Chris Hedges's Blog, page 51
January 17, 2020
Stephen King Walks Back Diversity Remarks After Twitter Backlash
This article originally appeared on Salon.
Acclaimed author Stephen King is facing controversy after he seemed to post a series of tweets criticizing the perceived need for diversity in art, and then later appeared to backpedal from his original statements.
“As a writer, I am allowed to nominate in just 3 categories: Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Original Screenplay,” King wrote in a pair of tweets on Tuesday. “For me, the diversity issue – as it applies to individual actors and directors, anyway – did not come up. That said I would never consider diversity in matters of art. Only quality. It seems to me that to do otherwise would be wrong.”
Related Articles
[image error]
The Only Way White Supremacy Is Defeated
by Robert Scheer
[image error]
Hollywood's Love Affair With Racism
by Robert Scheer
[image error]
Geena Davis Puts a Sexist Hollywood on Notice
by Kasia Anderson
King’s comments led to backlash on Twitter.
Director Ava DuVernay expressed dismay at King’s earlier position on Twitter, writing about how it felt to “wake up, meditate, stretch, reach for your phone to check on the world and see a tweet from someone you admire that is so backward and ignorant you want to go back to bed.”
Michael Harriot of The Root, in a much longer Twitter thread, wrote that “the conflation of ‘diversity’ with a lack of quality is a long-standing argument made by white males who are afraid of losing their privilege. Anyone who doesn’t consider diversity in art is probably making shitty art . . . Or stealing it from black people.”
He later added, “Here’s the question: Have you ever read Stephen King’s books? Have you ever noticed that every black character is raped, killed or knows some kind of magic? That’s because he doesn’t consider diversity in art.”
After the backlash, King seemed to reverse his earlier statements.
“The most important thing we can do as artists and creative people is make sure everyone has the same fair shot, regardless of sex, color, or orientation. Right now such people are badly under-represented, and not only in the arts,” King tweeted.
He added, “You can’t win awards if you’re shut out of the game.”
Singer Gareth Icke, by contrast, criticized King for reversing his original position, writing that “the woke Twitter mob loved Stephen King when he attacked Trump and pushed the Russia narrative. Now he says something they don’t like, they cancel him. It should be a lesson to others. Don’t pander to these illiberal lunatics. Tell them to fuck off.”
Evolutionary psychologist Gad Saad, meanwhile, tweeted that “Human cuttlefish walks back his earlier correct take on diversity due to castratitis. @StephenKing”
The Oscar nominations for 2020 have evoked backlash due to the under-representation of women and people of color, which may have contributed to King’s tweets. The only person of color to be nominated in any of the four acting categories was Cynthia Erivo for her role in the movie “Harriet.” Prominent actors of color with acclaimed performances who were overlooked come nomination time include Eddie Murphy from “Dolemite Is My Name,” Lupita Nyong’o from “Us,” Jennifer Lopez from “Hustlers,” and Awkwafina from “The Farewell.” The Oscars also snubbed female directors, with Greta Gerwig and Lorene Scafaria being overlooked despite directing acclaimed films like “Little Women” (which received six other Oscar nominations) and “Hustlers (which was shut out from the Oscars).
Trump Defense Team Includes Alan Dershowitz, Ken Starr
WASHINGTON—President Donald Trump has assembled a made-for-TV legal team for his Senate trial that includes household names like Ken Starr, the prosecutor whose investigation two decades ago resulted in the impeachment of Bill Clinton. Former Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz will deliver constitutional arguments meant to shield Trump from allegations that he abused his power.
The additions on Friday bring experience in the politics of impeachment as well as constitutional law to the team, which faced a busy weekend of deadlines for legal briefs and other documents before opening arguments begin on Tuesday.
The two new Trump attorneys are already nationally known both for their involvement in some of the more consequential legal dramas of recent American history and for their regular appearances on Fox News, the president’s preferred television network.
Related Articles
[image error]
The Impeachment's Moral Hypocrisy
by Chris Hedges
[image error]
Trump's Impeachment Articles Are Graver Than They Look
by Bill Blum
[image error]
The United States of Impeachment
by Maj. Danny Sjursen
Dershowitz is a constitutional expert whose expansive views of presidential powers echo those of Trump. Starr is a veteran of partisan battles in Washington, having led the investigation into Clinton’s affair with a White House intern that brought the president’s impeachment by the House. Clinton was acquitted at his Senate trial, the same outcome Trump is expecting from the Republican-led chamber.
Still, the lead roles for Trump’s defense will be played by White House Counsel Pat Cipollone and Trump personal lawyer Jay Sekulow, who also represented Trump during special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.
There are some signs of tension involving the president’s outside legal team and lawyers within the White House.
The White House would not confirm the fuller roster of the president’s lawyers Friday, and some officials there bristled that the announcement was not coordinated with them. Hours after Dershowitz announced his involvement with the team in a series of tweets on Friday, he played down his role by saying that he would be present for only an hour or so to make constitutional arguments.
“I’m not a full-fledged member of the defense team,” he told “The Dan Abrams Show” on SiriusXM. He has long been a critic of “the overuse of impeachment,” he said, and would have made the same case for a President Hillary Clinton.
A legal brief laying out the contours of the Trump defense, due at noon on Monday, was still being drafted, with White House attorneys and the outside legal team grappling over how political the document should be. Those inside the administration have echoed warnings from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell that the pleadings must be sensitive to the Senate’s more staid traditions and leave the sharper rhetoric to Twitter and cable news.
White House lawyers were successful in keeping Trump from adding House Republicans to the team, but they also advised him against tapping Dershowitz, according to two people who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal discussions. They’re concerned because of the professor’s association with Jeffrey Epstein, the millionaire who killed himself in jail last summer while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
A Fox News host said on the air that Starr would be parting ways with the network as a result of his role on the legal team.
Other members of Trump’s legal defense include Pam Bondi, the former Florida attorney general; Jane Raskin, who was part of the president’s legal team during Mueller’s investigation, and Robert Ray, who was part of the Whitewater investigation of the Clintons.
Trump was impeached by the House last month on charges of abuse of power and obstructing Congress, stemming from his pressure on Ukraine to investigate Democratic rivals as he was withholding security aid, and his efforts to block the ensuing congressional probe.
Senators were sworn in as jurors on Thursday by Chief Justice John Roberts.
The president insists he did nothing wrong, and he complains about his treatment daily, sometimes distracting from unrelated events. On Friday, as Trump welcomed the championship LSU football team to the Oval Office for photos, he said the space had seen “a lot of presidents, some good, some not so good. But you got a good one now, even though they’re trying to impeach the son of a bitch. Can you believe that?”
While the president speaks dismissively of the case, new revelations are mounting about his actions toward Ukraine.
The Government Accountability Office said Thursday that the White House violated federal law in withholding the security assistance to Ukraine, which shares a border with hostile Russia.
At the same time, an indicted associate of Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, Lev Parnas, has turned over to prosecutors new documents linking the president to the shadow foreign policy being run by Giuliani. The voluble Giuliani is not expected to play a formal role on the impeachment defense legal team, according to one official.
The GAO report and Parnas documents have applied fresh pressure to senators to call more witnesses for the trial, a main source of contention that is still to be resolved. The White House has instructed officials not to comply with subpoenas from Congress requesting witnesses or other information.
Views on it all are decidedly mixed in the Senate, reflective of the nation at the start of this election year.
“I’ll be honest, a lot of us do see it as a political exercise,” Republican Joni Ernst of Iowa told reporters on a conference call. “The whole process has really been odd or unusual or bizarre in some mannerisms. …”
Others spoke of the seriousness of the moment.
“Totally somber,” tweeted Democrat Chris Murphy of Connecticut. He sits next to Sen. Elizabeth Warren, one of four senators running for the Democratic nomination to challenge Trump in the fall, and said they agreed their “overwhelming emotion was sadness.”
All said they will be listening closely to all arguments.
As she filed for re-election Friday in West Virginia, GOP Sen. Shelley Moore Capito told reporters, “I think it’s been a very politicized process to this point and the president hasn’t had a chance to present his side.”
Starr, besides his 1990s role as independent counsel, is a former U.S. solicitor general and federal circuit court judge.
More recently, he was removed as president of Baylor University and then resigned as chancellor of the school in the wake of a review critical of the university’s handling of sexual assault allegations against football players. Starr said his resignation was the result of the university’s board of regents seeking to place the school under new leadership following the scandal, not because he was accused of hiding or failing to act on information.
Dershowitz’s reputation has been damaged in recent years by his association with Epstein. One of Epstein’s alleged victims, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, has accused Dershowitz of participating in her abuse. Dershowitz has denied it and has been battling in court for years with Giuffre and her lawyers. He recently wrote a book rejecting her allegations, called “Guilt by Accusation.”
Giuffre and Dershowtiz are also suing each other for defamation, each saying the other is lying.
_____
Associated Press writers David Caruso in New York, David Pitt in Iowa, Anthony Izaguirre in West Virginia, Sean Murphy in Oklahoma and Lisa Mascaro in Washington contributed to this report.
7 Men, 5 Women Selected for Weinstein Trial
NEW YORK—A jury of seven men and five women was selected Friday for Harvey Weinstein’s rape trial after an arduous, two-week process in which scores of people were dismissed because they had already made up their minds about the disgraced Hollywood mogul.
Opening statements are expected Wednesday in the case against the 67-year-old executive who has come to be seen as the archvillain of the #MeToo era.
The once powerful and feared studio boss behind such Oscar winners as “Pulp Fiction” and “Shakespeare in Love” is charged with raping a woman in a New York City hotel room in 2013 and forcibly performing a sex act on another at his apartment in 2006. He has said any sexual activity was consensual. If convicted, he could get life in prison.
