Timothy Snyder on the trajectory of Trumpism (2 of 2): The Big Lie and the strategic perspective of the Party of Trump

"Post-truth is pre-fascism," writes Timothy Snyder, "and Trump has been our post-truth president." (The American Abyss New York Times Magazine 01/09/2021)

More details are coming out about the specifics of the January 6 storming of the Capitol at the direct, immediate incitement of Donald Trump himself. PBS Frontline has a documentary called Trump's American Carnage that take that riot as a starting point.

Frontline also is posting long segments of some of the interviews they did for the program. This is one that focuses on the kinds of concerns on which Snyder focuses. It's with Olivia Troye, someone I don't recall having heard of before, who was a homeland security and counterterrorism adviser to VP Mike Pence.

She was there in a professional capacity, not as a political adviser, and left Pence's staff in August 2020. This one was done after January 6 but before Biden's Inauguration. She talks quite a bit about the Capitol riot and Trump's encouragement and direct incitement.

She seems to have an impressively nuanced and realistic view of Pence himself. Toward the end (45:00 ff), she's asked about Pence's situation when he was in the Capitol and the lynch mob was coming for him. "I can't imagine what it must be like to have stood by someone unwaveringly, and been in this environment for four years, fully knowing how dangerous this man [Trump] can be. 'Cause we've seen this, repeatedly, and it leads to his own life [Pence's] being put directly in danger by this individual [Trump]. Right? You have the President basically setting up the Vice President of our country in a situation where he puts his [Pence's] life in danger.]."

And, speaking from her professional experience in counterterrorism, "And I have no doubt that the threat level on the Vice President [Pence] will remain high. 'Cause these people are not gonna forget." And at the end, she says, "You can't have unity if you don't have accountability." Olivia Troye is currently part of the Republican Accountability Project.

Snyder talks about how the Big Lie that Trump established around the blatantly false claim that Biden won the Presidential election through election fraud. The Big Lie is something historically associated in particular with the Hitler movement. Snyder describes that infamous Big Lie as:

... Hitlerian anti-Semitism: the claims that Jews ran the world, Jews were responsible for ideas that poisoned German minds, Jews stabbed Germany in the back during the First World War. Intriguingly, [Hannah] Arendt thought big lies work only in lonely minds; their coherence substitutes for experience and companionship.

In November 2020, reaching millions of lonely minds through social media, Trump told a lie that was dangerously ambitious: that he had won an election that in fact he had lost. This lie was big in every pertinent respect: not as big as “Jews run the world,” but big enough. The significance of the matter at hand was great: the right to rule the most powerful country in the world and the efficacy and trustworthiness of its succession procedures. The level of mendacity was profound. The claim was not only wrong, but it was also made in bad faith, amid unreliable sources. It challenged not just evidence but logic: Just how could (and why would) an election have been rigged against a Republican president but not against Republican senators and representatives? Trump had to speak, absurdly, of a “Rigged (for President) Election.” [my emphasis]

But this Big Lie isn't just a professional-wrestling gimmick that Donald Trump came up with. It's one that the Republican Party in general have been working on for four decades. It's just now graduated from the concept that the Democratic Party is illegitimate to the notion that democratic elections are illegitimate. And the rule-of-law system along with it.

Snyder gives us a sobering reminder of how far along Trump got with his actual plan. And the role that Trump's own lack of knowledge of politics and government and his own laziness played in its failure. On the storming of the Capitol, he writes, "It is hard to think of a comparable insurrectionary moment, when a building of great significance was seized, that involved so much milling around." In other words, "for all his lawsuits and entreaties and threats to public officials, [Trump] could not engineer a situation that ended with the right people doing the wrong thing."

But it did provide a real-world example of how close it could come. The two groups of Republicans that Snyder calls the Gamers and the Breakers have a template for a coup that they can broadly share. And did broadly share in 2020-1.

If Trump remains present in American political life, he will surely repeat his big lie incessantly. Hawley and Cruz and the other breakers share responsibility for where this leads. Cruz and Hawley seem to be running for president. Yet what does it mean to be a candidate for office and denounce voting? If you claim that the other side has cheated, and your supporters believe you, they will expect you to cheat yourself. By defending Trump’s big lie on Jan. 6, they set a precedent: A Republican presidential candidate who loses an election should be appointed anyway by Congress. Republicans in the future, at least breaker candidates for president, will presumably have a Plan A, to win and win, and a Plan B, to lose and win. No fraud is necessary; only allegations that there are allegations of fraud. Truth is to be replaced by spectacle, facts by faith.

Trump’s coup attempt of 2020-21, like other failed coup attempts, is a warning for those who care about the rule of law and a lesson for those who do not. His pre-fascism revealed a possibility for American politics. For a coup to work in 2024, the breakers will require something that Trump never quite had: an angry minority, organized for nationwide violence, ready to add intimidation to an election. Four years of amplifying a big lie just might get them this. To claim that the other side stole an election is to promise to steal one yourself. It is also to claim that the other side deserves to be punished. [my emphasis]

Mark Sumner has an insightful Twitter thread on this process that has played out to this point in the Republican Party. He goes back to what Ronald Reagan called the 11th Commandment, that Republicans shouldn't criticize other Republicans, which as he puts it, "erected a wall on the Republican left, but placed not a single barrier to the right. It meant there was never any internal testing of ideas. There was no competition to challenge and refine claims. No effort to call out extreme views. ..." (01/30/2021)

The Twitter format forces painting in broad strokes. So of course we could point out that the Republican Party at times over those four decades have called out the more extreme views of characters like David Duke and Pat Buchanan. But Sumer describes the basic trend very well. David Duke may have been too bitter a pill for country club Republicans to swallow. But Rush Limbaugh wasn't. Nor Alex Jones.

So, he writes, "Josh Hawley opposing votes certified by PA’s GOP legislature is the future of the Republican Party." And Hawley is by no means the only one ready to keep operating on Trump's coup template: A Slap in The Face to Voters': GOP Bill Would Allow AZ Legislature to Overturn Election The Choice 01/30/2021.

Snyder also centers the white supremacy element in the current Republican drive against democracy. "In the past half century, since the Civil Rights Act, Republicans have become a predominantly white party interested — as Trump openly declared — in keeping the number of voters, and particularly the number of Black voters, as low as possible." And he says of the Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump, "At bottom, the fantasy of fraud is that of a crime committed by Black people against white people."

Snyder uses the f-word (fascism) without jumping into the thornbush of academic definition. He writes of using the history of fascism to understand Trumpism, "One comfortable position has been to label any such effort as a direct comparison and then to treat such comparisons as taboo. More productively, the philosopher Jason Stanley has treated fascism as a phenomenon, as a series of patterns that can be observed not only in interwar Europe but beyond it." Mussolini actually called his politics Fascism - it's where we get the word for that brand of politics - and Hitler modeled his takeover of power after Mussolini's. So we can observe similarities without having to quibble about the precise definition.

Snyder in this article uses the word "cult" only in the context of a "martyrdom cult" the authoritarian governing party in Poland currently uses. But understanding cults does shed light on how the current Trumpian Big Lie functions:

Thanks to technological capacity and personal talent, Donald Trump lied at a pace perhaps unmatched by any other leader in history. For the most part these were small lies, and their main effect was cumulative. To believe in all of them was to accept the authority of a single man, because to believe in all of them was to disbelieve everything else. Once such personal authority was established, the president could treat everyone else as the liars; he even had the power to turn someone from a trusted adviser into a dishonest scoundrel with a single tweet. Yet so long as he was unable to enforce some truly big lie, some fantasy that created an alternative reality where people could live and die, his pre-fascism fell short of the thing itself. [my emphasis]

In the more narrow sociological-clinical sense of cult, like Jim Jones' People's Temple, or the UFO cult Heaven's Gate, or the Branch Davidians, that doesn't describe the complexity of the current authoritarianism in the Republican Party. But there is a cultish aspect in Trump following.

Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, calls the Trumpified Republican Party "a one-man cult." (Rep. Jayapal: GOP Isn't A Party Of Principle. It's A Cult MSNBC/The 11th Hour 01/30/2021)

Steven Hassan, an authority on cults and author of The Cult of Trump (2019), spoke earlier this month with Kati Couric on this subject, Former Cult Follower Describes How President Trump Has Created a Cult Following (a sloppy YouTube title!) 01/13/2021:

I'll end by going back once again to what Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein wrote in their 2012 book, It's Even Worse Than It Looks:

[H]owever awkward it may be for the traditional press and nonpartisan analysts to acknowledge, one of the two major parties, the Republican Party, has become an insurgent outlier- ideologically extreme; contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime; scornful of compromise; unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence, and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.

