions regarding my near constant blog posts, Facebook posts and Tweets about Trump. I’ve been told, “Hillary lost. Get over it.” That they had to “put up” with Obama for 8 years so “Why can’t I just shut up and give Trump a chance?” I’ve been asked, “Don’t you have something else to worry about?” I’ve been called a “libtard,” a “snowflake” and a “loser.”

Some have questioned my patriotism. Others have even questioned my sanity. Many would prefer that I ignore the current state of our democracy and go back to posting family and travel photos on Facebook.

Here’s my response: Trump and his followers are unlike anything seen in our country since the end of the Civil War. Their hatred has further divided an already broken political system. They have not only turned Democrat against Republican. They have turned Republican against Republican, state against state, friend against friend, man against woman, brother against brother, Christian against Muslim, Christian against Christian, heterosexual against homosexual…and the world against the US.

In order for others to truly understand my obsession, I need to delve into a bit of history – some of which you probably already know.

When I first became aware of “The Donald” in the eighties, he was considered a small-time developer in New York City. His few properties made a statement only in regard to their gaudy decor and the many lawsuits against his company for racial discrimination and failure to pay suppliers. It soon became known, at least in Manhattan, that he had ties to organized crime. Those rumors were soon confirmed when he dived into the gambling industry…an industry long connected to organized crime. Yet, in a telling display of his business acumen, he was one of the few casino owners to ever go bankrupt.

His only success was his ability to call attention to himself and his “glamorous” lifestyle. That led to his role as a business mogul on “The Apprentice” in which he reveled in the opportunity to unleash his inner bully. Had it not been for that reality show (more precisely, an un-reality show) and an accomplished ghost writer who wrote “The Art of The Deal,” Trump likely would have faded into obscurity long ago, especially when the real estate crash of 2008 made him financially toxic to virtually every lender – except to the Russians and a German bank involved in Russian money-laundering.

How did he rise from those ashes to the White House? That is a question that will be debated for generations.

The reality is that, in an attempt to become relevant, he led the “birther” movement, claiming Obama was an illegitimate president. When Obama responded at the White House Correspondents Dinner, Trump was humiliated and infuriated. As a longtime racist and bully, he felt the need to strike back. So he began his presidential campaign based on racist attacks on Mexicans, refugees, Muslims, and women.

The heart of his campaign was to push aside political correctness, encouraging like-minded racists and misogynists to say and do what they had long felt, but were afraid to say. This quickly became apparent at all of his political rallies with chants of “lock her up” as well as verbal and physical attacks on protesters who were Latino or black. Of course, there were also relentless verbal attacks on the news media.

At any other time in our nation’s history, his fomenting of violence, his bullying tactics and his name-calling of other candidates, would have repulsed the majority of Americans and permanently ended his political aspirations. Instead, the more despicable his words and actions became, the more his popularity grew among white people who somehow felt oppressed by their white privilege and majority religion.

Not even a video of him bragging about grabbing women by the pussy harmed his popularity. Many even applauded his verbal attack of a Gold Star family – likely because of their skin color and their religion.

In a move that far exceeded Nixon’s Watergate transgressions, he unethically and illegally encouraged Russia to hack his political opponent’s emails. And it is now abundantly clear that his election night win was illegitimate. He obviously took office as the result of the interference of our nation’s greatest rival. Worse, given the dozens of connections between Trump’s campaign and Russia, it appears increasingly likely that his campaign colluded with Russia in order to win.

There has been no greater assault on our democracy since WWII.

If his lack of character and the illegitimacy of his position weren’t enough, Trump has made no effort to bridge the political divide. Instead, he has gone out of his way to further divide us. And his nomination of unqualified and lunatic fringe people to his cabinet and heads of federal agencies has turned our nation into a Kakistocracy – a government run by the worst, least qualified and most unscrupulous citizens – people like Betsy Devos, Ben Carson, Scott Pruitt, Tom Price, and Jeff Sessions.

Trump and his administration have taken every opportunity to enrich themselves and their families. He has emboldened the worst among us – racists, white supremacists and neo-Nazis. His administration has not only tried to cut access to healthcare and withdrawn from the Paris accords on climate change. It has rolled back regulations protecting clean air, clean water and endangered species. It has plans to reduce the size of national monuments in order to sell drilling and mining rights to extraction industries. It has plans to cut funding for Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, even food programs for needy children in order to give tax breaks to the wealthy and large corporations.