Related Articles
[image error]
A Women’s Revolt That Targets Far More Than Sexual Abuse
by Chris Hedges
[image error]
How Should Journalists Report on the #MeToo Movement?
by Emily Wells
[image error]
Weinstein Charged With Sex Crimes in L.A. on Eve of N.Y. Trial
by
During jury selection, prosecutors had accused Weinstein’s lawyers of systematically trying to keep young women off the panel, though the final makeup of the jury turned out to be more closely balanced.
For its part, the defense raised an outcry and demanded a mistrial because one of the jurors is the author of an upcoming novel about young women dealing with predatory older men. The request was denied, but Weinstein’s lawyers continued to claim outside court that the juror had withheld the information on her questionnaire.
“We got the best jury we could get under the circumstances,” defense attorney Donna Rotunno told reporters. “I’m obviously not happy with what happened in the end there. I think that was an absolutely ridiculous decision.”
The defense said it wasn’t specifically trying to exclude young women but didn’t want jurors too young to understand the way men and women interacted in the early 1990s.
“That was a different time in New York and on planet Earth,” said another Weinstein attorney, Arthur Aidala,
A stooped Weinstein, shuffling out of the courthouse with the use of a walker because of recent back surgery, had no comment when asked his thoughts on jury selection. “Ask Donna!” he said, referring to Rotunno.
Three alternates — one man and two women — were also seated and will sit through the trial and take the place of any jurors who can’t make it through to deliberations.
On Day One of jury selection last week, one-third of the first 120 prospective jurors were promptly sent home after Judge James Burke asked if there was anyone who could not be impartial and about 40 hands went up. Each day for nearly a week afterward, dozens of people raised their hands whenever the question was asked of a new batch of potential jurors.
Of the more than 600 people summoned for the case, some marked themselves for disqualification by admitting they knew one of Weinstein’s many accusers, had personal experience with sexual abuse or read “Catch and Kill,” a book by Ronan Farrow, one of the first reporters to expose the allegations against Weinstein.
Weinstein’s lawyers have tried, so far unsuccessfully, to move the trial out New York City, arguing that heavy publicity has turned the case into a “carnival” and that the media hub where celebrities and ordinary people often intersect can’t possibly give their client a fair trial. The request is now before a state appeals court.
Cognizant of the media attention and the weight some people are attaching to the case, the judge cautioned potential jurors: “This trial is not a referendum on the #MeToo movement.”
Supermodel Gigi Hadid was summoned for jury duty and briefly remained in the running even though she said she had met the defendant. A man whose wife starred on a show that Weinstein’s studio produced said he couldn’t be impartial. A woman said she couldn’t be impartial because she has a “close friend who had an encounter with the defendant in his hotel room.”
Another man was scratched for saying he couldn’t be fair-minded because he had often spotted Weinstein in Manhattan’s Tribec neighborhood. “On several occasions I’ve seen him on the phone screaming at someone,” he said.
There was at least one instance of what jury consultants call “stealth jurors” — people eager to serve, especially on a high-profile case, because they hope to make a point or a profit.
On Thursday, the judge threatened to hold a potential juror in contempt of court for asking his followers on Twitter “how a person might hypothetically leverage serving on the jury of a high-profile case to promote their new novel.”
___
Associated Press writer Jennifer Peltz contributed to this report.
Big Pharma Is Literally Poisoning Us
Big Pharma spends a small fortune every year buying politicians to make sure we can’t import prescription drugs from Canada, but they’re more than happy to sell us contaminated medications from countries with weak manufacturing controls and exploitable labor that ensure high profit margins.
A toxic compound that doesn’t belong anywhere near medicine known as NDMA was first discovered in some blood pressure medications in 2018, and the FDA issued an alert and wrote a complaint letter to the raw materials supplier to Big Pharma companies. It turns out the meds follow the very common pattern of being made in India with raw ingredients coming from China. And they are sold by big companies for obscenely high prices to U.S. consumers.
More recently, NDMA contamination provoked a nationwide recall of the popular anti-heartburn medication Zantac and all its generic versions.
Related Articles
[image error]
Big Pharma Must Learn From Its Own Victims
by
[image error]
Ralph Nader: Big Pharma Must Be Stopped
by
[image error]
Doctors Prescribe More of a Drug if Big Pharma Pays Them
by
And now the world’s most widely prescribed drug of all, which is used to treat and prevent Type 2 diabetes called metformin, is contaminated with NDMA.
NDMA (N-Nitrosodimethylamine) is, according to the World Health Organization, produced by “the degradation of dimethylhydrazine (a component of rocket fuel) as well as from several other industrial processes. It is also a contaminant of certain pesticides.”
And it’s one of the world’s most potent carcinogens, at least for humans and other mammals. Our livers produce an enzyme that converts it to methyldiazonium that then leads to O6-methylguanine, both of which alter a process at the cellular level called methylation that is a cancer turbocharger.
Because it’s such a potent biological agent, NDMA is also extremely poisonous; a Chinese medical student put a few drops in his roommate’s water and killed him. Ditto for a Canadian grad student, who injected it into a colleague’s apple pie.
It’s so poisonous that the FDA has set the “acceptable” amount for human daily intake at 96 nanograms, or 0.000096 of 1 milligram (a single grain of salt is about a milligram). In some of the generic brands of the blood pressure medication, just one tablet was found to have NDMA levels almost 20 times higher than the “acceptable” 96 nanograms, and nearly all were drugs that are taken daily.
Once it gets into groundwater, NDMA is wicked hard to get out, as citizens of numerous California cities found out in the late 1990s. Its “miscibility” (rapid solubility) with water is extreme, meaning that a few drops of it rapidly spreads through miles of underground aquifers or other water supplies in a matter of hours or days at most. Because of this, it’s nearly impossible to isolate the contamination once it happens, the only solution then being radical and expensive water treatment everywhere in the aquafer, principally using ultraviolet light.
Ever since 1987 when Congress and the Reagan administration cut a corrupt deal with Big Pharma to ban the retail import of pharmaceuticals into the U.S., Democrats have pushed to allow Americans to get their prescription drugs from other countries when they’re too expensive here (which is nearly always the case; we pay about twice as much for drugs as any other country in the world).
In 2000, Congress passed a law to allow imported retail drugs, but the Clinton administration, heavily funded by the health care industry, killed it administratively.
Nonetheless, progressive Democrats have pushed for years for the elimination of the ban. I first met Bernie Sanders when I lived in Montpelier, Vermont, around the turn of the century and he was organizing busloads of Vermont seniors to travel the two hours to Montreal to fill their prescriptions.
And now, in another popular policy position “borrowed” from progressive Democrats (who have also opposed neoliberal trade deals for decades), the Trump administration is talking about letting American consumers buy drugs from Canada or overseas.
The downside of this is that generic drugs sold in Canada are just as likely to be made in India and China, and thus just as contaminated, as drugs sold here. The upside is that because Canadian drugs will be cheaper, some of us can afford to buy the name-brand versions made in Germany, Switzerland or Ireland and sold in Canada, and not worry about getting cancer from NDMA in our generic drugs. (Yes, I mean this sarcastically.)
There was a time when virtually all drugs sold in the U.S. were manufactured here, including generics, or in Switzerland and Germany. Congress passed a special tax break for American drug manufacturers who’d move their factories to Puerto Rico, and for decades that was the hub of U.S. drug manufacturing. But in past decades neoliberalism has won out, and only a fraction of the pharma facilities in and around San Juan remain in operation.
Trump ran on the traditionally Democratic and progressive position of bringing manufacturing back to the U.S., a project that progressive senators including Sherrod Brown and Bernie Sanders have worked on their entire modern political careers.
This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.
Thom Hartmann is a talk-show host and the author of “The Hidden History of the Supreme Court and the Betrayal of America” and more than 25 other books in print. He is a writing fellow at the Independent Media Institute.
Noam Chomsky Makes the Case for the Lesser of Two Evils
After a harrowing discussion about humanity’s undeniable march toward a dystopian future, world-renowned thinker Noam Chomsky and Truthdig Editor in Chief Robert Scheer move on to other pressing topics related to current events and end on a positive note.
Beginning with the issue that inspired the two-part interview, Scheer explains that an episode of his podcast, “Scheer Intelligence,” which featured Susie Linfield discussing her book, “The Lions’ Den: Zionism and the Left from Hannah Arendt to Noam Chomsky,” led to an ongoing exchange with Chomsky. The linguist, who has been an outspoken critic of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories, argues that “The Lion’s Den” and its chapter on Chomsky’s criticisms “is the most extraordinary collection of lies and deceit that I have ever seen.”
Related Articles
[image error]
Noam Chomsky: America Has Built a Global Dystopia
by Robert Scheer
[image error]
Noam Chomsky: Democrats Are Failing the Test of Our Time
by Ilana Novick
[image error]
Noam Chomsky: Trump Is History Repeated as Farce
by Jacob Sugarman
Admitting that before his interview with Linfield, Scheer had not paid close attention to the chapter in question, the Truthdig editor in chief goes on to say that upon rereading it, he found it incredibly “unfair.”
“The people attacked in this book,” Scheer says, “are all attacked for daring to raise questions about the performance of [the Israeli state] and the Zionist experiment, particularly in its relation to the Palestinians and notions that many of us, myself included, who are Jewish, had thought were built into a kind of universalism of the Jewish experience, and a concern for the other.”
To Chomsky, the dilemma Israel poses to Jewish intellectuals such as himself, who are concerned with the state’s future, has always been clear: criticize the state’s actions or remain silent in the face of decisions that would endanger it. The thinker’s criticisms take root in the 1970s, when Israel rejects viable two-state solutions more than once, an inconvenient historical reality he argues Linfield “lies about like a trooper.”