Trump is no longer President. But the Republican Party is still a Trumpian party. And it is still on the trajectory that took it from 2012 to becoming the Party of Trump. In 2020, the Republican National Committee (RNC) didn't even bother to adopt a new party platform. They just issued a one-page resolution stating, "RESOLVED, That the Republican Party has and will continue to enthusiastically support the President’s America-first agenda." It really is the Party of Trump.

A Christian Right post-election repositioning on Trump. Kinda, sorta.

Traditions are important in politics. One of the best-established ones for the Democrats is that every Presidential election year, they fantasize that voters who identify with the Christian Right will start seeing the light and see that there's "Christian" stuff about Democratic policies, too.

Since it never actually happens, we get to rinse-and-repeat every four years. But rituals are important, you know.

Here's an example of a Christian Right true believer engaging in a beloved Republican political ritual: Hunter Baker, When Pragmatic Politics Goes Bad: An Apology to the Never-Trumpers Public Discourse 01/15/2021

After Bush I and especially after Bush II, the latter of whom Republicans including the Christian Right treated with quasi-religious and nationalist devotion while President, they immediately tried to distance themselves from them. Digby Parton calls it the principle that conservatism cannot fail, it can only *be* failed. The same happens when Republican Presidential candidates lose.

But Baker sticks to two notions that for the Christian Right are essentially infallible reasons to support Republicans over Democrats: opposition to abortion (main symbol for their hostility to women's rights more generally), and fear of the imaginary war on Christianity, a deeply dishonest pretense. And with the notion of Republican Presidents as "King Cyruses" or "Queen Esthers" who are chosen by God to save His people, they can easily justify supporting the next Trump, or even a 2024 Trump candidacy. After earnest prayer, of course!

That said, this kind of dubious "testimony" of repentance may create some emotional opening for people who are losing their emotional commitment to the Christian Right cause to rethink their approach.

And it's not exactly a full-blown repentance. I mean, isn't the idea that you repent of sins before you ask forgiveness? He writes:

When I voted for Donald Trump the second time, it was easier to do. I felt largely vindicated by his judicial appointments and much of the policy record, despite my strong disagreement with his tone and approach regarding immigration (including illegal immigration). The left’s treatment of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh also bolstered my sense that Trump was the only choice. From my perspective, he had also taken necessary steps to confront China on trade and intellectual property, had begun to roll back some of the power of the administrative state, and had repatriated offshore corporate profits by making the American tax rate more competitive.

Because Jesus was all about repatriating corporate profits, I get it. (The actual effect of Trump's tax cuts on repatriation of funds was much less that advertised, if it can be said to have happened at all in any meaningful sense.)

If you read Baker's statement all the way to the end, he tailors his repentance very specifically to apologize to the NeverTrumpers for not heeded their warning that Trump might at some time go too far. ("I find it entirely plausible [sic!] that Joe Biden won.") Baker thinks he finally did go too far by denying that Biden won the election. Note the date of his piece, a week and a half after Trump literally sent a murderous lynch mob to occupy the US Capitol. "The reason for this apology, then, is because the never-Trumpers were right about the president in a very precise kind of way."

But he doesn't exactly offer a ringing condemnation of the Trumpista lynch mob that stormed the Capitol with literally fatal results for five p0eople:

I knew I was wrong as January 6 approached and the president started calling for Vice President Mike Pence to reject certification of the electoral college results. This, of course, was on top of his disturbing phone call to the Georgia Secretary of State urging him to “find” additional votes. At the same time, he encouraged Americans to mass at the Capitol to support his cause.

I do not suggest that the Americans who went to the Capitol, the great majority of them peaceful, bore ill intent, but I do think that the president intended to create a spectacle that would put pressure on Mike Pence to take a dramatic and extra-legal step that would fundamentally betray the American political order and its traditions.

In fact, that doesn't sound like a condemnation at all to me!

So, being able to avoid paying taxes on corporate profits is the Lord's will? But it would be Christ-like to CONDEMN A MURDEROUS LYNCH MOB?!?

If you need something to bore you to sleep, you can check out Baker's pre-election endorsement of Trump, How Trump Has Transformed the GOP—and Why Conservatives Should Vote for Him Anyway 09/27/2020

Joe Biden denounces Trump's clown coup as "an unprecedented assault on our democracy"

I was glad to see that President-elect Biden yesterday came out to emphasize how anti-democratic the Trump clown coup really has been, and didn't try to present that message in the form of some saccharine “bipartisan” pablum. (And only a small amount of corniness.)

Biden speaks after Electoral College certification results PBS NewsHour 12/15/2020:

Instead he called it "unconscionable," "stunning," an "abuse of power" that relied on "baseless claims," and named it a direct threat to democracy in the US. Specifically, "an unprecedented assault on our democracy". Biden makes a straightforward defense here of democracy and the rule of law. And he called out the seditious Texas-led attempt to throw out 20 million votes in other states in order to "hand the Presidency to a candidate who lost the Electoral College, lost the popular vote, and lost each and every one of the states whose votes they were trying to reverse. It's a position so extreme, we've never seen it before, a position that refused to respect the will of the people, refused to respect the rule of law, and refused to honor our Constitution."

For literal accuracy, he maybe should have said "so extreme that we haven't seen it since 1861". But Abraham Lincoln's winning vote total in 1860 was 1.7 million - the total number of votes he won, not the margin of victory - so the Confederate secessionists were trying to wipe out 18 million or so fewer votes than the Texas lawsuit this year attempted.

I'm also happy to see that Biden emphasized what a LOSER Donald Trump is.

So for future reference, it's clear that as of now, the incoming President recognizes that the real existing Republican Party of 2020 is not a party that respects democracy and the rule of law, much less one that respects precedents set over decades or centuries that they decide are inconvenient at any given moment. That doesn't mean he can't get some Republicans in Congress to support some of his bills. It *does* mean that as of mid-December 2020, he recognizes that the Republican Party and its main leaders are operating in deeply bad faith, rather than seeing themselves as some kind of "loyal opposition." They see themselves as a Confederate opposition.

The most distinguishing feature of the American political scene right now is not "division" or "partisanship". It's asymmetric partisan polarization. And there no reason to believe that will suddenly change in the next four years.

I'm under no illusion that anything so petty as "facts" make any difference inside the QAnon/Newsmax/OANN bubble, where even FOX News is now considered part of the "deep state". But facts do matter in the real world.

When anyone in such a prominent position describes an event like the Trump clown coup in blunt terms like this, it's worth noticing. Because we don't see things like this nearly often enough.

Trumpistas and the law

"[In the Trump Administration] a brazen disregard for the law and the expectation of total impunity has been perhaps the most coherent and consistent direction of the president’s four years at the helm."

That's Alexander Sammon writing in Prosecuting Trump Is the Only Way to Heal the Nation The American Prospect 11/25/2020. He gives this summary of the problems he's referencing:

The stuff we know about—the violations of the Emoluments Clause, the solicitation of foreign interference in elections, the tax cheating, the use of the military on civilian protesters, the sexual assault allegations and the attempted use of the Justice Department to fight them, the obvious and repeated obstruction of justice, and on and on—may be dwarfed by the crimes we haven’t yet been made aware of. Trump was impeached for a tiny percentage of this, and then he and his enablers in the attorney general’s office and the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security kept on unabated. [my emphasis]

But he warns that we're already seeing signs that some Democrats would prefer to give the Trump Administration criminals a free pass:

What exactly to do about Trump, Bill Barr, Mike Pompeo, and their epic corruption will be a defining question of the Joe Biden presidency. For many Democrats, the prospect of hauling a political rival before the courts is too messy and excessively political, the sort of thing done in banana republics and not in the high-minded and high-functioning political culture of American democracy. So appalled were Democrats by Trump’s calls to lock up Hillary Clinton, most are determined to overcorrect by proposing to give Trump’s crimes a pass.

The modern Democratic Party tries to model good behavior. It rejects actions that could be perceived as partisan (seemingly still unable to internalize the fact that the GOP has remade every democratic procedure as partisan); it’s antithetical to their commitment to national “healing” — the process by which Democrats cede ground to Republicans after voters rebuke the GOP by taking the presidency away from them. [my emphasis]

That, of course, is a generous interpretation, though it's accurate as far as it goes. In our increasingly plutocratic society, impunity for elites - the very wealthy and the politicians they finance own - is a strong expectation for those who want to preserve that increasingly unequal order of things. And too many leading Democrats just buy into that concept.

