Let it be understood
ite here to analyze Trump, not praise him. Like so many others, I arose on November 9
And so, it finally came to pass, an American president publicly unveiled the portrait of the United States' Dorian Gray foreign policy, one which analyst William Blum has long contended that, "The secret to understanding US foreign policy is that there is no secret. Principally, one must come to the realization that the United States strives to dominate the world. Once one understands that, much of the apparent confusion, contradiction, and ambiguity surrounding Washington's policies fades away." Dissident Noam Chomsky is more explicit. "If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged. By violation of the Nuremberg laws I mean the same kind of crimes for which people were hanged in Nuremberg."
While cases of crimes committed due to sanctioned American action under the watchful eye of a U.S. president abound, I will list but a few.
-Truman supported a counterinsurgency campaign in Greece that killed tens of thousands in 1948
-Eisenhower had the democratically elected government of Iran overthrown in 1953
-Kennedy approved the murder of his allied South Vietnamese president in 1963
-Johnson authorized the use of chemical warfare in Vietnam in 1965
-Nixon bombed civilians in Cambodia in 1970
-Ford sanctioned the genocide of the East Timorese in 1975
-Carter supported the training and funding of Salvadoran death squads in 1979
-Reagan funded and praised sociopathic mujahedeen warlords in 1980
-Bush I permitted the slaughter of thousands of Shias by Saddam Hussein after encouraging them to revolt in 1991
-Clinton bombed a Sudanese pharmaceutical factory in 1998
-Bush II Invaded Iraq in 2003
-Obama oversaw the killing of civilian children by drone in 2011
The actions of these former presidents have led to the torture and death of millions of civilians like Jamal Khashoggi. The only difference is, we now have a man in the White House who is happy to be forthright about our often murderous foreign policy. Don't get me wrong, the torture and killing of Khashoggi is reprehensible. But Trump's response to it has been honest - Don't want to lose the money from arm sales, jeopardize the price of oil, forfeit an ally against Iran. Unlike past presidents, Trump breaks immoral policy wind aloud. We will have to see if this noise makes it any harder for the citizens of the United States to ignore the hideous odor.
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