“If you care about Israel, what you tell them is you’re sacrificing security for expansion,” Chomsky argues. “And it’s going to have a consequence. It’s going to lead to moral deterioration internally, and decline in status internationally, which is exactly what happened. […] You go back to the 1970s, Israel was one of the most admired states in the world. […] Now it’s a pariah state.”
Chomsky uses the example of how support for Israel within the U.S. had shifted from liberal Democrats to ultranationalists and evangelicals as an illustration of a dangerous shift in Israeli policies that led to the terrible suffering of Palestinians and a moral decline within the Middle Eastern nation. The linguist’s conclusion, based on the biblical story of Elijah, is one that can be applied across the board when thinking of constructing an effective approach to politics, not just in Israel, but around the world.
“You don’t love a state and follow its policies,” says Chomsky. “You criticize what’s wrong, try to change the policies, expose them; criticize it, change it.”
The discussion of Israel then leads to a broader conversation on the topic of “lesser evilism,” especially as applied to U.S. politics as voters face a presidential election in 2020 which could lead to President Donald Trump’s reelection.
“We’ve been living all these years,” Scheer argues, “with the illusion that there’s this lesser evil that somehow will make it better. […] I’m frightened out of my mind that it’s four more years of Trump; yes. However, do we really think that the Democrats are going to propose a serious alternative?”
“There’s another word for lesser evilism,” Chomsky replies. “It’s called rationality. Lesser evilism is not an illusion, it’s a rational position. But you don’t stop with lesser evilism. You begin with it, to prevent the worst, and then you go on to deal with the fundamental roots of what’s wrong, even with the lesser evils.”
While Scheer agrees with Chomsky about the imminent danger Trump poses, not just to Americans, but to humanity as a whole due to his suicidal approach to the climate crisis, the Truthdig editor in chief insists that it is precisely having read Chomsky’s works that instilled in him a profound fear “of what neoliberalism and what that opportunism breeds,” concluding that “it breeds a Trump.”
Chomsky, on the other hand traces the hard-earned progress that has been made by organized movements throughout the history of the U.S., using the examples of Presidents Richard Nixon and Franklin D. Roosevelt as leaders who were forced to amend their policies and actions by political activists.
“So even if there’s core, deep problems with the institutions, there still are choices between alternatives, which matter a lot,” says the MIT professor. “Small differences in a system with enormous power translate into huge effects. Meanwhile, you don’t stop with a lesser evilism; you continue to try to organize and develop the mass popular movements, which will block the worst and change the institutions. All of these things can go on at once. But the simple question of what button do you push on a particular day? That is a decision, and that matters. It’s not the whole story, by any means. It’s a small part of the story, but it matters.”
When Scheer goes on to express his surprise to find in Chomsky a source of optimism, the latter gives him a list of reasons to remain hopeful, including the Green New Deal and the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign.
Listen to the full second part of the engrossing conversation between Chomsky and Scheer below, and listen to the first part here. You can also read a transcript of the interview below the media player and find past episodes of “Scheer Intelligence” here.
—Introduction by Natasha Hakimi Zapata
Robert Scheer: OK. Because I know, you know, you got to go somewhere. So please, let me get to the original subject that brought us together. Because I was much too easy in reviewing a book–a podcast, Susie Linfield from NYU–From Hannah Arendt to Noam Chomsky–I actually forget the title, but–do you remember the title? I don’t either. But it was all a depiction, almost everyone attacked in this book was Jewish. I think there was one exception. And I, frankly, just true confession, I try to read every book from cover to cover every time. And this one, I thought I knew the subject quite well, and at five in the morning, I don’t know, I dozed off or something at the Chomsky chapter. I will admit it, I skimmed it and so forth. And then rereading it, I felt it was quite unfair. And what I thought was unfair–and so I want to make amends here, [discussing] this issue. I think all of the people in this book–and I’ll just summarize it.
They all started out as kind of sympathetic to some notion of Zionism. And a lot of that was informed by the Holocaust, the tragedy that had occurred for Jews, and the feeling that maybe there could not be assimilation, or a place for Jews in the world. We know those arguments. And they all–and the people attacked in this book, From Hannah Arendt to Noam Chomsky, are all attacked for daring to raise questions about the performance of this state and the Zionist experiment, particularly in its relation to the Palestinians and notions that many of us, myself included, who are Jewish had thought were built into a kind of universalism of the Jewish experience, and a concern for the other, and so forth.
And we are at a moment, again, as we are with this description of the secret documents about Afghanistan, it happens also the other day Donald Trump spoke to the Republican Sheldon Adelson’s sponsored group in Florida about Israel, and took them to school saying: Hey, you guys should be giving me a lot more support; I’ve done what every president promised or was scared to promise; I’ve done the bidding. And it struck me, reading that–and I’ve felt this since the election–for all the talk about meddling in our election, you know–Russian meddling, whatever that turns out to be–and it’s really bizarre that the United States, which has meddled in just about every election–you can go back to certainly the Italian election of ’48, and whatever, but all over the world–somehow Russia and the evidence for any significant impact is not–but really, whether covertly or openly, Israel certainly meddled in the 2016 election, and most prominently by Netanyahu speaking to the U.S. Congress and condemning Barack Obama’s major foreign policy achievement, which was the international agreement with Iran, going back to our nuclear weapons concern, to not make weapons and to yet, you know, be able to have a modern scientific society for their–and blah, blah, blah.
So that was working. And when we look at this election, the interference by the leader of Israel was quite direct, and we’re not even talking about any of the other stuff. The leading contributor to Trump was this same Sheldon Adelson; I believe he gave $35 million, his biggest funder. He happens to have one of the most influential newspapers in Israel, as well as gambling interests in Las Vegas. And you have this bizarre situation, I think, where Donald Trump has delivered to a foreign government, everything from recognizing the embassy in Jerusalem to attacking settlements to destroying what remained of any peace process; you could go down the line in terms of Israel–but also accepting the foreign policy agenda of Israel that the main danger was Iran, giving Saudi Arabia a blank check. Another irony of this weekend, we have Saudi officers, air force officers, one officer killing other people at a base and raising questions about Saudi Arabia.
So our policy under Trump has been strongly pro-Israel, and the alliance, really, between Israel and Saudi Arabia. And yet that doesn’t come up at all. And the reason I want–so I wanted to say, I thought going back to Hannah Arendt, the people who had been criticized for daring to speak up actually are not speaking up out of any hostility to the concern of Jewish people for security, and the response to the Holocaust, but concern over the contradictions presented, I think, by Israel.
Noam Chomsky: Well, again, a lot of points. First, I won’t go into it because it’s kind of irrelevant, but the book you mentioned is the most extraordinary collection of lies and deceit that I have ever seen. If we had time I could go through it, but it’s not significant, so put it aside. The crucial issue is what you just mentioned. Trump brought it out very clearly: You don’t love Israel enough. He said, You’ve got to love Israel. What does that mean exactly? Actually, we know what it means. This morning the New York Times has a long story about William Barr, the Attorney General, about how we have to bring religion and the Bible back into our lives.
So let’s go to the Bible. That’s–you can find the model that Trump is following in the Bible. It’s King Ahab, the evil king, the epitome of evil in the Bible; he called the prophet Elijah to him, and condemned the prophet Elijah because he doesn’t love Israel enough. In fact, he’s a hater of Israel, the proof he was condemning the acts of the evil king. So loving a country, from Trump’s point of view, is follow its policies; whatever its policies are, you got to support them. That’s loving a country. So Trump and Ahab, the evil king, agree on that. The prophet Elijah and the ones who Linfield is attacking, they agree, no, you don’t support the policies. What you do is if you care about a country, it’s like caring about a friend. If you have a friend who’s doing something to harm himself, and to severely harm others, you don’t say, Great! I support you all the way. You try to change what the friend is doing.
And in the case of a state, you first have to dismantle the cloud of propaganda and myth that every state constructs to justify what it’s doing. And when you do that, then what do you find? You go back to the early seventies, which actually is the point she emphasizes. At that point, Israel had a fateful decision. Namely, is it going to pursue expansion or security? That was very clear. On the table, there were very clear options for negotiation and political settlement.
Linfield, incidentally, lies about this like a trooper. I actually described it with exact precision, and she claims I made it up by the clever technique of avoiding every single thing I said about it, OK, which happened to be exactly accurate. What happens is this. First of all, in 1971, Gunnar Jarring, international mediator, presented proposals to Egypt and Israel for a political settlement, pretty much in line with the international consensus. Egypt accepted it; Israel rejected it. In 1976 the Security Council debated a resolution calling for a political settlement, two-state settlement, on the international border with guarantees for the rights of each state, Israel and a Palestinian state, to live in peace and security within secure and recognized borders.
It was vetoed by the United States; Israel was hysterical. The Israeli ambassador Chaim Herzog, later president, claimed that the PLO had written this as a device to destroy Israel, which of course was complete nonsense. The PLO kind of tacitly supported it, but certainly didn’t write it. The resolution, crucially, was supported by the three Arab confrontation states: Egypt, Jordan, and Syria. That was ’76. That’s a tough one for people like Linfield who support Israeli policies, so what she does is just lie about it, OK, in the way that I mentioned. But it was real, and there were other options, and it continues like this.
Now, if you care about Israel, what you tell them is you’re sacrificing security for expansion. And it’s going to have a consequence. It’s going to lead to moral deterioration internally, and decline in status internationally, which is exactly what happened. You mentioned that people who used to be one or another form of Zionist are now very critical of Israel. It’s much more general than that. You go back to the 1970s, Israel was one of the most admired states in the world. Young people from Sweden were going to Israel to see the wonderful social democracy, and so on. Now it’s a pariah state. What’s happened? It’s not–the same that’s happened in the United States. Support for Israel used to be based in basically liberal democrats; that was support for Israel. No longer. Most of them support the Palestinians. Support for Israel now is in the Christian evangelical community and ultranationalists.