But, as Sammon puts it well, "A failure to bring Trump to account before the law would mark a profound politicization of the legal system, one that would call into question the legitimacy of our rule of law and notch a new low in its undermining." (my emphasis)

He's very right about that. It is the responsibility of Presidents to enforce the law. In Watergate and various other instances of criminal behavior in office, we've seen that the US justice system can function as an independent system that can professionally prosecute crimes by political players without it being a partisan political process.

I'll comment here on an important "left" insight that will inevitably be used by people defending Trump and his criminal associates, probably more by Republicans than people who consider themselves on the left. It the very reality-based argument that we have class justice in the US because the wealthy can afford much better legal representation and they are normally subject to the kind of persecution and arbitrary violence that poor people and minorities are. Another way to put it is that even a well-functioning liberal-democratic, rule-of-law system is still vulnerable to inequities imbedded in the economic system and class order. (Yes, Republicans will use some contorted version of this argument to argue that self-claimed billionaire Donald Trump and his cronies are being persecuted because they stand up for "the workin' man".)

But it's no excuse for not prosecuting government officials who actually commit crimes. That fact that a rule-of-law system functioning equitably and fairly can't completely offset the realities of wealth, income, and class doesn't mean we shouldn't have liberal-rule-of-law justice systems. When we finally get that One Big Union or some other system that more closely approaches utopia than what we have now, that situation will be much better. But the fact that we aren't there yet should never be an excuse for not prosecuting government officials who break the law.

Sammon's desription of past Democratic failures on accountability for Republican law-breakers is well worth reading, especially the part on the Obama-Biden Administration.

In an earlier Prospect piece from this past summer, Sammon reminds us of how serious a failure it was on the part of the Obama-Biden Administration not to deal responsibly with criminal behavior by the precedent one (Biden Must Bring an End to the Bush Era 07/21/2020):

Many Democrats, for some reason, have spent the past 12 years forgetting the actual impact of the Bush presidency. One of the least popular presidents in history at the time of his departure, mastermind of the war in Iraq, the financial crisis, Hurricane Katrina, and more, Bush’s approval rating among all Americans sunk as low as 25 percent, which still somehow seems high. Fast forward not even a decade, however, and a majority of Democrats now say they view him favorably.

Joe Biden was elected alongside Barack Obama with a powerful mandate to undo the abominable handiwork of the Bush administration. But Obama and Biden did nothing of the sort. They insisted on looking forward, and prosecuted no one involved in crimes of finance or war. They pledged to close Guantanamo Bay, but didn’t. Looking forward, it turned out, meant letting many of Bush’s great sores continue to fester. [my emphasis]

This was a serious failing, although the Obama-Biden Administration itself was remarkably free of any scandals involving criminal corruption.

Trump ramps us the conspiracy talk and demented clown-coup ranting on his way out the White House door

Trump's clown coup has only the smallest of chances of succeeding at this point. But he is keepi9ng up the doomed effort and using it to propagate the most toxic Republican Party claims intended to undermine faith in the integrity of the vote and to justify anti-democratic voter suppression measures.

Yesterday the Orange Clown himself gave what may be the most dishonest, demented Presidential speech in the history of the country. And that's saying a lot!

President Trump gives UPDATE on voter fraud claims The Hill 12/02/2020:

Heather Cox Richardson in a 12/02/2020 Facebook post wrote:

Let me take a step back here for a minute to emphasize that this is dangerous, unprecedented… and crazy. The president of the United States is trying to undermine an election for which there is no evidence there was any irregularity, in order to stay in power. He might be doing so for the money—he has raised $170 million so far on promises to challenge this election—or because he is worried about the lawsuits he can expect as soon as he is not protected by the presidential office.

Or, perhaps, he is simply escalating his rhetoric to continue to grab headlines as he feels the focus of the world slipping away from him and he cannot stand it. For the focus of the world is indeed slipping away from him. [my emphasis]

But she emphasizes how genuinely despicable and anti-democratic Trump's Wednesday speech actually was:

Still, for all that Trump’s posturing seems like a sign that he sees power slipping away from him as the country confronts the pandemic and the recession without him, his words are a deadly assault on our democracy by the man who swore an oath to defend it. This attack cannot be dismissed as Trump being Trump. It strikes at the very heart of who we are.

For all that attacking the election might be reality television for Trump, his supporters take it very seriously indeed. At a rally in Georgia, Trump’s ally, lawyer Lin Wood, insisted he had seen the “real” results of the election, and that Trump won “over 410” electoral votes. “He damn near won every state including California!” The crowd blamed Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, a Republican, for the fact that the state’s recount did not go to Trump. “Lock him up!” they chanted. [my emphasis]

But as demented as Trump's own message is, he is expressing the general position of the Republican Party. This is an obviously prepared speech - it's a safe bet that a lot of it came from Stephen Miller - packed with a litany of the claims that Republicans nationally have been making in support of their dishonest "voter fraud" claims they use to justify greater and greater restrictions on voting by minorities and lower-income people. Although some Republicans like the Georgia secretary of state are unwilling to go along with the increasingly desperate and hysterical Trump's clown coup attempt, what Trump is defending in this speech is the position of the Republican Party nationally.

The speech contains a litany of claims that his own attorneys have been completely unable to demonstrate in court, repeatedly earning scornful rebukes from federal judges, including Trump appointees to the bench.

This speech of Trump's was so unhinged that even the Associated Press called it out bluntly for what it was:

This is good to see. And it only took for years to happen. 😑 https://t.co/xKYJYyvcjA

— Joan McCarter (@joanmccarter) December 3, 2020

The full article by Aamer Madhani and Kevin Freking is In video, Trump recycles unsubstantiated voter fraud claims 12/03/2020. They also report:

Julian Zelizer, a professor of political history at Princeton University, said the nation has seen close elections before — 1800, 1876 and, most recently, 2000. But this year’s election does not fit in that category.

“This is just a random baseless attack on the entire election,” Zelizer said. “Trump has no turning point. I often say there are parallels or precedents, but there aren’t in this case. He keeps bending norms.” [my emphasis]

The lame duck Trump Administration isn't really into this whole bipartisan harmony idea

“Calling an election unfair does not make it so. Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here.” https://t.co/2F4FpGgWmp

— Slate (@Slate) November 28, 2020

No matter how hard establishment Democrats try, Republicans just do not seem to value Bipartisanship for its own sake!

Isaac Arnsdorf reports for ProPublica, Trump Races to Weaken Environmental and Worker Protections, and Implement Other Last-Minute Policies, Before Jan. 20 11/25/2020

Even as Trump and his allies officially refuse to concede the Nov. 3 election, the White House and federal agencies are hurrying to finish dozens of regulatory changes before Joe Biden is inaugurated on Jan. 20. The rules range from long-simmering administration priorities to last-minute scrambles and affect everything from creature comforts like showerheads and clothes washers to life-or-death issues like federal executions and international refugees. They impact everyone from the most powerful, such as oil drillers, drugmakers and tech startups, to the most vulnerable, such as families on food stamps, transgender people in homeless shelters, migrant workers and endangered species. ProPublica is tracking those regulations as they move through the rule-making process.

One change they are trying to rush through is to change Department of Agriculture regulation to allow chicken processors to speed up their production lines, which "could lead to more worker injuries and make it harder to stop germs like salmonella."

But, to be fair, the QAnon Republicans may think that salmonella outbreaks are a HOAX. You know, just like COVID-19.

And why not also sabotage nuclear nonproliferation and maybe try to start a war with Iran on the way out the door? Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, Iran's top nuclear scientist, assassinated near Tehran BBC News 11/27/2020:

Trita Parsi discusses the grim situation with Iran in How the assassination of Iran’s top nuclear scientist can sabotage diplomacy & start a war Responsible Statecraft 11/27/2020.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani blames Israel for the recent assassination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who was "head of the ministry of defence's research and innovation organisation" and who "was clearly still a key player" in the Iranian nuclear program. (Mohsen Fakhrizadeh: Iran vows to avenge scientist's assassination BBC News 11/28/2020)

Of course, we don't know at this point who was behind Fahrizadeh's assassination, and who knows when if ever the information will become public. Trita Parsi explains why it plausible to think that Israel was behind it. He also explains the international alignment in which Israel and Saudi Arabia perceive it in their interest to have the US go to war against Iran. It's a type of let's-you-and-him-fight kind of diplomacy on their point. Provoking military tensions and conflicts among other countries, of course, is nothing at all new in international relations.

