Democrats running in elections for the President of the United States in 2020 are playing smoke and mirrors with the American public. I watched them recently tie themselves into knots that would make Houdini jealous, and go into verbal contortions in the aftermath of the United States and President Trump ordered assassination of Iran's top military leader. Had Iran done this to the United States it would be equivalent to killing the Director of the CIA or the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Spineless and afraid, Democrats in the United States Congress and those running for the POTUS in 2020 cannot even make the point that as the leader of Iran's military, General Soleimeni was entitled to travel to countries in the region. Now you may not like the general but would the U.S. like another country, forget Iran, targeting its Armed Forces Chief of Staff as he traveled around the world?
My beef is with Democrats so afraid like Congressional Republicans of President Trump who is behaving each passing day more and more as a hybrid between a modern day monarch, and a died-in-the-wool, tinhorn dictator; a president who believes that he's above the law, is given a pass by these gutless peons of fecklessness. As Democrats of all hues and stripes do daily verbal and political gymnastics over how to not sound anti-war or pro-peace lest they enrage the military industrial complex now salivating over the growing prospects of selling more weapons, a la war profiteering, and egging on a clueless chief executive to go down the road to war, the similarities of the two main politics parties are in stark relief. Six of one and half a dozen of the other.
More alike than we want to admit and imagine, the Democratic Party is basically a Republican lite form of the Corporate Party. They can't call a political spade a spade. They have all but allowed a rogue POTUS to literally "moon" them (the juvenile action of pulling down one's pants and exposing the backside while wagging it them an individual) and dare them to stop him. This is a man who has said that he informed the U.S. Congress of his actions via Twitter and that was enough. Such hubris and arrogance expose a president drunk with power and genuinely convinced that he can get away with anything, and that as POTUS his role is not as the Chief Executive of the nation, but its modern-day monarch with the power to determine who lives and who dies.
President Trump has demonstrated time and time again that he's under absolutely no constraints and can do whatever he wants without any consequences. He's right: he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue in New York in broad daylight and the Republican Party, its whorish and genuflecting cabal of smarmy republican sycophants, and its enabling congressional leaders like Mitch McConnell and Jim Jordan will not only say the POTUS is innocent (or justified to do it) but urge him to do it again for good measure. He's not going to lose one vote from his loyal, blinkers-on base who now consider him a political Republican messiah who could do no wrong. Democrats are so scared of Donald Trump that even with impeachment and arguably having the goods on him they were very careful to tip-toe when it came to the articles of impeachment. Remember the watered-down Articles of Impeachment? After the feigned righteous anger and public drama by Democrats the much ballyhoo impeachment "scandal and smoking gun" petered out and all but ebbed into a whimper rather than a howl.
But back to Iran. The cabal of war chicken hawks in the Trump Cabinet urged and convinced Trump to kill Iran's top general, and to justify that action carried out on the soil of a foreign country as "preventing an eminent threat." As yet these threats have not been explained or publicized, and it is fundamentally unclear how killing one man stopped these "threats" to American lives. FLASHBACK: Ah! The justification for the Iraq war Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction; we were told by the talking heads, media experts and sundry Republican AND Democratic political pundits ad nauseum. We all believed the Bush Administration and ignored the fact that the CIA was singing a very different tune. America even went to the United Nations and General Colin Powell with photos and charts "made the case" for war that cost the lives of millions of Iraqis. Heck, a number of prominent Democrats some now running for POTUS in 2020 voted for the war. Funny thing? Was all a big bold-faced lie. As Donald Trump would say it was a fake narrative and a fake accusation made up by the warmongers and enabled by the media for ratings and millions in advertising money. It was a costly lie. Maybe this is WMDs in Iran redux.
Finally, Democrats are so afraid of President Trump that they cannot and will not address the international illegality of the president's actions even though they do not like the slain Iranian general. Thus far, without ANY PROOF the Trump Administration's talking points say that Soleimeni had the blood of thousands of Americans on his hands. Ok. So, pray tell us who, why, when, what and where did all this bloodletting happen. Not because the Administration says so, means it's so. Oh yes, Trump is evoking the Richard Nixon Rule of Lying if the POTUS says it so then it's so. It's legal (I parsing here). "We the people" cannot ask questions and must take the Administration's statements without evidence, facts or proof without question. We're, you see, dumb, driven cattle.