That reflects the changes that have taken place. Is this good for Israel? I don’t think so. It’s turned Israel into, as I said, a pariah state which is declining–internally, morally–and it’s horrible for the Palestinians. So I think the ones who were following the path of Elijah were correct. You don’t love a state and follow its policies. You criticize what’s wrong, try to change the policies, expose them; criticize it, change it. And exactly what was predicted in the seventies has happened.
Now, take Trump’s policies. As I said before, in connection with Vietnam and other cases, it’s–we should be, just not race right off to say there’s no rational policy. Often there is. And there is in the case of what Trump is doing in the case of the Middle East as well. It’s pretty hard to find a sensible geopolitical strategy in the chaos around Trump, but if you look, you can find one. He might not even understand it, but his advisors certainly do. And it’s even articulated clearly by people like Steve Bannon. The idea is, what they’re doing is forming an alliance of the most reactionary states, headed by the White House, in the Middle East. It includes Saudi Arabia, of course, the most reactionary state in the world; Egypt under the Sisi dictatorship, the worst dictatorship in Egypt’s history; Israel, as it’s moved very far to the right–and of course as a technological commercial center, supported pretty much by Modi’s India, ultranationalist, destroying secular democracy in India and moving to ultranationalist Hinduism as a natural ally. And then there’s Orbán in Hungary is another; Le Pen in France; it’s a kind of an international alliance of reactionary states with the Middle East, run by the White House.
Now, you can say that it’s incompetent, but you can’t say there’s no policy. It’s a very clear policy. It’s understandable. I think it’s disgraceful, but that’s a different point. And I think if we look carefully, that’s what we find. Trump’s giving everything to Israel is just like sending troops to defend Saudi Arabia from Iran, destroying the Iran Treaty, which would have undermined any possibility of Iran developing nuclear weapons for a long time, even though there was one. And I should say that in the background–it’s getting late, but let me just end with this–there’s a very straightforward way to end any possible threat of Iranian nuclear weapons–assuming there is a threat, which is a very dubious assumption, but let’s assume it. How do you end it? It’s straightforward. Move to establish a nuclear weapons-free zone in the Middle East. Is there any objection to that? The Arab states are strongly in favor of it; they initiated it 20 years ago. Iran is in favor of it, strongly supports it, backed by the G77, the former Non-Aligned Movement–actually about 130 countries now; strongly support it. Other countries pretty much support it. If you had it, along with an inspection system–which is certainly possible, as we’ve seen in the case of Iran–that would end any possible threat. What blocks it? Us. Bipartisan objection–
RS: Well, Israel.
NC: Israel refuses, but they’ll do what we tell them to do. They have to. If the United States supported it, they’d have no choice. The United States opposes it; it comes up every five years, in the non-proliferation treaty review committee. Last time was 2015. Obama blocked it. Everybody knows the reason why; nobody says it. If the United States accepted it, Israel’s huge nuclear weapons system would have to be inspected, which the U.S. doesn’t want. And furthermore, U.S. military aid to Israel would have to stop. U.S. law, Symington Amendment, requires that the United States not provide aid to any country developing nuclear weapons outside the non-proliferation treaty. That’s why the United States pretends–of course, pretends–that it doesn’t know that Israel has nuclear weapons. Of course it knows; everybody knows. But you have to pretend you don’t know, or that brings into operation U.S. laws which ban aid.
The U.S. is not ready to do that. Therefore, we block the one way to end any threat of nuclear weapons in the Middle East–which is a very severe threat, not because of Iran, but because of Israel and other countries that may be duplicating. Is that a rational policy? Well, it has a certain rationality to it. Is it a policy that benefits human society, or that benefits the United States? No. But you can say the same about the policy of racing towards climate destruction, racing towards nuclear war. They’re not policies designed for the benefit of the people of the country. Quite differently. That’s not the way state policy is designed. It’s not–the myth is you represent the people; the truth is quite different. You represent centers of power. Now, we can change that, and to some extent it has been changed. But we have to begin by at least recognizing it. And in case after case, including what we’ve discussed, I think that’s what we see.
RS: So finally, the reason I wanted to have your point of view is because I think it’s really quite courageous. And it’s the third rail issue. The only candidate that has really discussed this–and I’m very proud of the fact that a Brooklyn Jewish guy from our generation, Bernie Sanders, at least brought up the Palestinians as people in the primary debate. And to my mind, it’s truly appalling that when people like yourself speak up–in the name of a Jewish tradition of speaking up against oppression, you know, and state power and so forth–and defend the rights of Palestinians, they’re smeared in the most vicious way. And, you know, whether it’s Democrat or Republican.
And so I want to end with something that gets me in trouble with everyone I know, even though I recognize the danger of Trump, and I think a second Trump term would be incredibly dangerous because–
NC: It’d be terminal for the species.
RS: Oh. Well, there–
NC: Another four years of Trump’s policies, we may be past the tipping point, literally.
RS: Well, that’s as serious an indictment as you can make, terminal for the species, coming from probably the smartest man alive. And I mean that seriously. However–and here I’ll get in trouble. Trump, to my mind, is the pus in the wound. He did not create the wound. And as I read your writings, the body of your work, that’s quite clear. And on any policy–he didn’t create the immigration policy; we’ve neglected it, we’ve exploited it, we’ve been contradictory about it. Ever since we captured part of Mexico, you know, and created the immigration problem. He didn’t create the problem of–we haven’t had a chance, but one of the strengths of your writing is the reminder of class.
We were raised, you and I, in a society driven by the myth of a classless society, and we know that’s not the case. We know we’ve had the most glaring income redistribution for the rich in the last forty–ever since Reagan-Clinton, and they did the same thing up to now. And we don’t talk about class, and Occupy movements and so forth are brutally destroyed, up to this point actually more effectively than, say, in Hong Kong or other places where movements are destroyed.
And so I just wonder whether this Trumpwashing, as sort of what I tried to begin with, gets everybody off the hook. You know, and yet suddenly they’re all heroes now, all the [Democrats]–the CIA’s heroes, the FBI’s heroes, militarism. They voted for the big–Democrats and Republicans, biggest military budget, the languages of war-mongering. And I don’t see a peace movement now. I think we’re in a particularly dangerous moment, because there really is not much of a–even the people who are progressive candidates in the Democratic Party hardly talk about foreign policy. Sanders’ remarks were quite an exception. And I just wonder, you know, whether this Trumpwashing for everyone else is really not–is, I think, to my mind, really the big danger of the moment. We’ve lost a progressive base.
NC: I think you’re right to say that Trump is a symptom, but a very ugly and dangerous symptom of something much deeper. We can ask the question: What drove the Republicans off the rails? The Republican Party is the most dangerous organization in human history, literally, for just reasons of global warming and militarism–forget the rest, there’s plenty more–but that alone. And what happened? Notice it’s happening all over the world. All over the world there’s anger, resentment, bitterness; contempt for the established institutions takes one or another form. What’s happened all over the world? Well, something much deeper. We’ve been through 40 years of a neoliberal assault on the population. Every place you look, it’s been harmful. Take the United States, the most privileged country.
Real wages are about what they were in the 1960s and ’70s. There’s been plenty of growth; it’s gone into very few pockets. We’re now in a situation where 0.1%–not 1%–0.1% of the population have over 20% of the wealth. Half the population has negative net assets, losses bigger than gains, and people are in very precarious jobs. The majority of the population thinks their jobs are no good, uncertain. You don’t know what’s going to happen next. No organization, no way of defending yourself. That’s happening even more in Europe in many ways.
But there’s, in that kind of situation, a demagogue–this is very fertile terrain for a demagogue to come along and say, I’m your savior, I’m going to save you from all these terrible things, while in fact he’s working for them. Trump’s an example, Salvini in Italy is an example, Orbán in Hungary. It’s what’s happening all over. Modi in India. That’s–it’s a broad development. Trump is a particularly dangerous case of it because of the power of the United States. He happens to be the demagogue that came out of this situation in the United States, the most powerful state in history. So when the U.S. pulls out of any effort to deal with global warming, it’s much more serious than if, say, Italy does, OK. I think that’s the broader situation.
But I agree with you: just focusing on Trump as a depraved individual, which he is, is not really the point. It’s his–what he represents, and the enormous danger that’s posed. Just go back to that transportation document that I quoted. These guys are perfectly happy to see organized human society destroyed in the next generation, as long as they can be rich and powerful. And it’s not just Trump; it runs across a very broad spectrum. That’s what we should be worried about.
RS: So that sort of–I mean, I think that effectively, and in a chilling way, sums it up. Because the real question is, is the lesser evil significantly lesser?
NC: It is.
RS: It is in this election, perhaps, depending on how it works out. But again, going back through your body of work, and warnings that were offered–of course not just by you; we mentioned plenty of people, you know. First Pope John, and you know, Martin Luther King, lots of people issued these warnings about everything–about poverty, about class, about war, about violence, about American jingoism, et cetera. They were not heeded. And when you–it’s sort of, it’s actually more depressing than anything to consider that we don’t have adults–forget about smart people. We don’t–we used to say in the Bronx, you know, you can’t leave the candy store in the hands of your kid, you know; you got to have an adult watching the store. And really, the lesson of all of your work is not that we didn’t know what to do. You are–yes, you are very smart, but you also were stating what should have been the obvious. And then the real question is, why didn’t this cast of characters, who presumed to be knowing and concerned and everything, behave as adults?