Parsi explains:

While it’s highly unlikely that Israel would have carried out the assassination without a green light from the Trump administration, a more direct U.S. role cannot be entirely discounted. The Trump administration has reportedly run several joint sabotage operations with Israel against Iran’s nuclear facilities in the past year and relied in part on Israeli intelligence in carrying out the assassination of Gen. Qasem Soleimani outside the Baghdad airport last January. Earlier this month, Trump himself reportedly raised the possibility of attacking Iran with his top national-security advisers, while it was just last week that the administration’s most prominent Iran hawk, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, well as leaders of Iran’s adversaries in the Persian Gulf, notably Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. [my emphasis]

In any event, conducting attacks in Iran has few downsides for Israel right now. Iran could lash out and spark a broader conflict that sucks in the United States, bringing about a U.S.-Iran confrontation that Netanyahu has long sought.

Or, if Iran sits tight to wait to deal with President-elect Joe Biden, the Trump administration is highly unlikely to impose any costs on other Israeli provocations.  [my emphasis]

Julian Borger (Iran scientist's assassination appears intended to undermine nuclear deal Guardian 11/27/2020):

Israel is widely agreed to be the most likely perpetrator. Mossad is reported to have been behind a string of assassinations of other Iranian nuclear scientists – reports Israeli officials have occasionally hinted were true.

According to former officials, the Obama administration leaned on Israel to discontinue those assassinations in 2013, as it started talks with Tehran that led two years later to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), by which Iran accepted constraints on its nuclear activities in exchange for sanctions relief.

It would be a fair guess that Joe Biden would also oppose such assassinations when he takes office on 20 January and tries to reconstitute the JCPOA – which has been left wounded but just about alive in the wake of Donald Trump’s withdrawal in 2018.

He quotes Ellie Geranmayeh of the European Council on Foreign Relations, “The objective behind the killing wasn’t to hinder the nuclear programme but to undermine diplomacy.”

It's also a reminder that whatever Trump's America First foreign policy may have been, it was not a peace policy.

Cleaning up the corruption that Trump and Pence are leaving behind

Greg Sargent back in August about the extent of corruption under the Trump-Pence Republican Administration, If Biden wins, the post-Trump corruption purge will have to be epic Washington Post 08/05/2020:

[A]n incoming Biden administration will also face another mission: undertaking a full accounting of the Trump administration’s corruption and the damage it has done to our government and institutions.

That is, if the new administration chooses to accept that mission.

But he also warned about what we saw this week with trial balloon links from the Biden team about giving Trump and other people in his administration who committed criminal acts a free pass from Federal prosecution:

And yet, having campaigned on a vow of post-Trump reconciliation — and facing the daunting task of unifying a battered country around national solutions to the coronavirus pandemic and a potential economic depression — Biden might feel disinclined from sinking too much political capital into an effort along these lines, which might feel akin to diving right back into Trump’s black hole.

Democrats For Legal Impunity For (Only) Republican Presidencies leap into action

The campaign from the Democratic side for giving Trump and his collaborators immunity for any and all crimes they may have committed during Trump's Presidency is now under way. The trial balloons for giving Trump and his co´-conspirators a free pass on crimes committed in office has begun:

• Carol Lee et al, Biden hopes to avoid divisive Trump investigations, preferring unity NBC News 11/17/2020
• Michael Conway, Why Biden should pardon Trump - and we Democrats should want him to NBC News 11/17/2020

The law applies to the President of the United States. He is subject to impeachment by the House and conviction by the Senate in order to be removed from office. But the law still applies to the President and to all members of his Administration.

Gerald Ford set a terrible precedent when he issued a blanket pardon to Richard Nixon when Nixon resigned and Ford became President, giving Nixon immunity from prosecution for bad acts committed in office. Bad acts for which numerous senior Nixon officials were convicted and even did prison time. Old Man Bush - George H.W. Bush, the "moderate" Republican - pardoned a variety of defendants in the Iran-Contra crimes, thus ending the Independent Prosecutor's pursuit of charges against them. And, not incidentally, blocking legal inquiries that could have been directly embarrassing for him personally. The Cheney-Bush Administration authorized criminal torture and crassly flouted the law in other ways: Obama became President and declared he wanted to "look forward, not backward," so even those crimes by senior officials were not prosecuted.

These are seriously bad precedents. They flout the rule of law. It's just plain wrong to give government officials impunity for serious crimes.

It's also a real sign of weakness on the part of the Biden team and the Democratic Party that the Biden team is floating this idea while the Republicans led by Trump are trying to nullify the results of the Presidential election. The Republicans can only take this as a sign of weakness on the part of Biden and the Democrats, because it really is a gesture of weakness.

I want to parse the two NBC stories linked above a bit more. Michael Conway - not to be confused with NeverTrumper George Conway, husband of Kellyanne Conway - is not part of the Biden campaign or transition team, so far as I know.

He argues that Biden should pardon Trump, although he notes, "Biden's initial instinct was to oppose granting Trump a pardon. He actually foreclosed this option by pledging last May that, if elected, he would not pardon Trump."  (my emphasis) Whether that "instinct" was simply political positioning to keep Democratic base voters who may not have been enthusiastic for him on board, the position he took was the right one. It's actually a clear statement of how the Justice Department is supposed to work in making independently decisions on investigations and prosecutions based on evidence and without political inference.

The Biden pledge in question was reported by Quint Forgey in Politico, Biden pledges not to pardon Trump 05/15/2020:

The pledge from the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee came during a virtual town hall on MSNBC, when Biden was asked by a voter whether he would be willing to commit “to not pulling a President Ford” and pardoning Trump “under the pretense of healing the nation.”

“Absolutely, yes. I commit,” Biden responded, adding: “It’s hands-off completely. Look, the attorney general of the United States is not the president’s lawyer. It’s the people’s lawyer.”

A possible pardon of Trump by Biden would represent the second such exoneration of a former president by his successor in modern American history. President Gerald Ford famously pardoned Richard Nixon in 1974 after Nixon resigned from the presidency amid the Watergate scandal, facing the imminent threat of impeachment and removal from office. ...

Biden [lamented] how “we never saw anything like the prostitution of [the presidency] like we see it today,” and arguing that “what’s going on is an absolute travesty. A travesty of justice.”

“It is not something the president is entitled to do, to direct either a prosecution and/or decide to drop a case,” he said. “That is not the president’s role, responsibility. And it’s a dereliction of his duty.”

This is the relevant clip, Joe Biden Says He Would Not Pardon President Donald Trump The Last Word MSNBC 11/14/2020:

Michael Conway: a pardon of Trump would be a "healing" gesture with the added political advantage (to Republicans) that the Democratic base would hate it

Conway's argument basically comes down to saying Biden should pardon Trump because Conway just thinks that would be a nice thing to do. He makes the argument that the President should act like a national pastor, who presumably shouldn't do anything about evidence he might have of serious crimes by a previous pastor:

It may seem fair and emotionally fulfilling to treat Trump as he so often threatened to treat his own political opponents. But Biden made the case that he, and the country, ought to be better than that. As unsatisfying as a pardon would sit with many of us, this tough decision would be one good way to begin the healing Biden offered.

Healing? It would mainly be a signal to the Democratic base that Biden and the Democratic establishment weren't at all serious when they talked about Trump being a deadly danger to democracy. And it would be a sign to Congressional Republicans like Mitch McConnell that Biden has no intention of fighting seriously for his own positions. And a signal to the QAnon-ized Republican based that they can demonize Biden in the way they will do regardless of a pardon or not, but emboldened by the knowledge that Biden is weak in opposing rabid Republican foes.

And Conway even says explicitly, citing the example of Jerry Ford's pardon of Nixon, that it would hurt Biden politically with his own base. "Biden’s pardon of Trump would be even more courageous than Ford’s action — though, like Ford, pardoning his predecessor will subject Biden to intense, scathing criticism."

But the NeverTrump Republican pundits on MSNBC' Morning Joe would praise him for it, so there's that...

Because the Beltway Pod Pundits think that The One True Thing David Frum Ever Said is the way that things should be: "while Republican politicians fear their base, Democratic pols hate theirs"; (Gibbs on the Left FrumForum 08/10/2010)

Conway also invokes this argument, which I'm sure we'll hear a lot in the immediate future:

Democrats already know what the mirror image of that looks like. When Trump called for the jailing of his political opponents, he was justly condemned as promoting a vendetta characteristic of a banana republic. Despite the efforts of Trump’s Justice Department, no basis was found to prosecute his political rivals. Trump tried anyway; Biden can, and perhaps should, be better than that.