Most problematic of all is the fact that Trump has essentially replaced our State Department and traditional diplomacy with his Twitter rants. His name-calling and cyber-bullying have led our nation to the brink of war with a nation led by a similar man-child – a war that would lead to the deaths of millions.

Am I obsessed with Trump? Damn right I am! As should be anyone in their right mind.

The Many Reasons Donald Trump Can Never Be My President.

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1. He spent years undermining a sitting president by claiming that the president was not a citizen of the United States.
2. He broke a 40-year tradition of presidential candidates releasing tax returns. What is he hiding?
3. He has a long record of refusing to pay small businesses for work on his properties.
4. He has long bullied his critics by initiating frivolous lawsuits.
5. He has reputed ties to the mob.
6. He has licensed his name to foreign governments that use slave labor to build resorts.
7. He hired a campaign manager with ties to foreign governments that oppose democracy.
8. He openly praised the dictator of our nation’s chief rival.
9. He mocked a reporter with a physical disability.
10. He was recorded bragging about his sexual assaults of women earning him the title, Das Gropenfuhrer.
11. He has been accused of raping a 13-year-old girl.
12. He has been accused of being a serial sexual assailant.
13. He offered few policies to “make America great again.”
14. The policies he did offer were racist and unconstitutional.
15. He encouraged violence and racism at his rallies.
16. He refused to disavow the support of the KKK and other racist organizations.
17. He encouraged a foreign government to meddle in our presidential election by stealing confidential information from his opponent.
18. He refuses to disentangle himself from his business interests, creating conflicts of interest worldwide.
19. He refuses to hold press conferences to answer the questions of journalists preferring, instead, to communicate by Tweets.
20. He lost the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes and won the electoral vote by carrying 3 states by a total margin of fewer than a 78,000 votes. Yet he claims to have won by a “landslide.”
21. He has undermined the current president by interfering in foreign policy before his inauguration.
22. He has threatened other governments by tweet.
23. He used his status as president-elect to broker deals to benefit his family businesses.
24. He was elected as a direct result of the meddling by a foreign dictator, according to all of our intelligence agencies.
25. He not only refused to accept the findings of our intelligence agencies. He demeaned them.
26. He was elected as a direct result of voter suppression of minorities.
27. He has appointed a racist and originator of fake news as a senior adviser to the White House.
28. He has selected cabinet appointees who, instead of being reformers, are openly antagonistic of the departments they have been chosen to lead.
29. He nominated a racist to become Attorney General.
30. He nominated a close friend of Vladimir Putin to be Secretary of State – a oil executive whose company has a $500 billion deal at stake with Putin’s state-owned oil company.
31. Before inauguration, he recalled all US ambassadors.
32. He requested names of individuals within NASA who have been assigned to the study of climate change indicating that they will be singled out for punishment.
33. He requested names of individuals within the Energy Department who have worked to combat climate change.
34. He has sought waivers from government nepotism laws in order that he may appoint family members to positions within his administration creating even more conflicts of interest.
35. He has clearly demonstrated a lack of understanding of the Constitution and the office he will hold.
36. He has a long history of vindictiveness and he will hold the codes for our nuclear weapons.
37. He is filling the White House with family members and business partners.
38. He insulted and demeaned a Gold Star family.
39. He is a serial liar.
40. He exhibits all of the characteristics of a narcissistic sociopath!

Worse Than Watergate.

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During the 1972 presidential race, Republican operatives known as the “plumbers” were caught breaking into the Democratic National Party (DNC) headquarters. Working on behalf of President Nixon, their intent was to rig the election. The break-in and ensuing cover-up led to the threatened impeachment of the president and, ultimately, his resignation.

Embarrassed and furious at losing the White House, Republicans have been looking for payback ever since.

More than anything else, the Republicans’ desire for payback was what drove the sweeping and nearly decade-long investigation into Whitewater, “Travelgate”, “Fostergate” and “Filegate”, which culminated in impeachment proceedings against President Bill Clinton for lying under oath about his relationship with a White House intern. And it didn’t end there. With each allegation against a Democratic official, Republicans are fond of saying that the actions are “worse than Watergate.”

That is especially true of any hint of scandal involving the Clintons.

Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, Republican accusations regarding the attack on our consulate in Benghazi, the Clinton Foundation and Hillary’s use of a private email server have all resulted in the claim that the events are “worse than Watergate.”

Of course, those claims are entirely untrue. But there is one scandal that may, indeed, be worse than Watergate.