NC: They do, within a certain institutional structure. So let’s go back to the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, OK. When he devotes huge financial resources to fossil-fuel production–including the most dangerous, like Canadian tar sands–he knows perfectly well what the consequences are going to be. But what are his choices within the institution that he’s controlling? He has two choices. One, he can say, I’m not going to do this, in which case I’m going to be thrown out, and somebody else will come in who will do it. Or he’ll just say, I’ll do it. It’s not just a personal problem, it’s an institutional problem, and the institutions are very dangerous. At the same time, when we look at specific choices like the electoral choice in 2020, personally I think the stakes are huge. Almost anyone you can pick up off the streets would be less dangerous than Trump.
We know what Trump’s policies are going to be. Probably not in his head; the policies are just directed by what’s good for me. But if you look at what they are, it’s maximizing–it translates into maximizing the use of fossil fuels, racing towards developing more devastating weapons, and encouraging others to do the same. Now, others we might not like, but they’re not going to do that. That’s a very significant difference, a fatal distinction. The fate of organized human society, and the existence of many other species, actually depends on this choice. So sometimes you can say, yeah, so all the choices are not great. But there are differences that matter. And I don’t think that can be forgotten.
RS: Well, just to underscore it, and I do think it’s an important point, you’re saying it is not just about manners. You’re saying that really, the people–you describe it as the most evil force we’ve had, the Republican Party. And it’s funny, because we’re doing this from Arizona, and there was a time when the senator from Arizona was running for president against Lyndon Johnson, and Barry Goldwater was described as the most evil Mad Bomber, and the world would be destroyed, and so forth. And we know this war in Vietnam that you protested against, and wrote so eloquently about, it was pursued by–we know because we have the Johnson tapes. We have the data, we have the evidence, we have the real news. And he says to Senator Russell–right there, on the eve of that election–he said, I have to be in Vietnam; I can’t get out, because the Republicans will destroy me. And then he goes in, and what, somewhere between 4 and 6 million Indo-Chinese people, and 59,000 Americans, et. cetera, get killed. And yet–we saw with Richard Nixon, we would have probably seen it with Barry Goldwater–maybe these guys can do reversals, maybe they can change.
Now, I’m not saying that’s a reason, but we’ve been living all these years with the illusion that there’s this lesser evil that somehow will make it better. And I’m just wondering–yes, it’s true. I’m frightened out of my mind that it’s four more years of Trump; yes. However, do we really think that the democrats are going to propose a serious alternative? And won’t we be–if they don’t address the question of the growing immiseration of American people and their real incomes, the 80% that you write about, if they support bigger military budgets. You know, it’s not just you pick Exxon or JPMorgan–who, by the way, they were close to Obama–you could pick Goldman Sachs, you could pick Robert Rubin, you could pick the democrat billionaires and so forth.
And I just wonder whether once again, lesser evilism will not lull us into–and we see it with the celebration of the FBI and the NSA and the CIA now, and everything. You know, yes, I can have the two thoughts in my head at once. Yes, I’m frightened of Trump, and I agree with Noam Chomsky on that. On the other hand, I’ve read Noam Chomsky, and I’m frightened to death of what neoliberalism and what that opportunism breeds, and it breeds a Trump. I didn’t go to his wedding; the Clintons did.
NC: There’s another word for lesser evilism. It’s called rationality. Lesser evilism is not an illusion, it’s a rational position. But you don’t stop with lesser evilism. You begin with it, to prevent the worst, and then you go on to deal with the fundamental roots of what’s wrong, even with the lesser evils.
RS: Or is it a rationalization? Far be it from me–
NC: It’s not a rationalization. Take Richard Nixon. You say that he changed. Why did he change? Because of something we haven’t mentioned. Because of a massive popular movement, which prevented him from doing what he might have done, OK. That’s what changed Nixon finally. He probably would have used nuclear weapons, just as Goldwater would have. Well, what happened in Vietnam was bad enough. Could have been worse. Let’s go back to the INF Treaty and Reagan. There was a background to that, too. A huge, popular anti-nuclear movement in the eighties, here and in Europe. That was a large part of the background. And if you take case after case, the reasons why the worst didn’t happen were because of popular movements that blocked it, and did make things better.
It goes back to when we were kids in the 1930s. There could have been things–there were problems with the New Deal. Could have been things much worse. Why weren’t they? Because of labor movement activism, popular activism, political parties–all the stuff we both remember from childhood that led to developments which greatly improved life for people. So even if there’s core, deep problems with the institutions, there still are choices between alternatives, which matter a lot. Small differences in a system with enormous power translate into huge effects. Meanwhile, you don’t stop with a lesser evilism; you continue to try to organize and develop the mass popular movements, which will block the worst and change the institutions. All of these things can go on at once. But the simple question of what button do you push on a particular day? That is a decision, and that matters. It’s not the whole story, by any means. It’s a small part of the story, but it matters.
RS: But last little footnote, is it also a trap? Is it an illusion? And I–I can’t sit here and disagree with what you said. And I’ll probably push the button–as I’ve done all my life; I’ve voted for lesser evil people. I’ve voted for war criminals. I’ve voted for the people–I always fail this test. True confession. I have voted for some of the worst, you know.
NC: That’s the right thing to do.
RS: OK. However, reading Noam Chomsky–and I’m saying this with great respect–does not lead me to think that we’ve been on a curve of progress. It leads me to think that, you know–no. We blew chances, we blew the opportunities, we endangered the world. And we have created, for the first time, this very idea that life on this planet is at issue. Now, if I had listened–I remember with Ehrlich and his Population Bomb, I remember the discussions of the sixties–this stuff about climate change and wasted resources and protecting the environment–this is not new. We’ve known this.
NC: There was no environmental movement in the sixties. Scientists knew it, but the–
RS: But people who wrote the Whole Earth Catalog, and talked about how we’re wasting resources, and–
NC: But it’s not a matter of wasting resources. It’s a matter of global warming, which is going to destroy the possibilities of human life. That didn’t really reach the public consciousness until the eighties. Now, when you say there’s no progress, I disagree. I think there’s been a lot of progress. In many respects, things are much better than in the sixties. Just take, for example, in the 1960s the United States had federal laws mandating segregation, preventing blacks from moving into federal housing. Do we have those now? No. The United States had anti-miscegenation laws so extreme that the Nazis wouldn’t accept them. Do we have them now? It had anti-sodomy laws, right until about 20 years ago. We don’t have them. Did women–were women regarded as, legally, peers? Entitled to be on a federal jury? No. That’s changed enormously.
And it didn’t change by gifts from above. It changed by the popular activism. Now, you say that Russell and Martin Luther King were vilified, but they also helped crucially to develop popular movements which made a difference. So, OK, they were vilified. Profit Elijah was vilified. Everyone who tries to do anything decent will get vilified. But they have an effect. They have an effect by reaching the public, helping to develop things that are developing from a groundswell. It wasn’t just Bertrand Russell and Martin Luther King. It was people working on the ground. In the case of the Civil Rights Movement, it was students in Greensboro, North Carolina who sat in on a lunch counter. SNCC workers who were going, riding on freedom buses, and so on. All of these things develop and they interact, and they do lead slowly to some kinds of progress. Not always; there are regressions. And there are points where you make choices that make a big difference.
I’m afraid I–it’s way my past my bedtime. [Laughs]
RS: Well, Noam Chomsky, I–look, it’s really refreshing and exciting for me to find you to be a source of optimism. I’m looking for sources of optimism, and I’m not going to play–
NC: Well, that’s easy to find. Take the Green New Deal. Something like a Green New Deal is essential for survival. Five years ago, nobody’d heard of it. Now it’s on the legislative agenda. Why? A bunch of young kids in the Sunrise Movement made a big difference. They didn’t come out of nowhere. The background of that is the Sanders campaign, and other agitation, and so on. That’s how things change.
RS: The Sanders campaign is a miracle of American politics. I thought he would get one or 2% of the vote, and then I saw my students, their laptops open, and I never saw a Hillary sticker. And I teach at the University of Southern California, which can be pretty conservative. But I was educated by my students about Sanders, no question about it. And I–the real issue [is] you talk about these institutions or organizations, but your work is about co-option, about manipulation and corruption. What we had–and it runs through your books. There was a time in our youth where you had, the unions really were a great hope. That’s the only thing that came out of–maybe in the black community was the church at some point, and so forth. But there really were not counter institutions until the development of industrial unions and so forth. And what we have now is a total fragmentation of people.
I mean, I got here with an Uber driver, you know, who seems to be a retired citizen trying to make do, you know. And the very idea of organizing for the rights–we have some of that with the service employees, and so forth. But in the main, we have almost no attention to economic condition, except for a few candidates in the primary. We’ve lost a base. And I’m not saying then that’s an excuse for inaction; I’m here doing this podcast [Laughs] because I’m trying to–
NC: Take a look at a little history. In the 1920s, the labor movement was totally crushed. There was nothing left. In the 1930s it revived, spearheaded the social democratic innovations which changed life. It can happen again.
RS: And let me just say as a footnote, when he says it can happen again, he’s not talking about the Holocaust. You’re talking about a mass–and I will hand you that other old codger; Bernie Sanders has certainly set a sterling example.
And thank you, Noam Chomsky, for doing this. This has been another–oh, a very special edition of “Scheer Intelligence,” where clearly I have been taken to school, and I enjoy it. I like learning, even at my advanced age. I want to thank Arizona Public Radio for hosting this, and the University of Arizona for hosting Noam Chomsky. Get ’em away from the New England elite. And our producer is Joshua Scheer, and Christopher Ho at KCRW in Santa Monica helps get these things up, and the University of Southern California. And see you next week with another edition of “Scheer Intelligence.”
Trump Vastly Overestimates America’s Readiness for War
ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.
This article was co-published with The New York Times.
Between the killing of Iran’s most important general and Iran’s missiles hurtling toward American troops in Iraq, President Donald Trump took time to discuss America’s military prowess.