Can you imagine President Barack Obama doing just a small fraction of the things that President Trump has done to date? Republicans in congress would be carrying lynch ropes in their back pockets and looking for the best tree in Washington to hand him from all while having a party. Before our very eyes President Trump is dismantling environmental protections in place for years; Wait! He does not believe in climate change. It's a hoax invented by the Chinese. Sorry Barack you don't get this one! He's obstructed Congress with impunity, he's used foul and unpresidential language to denigrate political opponents and anyone who disagrees with him, he's embarrassed America on the world stage with his incoherent, uninformed, unprepared and clueless antics and behavior that routinely draws quiet laughter and ridicule from his peers, and he's picked fights with friends and enemies alike. That's the text-book definition of a putrid narcissist pissing drunk with power based solely on the world's strongest military for now and dealing with a U.S. economy threatened by two ascending powers China and Russia.
Hilariously, we heard the US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, go on national TV and berate the former Obama Administration for the sorry mess and debacle that is the Trump Iran policy today. Pompeo and company, jacked up on Israel juice, and addicted to doing its bidding, pulled out of a negotiated nuclear deal with Iran at a time when all parties to the agreement said that Iran had complied, and was complying with the terms of the agreement. But war chicken hawks like Pompeo and John Bolton cheered on the American president's tearing up the deal to please Israel, and walking away from an agreement that it was a signatory to without ANYTHING TO REPLACE IT. Like Trump's approach to the Affordable Care Act, commonly called "Obamacare," that he's called the worst healthcare system, the Iran deal was also, for him, the worst deal. Curiously, Trump can condemn deals, treaties and agreements willy-nilly but this clumsy, oafish dealmaker has never had an original idea of his own, much less a real, carefully thought out plan. That would require research (reading), communicating with experts in the field. At any rate, the very first nation to applaud Trump's calculated lunacy was Israel. And why not? It achieved what it always wanted without firing a single shot as its "Big Brother" put Iran in a box.
Let us sum things up. Is the risk of murdering Iran's top general worth it? Are American's safer today as a result? What's this administration's morbid fixation with Barack Obama? He has absolutely nothing to do with the utter stupidity of targeting Iran's top general, and then looking foolishly like a deer caught in the headlights. This is the end result of a proud and important nation with a hitherto enviable international reputation and standing now run by a kakistocracy government by the worse people. Pompeo and company are so incompetent that they cannot get right even old, tested and tried United States meddling and regime change techniques.
Consider this: They royally screwed up Venezuela when John Bolton and Mike Pompeo made the POTUS declare an unelected quisling the new president while the elected one was still in office. Some 60 nations pressured by the US also "recognized Juan Guido as the new, interim president of Venezuela." Today, they all have egg on their faces. That jingoistic misadventure backfired spectacularly. Nicholas Maduro is still today the president of Venezuela, and despite the US sanctions Donald Trump's favorite Swiss army knife foreign policy tool - Guido is now an afterthought. However, the effects of that failed foreign policy adventure is that the Venezuelan economy is a wreck, millions of mostly poor Venezuelans have fled the country causing an ongoing serious humanitarian crisis compliments of the United States of America.
Now the drums of war are beaten by the American media bored with the impeachment saga, having milked it for all its worth, and playing matchmaker for the upcoming 2020 presidential elections. Iran is a nice pivot for the one-track media and its pundits since it gives malleable and supine Democrats and Republicans - the kind of political cover and talking points that will elicit safe and predictable responses. They are going to say the right things stopping short of holding President Trump accountable for his illegal actions and thumbing his nose again at the United States Congress and the rule of law. President Donald Trump is not a counterpuncher, he's a bully and like all bullies, he a coward who thinks that a powerful army is a toy to be used when you tire of sucking your finger.
Trouble is ahead because every time Democrats just dance around and do nothing save snazzy political statements packaged for the 6 o'clock news they too are enabling him.