I’m referring to the hacks and subsequent release of emails from the DNC, from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) and from Hillary Clinton’s campaign chair – John Podesta. The hacks accomplished what Nixon’s plumbers failed to do – by allowing the GOP to sort through thousands of stolen documents in search of embarrassing details and their opponents’ campaign strategies. Worse yet, the NSA and CIA have determined that the hacks were executed by a foreign government – Russia – seeking to affect the outcome of our election.

Ignoring Democratic outrage, journalists have written relatively little about it. Other than Donald Trump’s call for Russia to hack Hillary’s private emails, Republicans have remained eerily silent about the matter. And, unlike the Washington Post’s sustained investigation by Woodward and Bernstein, the media briefly reported the story then refocused their attention on Hillary’s use of a private email server.

It’s almost as if the hacks, and a foreign government’s meddling in our presidential election, never really happened. Perhaps it’s because the media don’t know how to pursue the story. Perhaps they don’t feel they have the time or resources to do so. Perhaps they don’t know how to find and cultivate their own version of “Deep Throat.”

If so, that’s particularly troubling. Because a comedian did.

Despite lacking the resources of a major news organization, Samantha Bee and her crew were able to find and interview two Russians who could provide insight into the matter. They stated that they, and hundreds of other Russian hackers, have been hired by the Russian government to meddle in the US election by disseminating false information and memes on social media in support of Donald Trump.

Take a moment to reflect on that – a foreign government which is one of our long-time adversaries is meddling in our presidential election on behalf of one candidate. For what reason? What does Russia hope to gain? What should we know about that candidate’s relationship with Russia and its leaders? What impact would Trump’s election have on our nation’s foreign policy? What impact would Trump’s election have on our national security? What, if any, connection does the meddling have to do with the previous hack of the State Department’s email server (the government server that was hacked while Secretary Clinton’s private server was not)?

Is not the theft of private documents from one of our two major political parties a bigger story than a former Secretary of State using private emails to communicate with her staffers as her predecessors had done?

Many things have changed since Watergate. And few of the changes are good.

Will US Election Be Decided By Outsiders?

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During the Clinton and Obama administrations, the right-wing promoted numerous conspiracy theories – that Hillary Clinton had Vince Foster murdered; that Obama is not a US citizen; that Obama is a secret Muslim; that Obama is coming for your guns; that Clinton and Obama sacrificed our Libyan ambassador by telling a military response team to stand down; that Obama planned to use the Jade Helm military exercises to take over our nation and institute Sharia law. The list of conspiracy theories is lengthy.

Now, allow me to posit a conspiracy theory of my own.

We know that Russia hacked the email servers of the DNC (Democratic National Committee), of the DCCC (Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee), and the DGA (Democratic Governors Association). We also know that some of emails were altered before their release to make them seem more damning than they were. We know that Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has threatened to release additional emails aimed at damaging Hillary Clinton’s election campaign. And we now know that a foreign government hacked into the election systems of at least two states: Arizona and Illinois.

We know that, until recently, Donald Trump’s campaign was being run by a man with close ties to Russia and Vladimir Putin. We have heard accusations that Russian oligarchs are heavily invested in Trump’s businesses (we can’t know for certain because Trump refuses to release his tax returns) . And we know that Trump called for Russia to hack the former Secretary of State’s email server and release her personal emails.

Taken separately, these things are concerning enough. But collectively, I believe they represent a true threat to the sanctity of our election, especially given the improprieties that occurred in Florida during the 2000 presidential election that resulted in George W. Bush claiming the White House.

Equally worrying are Trump’s suggestions that the US elections are rigged and his claims that the polls don’t show the true strength of his campaign, saying that there are many voters who refuse to acknowledge their support for Trump to pollsters (of course, this would represent a ready-made excuse if the voting software are hacked to show that Trump’s vote totals significantly out-performed the polls to win the election).

Yes, I acknowledge that such concerns can be dismissed as a wild-eyed liberal conspiracy theory. But I think you will have to admit that there is far more substance to it than any of the aforementioned right-wing theories.

If It Was A Joke, We’re Not Laughing.

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After encouraging Russia to hack the former Secretary of State’s website and reveal 33,000 of her personal emails, the Republican “Presidential” nominee now says he was joking. Having seen his plea to Russia at his news conference, it sure didn’t seem like a joke at the time. And no one was laughing. Not the FBI, not the NSA, not the CIA, not the White House, not the media, not even Republican members of Congress.