Related Articles
[image error]
Trump’s Illegal, Impeachable Act of War
by Maj. Danny Sjursen
[image error]
Trump Has Been at War With Iran for More Than a Year
by Juan Cole
[image error]
The Real Reason Trump Assassinated Qassem Soleimani
by Juan Cole
“The United States just spent Two Trillion Dollars on Military Equipment,” he tweeted on Jan. 5. “If Iran attacks an American Base, or any American, we will be sending some of that brand new beautiful equipment their way.”
Besides being wrong (the military has not spent that much), he repeated a mistake that military leaders have made for years: emphasizing weapons over the fitness of the men and women charged with firing them.
Over the past 18 months, ProPublica has dug into military accidents in recent years that, all told, call into question just how prepared the American military is to fight America’s battles.
If forced to fight in the Persian Gulf or the Korean Peninsula, the Navy and Marine Corps are likely to play crucial roles in holding strategic command of the sea and defending against ballistic missiles.
Those branches, though, do not need billions of dollars of new weapons, our examination revealed. They need to focus on the basics: its service members, their training and their equipment.
The Government Accountability Office, Congress’ watchdog, has been sounding the alarm for years, to little effect. In 2016, the GAO found that years of warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan had taken their toll: “The military services have reported persistently low readiness levels.”
In 2018, the agency focused on the Navy and Marine Corps. All seven types of aircraft it tracked, from cargo planes to fighters like the F/A-18D, had repeatedly missed goals for being prepared for missions. “Aviation readiness will take many years to recover,” the GAO said.
In a report last month, the GAO found that only about 25% of Navy shipyard repairs were completed on time. “The Navy continues to face persistent and substantial maintenance delays that affect the majority of its maintenance efforts and hinder its attempts to restore readiness,” it said.
The services’ problems with readiness burst into public view in the summer of 2017, when two American destroyers collided with two commercial ships in separate incidents that left 17 sailors dead and scores injured. They were the Navy’s worst accidents at sea since the 1970s.
Both the USS Fitzgerald and the USS John S. McCain were deployed to the 7th Fleet, based in Yokosuka, Japan. What both ships needed, ProPublica found, was more time to train and more sailors.
Neither ship was fully qualified for its battle missions; neither ship had a full crew; both ships had patched together navigation systems that failed to work at times.
Sailors on both ships described being shortchanged in training and exhausted by the pace of operations. One-hundred-hour work weeks were not uncommon.
On the Fitzgerald, for instance, a sailor had to manually press a button more than 1,000 times to refresh a radar screen tracking nearby traffic. On the evening of the collision on June 17, the Fitzgerald was under the control of a relatively inexperienced officer who ordered the destroyer to turn directly into the path of a cargo carrier.
On the McCain, the Navy had installed a touch-screen navigation system as a cheaper alternative to traditional steering wheels and throttles. The design of the new system was so confusing that the sailors using it accidentally guided the McCain into an oil tanker in the Singapore Strait on Aug. 21.
Dakota Bordeaux, the young sailor steering the ship, said of the new navigation system, “There was actually a lot of functions on there that I had no clue what on earth they did.”
It was not that the Navy was unaware of the problems. Top commanders had simply ignored urgent messages for help. Military leaders wanted missions completed. They cared less about whether the men and women on duty were forced to cut corners to do them.
In January 2013, Vice Adm. Thomas Copeman issued a warning at the Surface Navy Association Symposium, one of the premier gatherings of Navy officers in charge of warships. Readiness, he said, was headed toward a “downward spiral.”
“It’s getting harder and harder I think for us to look the troops in the eye,” Copeman told the audience.
“If you’re an admiral in the Navy,” he later told ProPublica, “you may have to make that decision to send people into combat, and you better not have blood on your hands the rest of your life because you didn’t do everything you could in peacetime to make them ready.”
The Navy’s surface forces needed $3.5 billion, he said, just to fix what was wrong with training alone. Copeman raised the specter of a “hollow” Navy without those additional funds.
Three years later Janine Davidson, the undersecretary of the Navy, sounded the alarm again. The Navy remained short of adequately trained sailors and reliable ships.
“It’s sleepwalking into a level of risk you don’t realize you have,” she said to ProPublica.
The 7th Fleet, the largest of the Navy’s forward-deployed fleets, was perhaps most vulnerable. In 2017, top officers laid out the armada’s dire conditions for its senior commander, Vice Adm. Joseph Aucoin.
Training was down. Certifications, which crews received after proving they were prepared to handle crucial war-fighting duties, had dropped from 93% completed in 2014 to 62% in 2016. That year, only two of the fleet’s 11 destroyers and cruisers received all recommended maintenance. One ship got only a quarter of its scheduled upkeep.
Aucoin sent the assessment to the top brass. But the portrait of crisis got him nothing.
Low-level officers on the decks of ships and high-ranking leaders up the chain of command said they made similar warnings and were shut down. Scores of sailors reached out to us and testified to some combination of fear, lack of training and an absence of confidence in the Navy’s leadership.
“If the Navy paid more attention to the job satisfaction and intrinsic motivation of sailors, then a lot of these other systemic issues will fix themselves,” one sailor wrote.
We examined other Navy episodes directly relevant to today’s situation with Iran. In 2016, the crew of two American gunboats was seized in the Persian Gulf by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the military force dominated by Qassim Suleimani, the major general killed by a drone strike outside the Baghdad Airport this month.
The sailors on the gunboats undertook a last-minute mission without proper training or equipment and were captured after straying into the waters surrounding an Iranian naval base on Farsi Island. An international incident was avoided only through military pressure and last-minute diplomatic maneuvers.
We also examined the state of the Navy’s minesweepers. The Persian Gulf is one of the few places in the world where such ships may prove indispensable. Nearly a quarter of the world’s oil supplies pass through the Strait of Hormuz at the gulf’s entrance. The Iranians have threatened to use mines to block it in case of conflict.
The Navy has fewer than a dozen minesweepers, many in disrepair. One sailor told us the sonar meant to detect mines was so imprecise that in training exercises it flagged dishwashers, crab traps and cars on the ocean floor as potential explosives.
“We are essentially the ships that the Navy forgot,” another sailor said of his own minesweeper, which had not left port in 20 months.
The Department of the Navy oversees the Marine Corps. And a Marine Corps aviation accident in December 2018 raised its own questions about readiness. A midair collision between a F/A-18D Hornet and a KC-130J Hercules fuel tanker over the Pacific left six Marines dead.
The same patterns showed up again: Local commanders had warned higher-ups of a lack of training, nonfunctioning aircraft and faulty equipment.
Squadron 242, whose fighter jets were involved in the accident, was designed to leap quickly into an attack against North Korea in case of conflict. The commander’s own reports showed the squadron was consistently not capable of completing seven of its 10 “mission essential tasks,” such as armed reconnaissance and traveling into enemy airspace to bomb known targets.
In commentary written in response to the findings of a safety board investigation after the incident, the commander for the tanker squadron, which lost five Marines in the crash, was unsparing.
“In an [area of operations] where the mantra of ‘Fight Tonight’ is repeated everywhere,” Lt. Col. Mitchell Maury said, referring to the Pacific, “we are not manned, trained, and equipped to execute to the appropriate level of effectiveness.”
In isolation, each of the events seemed an unfortunate accident — regrettable, to be sure, but not a cause for widespread alarm.
But our reporting showed a broad and alarming pattern. The Navy and the Marine Corps had routinely ignored their sailors and Marines, their equipment and their training. The result: men dying during peacetime.
Are the two branches ready to fight a war against Iran tonight? It’s a question that nobody hopes to ever answer. But it’s a question that goes beyond expensive new weapons.
Joe Biden Can’t Outrun His Record on Social Security
Recently, a newsletter from the Bernie Sanders campaign laid out Joe Biden’s long record of supporting cuts to Social Security. The website PolitiFact weighed in on one part of that record, a speech Biden gave in 2018 in which he expressed enthusiasm for former House Speaker Paul Ryan’s plans to cut Social Security.
PolitiFact wrongly ranked the statement from the Sanders newsletter as “false” because they willfully refused to understand what Biden said in the speech—and how it represents decades of Washington establishment consensus on cutting the American people’s earned Social Security and Medicare benefits.
In the speech, Biden says, “we need to do something about Social Security and Medicare” and that Social Security “needs adjustments.” Biden did not elaborate on what these “adjustments” were, but a look at his long history on Social Security is telling.
Related Articles
[image error]
Does Joe Biden Excite Anybody But Wealthy Donors?
by Norman Solomon
[image error]
We Need to Talk About Joe Biden
by
[image error]
Bernie Sanders Is Right About Biden's Record on Social Security
by Ilana Novick
In the 1980s, Biden sponsored a plan to freeze all federal spending, including Social Security. In the 1990s, Biden was a leading supporter of a balanced budget amendment, a policy that the Center for American Progress and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (two center-left think tanks who are hardly in the tank for Bernie Sanders) agree would be a catastrophe for Social Security.
More recently, Biden led “grand bargain” negotiations with Republicans during his time as vice president. This “grand bargain” would have given Republicans structural, permanent cuts to Social Security in return for tax increases on the wealthy that would be rolled back as soon as a Republican president got elected to office.
Time and time again, Biden kept coming back to the negotiating table, insisting that Republicans were dealing in good faith. Ultimately, the grand bargain fell through only because of hardline House Republicans refusing to make even an incredibly lopsided deal. Biden was fully prepared to make a deal that included Social Security cuts, including reducing future cost-of-living increases by implementing a chained CPI.
When Washington politicians talk about Social Security cuts, they almost always use coded language, saying that they want to “change,” “adjust,” or even “save” the program. That’s because cutting Social Security is incredibly unpopular with voters of all political stripes. When corporate-friendly politicians like Biden use those words, they are trying to signal to elite media and billionaire donors that they are “very serious people” who are open to cutting Social Security benefits, without giving away the game to voters.
