{"id":215011,"date":"2020-10-14T13:20:27","date_gmt":"2020-10-14T13:20:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=215011"},"modified":"2020-10-18T07:35:22","modified_gmt":"2020-10-18T07:35:22","slug":"trumps-endless-wars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=215011","title":{"rendered":"Trump\u2019s Endless Wars"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Nicolas JS Davies & Medea Benjamin<\/strong>
\nThe Progressive via ICH<\/strong>
\nOctober 12, 2020 \u2013 Courtesy Darkmoon<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/h1>\n

The pretend peacemaker has repeatedly<\/em><\/strong>
\nendangered the nation and world.<\/strong><\/em><\/h3>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cBesides not ending any of the wars that he promised to end, Trump has come dangerously close to starting even more catastrophic wars. . . .The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in January advanced the hands of its Doomsday Clock to just 100 seconds to midnight, closer to self-destruction than ever.\u201d\u00a0 \u2014 <\/strong>Nicholas JS Davies & Medea Benjamin.<\/strong><\/em><\/h5>\n
In the aftermath of the attacks on 9\/11, the Bush Administration invaded Iraq and tortured prisoners of war and terrorism suspects, in flagrant violation of the U.N. Charter and the Geneva Conventions. As a result, the United States lost standing among many of its traditional allies around the world.<\/h5>\n
President Barack Obama\u2019s global charm offensive brought friends and allies back to America\u2019s side, but his\u00a0ten-fold increase\u00a0in drone strikes to assassinate often innocent terrorism suspects, and his failure to reverse the ever-expanding violence and chaos of U.S. wars,\u00a0overshadowed\u00a0his efforts to restore America\u2019s international credibility, especially in the Global South.<\/h5>\n
Then came Donald Trump.<\/h5>\n
The 2016 election was a make-or-break moment in U.S. history. Would the United States build on the constructive elements in Obama\u2019s record, like the nuclear agreement with Iran and restored relations with Cuba? Or would it perpetuate catastrophic\u00a0neocolonial wars\u00a0justified as humanitarian interventions?<\/h5>\n
Trump\u00a0campaigned\u00a0on a platform of ending \u201cendless wars,\u201d in contrast to his\u00a0hawkish opponent, Hillary Clinton. A\u00a0detailed study\u00a0by Douglas L. Kriner of Cornell University and Francis X. Shen of the University of Minnesota Law School reached the stunning conclusion that support for Trump in counties with a high number of war casualties\u2014especially in the battleground states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin\u2014played a critical role in the elections.<\/strong><\/h5>\n
Yet Trump, far from delivering the peace he promised, doubled down on the worst of Obama\u2019s policies, particularly in regard to the nation\u2019s covert and proxy wars. In Libya, Syria, Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Yemen, U.S. allies still do most of the fighting while the U.S. military provides devastating air support, special operations \u201ckill or capture\u201d raids, training, and weapons for its proxies.<\/strong><\/h5>\n
This strategy has resulted in massive casualties to combatants and civilians in those countries. But it reduced domestically sensitive U.S. war deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan to just thirty in 2015 and thirty-three in 2016, compared with 560 at the peak of Obama\u2019s escalation in Afghanistan in 2010 and 1,021 in 2007 at the peak of the Iraq War.<\/strong><\/h5>\n
And while Trump has reduced U.S. troop strength in Afghanistan under a peace agreement with the Taliban, there are still\u00a0about 8,600\u00a0U.S. troops there, slightly more than when he took office. Trump has\u00a0promised\u00a0another reduction to less than 5,000 U.S. troops by November, which would amount to the smallest deployment in Afghanistan since 2001. But this would still be less than a full withdrawal, leaving the door open for yet another cycle of reinforcement and re-escalation.<\/h5>\n
Trump\u2019s war on Afghanistan has relied heavily on bombing, with a record 7,423 bombs and missiles\u00a0dropped\u00a0in 2019. So far, the agreement with the Taliban has\u00a0not ended\u00a0the U.S. air campaign, nor the United States\u2019 support for the corrupt Afghan government. The fact that Trump can wave around a piece of paper during his re-election campaign does not mean that the war is over.<\/h5>\n
As part of his bid to win another four years as commander-in-chief, Trump has bragged about how he crushed ISIS in Iraq and Syria; but few Americans comprehend the level of U.S. brutality that this involved. <\/strong><\/h5>\n
The U.S. military used almost 40,000 bombs and missiles, and thousands more artillery shells and rockets, to bombard Mosul, Raqqa, and other ISIS-held areas in 2017.<\/strong><\/h5>\n
In 2015, candidate Trump\u00a0threatened\u00a0to kill ISIS family members along with the fighters, saying, \u201cWhen you get these terrorists, you have to take out their families.\u201d <\/strong><\/h5>\n

THE\u00a0 MAN\u00a0 OF\u00a0 PEACE<\/h2>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

