Philip Giraldi – The Unz Review April 10, 2025

Many Americans will be relieved to learn that US Embassy employees and their families in China can no longer have “romantic or sexual relations” with local Chinese. It is certainly a move long past due which will keep us safer together with those 125% tariffs that we will be hitting the Chinks with. But beyond that good news, it has been another interesting week in the fantasy world created and sustained by President Donald J Trump. This week included a not-so-surprise visit by the Chosen Lord of the Universe Benjamin Netanyahu, ruler of a pathetic little country called Israel, which is growing bigger as, with American support, it absorbs all of its neighbors one at a time. Netanyahu was in town to give Trump his marching orders for the next month or so, and it was no surprise that both men agreed that the two million or so hapless Palestinians still hanging around Gaza have to go and the sooner the better. Starving them and shooting and bombing them is not getting the job done quickly enough, so they will have to be convinced to go somewhere else, which sounds a lot better and easier than it actually is. An upbeat Trump nevertheless observed that they could find a nice quiet place somewhere in the world where they would be less likely to get killed. Meanwhile that lovely bit of prime real estate along the shore of the Mediterranean Sea can be developed under US protection without any Palestinians allowed. Netanyahu noted that the Gazans should just go “voluntarily” to one of a number of unnamed countries that he is talking with about the issue. But if they don’t go voluntarily…

Netanyahu was possibly a bit miffed over a bit of an attempt by Trump to assert some independence by indicating that his team of misfits would be negotiating directly and separately with Iran in Qatar to essentially come to an agreement that removes any possibility that uranium that is being enriched might be weaponized. Such a program was in place and called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) back in 2017, when Trump withdrew from it claiming, without any evidence, that there was a secret enrichment and weapons development center hidden somewhere underground, i.e. that the Iranians were cheating. CIA and even Mossad, who have plenty of spies inside Iran, for what it is worth, have since declared that Iran has no nuclear weapons program and has not had any such thing for the past twenty years but guys like Trump and Netanyahu are notably not good listeners.

Now Trump wants to recreate the program but make it even tougher by threatening the Iranians with dire consequences, which will in any event be a hard sell as his promises are known to be worthless. Also, he is simultaneously and openly building up a force of heavy bombers in the Indian Ocean which appear to be intended for use against Iran when the talks break down, as they will, and Trump is forced to deliver on his “hell to pay” option. Iran is fully aware of what cards are on the table.

Netanyahu is also calling for a “Libyan solution” which would completely strip Iran of its defenses. Since the meeting with Trump he has asserted that any agreement with Iran will have to include the complete destruction of their infrastructure capability, meaning that they should be unable to create and manufacture new and effective weapons. It would mean the end of their arms industry and they would be unable to defend themselves, which would end their ability to sustain their regional sovereignty against Israel. It would also require the use of American troops to strip the Iranians of their defense establishment capabilities, which is not going to happen. Admittedly, the Mullahs’ new found friends Russia and China might be willing to exchange oil for weapons if Tehran proves to be dumb enough to fall for whatever the US acting for Israel places on the negotiating table.

Another good story over the past week makes the case that the accelerating deportation of alleged illegal immigrants or foreign born criminals from the United States is extremely dangerous and establishes a very bad precedent for getting rid of people you don’t want in your country. It unfortunately sets the stage for much worse abuses of American citizens in the near future. The link includes a video of President Trump saying that US citizens committing “grave crimes” as interpreted by the White House can be similarly deported to places like El Salvador and other hell-holes that the non-citizens are now being sent to, in order to serve their sentences. This perversion of justice is earth-shatteringly vile, and beyond dangerous. It is a massive violation of constitutional law, international precedents, and a direct abuse of presidential authority. That the authority would be inevitably expanded to include “speech” and “thought” crimes like “antisemitism” is a certainty. It is a given that we Americans will one day soon have to endure the enabling of government to silence dissidents by being able to detain and deport anyone who is brainless enough to say anything that contradicts the policies coming out of the White House.

