On Friday morning I jumped out of bed just before 5 am Eastern US time full of fear that President Donald Trump might have become the declared recipient of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, following in the footsteps of noted warmonger President Barack Obama, who is fondly remembered for also institutionalizing the killing the American citizens overseas whom he targeted in weekly White House staff meetings. Trump has undoubtedly decided to follow the Obama model in his bombing of Iran and his apparent intention to overthrow Venezuela rather than Libya, but has expanded on that with his killing of Venezuelans on fishing boats in international waters without any evidence that criminal activity is intended. In both cases, as well as in that of their predecessor George W. Bush, the argument inevitably used has been that “terrorism” was involved, justifying instant death for the potential perps before they could actually act.

Trump will be raging over the Nobel Committee’s selection of a little-known Venezuelan woman Maria Corina Machado, who oddly inter alia is herself an “opposition figure” to her own government who has reportedly promoted free elections and representative government while also cozying up to right wing anti-democratic elements including Israel and even calling on the Zionists to assist in using force to change the current regime of Nicolas Maduro in Caracas, not unlike what Trump is up to. The Nobel Committee opted to look at the positive, however, praising her “for her tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy.”

Trump characteristically responded to the Nobel selection with a huge self-serving lie “President Trump will continue making peace deals, ending wars, and saving lives. He has the heart of a humanitarian, and there will never be anyone like him who can move mountains with the sheer force of his will. The Nobel Committee proved they place politics over peace.”

One would have thought that Trump’s enabling of two wars in Ukraine and Gaza that he could have stopped and which have collectively speaking killed as many as two million people would have been evidence enough for the Norwegian selectors, who now might be fearing the consequences of their bold action. That might include at a minimum their being sanctioned by Washington, like was done to the International Criminal Court, and arrested on sight if they or their family members should ever happen to travel to the United States, Britain, or Germany.

Donald Trump had clearly hoped that his promotion of the so-called Gaza Peace Process, which suddenly moved forward against the odds just before the Nobel Peace Prize results were announced, would have tipped the balance in his favor, but, alas, it was not to be. Quite likely the Committee in Norway was aware that the Trump electoral message promoting himself as a peace candidate was a bit of a scam, illustrated by his persistent subservience to Israel’s war criminal Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who sponsored his bid for the prize, and his willingness to supply Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky with long range weapons that could easily lead to a nuclear World War 3.

The other charming side of Trump is his desire to punish anyone who criticizes him or opposes his so-called policies in any way, currently being exhibited in the firing of senior officers and officials both in the US military and civil government services. During his speech at the funeral memorial for assassinated political influencer Charlie Kirk, Trump made it clear that he “hates” those who oppose him. In fact, you don’t need to be a critic to get fired in Trumpworld and many in government expect the ax to fall sooner or later, possibly to include all “fatties” government wide, as his War Minister Pete Hegseth warned in Quantico. Trump himself is, of course, noticeably overweight but he presumably exempts himself from the rules that he promulgates for others.

As a historian, I sometimes speculate on which historic figure reminds me most of Trump, particularly as measured by what we might call our president’s ignorance and mental instability, to put it as politely as possible. Somehow, I keep coming up with Gaius Augustus Caesar Germanicus, whose nickname was Caligula. He was Rome’s third emperor, who ruled from 37 until 41 AD (in Roman dates 790-794 AUC). The nickname which he disliked but was widely used meant “little boots” derived from a soldiers’ name for a young boy who was on campaigns in Germany as a child accompanying his father Germanicus, who was a celebrated general. His mother was Agrippina the Elder, granddaughter of the first Roman Emperor Augustus Caesar. “Caligae” were the Roman Army’s military boots but it is not known if the boy Gaius ever developed bone spurs. For sure, he never served in the Legions. One recalls how the Roman historian Publius Cornelius Tacitus described the German campaigns “To ravage, to slaughter, to steal, this they give the false name of empire; and where they create a desert, they call it peace.”

