Trump and the Warmongers
Trump and the Warmongers
More Bombs for Bibi to Kill Babies
Trump and the war hawks. Or war sluts. Or war pigs. I thought about all three of these. Then I thought: Why insult hawks, sluts, or pigs?
Donald Trump is forming his cabinet by rounding up the usual warmongers. In 2016, he gathered the generals, men like James Mattis and John Kelly. This time around, he’s tapping people like Marco Rubio. “Little Marco” as Secretary of State, a man who’s rarely met a war he didn’t like. For Secretary of Defense he’s nominated Pete Hegseth, whose main concern seems to be waging a war on “woke” generals. One thing is certain: Rubio and Hegseth won’t challenge the military-industrial complex. They will feed it … and feed it again.
Other nominations include Elise Stefanik, a rabid Zionist, as UN ambassador, along with Mike Huckabee, a pro-Israel evangelical who believes in the “end times,” as U.S. ambassador to Israel. Trump may trump Biden as being more slavishly pro-Israel. “Bombs for Bibi to kill babies” should be their motto.
Kristi Noem, who shot and killed her own dog because she couldn’t train it, will run Homeland Security. (If you work for DHS, it might be a good idea to watch your back, or at least to avoid being alone with Noem at a gravel pit.) Mike Waltz will be the National Security Advisor; here’s how Caitlin Johnstone describes him:
Waltz is a warmongering freak. Journalist Michael Tracey has been filling up his Twitter page since the announcement with examples of Waltz’s insane hawkishness, including his support for letting Ukraine use US weapons to strike deep into Russian territory, criticizing Biden for not escalating aggressively enough in Ukraine, advocating bombing Iran, opposing the US military withdrawal from Afghanistan, and naming Iran, North Korea, China, Russia and Venezuela as “on the march” against the United States toward global conflict. The mainstream press are calling Waltz a “China hawk”, but from the look of things he’s a war-horny hawk toward all the official enemies of the United States.
Once again, Trump isn’t draining the swamp. He’s filling it with warmongers and Zionists who are even more extreme than the warmongers and Zionists of the Biden administration.
Of course, the fundamental problem is that Republicans want to boost military spending even higher than Biden and Harris have. Republicans are "all in" on revamping the nuclear triad, for example, which is likely to cost $2 trillion factoring in the usual cost overruns.
It's possible Trump/Vance will be more likely to pursue diplomacy with Russia; perhaps the war in Ukraine will finally stumble to an end. But the imperial vision remains, aggravated perhaps by a war within to expel "illegal" immigrants, together with a coup within the military against “woke” officers.
That sounds pessimistic. If I'm being optimistic, perhaps Trump can have a "Nixon goes to China" moment. Trump can sell virtually anything to his followers. He is also driven by ego. Maybe there's a way to drive him toward peace, dangling the carrot of a Nobel Peace Prize for him. Trump loves accolades, and if he could be influenced to stop throwing all of America's chips into the Pentagon, that would be a good thing.
But, if personnel is policy, America had better prepare for more war, catastrophically so, even as more bombs are sent to Bibi to kill babies. There’s certainly nothing “woke” about that.
Perhaps the most jarring thing about yesterday's flow of appointments was how rapidly they were announced; clearly there was a list prepared of those who would be given Cabinet and other national security roles. It appears each was chosen based on personal loyalty to Trump and support of the goals of Miriam Adelson.
Rubio as Secretary of State is ridiculous; whether he will be worse than Blinken remains to be seen. The only thing that's clear is the State Department will continue to diminish as it has over the last 30 years - being little more than the auxiliary of the DOD.
The DOD will continue to rake in and spend hundreds of billions of dollars buying weapon systems that are look nice but are inferior to other countries (little reported in the MSM, but the F-35 was apparently painted by Iranian radar in Israel's last raid). About the only Trump victory in the DOD might be its war on woke generals.
The most frightening is Waltz's appointment as National Security Advisor. As Caitlin observed, he is a hawk on war everywhere - but I wonder if he understands wars against nation states with advanced technologies are not the same as waging war on second world armies and peasants with AK-47s.
I wonder how all this will be received by MAGA (the desperate working class portion), after body bags of dead sailors and airmen start coming back from the Mideast?
Be nice to America or we will bring Democracy to your country. Like we did in Vietnam, Chile, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Ukraine, and God knows where else.
I wonder if the earth will ever recover after all the destruction rendered in our effort to "democratize" our official enemies (who can be anybody at any time).