And given that the “clarification” was spewed from the mouth of the would-be Liar-In-Chief, it’s difficult to take it seriously. Indeed, the clarification is much more laughable than the original statement.

What is even less funny is the fact that a candidate for the most powerful office in the world called for one of our nation’s greatest adversaries to commit a cyber attack on a rival candidate in order to influence the election. Military leaders called it “unbelievable,” “disqualifying,” and “shocking and dangerous.” Some called for him to be denied the national security briefings traditionally given to the parties nominees for president out of fear that he might share the information with his Russian friends.

Taken by itself, Trump’s request might have been easily dismissed as just another of his bat-crap crazy statements designed to get media attention. But put his plea into the context of his previous statements of admiration for Vladimir Putin; of his campaign manager Paul Manafort’s ties to Vladimir Putin; of his nearly $60 million in profit from the sale of a Florida home to a Russian oligarch; of the reported investments in Trump’s enterprises by Putin’s friends; of his refusal to release income tax statements that might show his ties to Russian oligarchs; of his announcement that, if elected, he might not stand with our NATO allies; of his taking delight in the hack of the DNC email server by Russian intelligence agencies and the subsequent release of DNC emails by Wikileaks. With all of those combined, you have the makings of a real conspiracy – the very real possibility that Trump is conspiring with a foreign power to meddle in a US election in order to affect the outcome.

Trump has acknowledged that he is running on the same law and order theme used by Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew. Is it possible that Trump is trying to one-up the Nixon campaign’s burglary of the DNC’s Watergate offices? Is it possible that he has so little regard for the US electorate that he thinks, unlike Nixon, he can get by with it?

At times, it seems that Trump’s campaign is a bizarre parody of itself – an attempt to test the limits of American politics; to see how much free publicity he can garner; to see how outrageous he can be before the reaction is so overwhelmingly negative that he has to walk back his statements; to test the gullibility of American voters.

As a result, I half-expect that one day, before the election, he’ll step to a microphone and announce that his entire campaign has been a practical joke. In fact, it already is.

Men (And Women) Of War.

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Now that the political upheaval in Ukraine is reaching a critical juncture, the usual warmongers are blustering and calling for military threats. At the same time, they’re blaming President Obama for “weak foreign policy.” Exactly which foreign policy do they consider weak? The policy that ferreted out and killed Osama bin Laden? The policy of targeting al-Qaeda leaders with drone strikes? The policy of providing air support for Libyan rebels? The policy of mandatory inspections and destruction of chemical weapons in Syria?

Or is it the policy of allowing the people of other nations to select their own government and leaders? Is it the peace negotiations with the new moderate President of Iran who requested a dialogue to end the severe economic sanctions in exchange for Iran ending its ambition for nuclear weapons? Or is it the resumption of US-led peace talks between Israel and Palestine? All of these are positive steps that stand as a welcome contrast to the Bush administration’s “you’re with us or against us” black and white approach to foreign policy.

The world is not merely black and white. It’s nuanced and complex. For example, Russia still has thousands of nuclear warheads with the capability of extinguishing all life on this planet. The US, Great Britain, France, China, India, Israel, Pakistan, and North Korea all have nuclear weapons. And all but North Korea have long-range delivery systems for their warheads. As a result, military threats and war are seldom the best solutions.

Without using nuclear warheads, which could escalate into the complete destruction of our planet, our options are limited. We have seen what happens when we involve our military in nation-building projects such as Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq. We have seen what happened when we used our CIA to overthrow leaders in Chile, Iraq, Iran, Vietnam, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and too many Caribbean and Pan American countries to count. We have seen what happens when we serve as the world’s largest arms and munitions dealer.

All of these tactics have created anti-American sentiment, anti-American terrorists and legions of heavily-armed militias who are determined to fight us and each other. Yet this reality seems lost on the neocons who still cling to Cold War beliefs and the ideals of the Project for the New American Century…a plan to expand the American empire by using our status as a superpower by bullying and threatening other nations to obtain an endless supply of cheap raw materials and underpaid labor.

