A hard pushback on the dicey “evidence” the Trump administration didn’t quite present – it’s classified y’know – slowed down John Bolton’s rush to war, but something bit Donald Trump and he has tweeted another implied nuclear threat at Iran. Here are questions that should be considered in going to war. Read More
Nate Beeler
National Security Advisor John Bolton still thinks that the Iraq war was a good idea. He has never met a war he didn’t like or a treaty that he did. Now, as Donald Trump’s National Security Advisor, he has a great deal of power to make war against Iran. Bolton has given speeches for the MEK, a cultish organization that wants regime change in Iran.
Trump pulled the United States out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA, Iran deal) a year ago, under the fiction that his great deal-making skills and “maximum pressure” would force Iran into a deal where they would change their government, stop supporting Hamas, end all nuclear work, and, probably, build a Trump Tower Tehran. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has listed twelve points that Iran must meet to become a good world citizen in his eyes. Presumably, as in the case of North Korea, Iran must meet all those points before sanctions will be removed.
The JCPOA covers the possibility of Iran’s making nuclear weapons in full detail. Iran is complying with the agreement. But that’s not enough for a faction in the United States and Israel who opposed the JCPOA from the beginning and have continued to agitate for withdrawal from it. Read More
Paresh Nath
Donald Trump has long believed that he could eliminate nuclear weapons from the world. He is the greatest negotiator ever, and he doesn’t understand why those wimpy diplomats can’t just heave a hearty “Fuck You” across the conference table and walk out, which would induce the other party to come around.
The administration’s approach to foreign policy is driven by Trump’s ignorance and greed, but with an inertial component of conventional policy development by the permanent government employees who remain at lower levels, and a layering of political appointees with their own agendas, some of which dovetail with Trump’s, some of which are more or less conventional foreign policy, and some that are quite idiosyncratic. Read More
Dave Whamond
Donald Trump again repeated a lie at his Wisconsin rally. It’s a lie that has been around a very, very long time, the form even longer. Paint your opposition as being capable of an atrocity that no decent person would tolerate. That makes it easier to ostracize them, jail them, go to war against them.
This particular lie was used to promote World War I, the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s, and two wars against Saddam Hussein.
Babies and young children, as the most vulnerable of humans with lives ahead of them, are fodder for lies that play on deep emotions. To say someone kills babies is one of the most explosive accusations it is possible to make.
Trump takes his story from a mangling of a doctor’s statement about the heartbreak of delivering a baby that cannot live because it lacks major organs – lungs, parts of the brain or heart. That story has been told in major newspapers by mothers who have experienced a pregnancy with a severely deformed fetus. A nurse who has dealt with such tragedies describes them in this Twitter thread.
Yes, this lie has been around a very long time. It is related to the blood libel, the accusation that Jews drink the blood of children.
The New York Times says “President Trump revived an inaccurate refrain” in referring to Trump’s lie. But it’s worse than that. And it ties in with the antisemitism that Trump encourages, except this time it’s against every human who can imagine the feelings involved in a pregnancy that will result only in a dead baby, through natural causes.
Thanks to the commenters on an earlier Balloon Juice thread for pointing out how many times this attack has been used before.
Cross-posted to Balloon Juice.
Stephane Peray
Dave Granlund
I attended a symposium on authoritarianism a week or so ago. Two of the presentations implicitly compared Trump to Adolf Hitler and Hugo Chavez. The parallels are striking. Jay West, retired from teaching Russian history at Middlebury College, spoke about Nazi Germany and the temptations of fascism, something that naturally accompanies Russian history. Charles Shapiro, American ambassador to Venezuela during the Chavez years, spoke about his experience with Chavez.
Hitler, Chavez, and Donald Trump were all elected. Portions of the electorate disapproved of them for one reason or another, but they supported them because they thought they shared common goals and that those elected would be controllable. West and Shapiro gave much longer lists. Read More