Caligula, who ascended to the throne at age 24, was regarded as both particularly ruthless and also not of sound mind, though admittedly that comes from hostile sources among the nobility, which described him as “self-indulgent, cruel, sadistic, extravagant and sexually perverted; thereafter, an insane, murderous tyrant who demanded and received worship as a living god, [and who] humiliated the Senate.” He appointed his favorite horse Incitatus as Consul of Rome and in a somewhat Trumpean move he launched an invasion of Britain, which he may have sought to acquire as a new province, but halted the Roman army on the shore of the North Sea looking across at the British Isles, where the apparently mutinous soldiers were ordered to pick up seashells as their “loot from the sea” before being made to return home. It was a bit like spending a billion dollars to fly to a peaceful country named Iran and bombing it, accomplishing nothing, before announcing falsely that the target had been “obliterated.”

Like Trump, who has claimed that the presidency empowers him to do whatever he wants, Caligula was protected by his authority as the sole princeps legibus solutus (“a leader not bound by the laws”), a unique distinction that required the exercise of personal responsibility, self-restraint, and above all, tact in dealing with the Roman elites but it turned out that his own sense of discretion was in lamentably short supply and increasingly so as his reign progressed. And his cruelty was notable. He initiated treason trials against nobles and on one occasion he had more than 26 equestrians executed in a circus as part of a public spectacle. Some sources also claim that he even forced equestrians and senators to fight in the arena as gladiators. Other accounts maintain that there was a brothel in the Imperial palace that was staffed by Roman aristocratic women and their children.

To be sure, Trump has not yet appointed a horse as Senator as he appears to dislike all domestic animals, particularly dogs, but friends of mine who abhor his policies as well as his demeanor sometimes assert that his senior appointments might be described as “horses’ derrieres” to paraphrase a bit. But Trump is much closer to Caligula’s favorite bon mot expression, according to the Roman historian Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus, which was “Oderint dum Metuant,” meaning in rough English translation “Let them hate as long as they fear.” He was referring to the fact that Caligula, like Trump, was constantly threatening opponents and was ruthless with his perceived enemies, in Caligula’s case through executing Senators and other high officials when they offended him. The forces opposed to Caligula inevitably grew as he became more unstable and a liability to the survival of Rome. He lost all popular support after declaring himself a God, presumably because there was no Kennedy Center that he could have renamed to better honor himself, so the Pretorian Guard eventually killed him and replaced him with his uncle Claudius.

Thinking of Caligula brings me to what is going on currently in the Middle East. It is certainly to the good that the bombing and killing of Gazan civilians by Israel was stopped on Friday, at least temporarily. As part of what is being referred to as the First Phase or Phase One, Hamas appears prepared to turn over twenty living Israeli hostages as well as the bodies of fifty or so more who were presumably killed in Israel airstrikes or because of untreated wounds or because they starved to death thanks to the Israeli blockade on food and medicines. In return, Israel will free some 2,000 of the Palestinian prisoners that it is holding, and torturing, out of the 11,000 or so that have been arrested, a third of whom are being held without any charges. The Phase One will also in theory permit the immediate importation of food and medicine into Gaza to end the starvation and avoidable deaths, but as Israel will continue to control the access “choke points” through a “security perimeter” all around and also including parts of Gaza we will see how that goes.

Israel also claims that it is withdrawing its invasion force from Gaza, but how that will proceed and to what extent is by no means clear and Netanyahu may be regarding it as negotiable or fit to be ignored. Back in March, a ceasefire that was initiated in January involving some US mediation on the part of Trump’s Special Envoy and chief negotiator Steve Witkoff failed when Israel contrived to reopen hostilities soon thereafter based on Netanyahu’s claims that Hamas was engaging in “manipulation” and “psychological warfare.” Israel has also broken agreements with Lebanon and Syria, while also attacking Yemen. It also attacked Qatar in an attempt to kill Hamas negotiators, indicating once again, if one had any doubt, that the Israeli government is completely unrestrained and unconcerned about humanitarian concerns or international law.