One of those billionaires, Pete Peterson, spent almost half a billion dollars on a decades-long crusade to destroy Social Security and Medicare. Peterson died in 2018, but his money lives on in the form of think tanks like the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB), which relentlessly advocate for benefit cuts while insisting that they are neutral arbiters because they are “non-partisan.”
Non-partisan and non-ideological are two very different things, but the media has an unfortunate tendency to treat them as one and the same. The CRFB and similar groups are zealously committed to an ideology of cutting the American people’s earned benefits. PolitiFact quotes a CRFB staffer to back up their article, without providing readers with any context about CRFB’s ideology or speaking to an expert opposed to Social Security cuts.
It’s easy for people in a D.C. elite bubble, working for think tanks or newspaper editorial boards, to support cutting Social Security. Cushioned by billionaire money, they have no idea what it’s like to live on the average Social Security benefit of less than $18,000 a year.
But in the rest of the country, it’s a very different story. People love Social Security, the only thing keeping their grandparents, their friend with a disability, and their young neighbors who recently lost a parent out of poverty. Grassroots activists across the country, working with congressional champions like Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, put pressure on Democratic politicians and changed the conversation on Social Security.
After years of hard work, Democrats are united in support of expanding, not cutting, Social Security. Ninety percent of House Democrats are co-sponsors of the Social Security 2100 Act, and every major Democratic presidential candidate has a plan to expand Social Security.
That includes Biden, who has disavowed benefit cuts and is running on a plan to modestly expand Social Security benefits. Politicians responding to activist pressure is a good thing, and people have the capacity to evolve and change. But Biden continually sows doubt that his change of heart is genuine by continuing to talk about the merits of “sharing power” with Republicans. He says that “there’s an awful lot of really good Republicans,” and has even stated that he’d consider making a Republican his vice president.
Biden doesn’t seem to have changed much from his time as vice president, when he offered Republicans “grand bargains” that included Social Security cuts again and again. At this point, it’s self-evident that the only agenda Republican politicians care about is cutting taxes for their billionaire donors and stealing earned benefits from the American people. When Biden says that he wants to work with them, it suggests that he remains open to that agenda. That’s very concerning for everyone who cares about the future of Social Security and Medicare.
Additionally, Biden’s past support for Social Security cuts is a major vulnerability should he become the Democratic nominee. In the 2016 election, Donald Trump continually promised to protect Social Security and Medicare. That was a lie. But lying has never bothered Trump, and he’ll be happy to use the same playbook in 2020.
There are numerous videos of Joe Biden calling for Social Security cuts. We can expect Trump to blanket Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania with ads containing that footage.
Democrats win when they can draw a clear contrast with Republicans on protecting and expanding our most popular government program, Social Security. Nominating Joe Biden would make that far more difficult than it needs to be.
This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.
Alex Lawson is the executive director of Social Security Works, a non-profit advocacy group that supports expanding benefits to address America’s growing retirement security crisis. Lawson has appeared on numerous TV and radio outlets and is a frequent guest host of The Thom Hartmann Program, one of the top progressive radio shows in the country.
Bernie Sanders Leads in New Post-Debate National Poll
Amid a series of endorsements from key groups and allies in crucial primary states this week—and despite the “brouhaha” with Sen. Elizabeth Warren—a new national poll shows Sen. Bernie Sanders now in the lead over former Vice President Joe Biden and the rest of the Democratic primary field.
According to the Reuters/Ipsos poll released late Thursday, Sanders received support from 20% of registered Democratic primary voters surveyed. That figure was enough to edge out Biden who received 19% and the 12% of voters who say they back Warren. Rounding out the top five finishers in the nationwide poll—conducted this week between Jan. 15-16—were former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg (9%) and former South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg (6%).
While the poll has a 5-point margin of error that puts Biden and Sanders in a statistical tie, the results show Sanders gaining steam and Biden remaining flat compared to a similar poll taken last week. In addition, Reuters noted in its reporting, “The poll shows that standing does not appear to have been hurt by his recent confrontation with Warren” that captured political headlines throughout the week.
Related Articles
[image error]
CNN’s Sanders Hit Piece Is a Journalistic Outrage
by
[image error]
What Separates Sanders From Warren (and Everybody Else)
by Conor Lynch
[image error]
Corporate Democrats Desperately Want a Sanders-Warren Feud
by Norman Solomon
“Warren, who is aligned with Sanders on a variety of issues, has accused him of telling her in 2018 that a woman could not be elected president,” noted Reuters. “Sanders disputes that claim, and the two sniped at each other after this week’s presidential debate about how they were framing the conversation in public.”
The new national poll showed Sanders’ and Warren’s support remains unchanged among women voters compared to polling prior to the dust-up, with approximately 15% supporting Sanders and 11% supporting Warren.
It’s just one poll, but it looks like Bernie is unhurt and Warren unhelped by the brouhaha.
And, speaking of Bernie Bros: “So far, Sanders’ and Warren’s support remains unchanged among women, with about 15% supporting Sanders and 11% supporting Warren.” https://t.co/ZGX5exm7qn
— Doug Henwood (@DougHenwood) January 17, 2020
Meanwhile, a new Emerson poll out of New Hampshire released Friday showed Sanders maintaining a discernible lead in the nation’s first primary state.
With the support of 23% of state primary voters, Sanders was followed by Buttigieg in second place at 18%, while Biden and Warren were tied in third with 14% each. Sen. Amy Klobuchar rounded out the top five with 10%.
#NEW New Hampshire Post-debate @7News / @EmersonPolling:
Sanders 23
Buttigieg 18
Biden 14
Warren 14
Klobuchar 10
Yang 6
Gabbard 5 pic.twitter.com/HTtM6NUKfI
— Political Polls (@PpollingNumbers) January 17, 2020
Sanders has been experiencing a surge in both national and state-level polling for weeks, a show of momentum that coincides with a raft of new endorsements by national groups and allies in key primary states that include Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, California, and Wisconsin.
On Thursday, the Clark County Black Caucus in Nevada officially endorsed Sanders. The CCBC represents members in the state’s largest county and cited Sanders’ commitment to social, economic, and racial justice as the key reason for offering their support.
“Bernie Sanders has been a lifelong advocate for civil rights and economic justice. His presidential campaign goes the furthest in addressing issues that impact the African American community nationally and here in Nevada,” caucus chairwoman Yvette Williams said in a statement. “As representatives of this community, CCBC looks forward to working with Sen. Bernie Sanders to ensure our political system works for everyone.”
The CCBC’s endorsement came just two days after the largest teachers union in Nevada also announced their official backing of Sanders on Tuesday, and an endorsement Wednesday by the national group Make the Road Action, which advocates for immigrant rights and social progress.
On Thursday, Rep. Mark Pocan, a Democrat from the key mid-western state of Wisconsin who also co-chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus, issued his endorsement of Sanders.
I am proud to endorse @BernieSanders for President of the United States.
After three years of Trump, Wisconsinites want someone who they can trust with values they share.
Bernie never stopped fighting for working families & I am joining him in the fight to defeat Donald Trump. pic.twitter.com/0UphQV3mrv
— Mark Pocan (@MarkPocan) January 16, 2020
“Sanders’ authenticity, honesty, and movement for equality is the antidote our nation needs now,” Pocan said. “I am proud to endorse a candidate that shares my progressive values and has long been an advocate for the issues Wisconsinites care most about. From health care to a living wage, it’s time we work for working people, and with Bernie Sanders as president—we can do just that.”
January 16, 2020
Three Reasons Trump Ordered Soleimani’s Killing
President Donald Trump’s administration has trotted out an embarrassingly inconsistent series of justifications for the recent drone strike in Iraq that killed top Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani. The ever-changing story of why Soleimani was killed underscores the Trump administration’s thin rationale for an action so provocative that it could have triggered an all-out war.
The day after the attack, Trump spoke from the White House. He said, “Soleimani was plotting imminent and sinister attacks on American diplomats and military personnel, but we caught him in the act and terminated him.” Trump reiterated his suggestion that Soleimani was found to be in the process of targeting Americans. He claimed in a tweet that the general “was plotting to kill many more [Americans] … but got caught!”
When pressed for specifics, Trump appeared confused over why anyone needed more explanation other than the fact that “[Suleimani] was a monster. And he’s no longer a monster. He’s dead.” The president added, “And he was planning a very big attack and a very bad attack for us and other people, and we stopped it.”
Related Articles
[image error]
The Smoking Gun in the Soleimani Assassination
by Juan Cole
[image error]
The Real Reason Trump Assassinated Qassem Soleimani
by Juan Cole
[image error]
Trump Fulfills the Wishes of Israel's Mossad
by
Then, on Jan. 8, Trump gave more specifics, saying, “We did it because they were looking to blow up our embassy . . . not just the embassy in Baghdad.” Trump added, “I can reveal that I believe it would have been four embassies.” The story changed, however, when Defense Secretary Mark Esper admitted on television that he had not been shown any piece of evidence that U.S. embassies would be targeted. Esper added, “I share the president’s view that probably—my expectation was they were going to go after our embassies. The embassies are the most prominent display of American presence in a country.”
In other words, the U.S. simply guessed that Soleimani would attack American embassies because they were obvious targets—a ludicrous assumption.
On Jan. 13, Trump angrily dug in his heels, insisting on Twitter that Soleimani was indeed plotting “imminent” attacks against the U.S., insisting, “it doesn’t really matter because of his horrible past!” On the same day, Attorney General William Barr switched to another explanation, telling The Associated Press, “President Trump and those of us in his national security team are reestablishing deterrence—real deterrence—against the Islamic Republic.”
