Submitted By: tim4surf@yahoo.com – Click to email about this post
TRUMPS DICTATORIAL DISASTER:
It was another date that would live in infamy. But whereas Franklin Roosevelt declared war in sombre tones to a joint session of Congress, Donald Trump did it his way.
The US president wore a white “USA” cap, dark jacket and white shirt open at the collar. He stood at a blue lectern bearing the US presidential seal and a black microphone, with the Stars and Stripes behind him, presumably at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida. He released a video on his own social media network, Truth Social, at 2.30am on Saturday – a time when most Americans are asleep but Trump is often found rage-tweeting into the night.
In the space of eight minutes, Trump proceeded to upend half a century of US foreign policy, renege on his campaign promise to avoid the risk of forever wars and leave the Fifa boss, Gianni Infantino, with some explaining to do about why he gave Trump a made-up peace prize.
“There is also a beautiful medal for you that you can wear everywhere you want to go,” the oleaginous Infantino told Trump last December. Trump was not wearing that medal on Saturday. Instead, he delivered a performance that would have had soccer fans chanting: “Are you George Bush in disguise?”
Bush dragged the US into a tragic war in Iraq in 2003 that costs hundreds of thousands of lives and trillions of dollars and was recently crowned by the Council on Foreign Relations thinktank as the worst foreign policy decision in history. The avaricious Trump seems determined to seize that title for himself with another act of Middle Eastern regime change.
At least Bush tried to make a case to justify his invasion – mendacious as it was – and tried to convince the UN of its merits. Trump did not even bother. He amassed a huge “armada” in the Middle East with little explanation to Congress or the public. He did not mention Iran until more than an hour into this week’s State of the Union address.
Finally, when the bombs were already falling, he tried to offer a rationale in his social media video. The Iranian regime, he said, are “a vicious group of very hard, terrible people” whose menacing activities “directly endanger” the US and its allies. Trump ran through the history of the Iran hostage crisis, the Marine barracks bombing, the attack on the USS Cole and Iran’s hand in killing and maiming US troops in Iraq.
“It’s been mass terror, and we’re not going to put up with it any longer,” he said. But none of that answered a simple question: why now?
Trump went on to reference Iranian proxy groups “that have soaked the earth with blood and guts” and cite Hamas’s 7 October attacks on Israel, saying: “Iran is the world’s No 1 state sponsor of terror and just recently killed tens of thousands of its own citizens on the street as they protested.”
Trump underlined the US policy that Iran can never have a nuclear weapon and glided past his own past claim that last June’s attack had “obliterated” its programme, contending that the US wanted to make a deal but Tehran refused. “They rejected every opportunity to renounce their nuclear ambitions, and we can’t take it anymore,” he said.
The president said the US had undertaken “a massive and ongoing operation to prevent this very wicked, radical dictatorship from threatening America and our core national security interests” – an ominous sign that Washington could be in for the long haul. The chair-for-life of the new Board of Peace promised to “raze their missile industry to the ground” and “annihilate their navy”.
Then came an unexpected admission: “The lives of courageous American heroes may be lost, and we may have casualties. That often happens in war, but we’re doing this not for now. We’re doing this for the future, and it is a noble mission.”
Here was Trump, the reality TV president, understanding how desperate it will look if American service members return home in body bags, their lives sacrificed for a cause that the public little understands and still less believes in.
It was another date that would live in infamy. But whereas Franklin Roosevelt declared war in sombre tones to a joint session of Congress, Donald Trump did it his way.
The US president wore a white “USA” cap, dark jacket and white shirt open at the collar. He stood at a blue lectern bearing the US presidential seal and a black microphone, with the Stars and Stripes behind him, presumably at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida. He released a video on his own social media network, Truth Social, at 2.30am on Saturday – a time when most Americans are asleep but Trump is often found rage-tweeting into the night.
In the space of eight minutes, Trump proceeded to upend half a century of US foreign policy, renege on his campaign promise to avoid the risk of forever wars and leave the Fifa boss, Gianni Infantino, with some explaining to do about why he gave Trump a made-up peace prize.
“There is also a beautiful medal for you that you can wear everywhere you want to go,” the oleaginous Infantino told Trump last December. Trump was not wearing that medal on Saturday. Instead, he delivered a performance that would have had soccer fans chanting: “Are you George Bush in disguise?”
Bush dragged the US into a tragic war in Iraq in 2003 that costs hundreds of thousands of lives and trillions of dollars and was recently crowned by the Council on Foreign Relations thinktank as the worst foreign policy decision in history. The avaricious Trump seems determined to seize that title for himself with another act of Middle Eastern regime change.
At least Bush tried to make a case to justify his invasion – mendacious as it was – and tried to convince the UN of its merits. Trump did not even bother. He amassed a huge “armada” in the Middle East with little explanation to Congress or the public. He did not mention Iran until more than an hour into this week’s State of the Union address.
Finally, when the bombs were already falling, he tried to offer a rationale in his social media video. The Iranian regime, he said, are “a vicious group of very hard, terrible people” whose menacing activities “directly endanger” the US and its allies. Trump ran through the history of the Iran hostage crisis, the Marine barracks bombing, the attack on the USS Cole and Iran’s hand in killing and maiming US troops in Iraq.
“It’s been mass terror, and we’re not going to put up with it any longer,” he said. But none of that answered a simple question: why now?
Trump went on to reference Iranian proxy groups “that have soaked the earth with blood and guts” and cite Hamas’s 7 October attacks on Israel, saying: “Iran is the world’s No 1 state sponsor of terror and just recently killed tens of thousands of its own citizens on the street as they protested.”
Trump underlined the US policy that Iran can never have a nuclear weapon and glided past his own past claim that last June’s attack had “obliterated” its programme, contending that the US wanted to make a deal but Tehran refused. “They rejected every opportunity to renounce their nuclear ambitions, and we can’t take it anymore,” he said.
The president said the US had undertaken “a massive and ongoing operation to prevent this very wicked, radical dictatorship from threatening America and our core national security interests” – an ominous sign that Washington could be in for the long haul. The chair-for-life of the new Board of Peace promised to “raze their missile industry to the ground” and “annihilate their navy”.
Then came an unexpected admission: “The lives of courageous American heroes may be lost, and we may have casualties. That often happens in war, but we’re doing this not for now. We’re doing this for the future, and it is a noble mission.”
Here was Trump, the reality TV president, understanding how desperate it will look if American service members return home in body bags, their lives sacrificed for a cause that the public little understands and still less believes in.