Israel is currently demanding that Hamas be disarmed before proceeding to Phase Two of the Trump plan. An international peacekeeper force has been mooted to protect whatever arrangement comes out of Phase One, but it may not develop in time to have any impact even though 200 American soldiers are reported to be on the way to participate. But even if that is achieved, the Gazans will be both defenseless and lacking any real leverage against an unconstrained Israel and Trump, a development which I and others fully expect rather than any real move towards “peace.” Nor is there any real roadmap for a future self-government Palestinian state emerging from the ruins of Gaza and the dismantling of the West Bank. The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine will sooner rather than later surely start again.

Trump for his part has never even pretended to have any compassion for the tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of Gazans that have been slaughtered. He speaks repeatedly of the Israeli 20 “hostages” but never about what Israel is doing to Gaza, which he refuses to call a genocide. He is through it all Israel and Netanyahu’s poodle and he demands a similar alignment from anyone who works for him in the White House.

Typically, Trump, discussed the “Peace Plan” in advance with both some friendly Arab leaders and Israel, though not with the Palestinians, and waxed enthusiastic regarding the release of “his” ceasefire proposal for Gaza. After meeting with the Arabs, he allowed the Israelis to modify in their favor the text of the original agreement to satisfy Netanyahu. Trump then boasted how “This is a big, big day, a beautiful day, potentially one of the great days ever in civilization.” He added that the deal would resolve millennia-old problems and bring “eternal peace.” He later qualified the enthusiasm by characteristically and predictably blaming the Arabs if the plan should not succeed, declaring that “If Hamas rejects the deal, Bibi you will have our full backing to do what you have to do” to “finish it.” Trump also warned that “Hamas is either going to be doing it or not – and if it’s not, it’s going to be a very sad end.” He also warned that Hamas would face “obliteration” if they tried to stay in power.

On a final note, when speaking in Hebrew to his countrymen Netanyahu refers to the “seven wars” that Israel is fighting simultaneously, meaning against nearly all its neighbors, though he now is also engaged in an eighth war against public opinion in the United States, which he clearly regards as the most serious conflict that his country in engaged in. Responding to the call, the usual crowd of Jewish billionaires that bankroll the Israel Lobby in the US are buying up media assets. Trump is supporting the effort, having required Chinese owned TikTok to be sold to an American owner after being informed by the idiots that have his ear that the TikTok site was bad for Israel as it exposed openly what was going in Gaza.

The world’s second richest man, passionate Zionist Larry Ellison, quickly did his duty to the country he loves best rather than the one he lives in and that made him rich. He recently completed the purchase of TikTok for a reported $14 billion. He also has obtained CBS and Paramount studios in addition to considerable media assets that he already had. He has brought in new Zionist managers including the odious Bari Weiss at CBS and is now reported to be adjusting the algorithms governing what is allowed to appear on the new TikTok site and elsewhere. You can bet that anything critical of Israel will be banned. More such purchases are in the works and the US media to include social media will soon be an Israel safe site, a development that goes along with Congressional and state legislature efforts to have any criticism or response to Israeli bad behavior be declared antisemitic, a “hate crime,” and subject to criminal penalties and other appropriate responses. Free speech in the United States of American is a vanishing commodity thanks to Israel and its friends!

In reality, if Donald Trump were actually interested in Making America Great rather than Israel, he would be prosecuting all of the folks like Ellison who are de facto agents of the Jewish state under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) of 1938, which would require them to reveal their sources of income and their contacts with foreign embassies, most particularly that of Israel. The last president who tried to do that to the Israel Lobby was John F Kennedy and he paid the price. Trump doesn’t seem to have the guts or moral integrity to do anything like that, maybe it has something to do with the bone spurs.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.

Original at Unz.com  https://www.unz.com/pgiraldi/nobel-peace-prizes-and-other-delusions/