KILL\u00a0 THEIR\u00a0 FAMILIES\u00a0 ALSO!\u201d<\/em><\/h3>\n
The Iraqi forces that captured the last ISIS refuge in Mosul\u2019s Old City in 2017\u00a0massacred\u00a0everyone left alive: men, women, and children. According to Kurdish Iraqi intelligence reports, more than 40,000 civilians in Mosul were\u00a0killed\u00a0in the attack to retake the city.<\/strong><\/h5>\n
Trump also\u00a0brags\u00a0about the weapons deals he has clinched with Saudi Arabia. Both Obama and Trump sold the repressive Saudi dictatorship so many U.S. weapons that, for three years, the Saudis\u2019\u00a0military spending\u00a0exceeded every country in the world except the United States and China. The Saudi-led coalition, which included the United Arab Emirates, used these weapons to carry out a catastrophic war in Yemen that has caused the\u00a0world\u2019s worst\u00a0humanitarian disaster.<\/h5>\n
Impervious to the suffering of the Yemeni people, Trump has\u00a0vetoed\u00a0five bipartisan bills seeking to rein in this endless massacre: two War Powers bills to end the U.S. role in the war and three bills to halt arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the UAE.<\/h5>\n
Meanwhile, Trump has continued to support Israel\u2019s\u00a0bombing\u00a0of Gaza and planned\u00a0annexation\u00a0of its illegal settlements, with only limited autonomy for what is left of the Palestinian territories. Now Trump has further sacrificed Palestine\u2019s future in order to cement a dangerous anti-Iran\u00a0military alliance\u00a0between Israel and the United Arab Emirates.<\/strong><\/h5>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cTrump has continued to support Israel\u2019s bombing of Gaza . . .\u201d<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Besides not ending any of the wars that he promised to end, Trump has come dangerously close to starting even more catastrophic wars against North Korea, Iran, and Venezuela. <\/strong><\/h5>\n
His devastating campaigns of unilateral economic sanctions target thirty-nine countries, affecting a third of humanity. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo\u2019s accusation that Europe is \u201csiding with the Ayatollahs\u201d in Iran is an admission that Trump\u2019s policies of withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal and imposing \u201cmaximum pressure\u201d are isolating the United States as much as Iran.<\/h5>\n
But Trump\u2019s disdain for international cooperation goes far beyond the Iran deal.<\/h5>\n
He has pulled the United States out of the\u00a0Paris climate accord, the\u00a0Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, the\u00a0Open Skies\u00a0agreement, and three U.N. agencies:\u00a0WHO,\u00a0UNESCO, and the\u00a0Human Rights Council.<\/h5>\n
Despite Democratic hawks smearing him as a\u00a0Russian puppet, Trump has led the United States back into a Cold War with Russia and China that\u00a0most Americans\u00a0thought we had left behind a generation ago. His\u00a0National Security\u00a0and\u00a0Defense Strategy\u00a0documents have unequivocally redefined Russia and China as enemies of the United States, courting major power confrontations and ensuring record military budgets for years to come.<\/h5>\n
This is a startling departure from Obama\u2019s 2015\u00a0National Security Strategy, which \u201cwelcome[d] the rise of a stable, peaceful, and prosperous China\u201d and promised to \u201ckeep the door open to greater collaboration with Russia in areas of common interests.\u201d<\/h5>\n
Although Obama set a new post-World War II record for U.S. military spending, at\u00a0$5.67 trillion\u00a0over eight years (in 2020 dollars), Trump has used his Cold War with Russia and China to justify spending even more, including pushing ahead with Obama\u2019s\u00a0$1.2 trillion\u00a0plan to \u201cmodernize\u201d U.S. nuclear weapons. Under the rising double danger of nuclear war and the climate crisis,\u00a0The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists\u00a0in January\u00a0advanced\u00a0the hands of its Doomsday Clock to just 100 seconds to midnight, closer to self-destruction than ever.<\/h5>\n
And while he once blasted NATO as \u201cobsolete,\u201d Trump has switched to browbeating NATO countries to spend more money on their militaries. To retaliate against pushback from German Chancellor Angela Merkel, he has withdrawn thousands of\u00a0 troops from Germany and repositioned 5,500 troops in Poland to \u201cenhance deterrence against Russia.\u201d<\/h5>\n
Trump has also\u00a0ordered\u00a0increasingly provocative U.S. naval patrols in the South China Sea and\u00a0stationed\u00a023,000 more U.S. troops in Japan, Guam, South Korea, and Australia. He also\u00a0sent\u00a014,000 more U.S. troops to the Middle East in 2019 and\u00a0ramped up\u00a0drone strikes in Somalia and West Africa.<\/h5>\n
Behind the smoke and mirrors of Trump\u2019s tweets and publicity stunts, he has doubled down on everything that was already wrong with America\u2019s catastrophic militarist foreign policy. As the November 3 election has drawn closer, Trump and Secretary Pompeo have stoked tensions at every flashpoint around the world, seeking to stir up the most jingoistic instincts in American voters.<\/strong><\/h5>\n
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists\u00a0in January\u00a0advanced\u00a0the hands of its Doomsday Clock to just 100 seconds to midnight, closer to self-destruction than ever.<\/strong><\/h5>\n
CONCLUSION:\u00a0 The legacy of Donald Trump remains one of continued U.S. wars and aggression, backed by a bloated military budget. The only positive aspect of Trump\u2019s foreign policy legacy may be his unintended contribution to hastening the day when the sun finally sets on the U.S. empire.<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n

LD:\u00a0 A round robin email consisting of nothing but a short video has only just entered my inbox. By a strange coincidence, the video happens to be relevant to the article you have just read \u2014 an angry rant by a well-known political commentator who would like to see Trump and all his supporters put in front of a firing squad. I post it below because it is part of the overall pre-election fever.\u00a0<\/strong><\/h5>\n
Keith Olbermann rants, calls the American people scum, maggots, terrorists, antisemitic and worthless.<\/strong><\/h5>\n
\n
VIDEO\u00a0 \u00a0:\u00a0 \u00a03.45 mins<\/h5>\n