Anti-War

Thanks to a recent Wall Street Journal article, I've been hearing from Democratic partisans that President Trump has done something brand n

Fredrik S. Heffermehl

Trump – Putin could rescue the world – and win the Nobel Peace Prize

Donald Trump has promised to repair America´s infrastructure and to lower taxes. We all know this is undoable, and yet – it could be done. Trump has one way to raise the required funds, and create a safer world in the bargain: talk with Russia on a global initiative for co-operation and disarmament, then get China to join. Astronomic funds would become available to meet the needs of nations and citizens everywhere. Seeing the advantages ought to get all other nations on board. All nations, all weapons, big and small; the paradox is that this will prove easier than step-by-step approaches.

This April 4th will be 100 years since the U.S. Senate voted to declare war on Germany and 50 since Martin Luther King Jr. spoke out against the war on Vietnam (49 since he was killed on that speech’s first anniversary).

Liberals are supposed to be antiwar, right? I went to college in the 1960s, when students nationwide were rising up in opposition to the Vietnam War. I was a Young Republican back then and supported the war through sheer ignorance and dislike of the sanctimoniousness of the protesters, some of whom were surely making their way to Canada to live in exile on daddy’s money while I was on a bus going to Fort Leonard Wood for basic combat training. I can’t even claim that I had some grudging respect for the antiwar crowd because I didn’t, but I did believe that at least some of them who were not being motivated by being personally afraid of getting hurt were actually sincere in their opposition to the awful things that were happening in Southeast Asia.

The United States is adding new sanctions on Iran over that country’s alleged misdeeds, and nearly all of those allegations are either out-and-out lies or half-truths. It has a familiar ring to it, as demonizing Tehran has been rather more the norm than not since 1979, a phenomenon that has included fabricated claims that the Iranians killed American soldiers after the U.S.’s armed interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq. This time around, the administration focused on the perfectly legal Iranian test of a non-nuclear-capable, medium-range ballistic missile and the reported attack on what was initially claimed to be a U.S. warship by allegedly Iranian-backed Yemeni Houthi fighters. The ship was later revealed to be a Saudi frigate.

A Georgetown Law professor named David Koplow has drafted what he calls a Nuclear Kellogg-Briand Pact.

I gather these are the features people have concerns about in the recent U.S. raid in Yemen.

1. It was fought on the ground rather than from the air.

2. An American died.

3. The American was a Navy SEAL Team 6 member, more valuable than other Americans.

4. Trump approved it instead of Obama.

5. Trump didn't have "proper" "intelligence."

6. Trump had the wrong accomplices in the room.

7. Trump wasn't in the room.

8. The U.S. hasn't declared war against Yemen.

9. Trump, who is legally responsible for this crime, sounds like an intoxicated idiot.

10. Last and certainly least, a bit too many children and women were killed.

May I respectfully request everyone pushing these ideas to stick a "Make America Great Again" hat in their mouth and eat it?

What in the hell is the matter with you people?

Happy Year of the Rooster!

Thank you for inviting me. Thank you to Archer Heinzen for setting this up. Of course I wouldn't have come had I known UVA's basketball team would be playing Villanova at 1 o'clock. I'm kidding, but I'll catch it on the radio or watch the replay without the commercials. And when I do I can guarantee only this: the announcer will thank U.S. troops for watching from 175 countries, and nobody will wonder whether 174 wouldn't be just about enough.

I wish I could also guarantee that UVA will win, but this is where sports monkeys around with rational thinking. I don't actually have any say over whether UVA wins. So I can turn my wish into a prediction "We will win" and then declare that "we" won as if I'd been involved. Or let's say that UVA blows it. Then I can remark that "we" decided to keep London Perrantes in the game even though he had a sprained wrist and the flu and had just lost one leg in a car accident, even though the obvious fact is that were I really the coach I would never have done that, just as -- if I fully controlled the U.S. government -- I wouldn't actually spend a trillion dollars a year on war preparations.

Here's why I ask. Maddow devotes many minutes on MSNBC stirring up hatred of Russia in order to establish that there is a vague possibility that President Donald Trump might be corrupted by a foreign government.

Here we are on Day 5 of the Donald Trump presidency, and he's got "special" forces of the U.S. military in two-thirds of the world's nations. He's engaged in serious occupation and/or bombing campaigns in Iraq, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen. He just sent malicious robot airplanes armed with missiles to blow to pieces a bunch of vaguely-identified but never indicted "criminals" in Yemen. Their body parts were widely scattered and their loved ones devastated. The injured writhed in agony.

We made it through a presidential campaign in which a debate moderator asked if a candidate would be willing to kill thousands of innocent children, and in which Donald Trump promised to "kill their families" and "steal their oil." And here we are on Trump's very first Terror Tuesday, and he's already in possession of the most expensive and extensive military machine ever seen on earth. His speed is remarkable. Already he has troops in 175 nations (and announcers are thanking them for watching sporting events as if it were all just normal).