The answer to this is the one given by Biden himself in May. We have a Justice Department set up with rules, laws, and procedures as internal safeguards to pursue prosecutions on a legal and non-partisan basis. According to Biden's own correct statement on the matter, it would be a dereliction of duty by the President to interfere with that process. Even a Presidential pardon should come only after that process has run its course.

Looking Forward, Not Backward - by letting Republican officials get away with serious crimes in office

The NBC story on the trial-balloon leaks from the Biden campaign does include a restatement, of sorts, of Biden's May position. The story reflects different viewpoints because, well, it's a trial-balloon story to test public and press reaction. The lede is this:

President-elect Joe Biden has privately told advisers that he doesn't want his presidency to be consumed by investigations of his predecessor, according to five people familiar with the discussions, despite pressure from some Democrats who want inquiries into President Donald Trump, his policies and members of his administration.

Biden has raised concerns that investigations would further divide a country he is trying to unite and risk making every day of his presidency about Trump, said the sources, who spoke on background to offer details of private conversations.

They said he has specifically told advisers that he is wary of federal tax investigations of Trump or of challenging any orders Trump may issue granting immunity to members of his staff before he leaves office. One adviser said Biden has made it clear that he "just wants to move on."

Another Biden adviser said, "He's going to be more oriented toward fixing the problems and moving forward than prosecuting them."

Politics is politics. And if Biden allows this statement to stand without his publicly rejecting it in some way, he will be sending a signal to his new Attorney General that he doesn't want crimes committed by the Trump Administration prosecuted. And that's a bad and wrong signal to send for both rule-of-law and political reasons. Maybe not a technical dereliction of duty, but uncomfortably close.

Still, we need to keep our eyes on the ball, which is the independence of the Justice Department investigation and prosecution process from partisan political influence.

After the introductory paragraphs signaling that we want to give the scoundrels and crooks a free pass from prosecution, later paragraphs qualify the message:

"His overarching view is that we need to move the country forward," an adviser said. "But the most important thing on this is that he will not interfere with his Justice Department and not politicize his Justice Department." ...

Biden wants his Justice Department to function independently from the White House, aides said, and Biden isn't going to tell federal law enforcement officials whom or what to investigate or not to investigate. ...

Biden's team is also reluctant to send any signal to Trump administration officials that the Justice Department wouldn't look into their actions, given that there are still nine weeks until the inauguration, another person briefed about the discussions said.

"While they're not looking for broad criminal indictments, they do want to make sure that people don't think there are no ramifications for any of their actions between now and the new presidency," this person said. [my emphasis]

Not exactly a ringing endorsement of the equal rule of law. But it's right, as far as it goes. That report also explains the uncomfortable complication that, you know, the law is the law:

But it will be difficult for Biden to avoid the issue altogether, given the expected calls for investigations into an array of issues involving Trump — from his administration's child separation policy to his taxes, possible conflicts of interest and potential violations of campaign finance law. The issue could set Biden on a collision course with some of his own supporters, who are eager for a wholesale examination of the Trump presidency.

"There's also a strong school of thought that believes the law's the law," a Biden adviser said, describing the internal debate.

"A strong school of thought." (?!?) By the way, "child separation policy" is a euphemism designed to make a systematic and sadistic policy of kidnapping refugee children from their parents, including literally taking newborn babies from their mothers.

But by presenting this as some kind of fifty-fifty option, Biden's team is definitely reminding us that establishment Democrats have a strong preference to give Republican officials impunity for crimes committed in office, an attitude that is radically different for the Republican Party's strong and loudly expressed preference for "lock her up"-type arbitrary, partisan use of criminal law and their contempt for the equal rule of law:

Still, multiple aides said, Biden is generally not inclined to see his Justice Department investigate Trump.

One of the reasons he has given aides is that he believes investigations would alienate the more than 73 million Americans who voted for Trump, the people familiar with the discussions said. Some Democrats, however, have said Biden should be prioritizing the concerns of his supporters, not those of his detractors.

This is a really sad example of the lazy and often irresponsible way the corporate press treats important matters of public policy as "horse-race" partisan narratives in a Both Sides Do It framing. Biden should be prioritizing fair and honest enforcement of the law. Whether his opponents or supporters support it is really secondary to his duty as President to see that the Justice Department enforces the law fairly.

The two main sides in this argument, which are not at all symmetric in their approach, look like this. One side is composed of Republicans and their corporate Democratic enablers who want Republican officials to be able to act in disregard of the law and suffer no legal consequences for doing so. The other is the side of Democrats, with maybe a few straggling NeverTrump Republicans joining in, who say just what Biden himself clearly said in May: "It is not something the president is entitled to do, to direct either a prosecution and/or decide to drop a case. That is not the president’s role, responsibility. And it’s a dereliction of his duty.”

State of the Biden-Harris transition: pandemic, economics, war-and-peace

The historian Heather Cox Richardson has been posting daily updates on American political developments on her Facebook account. In her entry for 11/16/2020, she described the current public posture of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris this way:

This afternoon Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris and President-Elect Joe Biden held a press conference outlining their economic strategy. They had just come from a strategy meeting with business leaders and union officials, and Biden seemed quite optimistic that the different groups had found common ground. In a notable change from his predecessor, Biden was transparent about who was at the meeting, identifying the attendees by name and position.

The plans Biden and Harris outlined essentially boiled down to what they had said on the campaign trail: they will bring jobs back to America by limiting federal contracts to companies in the country, support a $15 minimum wage, and support unions. Biden also reiterated that it is imperative for Congress to pass the Heroes Act, the $3 trillion coronavirus relief act the House of Representatives passed last May but which Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) refuses to take up. (“Heroes” stands for Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions Act.)

Biden reminded listeners that the states are in a crisis through no fault of their own, and they cannot fix it on their own, either. By law, virtually no state and local governments can operate with a deficit, while the federal government can. [my emphasis]

I don't have a problem with vague invocations of "working together". It's such standard political rhetoric that it alone doesn't signal much. But there is tremendous pressure from large Democratic donors for Democratic officials to "work together" with Republicans for actions that benefit the One Percent. So the real focus for people wanted to follow what's happening is the actual policies that emerge from this projected polite cooperation.

Richardson's summary indicates that Biden and Harris are so far sticking to major elements of their agreed program, the program that is the mandate on which they were elected. And since the Democrats typically are reluctant to fight for its own positions, that's a good sign, so far as it goes.

She also calls attention to the Republicans' cynical effort to withhold aid from states in order to drive them into bankruptcy. "But the process of driving states to that point means that Americans will lose their homes or their apartments, and be unable to afford food. And that is coming to pass. Today CBS News posted a video of thousands of cars lined up in Dallas, Texas, to collect boxes of food."

She directs our attention to an article from David Frum, the Shrub Bush speechwriter credited with coming up with the phrase "axis of evil," Why Mitch McConnell Wants States to Go Bankrupt The Atlantic 11/25/2020. He explains:

First, the country’s wealthiest and most productive states are overwhelmingly blue. Of the 15 states least reliant on federal transfers, 11 are led by Democratic governors. Of the 15 states most reliant on federal transfers, 11 have Republican governors.

Second, Congress is dominated by Republicans. Republicans controlled the House for eight of the last 10 years; the Senate for six. Because of the Republican hold on the Senate, the federal judiciary has likewise shifted in conservative and Republican directions.

A state bankruptcy process would thus enable a Republican Party based in the poorer states to use its federal ascendancy to impose its priorities upon the budgets of the richer states.

Frum's article also describes the important distinction betwee a state default and a state bankruptcy.

(BTW, even though I'm citing Frum here on something that's actually informative and helpful, I'm still going to keep referring to the following statement as The One True Thing David Frum Ever Said: "while Republican politicians fear their base, Democratic pols hate theirs"; Gibbs on the Left FrumForum 08/10/2010.)