Such a program is possibly being considered to neatly complement that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrests and deportations of foreign-born visa holders and legal residents with green cards which have heavily impacted on students studying for degrees at US universities. Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently announced that there have already been more than 300 revocations of travel and residency documents plus hundreds more in the past few days while many more are in the pipeline. The Department of Homeland security is reportedly scanning social media sites to develop derogatory information both on current visa holders as well as on foreigners who have applied for immigrant or student status. Social site account identifications will soon be required on all new application forms. This will dramatically increase the number of potential targets. As Gilbert and Sullivan once put it in The Mikado, America’s Attorney General Pam Bondi might soon be singing “As some day it may happen that a victim must be found I’ve got a little list — I’ve got a little list… Of society offenders who might well be underground… And who never would be missed — who never would be missed!”

Genevieve Lakier, a professor at my alma mater the University of Chicago who specializes in freedom of speech and American constitutional law, explained the focus on students: “My understanding is that Trump promised mass deportations and the people you can find that are the easiest to identify are students. They’re in the system and universities maintain records that are easy to access via multiple pathways. And of course, the administration doesn’t like universities, so it does not mind disrupting their business model. It’s a win-win for the administration and horrifying for our students who are terrified.”

To help the deportations along, the White House also announced last week that the anti-American, anti-Israeli, terroristic, antisemitic subhuman trash slated for a quick exit will be fined $998 per day if they overstay their final deportation order. It sounds like a nice incentive for getting the scumbags out expeditiously. If the targets don’t have the cash their personal property will be seized to make up for the shortfall. So, putting together all of the nifty personal security invasions, if you don’t like what’s going on here in the US or even object to the slaughtering of maybe as many as 400,000 Gazans, complain and even if you are an American citizen you might end up joining the undesirables in “retirement” or even in prison in places like Burkina Faso!

But the best story coming out of last week I saved for last! It is all about the military parade that Donald Trump has called for to celebrate his 79^th birthday on June 14^th. The parade also celebrates the 250^th anniversary of the creation of the United States Army. It will run over a four-mile long parade route running from the Pentagon through Arlington National Cemetery to Constitution Avenue and will feature flyovers, parachutists, marching troops, fireworks and lots of music from various military bands. Trump apparently was impressed when he was in Paris during his first tour in office and watched the French Bastille Day military parade. He wanted one of his own, and now it looks like he will yet again get what he wants at a cost of something like $110 million, which is pocket change for a government carrying an unsustainable $36 trillion debt and which will be spending $1 trillion which it does not have on the Pentagon in the upcoming year.

It promises to be a splendid spectacle, but I would throw in a bit more entertainment value to make it a historic event. As it turns out, Trump, Bill Clinton, George W Bush and I are all very close in age and I realized that if you are going to throw a military parade it would be nice to integrate some of the outliers into the ceremony, which would mean including the narrative of draft dodgers Trump and Clinton as part of the festivities. I would also include Joe Biden though he is four years older than the rest of us. I won’t go into the details, but if one goes to Wikipedia or Googles the names with “draft dodger” you will be presented with the arguments that have been made to demonstrate that all three maneuvered to avoid the draft which was running in support of the Vietnam War. George W Bush joined the Texas Air National Guard and was the only recent ex-president who served in the military in some capacity, though not directly in a war or war zone. Barack Obama also had no military service, but there was no draft on when he was in college and afterwards.

As I was in the same draft eligible group as Trump and Clinton, I am aware of the many subterfuges used by my university classmates to avoid Vietnam. Instead, when I was notified that my draft board would be calling me up a week after I graduated from college, I hurriedly enlisted in the army, adding another year to my commitment, but allowing me to pick my job category, which was intelligence. As I had had a year of Russian language in college, I wound up in Cold War Berlin where I spent a fabulous three years. In any event, I think it would insert a bit of fun at the expense of our combat shy presidents to introduce a bit of reality into a military parade ordered by a narcissist head of state who plausibly dodged the draft due to “bone spurs.” Perhaps Biden, Clinton and Trump could be presented with a special award, maybe a plaque or something like that featuring a Golden Chicken.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org

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