At the same time, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo echoed this new plot twist in a speech at Stanford University titled “The Restoration of Deterrence: The Iranian Example.” Pompeo said, “Your adversary must understand not only that you have the capacity to impose cost but that you’re in fact willing to do so.” He added, “The importance of deterrence isn’t confined to Iran. In all cases, we must deter foes to defend freedom,” implying that the U.S. could at any time lob drone strikes to extrajudicially assassinate prominent figures of regimes it considers enemies, simply to scare them into submission. Indeed, it was Pompeo who reportedly pushed Trump into killing Soleimani and has emerged as the biggest war hawk on Iran after the resignation of former national security adviser John Bolton last year.
The U.S. has been on the brink of war with Iran numerous times, but Soleimani’s killing brought the two countries closer to a violent confrontation than ever in the past 15 years. Soleimani was no angel. He was in charge of expanding Iran’s military influence in the greater Middle East, helping keep Syria’s brutal dictator Bashar Assad in power and overseeing militia groups in Iraq that violently quashed protesters. Still, just as the extrajudicial assassination of an American war criminal by a foreign nation would be unconscionable, so was the drone strike that took Soleimani’s life.
So why did the U.S. do it? As Pompeo made clear, the Trump administration’s assassination of a top Iranian leader was meant to push the Iranian nation into submission despite the risk of triggering war. Iran’s response was to launch missiles at U.S. bases in Iraq—an action that sounds quite serious on paper. But given that the regime issued a warning of its strikes ahead of time, there were no casualties. The action helped both the Iranian regime save face—Foreign Minister Javad Zarif said his country did not, “seek escalation or war, but will defend … against any aggression”—and helped Trump save face as the American president triumphantly tweeted, “All is well!”
Trump realizes that a war with Iran would be deeply unpopular. Within days of Soleimani’s killing, grassroots protests against a U.S. war with Iran took place all over the world. The U.S. House of Representatives last week passed a resolution 224 to 194 restricting Trump’s ability to launch a strike on Iran without congressional approval. Now, Democrats in the Senate say they have the votes to pass it as well—with some Republican support—which would be a major political rebuke. An ABC News/Ipsos poll this week found that 56% of Americans disapprove of Trump’s dealings on Iran. Fifty-two percent said that Soleimani’s killing has made Americans less safe.
Indeed, there is evidence that the killing of a violent leader often does more harm than good. A political scientist named Max Abrahms explained, “Militant groups have become more violent, specifically against civilians, after the death or imprisonment of senior figures.” Citing dozens of examples from history, Abrahms summarized, “Leadership decapitation promotes terrorism by empowering subordinates with less restraint toward civilians.”
While Trump cares little about the actual impact of his policies on Americans’ safety, he does fear negative voter sentiment. The show of American military dominance is a great talking point for a leader who projects narcissistic hubris and male bravado to his gleeful base. Trump has wasted no time in centering the Iran strike in his reelection campaign speeches. A day after Soleimani’s killing, Trump spoke at a megachurch in Florida, explaining that his action was “a warning to terrorists,” and boasting about ordering the “flawless” airstrike to “terminate” the “depraved butcher.” Trump told his followers at the church, “I really do believe we have God on our side.”
At a raucous rally in Milwaukee, Wis., this week, Trump was even more emboldened, saying in crude terms, “Great percentages of people don’t have legs right now and arms because of this son of a bitch.” He conflated Democratic opposition to war with support for the general, saying, “The Democrats should be outraged by Soleimani’s evil crimes and not the decision to end his wretched life.”
In Trump’s world, there is no such thing as international law. Just as he sees the U.S. Constitution as a pesky document not worth respecting, his view of the U.S. on the world stage is based on imperial hubris and brute force. He is not the first president to recklessly endanger lives through military might, and he will sadly not be the last.
But in trying to understand his recent actions on Iran, one thing is clear: Trump killed Soleimani because he could, because he wanted to reassert American military dominance—and because he thinks it can help his chances of reelection.
The Real Reason Trump Ordered Soleimani’s Killing
President Donald Trump’s administration has trotted out an embarrassingly inconsistent series of justifications for the recent drone strike in Iraq that killed top Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani. The ever-changing story of why Soleimani was killed underscores the Trump administration’s thin rationale for an action so provocative that it could have triggered an all-out war.
The day after the attack, Trump spoke from the White House. He said, “Soleimani was plotting imminent and sinister attacks on American diplomats and military personnel, but we caught him in the act and terminated him.” Trump reiterated his suggestion that Soleimani was found to be in the process of targeting Americans. He claimed in a tweet that the general “was plotting to kill many more [Americans] … but got caught!”
When pressed for specifics, Trump appeared confused over why anyone needed more explanation other than the fact that “[Suleimani] was a monster. And he’s no longer a monster. He’s dead.” The president added, “And he was planning a very big attack and a very bad attack for us and other people, and we stopped it.”
Then, on Jan. 8, Trump gave more specifics, saying, “We did it because they were looking to blow up our embassy . . . not just the embassy in Baghdad.” Trump added, “I can reveal that I believe it would have been four embassies.” The story changed, however, when Defense Secretary Mark Esper admitted on television that he had not been shown any piece of evidence that U.S. embassies would be targeted. Esper added, “I share the president’s view that probably—my expectation was they were going to go after our embassies. The embassies are the most prominent display of American presence in a country.”
In other words, the U.S. simply guessed that Soleimani would attack American embassies because they were obvious targets—a ludicrous assumption.
On Jan. 13, Trump angrily dug in his heels, insisting on Twitter that Soleimani was indeed plotting “imminent” attacks against the U.S., insisting, “it doesn’t really matter because of his horrible past!” On the same day, Attorney General William Barr switched to another explanation, telling The Associated Press, “President Trump and those of us in his national security team are reestablishing deterrence—real deterrence—against the Islamic Republic.”
At the same time, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo echoed this new plot twist in a speech at Stanford University titled “The Restoration of Deterrence: The Iranian Example.” Pompeo said, “Your adversary must understand not only that you have the capacity to impose cost but that you’re in fact willing to do so.” He added, “The importance of deterrence isn’t confined to Iran. In all cases, we must deter foes to defend freedom,” implying that the U.S. could at any time lob drone strikes to extrajudicially assassinate prominent figures of regimes it considers enemies, simply to scare them into submission. Indeed, it was Pompeo who reportedly pushed Trump into killing Soleimani and has emerged as the biggest war hawk on Iran after the resignation of former national security adviser John Bolton last year.
The U.S. has been on the brink of war with Iran numerous times, but Soleimani’s killing brought the two countries closer to a violent confrontation than ever in the past 15 years. Soleimani was no angel. He was in charge of expanding Iran’s military influence in the greater Middle East, helping keep Syria’s brutal dictator Bashar Assad in power and overseeing militia groups in Iraq that violently quashed protesters. Still, just as the extrajudicial assassination of an American war criminal by a foreign nation would be unconscionable, so was the drone strike that took Soleimani’s life.
So why did the U.S. do it? As Pompeo made clear, the Trump administration’s assassination of a top Iranian leader was meant to push the Iranian nation into submission despite the risk of triggering war. Iran’s response was to launch missiles at U.S. bases in Iraq—an action that sounds quite serious on paper. But given that the regime issued a warning of its strikes ahead of time, there were no casualties. The action helped both the Iranian regime save face—Foreign Minister Javad Zarif said his country did not, “seek escalation or war, but will defend … against any aggression”—and helped Trump save face as the American president triumphantly tweeted, “All is well!”
Trump realizes that a war with Iran would be deeply unpopular. Within days of Soleimani’s killing, grassroots protests against a U.S. war with Iran took place all over the world. The U.S. House of Representatives last week passed a resolution 224 to 194 restricting Trump’s ability to launch a strike on Iran without congressional approval. Now, Democrats in the Senate say they have the votes to pass it as well—with some Republican support—which would be a major political rebuke. An ABC News/Ipsos poll this week found that 56% of Americans disapprove of Trump’s dealings on Iran. Fifty-two percent said that Soleimani’s killing has made Americans less safe.
Indeed, there is evidence that the killing of a violent leader often does more harm than good. A political scientist named Max Abrahms explained, “Militant groups have become more violent, specifically against civilians, after the death or imprisonment of senior figures.” Citing dozens of examples from history, Abrahms summarized, “Leadership decapitation promotes terrorism by empowering subordinates with less restraint toward civilians.”
While Trump cares little about the actual impact of his policies on Americans’ safety, he does fear negative voter sentiment. The show of American military dominance is a great talking point for a leader who projects narcissistic hubris and male bravado to his gleeful base. Trump has wasted no time in centering the Iran strike in his reelection campaign speeches. A day after Soleimani’s killing, Trump spoke at a megachurch in Florida, explaining that his action was “a warning to terrorists,” and boasting about ordering the “flawless” airstrike to “terminate” the “depraved butcher.” Trump told his followers at the church, “I really do believe we have God on our side.”
At a raucous rally in Milwaukee, Wis., this week, Trump was even more emboldened, saying in crude terms, “Great percentages of people don’t have legs right now and arms because of this son of a bitch.” He conflated Democratic opposition to war with support for the general, saying, “The Democrats should be outraged by Soleimani’s evil crimes and not the decision to end his wretched life.”
In Trump’s world, there is no such thing as international law. Just as he sees the U.S. Constitution as a pesky document not worth respecting, his view of the U.S. on the world stage is based on imperial hubris and brute force. He is not the first president to recklessly endanger lives through military might, and he will sadly not be the last.
But in trying to understand his recent actions on Iran, one thing is clear: Trump killed Soleimani because he could, because he wanted to reassert American military dominance—and because he thinks it can help his chances of reelection.
Chris Hedges's Blog
- Chris Hedges's profile
- 1876 followers