Richardson explains:

The federal judiciary has shifted rightward in the last ten years, so bankruptcy would allow a federal judge to impose Republican priorities on Democratic states like New York, for example, states Republicans have little hope of controlling through elections. In such proceedings, the first things to go would be pensions and social welfare programs, while judges would protect bondholders, many of them wealthy people who pour money into the Political Action Committees of Republican politicians. [my emphasis]

It's important for us all to remember that Trumpism is not an aberration in the Republican Party. It was the Republican Party that produced Trumpism. The Republicans in Congress and the statehouses have no intention to enter some kind of strategic Bipartisanship with the Biden-Harris Administration to deal with the pandemic or the economic depression. Biden  may be able to peel off some Republican votes on individual measures having to do with those two major problems. But some kind of broad strategic cooperation of the kind that the Obama-Biden Administration pursued in vain for eight years is not in the cards. The only Grand Bargain the Republican Party will accept is one that enacts radical Republican policies.

Richardson provides this reminder that whatever he may have done right in foreign policy, by accident or otherwise, he did not have a pro-peace policy: "2018. Last Thursday, Trump asked his advisers whether he could do something about Iran’s main nuclear site, but appears to have been talked out of military action as they warned a military strike could escalate into a bigger conflict."

The New York Times reported that story: Eric Schmitt et al, Trump Sought Options for Attacking Iran to Stop Its Growing Nuclear Program 11/16/2020:

After Mr. Pompeo and General Milley described the potential risks of military escalation, officials left the meeting believing a missile attack inside Iran was off the table, according to administration officials with knowledge of the meeting.

Mr. Trump might still be looking at ways to strike Iranian assets and allies, including militias in Iraq, officials said. A smaller group of national security aides had met late Wednesday to discuss Iran, the day before the meeting with the president. ...

The episode underscored how Mr. Trump still faces an array of global threats in his final weeks in office. A strike on Iran may not play well to his base, which is largely opposed to a deeper American conflict in the Middle East, but it could poison relations with Tehran so that it would be much harder for President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear accord, as he has promised to do. ...

The events of the past few days are not the first time that Iran policy has emerged in the final days of a departing administration. During the last days of the Bush administration in 2008, Israeli officials, concerned that the incoming Obama administration would seek to block it from striking Iran’s nuclear facilities, sought bunker-busting bombs, bombers and intelligence assistance from the United States for an Israeli-led strike.

Vice President Dick Cheney later wrote in his memoir that he supported the idea. President George W. Bush did not, but the result was a far closer collaboration with Israel on a cyberstrike against the Natanz facility, which took out about 1,000 of Iran’s nuclear centrifuges. [my emphasis]

In other words, a late-administration attack on Iran would be a continuation of a Republican precedent set by the Cheney-Bush Administration, not some uniquely Trumpian idea.

Richardson also comments on a reported argument within the Administration about drawdowns of troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, which the Pentagon opposes. Even Sen. Majority Mitch McConnell has publicly objected to the idea. The Times also reports on that controversy (Eric Schmitt et al, Trump Is Said to Be Preparing to Withdraw Troops From Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia 11/16/2020):

Under a draft order circulating at the Pentagon on Monday, the number of U.S. forces in Afghanistan would be halved from the current deployment of 4,500 troops, officials said.

In Iraq, the Pentagon would trim force levels slightly below the 3,000 troops that commanders had previously announced. And in Somalia, virtually all of the more than 700 troops conducting training and counterterrorism missions would leave. ...

But the president’s aspirations have long run into resistance, as his own national security officials argued that abandonment of such troubled countries could have catastrophic consequences — such as when the United States pulled out of Iraq at the end of 2011, leaving a vacuum that fostered the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

Mr. Trump has also repeatedly pushed to withdraw from Syria, but several hundred U.S. troops remain stationed there, partly to protect coveted oil fields held by American-backed Syrian Kurdish allies from being seized by the government of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria. The current deliberations over withdrawals would not affect those in Syria, officials said.

The plan under discussion to pull out of Somalia is said to not apply to U.S. forces stationed in nearby Kenya and Djibouti, where American drones that carry out airstrikes in Somalia are based, according to officials familiar with the internal deliberations who spoke on the condition of anonymity. [my emphasis]

What's that you say? You didn't know the US military was stationed in Somalia and Kenya and Djibouti? You didn't know there was a country named Djibouti? You're not alone. The US reporting on US military activities abroad is pretty lacking. It's not nearly as interesting for TV pundits as, say, Hillary Clinton's emails.

The PBS Newshour repors on withdrawal discussions back in October, DOD surprised by Trump's intent to accelerate U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan 10/09/2020:

When it comes to military interventions, war critics need to be able to walk and talk at the same time. One of the jaded pieces of conventional wisdom about war is that it's a hell of a lot easier to get into a war than to get out of one. And there are lots of vested interests, aka, the military-industrial complex, that want it to be hard to get out of a war. Or to withdraw US troops completely from a country where they have been at war.

But that said, blundering around is just not a good way to run foreign policy. US troops should have been out of Afghanistan and Syria and Somalia years ago. But the process of removing them does matter. Would it be reckless or irresponsible to cut the number of troops in Afghanistan by half right away? I seriously doubt it. But it's also a call that needs to be informed by accurate, on-the-ground information, and not all that can be made immediately public.

But open-ended commitments of troops can also be a bad idea. A really bad idea. And, at some point, if the US is going to remove troops from a country, they actually have to do it by some actual point in time. The pullout of troops from the Kurdish enclave in Syria was particularly problematic because it was not only sudden. It also directly empowered Turkey to undertake an ethnic cleansing operation immediately following the pullout.

But anyone wanting to defend Trump as a pro-peace President should take note in those stories that: (1) a serious discussion of a immediate military attack on Iran is under way; (2) the Afghanistan pullout plan reported does not envision a full withdrawal of all remaining troops (it's easier to augment an existing commitment of troops than to begin a new commitment after all troops are gone); and, (3) when Trump abandoned Kurdish allies to Turkish ethnic cleansing, he made sure to leave troops to guard oil wells in Kurdish territory. Trump has said publicly that he thought the US should just seize natural resources from countries we invade, a blatant violation of international law.

Trump is not a peace advocate and has definitely not been a peace President.

Bernie Sanders über Krieg gegen Iran

Bernie Sanders war am vergangenen Wochenende auf der amerikanischen Nachrichten-Sendung Face the Nation aufgetreten. Full interview: Bernie Sanders on "Face the Nation" 06/23/2019 (alle Übertragungen aus dem Englischen sind meine):

Der Teil des Interviews über die Iran-Politik erregte besonders meine Aufmerksamkeit:

BRENNAN: Ich möchte Sie nach dem Iran fragen.

SANDERS; Gut.

BRENNAN: War die Entscheidung von Präsident Trump in dieser Woche, diesen [militärischen] Streik auszurufen, die richtige?

SANDERS: [kichert] Sehen Sie, es ist, als würde jemand einen Korb voller Papier in Brand setzen und ihn dann auslegen. Er hat dazu beigetragen, die Krise zu schaffen. Und dann stoppte er die Angriffe.

Die Idee, dass wir einen Präsidenten der Vereinigten Staaten betrachten, der, erstens, denkt, dass ein Krieg mit dem Iran etwas ist, das gut für dieses Land [die USA] sein könnte ...

BRENNAN: Er hat nur einen begrenzten Streik gemacht.

SANDERS: [bewegt die Hände, sprincht sarcastisch] Oh, nur ein begrenzter Streik, oh, nun, Ent-schuld-igung! Ich wusste einfach nicht, dass es okay ist, einfach ein anderes Land mit Bomben anzugreifen.

[gemält Anführungszeichen in die Luft:] "nur einen begrenzten Streik."

Das ist ein Akt der Kriegsführung.

Also zwei Punkte. Das wird einen Flächenbrand im gesamten Nahen Osten ausbrechen. Wenn Sie den Krieg - wie ich - den Krieg im Irak, Margaret, für eine Katastrophe halten. Ich glaube bis ins Herz meines Herzens, dass der Krieg, ein Krieg mit dem Iran noch schlimmer wäre, mehr Verluste an Menschenleben, nie endender Krieg in dieser Region, massive Instabilität. Wir reden darüber, wir sind jetzt seit 18 Jahren in Afghanistan. Dieses Ding wird nie enden! Ich werde also alles in meiner Macht Stehende tun, Nummer eins, um einen Krieg mit dem Iran zu beenden.

Und, Nummer zwei, und hier ist ein wichtiger Punkt. Ja auch, sollen wir uns daran errinnern, was wir in der Bürgerkundeklasse gelernt haben, ja auch, als wir Kinder waren. Es ist der Kongress der Vereinigten Staaten unter unserer Verfassung, der über eine kriegsschaffende Autorität verfügt. Nicht der Präsident der Vereinigten Staaten. Wenn er den Iran angreift, wäre das meiner Meinung nach Verfassungswiedrig.