It was neocons from both parties who led us to arm the Shah of Iran to help him oppress his people in exchange for selling us cheap oil. It was Teapublican neocons like Donald Rumsfled who armed Saddam Hussein to fight Iran. It was the neocon Richard Perle who convinced Ronald Reagan to rebuff Mikhail Gorbochev’s attempts to rid the world of nuclear weapons. It was the neocons who led us to arm and educate the radical Islamists of western Pakistan to fight the Soviets. It was neocons like George H.W. Bush, Oliver North, Elliott Abrams, Caspar Weinberger and Richard “The Dick” Cheney who arranged to sell arms to Iran in exchange for the illegal funding of death squads in El Salvador and Nicaragua. It was the neocons who supported the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan in hopes that the Taliban would allow US oil companies to build a pipeline across Afghanistan so that they could gain access to Caspian oil and gas. It was neocons like Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Scooter Libby and Condoleeza Rice who used the attacks of 9/11 to lead us into Iraq in order to ensure access to Iraqi oil.

More recently, neocon-lite Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham called for direct military involvement in Libya and Syria despite the fact that many of the militias involved in the war to overthrow Assad in Syria are allied with al-Qaeda. McCain, Graham and other warmongers from both political parties have called for increased sanctions on Iran – even as serious negotiations are underway – a move that would be likely to result in war with Iran. And now, the neocons are calling for confrontation and intervention in Ukraine. They are claiming that the problems in Ukraine are the result of the Obama administration’s “weak” foreign policy.

Seriously?

What do they want the administration to do? Invade Ukraine despite the fact that Ukraine has long been allied with Russia? Such an intervention rightly would be seen by Russia as an act of war. Since the end of the USSR, we have already broken our promises by moving NATO to the very doorstep of Russia, a move that is seen as a very real threat. We have already deployed our missile defense system in Europe, an act that is also seen as a threat to Russia by making a US first strike seem like a real possibility.

Any threat to use military force in Ukraine would, in effect, create a reverse version of the Cuban missile crisis. And there’s no guarantee that Putin is as realistic as Nikita Kruschev and as determined to avoid nuclear war.

The Project for the New American Century ended in 2006 in the aftermath of the group’s disastrous plan to invade and remake Iraq. Unfortunately, its members and proponents, including Richard “The Dick” Cheney, William Kristol, Robert Kagan, William Bennett, Jeb Bush, Steve Forbes, Dan Quayle and many others continue to sell the same bad ideas. Their ideas need to be relegated to the toxic waste dump of history where they belong. While we’re at it, we should bury the racist notion of American “Exceptionalism” along with the top-down economic policy known as Reaganomics, aka Trickle Down theory, Horse and Sparrow economics, and Voodoo economics. It’s time to leave the military and economic thinking of the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries behind us.

It is a new century with new possibilities. It requires new thinking and new strategies.

Saber Rattling In Congress.

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Following reports of the use of chemical weapons in Syria, some in Congress are demanding that President Obama intervene. Even though the use of chemical weapons have not yet been confirmed, some are calling the president “weak” for his failure to respond.

Such knee jerk reactions by the war hawks already have been responsible for far too many wars and far too many deaths.

In 1964, the war hawks used false reports of a North Vietnamese attack on US naval ships to ramp up the war leading to the unnecessary deaths of hundreds of thousands. In 1983, the Reagan administration not only turned a blind eye to Iraqi use of chemical weapons against Iran, there are indications the US actually supplied the weapons. And, in 2003, the Bush/Cheney war hawks were in such a hurry to invade Iraq, they used false information to convince Congress to vote for a war that led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands Iraqis and 4,486 US soldiers.

One would think that, after such obvious and lethal mistakes, our congressional war hawks and media would be much more reluctant to engage in saber rattling. After all, there are far more questions in Syria than answers. Were chemical weapons actually used? Who used them? What are the goals of those opposing Assad? What will happen to Syria if Assad is defeated, especially since it has been reported that the opposition includes factions of al Qaeda? Will the opposition welcome our military assistance? Will the new Syria become an ally?

What will Russia, a long-time ally of Assad’s, do if we choose to intervene in Syria? What will be the impact on the already flammable Middle East since Syria shares a border with Israel?

Given all of these questions, exactly how is the US to respond? Do we provide more sophisticated arms to the rebels, including al Qaeda? Do we create a no-fly zone that may lead to a far more serious confrontation with Russia, and may not even accomplish the goal of overthrowing Assad? Do we bomb military targets in Syria that will almost certainly antagonize Russia? Do we insert US troops on the ground in what could be a more lethal and lengthy war than Iraq?

According to a new Reuters/Ipsos poll, about 60 percent of US citizens interviewed oppose intervention in Syria.  It would seem that ordinary Americans have far more common sense than their saber-rattling congressional representatives.