Ich gönne mir hier ein bisschen "Theaterkritik". Brennans Formulierung der Frage nach dem Streik: War die Entscheidung von Präsident Trump in dieser Woche, diesen [militärischen] Streik auszurufen, die richtige?", ist angemessen. So wurde es diskutiert, und andere, darunter einige Demokraten, haben den Vorfall genutzt, um Trump eine Optik von Schwächen zu beschuldigen. Journalisten sollten sondierungs- und provokative Fragen stellen. Und es wäre ein wichtiger Moment gewesen, wenn Sanders die Prämisse der Frage einfach akzeptiert hätte. In diesem Fall wäre eine angemessene Folgefrage gewesen: "Glauben Sie, dass die Entscheidung, anzugreifen, die richtige war?"

Aber sie zeigte die zugrunde liegende militarisierte und imperiale Denkweise von viel zu viel der amerikanischen Großmedien, als sie seine Antwort mit „Er hat nur einen begrenzten Streik gemacht" unterbrach.

Der ehemalige Präsident Jimmy Carter, der als Präsident als Teil des konservativeren Flügels der Partei galt - sowohl Ted Kennedy als auch Jerry Brown hatten sich 1980 in den Vorwählen gegen ihn gestellt - sagte früher dieses Jahres seiner Sonntagsbibelklasse, dass die Vereinigten Staaten seien "die kriegslüsternste Nation in der Geschichte der Welt". (Brett Wilkins, Jimmy Carter: US 'Most Warlike Nation in History of the World' Common Dreams 04/18/2019; Emma Hurt, President Trump Called Former President Jimmy Carter To Talk About China NPR 04/15/2019)

Die beiläufige Annahme in den Mainstream-Medien, dass die USA routinemäßig Militärschläge starten und Kriege beginnen können, ist ein Spiegelbild der Zeit militaristischen Denkens, die in der amerikanischen Politik viel zu präsent ist. Andrew Bacevichs Beschreibung in The New American Militarism (2005) ist auch 15 Jahre und zwei Präsidenten noch immer eine wichtige Beschreibung des düsteren Phänomens.

Sanders zeigte in seiner Antwort nicht nur, dass er das Thema sehr ernst nimmt, sondern dass er sich tatsächlich emotional mit der ernsten Angelegenheit beschäftigt, das Land in den Krieg zu führen. Viel zu viele demokratische Politiker - und praktisch alle Republikaner - sind mehr besorgt, ihre Bereitschaft zur Kriegsandrohung hervorzuheben.

Sanders erwähnte auch Trumps Drohung zur Aufdeckung und Ausweisung von Millionen von Arbeitern ohne Papiere zur Folge und nannte sie zu Recht "schrecklich" und "unamerikanisch".

Bernie Sanders on war with Iran

Bernie Sanders was on Face the Nation this past weekend, Full interview: Bernie Sanders on "Face the Nation" 06/23/2019:

The segment of the interview about Iran policy particularly caught my attention:

BRENNAN: I want to ask you about Iran.

SANDERS: Good.

BRENNAN: Was President Trump's decision this week to call of that strike the right one?

SANDERS: [chuckles] See, it's like somebody setting a fire to a basket full of paper and then putting it out. He helped create the crisis. And then he stopped the attacks.

The idea that we're looking at a President of the United States who, number one, thinks that a war with Iran is something that might be good for this country ...

BRENNAN: He was just doing a limited strike.

SANDERS: [waving hands] Oh, just a limited strike, oh, well, I'm sor-RY. I just didn't know that it's okay to simply attack another country with bombs.

[With air-quotes:] "Just a limited strike."

That's an act of warfare.

So, two points. That will set off a conflagration all over the Middle East. If you think the war - as I do - the war in Iraq, Margaret, was a disaster. I believe to the bottom of my heart that the war, a war with Iran would be even worse, more loss of life, never-ending war in that region, massive instability. We're talking about, we have been in Afghanistan now for 18 years. This thing will never end! So I will do everything I can, number one, to stop a war with Iran.

And, number two, and here's an important point. Y'know, let's remember what we learned in civics, y'know, when we were kids. It is the United States Congress under our Consstitution that has war-making authority. Not the President of the United States. If he attacks Iran, in my view, that would be un-Consititutional.

I'll indulge myself in a bit of "theater criticism" here. Brennan's framing of the question on the strike, "Was President Trump's decision this week to call of that strike the right one?", is appropriate. That's the way it's been discussed, and others, including some Democrats, have used the incident to accuse Trump of a show of weakness. Journalists should ask probing and provocative questions. And it would have been a important moment if Sanders had simply accepted the premise of the question. In that case, an appropriate follow-up question would have been, "Do you think the decision to attack was the right one?"

But she displayed the underlying militarized and imperial mindset of way too much of the corporate media when she interrupted his answer with, "He was just doing a limited strike."

Former President Jimmy Carter, who when he was President was considered part of the more conservative wing of the Party - both Ted Kennedy and Jerry Brown mounted primary challenges against him in 1980 - told his Sunday School class earlier this year that the United States is “the most warlike nation in the history of the world." (Brett Wilkins, Jimmy Carter: US 'Most Warlike Nation in History of the World' Common Dreams 04/18/2019; Emma Hurt, President Trump Called Former President Jimmy Carter To Talk About China NPR 04/15/2019)

The casual assumption in the mainstream media that the US can routinely launch military strikes and start wars is one reflection of the time of militarist thought that is way too present in American politics. Andrew Bacevich's description in The New American Militarism (2005) is still an important description of the grim phenomenon 15 years and two Presidents later.

What Sanders showed in his response was not only that he takes the issue very seriously but that he actually is emotionally engaged with what a serious matter it is to take the country to war. Way too many Democratic politicians - and virtually all Republicans - are more concerned to highlight their willingness to threaten war.

Sanders also brought up Trump's threat to round up and expel millions of undocumented workers and rightly called it "horrific" and "un-American."

The week in TrumpWorld that careened to an end at CPAC

David "Bobo" Brooks' mission as a political commentator is to make even the craziest and most irresponsible Republican policies sound not-so-bad, just a little rough around the edges. Having Trump as President and Adored Leader of the Republican Party has made that considerably more difficult. This past Friday was one of those days he could barely rally himself to the task. (Shields and Brooks on Cohen testimony, North Korea summit PBS Newshour 03/01/2019; transcript here):

He tried, but his heart didn't seem to be in it:

Judy Woodruff:

But quickly, to both of you, does this advance the case against Donald Trump, advance the case of impeachment, David?

David Brooks:

I think a little.

We know the Trump Tower stuff in Moscow, the hush money. I tend to think there's much more — and, actually, everybody agrees, and I agree too, that AOC, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, did a very good job of laying down specific questions for specific predicates.

And she focused quite a lot on the business side of the Trump empire. And if I'm a Republican, I'm thinking there's a lot of bad news to come from there, and just whether it's taxes for all — whether it's other things.

And that's what the Southern District of New York is looking into. And so I think I'm less concerned that — there seems to be less to the Russia collusion and a lot more to everything else.

Below is the Global News video of the President's long, demented rant to the CPAC convention Saturday, Donald Trump addresses Conservative Political Action Conference 03/03/2019. He appareared to read some of it from the teleprompter, but there was plenty of extemporaneous Trump demagoguery, as well. Last week, the Trump-Pence Venezuela coup attempt spluttered into an embarrassing failure, leaving most of America's allies in Latin America and Europe with egg on their faces and wondering how they let themselves be conned into going along with it, to the extent of breaking relations with the actual government of Venezuela and recognizing what could accurately be described as a shameless American flunky as the self-proclaimed president of the country.

In the same week, The Republicans's Dear Leader went to Hanoi to sign a nuclear arms-control agreement with North Korea and that fell through, as well. As David Sanger and Edward Wong report (How the Trump-Kim Summit Failed: Big Threats, Big Egos, Bad Bets New York Times 03/02/2019), "As Mr. Trump and Mr. Kim parted company, nearly a year of optimism and flattery was left poolside at the Metropole, steps from a meeting room with two empty chairs and flags that had been carefully prepared for a 'signing ceremony'.”

Oh, and his former lawyer Michael Cohen gave devastating testimony against Trump to The House Government Oversight Committee.

Trump wrapped up the week with his longest episode of his current reality show, Trump Playing President in His Own Fantasy World:

PBS Newshour provides the transcript of what it describes as "his longest speech ever", Trump invokes ‘socialist nightmare’ ahead of 2020 03/02/2019.

Seung Min Kim and Brian Fung report on the CPAC speech in Trump derides Mueller probe, mocks Democrats and his former attorney general Washington Post 03/02/2019.

David Smith reports for The Guardian (Democratic oversight is 'bullshit': Trump goes off-script at CPAC 03/02/2019):

The president described the justice department’s Russia investigation as “a phoney witch-hunt” and claimed that since no collusion has yet come to light, Democrats in the House now want to look into his personal finances. He dismissed such oversight efforts with an unpresidential word: “Bullshit.”

Trump went on to rail against James Comey, whom he fired as FBI director, and Jeff Sessions, his former attorney general, even mocking the latter’s southern accent.

He also made false claims about everything from the unemployment rate to the crowd size at his inauguration. He insisted a wall on the US-Mexico would be built, prompting more cries of “USA! USA!”

He then went on to make remarks that some interpreted as an inflammatory attack on foreign-born members of Congress.

“Right now we have people in Congress that hate our country and you know that,” he said. “And we can name every one of ’em if they want. They hate our country. Sad. It’s very sad. When I see some of the things being made, the statements being made, it’s very, very sad.

“And find out, how did they do in their country? Just ask ’em, how did they do? Did they do well, were they succeeding? Just ask that question. Somebody would say, ‘Oh, that’s terrible that he brings that up.’ But that’s OK, I don’t mind, I’ll bring it up. How did they do in their country? Not so good, not so good.”

Andrew Restuccia and Politico get the booby prize for reporting on his CPAC speech as a "rollicking two-hour-plus appearance." (Trump delivers scorched-earth speech as he tries to regain footing 03/02/2019.

More on Bernie Sanders and the Venezuelan coup attempt

Following up on my post yesterday expressing suprise that Bernie Sanders seemed to take the humantiarian aid stunt the Trump-Pence Administration staged on the Venezuela-Colombia border as something other than a political stunt meant to build support for an external military intervention, maybe even provoke one immediately.

Twitter isn't the best medium for expressing nuance. But this earlier tweet string of Bernie's does express an awareness that military intervention or promoting coups are actons that have a serious dark side.

It's "safe" to express general support for "the rule of law, fair elections and self-determination" and to criticize human rights violations in suppressing dissent. Sanders has particular credibility in doing so because he has emphasized fighting against domestic human rights abuses and in favor of civil rights for those deprived of them.

The brief summary of what he sees as democratic deficits in Venezuela in the top tweet shown above is plausible as far as it goes. Venezuela's elections during the Chávez and Maduro eras seem to have been clean and legitimate ones up to and including the National Assembly (parliamentary) elections of 2015, which the opposition to Maduro clearly won. There were disputes about the seating of some opposition figures. There was an election in 2017 to select members to a Constituent Assembly with the power to write a new Venezuelan constitution. Maduro's supporters won that election, not least because leading figures of the opposition supported a boycott of the election. Maduro was re-elected President in 2018 in an election the opposition also boycotted and which was widely criticized internationally, for whatever that is worth at that particular time. But the events I just indicated are all meaningful issues of democratic legitimacy.

Do Mike Pence, John Bolton, or Elliott Abrams care in the least about the quality of Venezuelan democracy? (Hint: No) Here's where I have to fight back a weary sense of deja vu. Several obvious assumptions about foreign policy go out the window when the US government decides it wants to threaten war or start one. One is that disapproving of a country's government is not a justification for other countries to invade it. Another is that governments lie about their reasons for going to war. Still another is that the media and the public tend to "rally around the flag" when the government starts talking war. As John Kenneth Galbraith wrote in The Culture of Contentment (1992):

Almost any military venture receives strong popular approval in the short run; the citizenry rallies to the flag and to the forces engaged in combat. The strategy and technology of the new war evoke admiration and applause. This reaction is related not to economics or politics but more deeply to anthropology. As in ancient times, when the drums sound in the distant forest, there is an assured tribal response. It is the rallying beat of the drums, not the virtue of the cause, that is the vital mobilizing force.

Yes, Venezuela's oil is the main focus of American foreign policy concern with that country. That in itself is neither cynical or illegitimate. The country has the largest known petroleum reserves of any country in the world. That's important to the greed of multinational energy countries and gives Venezuela an important geopolitical signficance, even in times like these where oil prices have been weak for years.

Andrew McCabe's recent book relates that Trump told an intelligence briefing in July 2017 regarding Venezuela, "That’s the country we should be going to war with. They have all that oil and they’re right on our back door." (Alex Ward, Andrew McCabe claims Trump wanted war in Venezuela because “they have all that oil” Vox 02/20/2019)

I suppose McCabe could be acting out a Deep State manipulation in his book and that what Trump really said was, "I care deeply about democracy and human rights in Venezuela and we should be making a sincere effort to protect them." Anything's possible, I guess.

I probably should add that if humanitarian aid were the actual concern of the Trump-Pence Administration, they could provide it through the Red Cross or UN aid agencies. But both the Red Cross/Red Crescent and the UN declined to participate in the supply deliveries involved in the border action Saturday because of the obviously political nature of the operation. There's no need for any of us, Bernie Sanders included, to pretend that the stunt yesterday was anything a stunt to justify further external intervention.

Which brings me to a basic "realist" question. The Maduro government blocked the pro-coup group from delivering the supplies. So the real existing government has called the bluff of pseudo-president Juan Guaidó and his American backers. So what will Mr. Macho in the White House do now? Just back down? Stage an invasion? Give another speech raving about the evils of socialism?

Here is yesterday's PBS Newshour report on the border events, Violence at the Venezuelan border, humanitarian aid blocked 02/23/2019: transcript here. The report notes that Venezuela broke diplomatic relations with Colombia and that the coup leaders apparently don't have a fallback "Plan B" after yesterday's events.

Trump's State of the Union address and responses

I really don't like the pompous imperial show business event that the annual State of the Union (SOTU) message has become. The speeches themselves range between pompous and maudlin. The introduction of various guests to allow the President to make some political point or take a patriotic posture normally borders on being mawkish. Presenting crime victims or surviving family members as special guests ranges from tasteless to downright exploitive.

Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats did a good job of political theater to distract from Trump's applause lines. But I find the whole event tiresome. I hope the next Democratic President goes back to Thomas Jefferson's practice of sending a written State of the Union message rather than the current approach that looks more like an Oscars awards show than the fulfillment of a Constitutional responsibility.

The State of the Union developed out of article 2, Section 3, which says that the President "shall from time to time give to the Congress information of the state of the union, and recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient." The Constitution doesn't even say that it needs to be done annually, or specify the scope of it. A one-sentence email that says, "The state of the union is okay" would presumably be enough to satisfy that requirement. It was George Washington that first established the precedent of delivering a formal message in person before a joint session of Congress.

CBS provides a brief historical sketch, How the State of the Union address turned into a prime-time event CBS News 02/05/2019:

Here is the PBS Newshour video of the SOTU itself, Trump delivers 2019 State of the Union address 02/05/2019:

Here's the Transcript: Trump’s State of the Union, Annotated New York Times 02/05/2019.

And here are The Young Turks videos Bernie Sanders' response. Stacy Abrams of Georgia delivered the official Democratic response, a good speech but as forgettable as most of these responses are. (Stacey Abrams delivers Democratic response to State of the Union PBS Newshour 02/05/2019)

Bernie Sanders State of the Union Response 02/05/2019:

Bernie Sanders 2019 SOTU Response: TYT Analysis 02/05/2019:

Status of Trump impeachment, end of January

January 2019 is over. The House Democrats have not yet initiated impeachment proceedings.

Trump said 'you have to get rid of' the Russia probe and parroted a Kremlin talking point on CBS' 'Face The Nation' https://t.co/jQfeCdJHjw

— Business Insider (@businessinsider) February 3, 2019

"Trump pointed at the map and said he knew that Nepal was part of India, only to be told that it is an independent nation. When said he was familiar with Bhutan and knew it, too, was part of India, his briefers told him Bhutan was an independent kingdom" https://t.co/vuXhBUXFRQ

— Anne Applebaum (@anneapplebaum) February 2, 2019

Trump talks race, football, foreign policy and more ahead of the Super Bowl Face the Nation 02/03/2019:

Part 2 of the interview:

In terms of foreign policy, I think Trump's complete lack of interest in governing will allow us to look back at this period and see what the military does abroad without having to fear any type of oversight. https://t.co/jkkDrgOVWq

— Daniel Bessner (@dbessner) February 3, 2019