Trump stupidly brags about committing war crimes against Iran

 Trump stupidly brags about committing war crimes against Iran      

                      

Rule 1 for leaders committing war crimes is to refrain from bragging about them. President Trump jettisoned that wise rule regarding his criminal involvement in Israel’s 12 day war on Iran last June. 

When Israel attacked, Trump trotted his obedient Secretary of State Marco Rubio who issued this lie to America and world. “Israel had taken unilateral action to defend itself. We are not involved in strikes against Iran and our top priority is protecting American forces in the region. Let me be clear: Iran should not target U.S. interests or personnel."

Of course Iran had every right to target US interests and personnel since the US knew about and aided Israel’s crazed war that backfired on Israel. How so? Iran was wise to ignore US perfidy to launch a massive rocket attack on Israel that could not be defended against. After 12 days Israel threw in the towel. Israel now knows Iran will never be a genocidal punching bag like the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. 

US involvement was overt and covert. The former included refueling Israeli bombers during the entire 12 day war. The covert consisted of holding fake negotiations with Iran about their nuclear program to lull them into false security that no attack, which the US knew about, was imminent. Just 2 days beforehand Trump scheduled another negotiation and proclaimed “I am committed to a “diplomatic solution” with Iran.”

The US maintained the ‘not involved’ charade for nearly 5 months. Alas, Trump, an inveterate braggart on everything he maliciously touches from business partners, women wishing to be left alone, political enemies among others, just couldn’t contain his glee in assisting Israel’s unprovoked, murderous attack. ”Israel attacked first. That attack was very, very powerful. I was very much in charge of that. When Israel attacked Iran first, that was a great day for Israel because that attack did more damage than the rest of them put together.”

Iran took note of Trump’s confession of international criminality. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi fired off a letter to UN officials demanding the US be held to account for enabling Israel’s attacks on Iran that killed more than 1,000 people. In the letter Araghchi cited Trump’s recent comments about how he was "in charge" of the Israeli attacks. “The Islamic Republic of Iran reserves its full and unimpeachable right to pursue, through all available legal means, the establishment of accountability for the responsible States and individuals and to secure compensation for the damages sustained.”

 

Araghchi can Faggedaboudit. If the UN and the International Criminal Court can do nothing Trump’s complicity in Israel’s monstrous genocide in Gaza, there is zero chance they will even glance at his war crimes in Iran.

Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn IL

When it comes to New Start nuclear treaty….Trump just can’t get started

 

When it comes to New Start nuclear treaty….Trump just can’t get started

 

President Trump sure has an aversion to nuclear disarmament treaties with Russia that might just prevent nuclear war.

 

In his first term he dropped out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), a signature Obama agreement including Russia, China, France, Germany and the UK to diffuse Iran’s nuclear program. He also withdrew from the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF). Then he left office without renewing the impending expiration of the New Start Treaty. Successor Biden wisely renewed it for 5 years upon replacing Trump in January, 2021.

 

Here we are with New Start set to expire in 12 weeks and guess whose president again? Nuclear agreement adverse Donald J. Trump. And what has Trump done to avoid having the third nuclear treaty go poof on his watch. Nada, zilch, nothing.

 

New start was and is a sensible nuclear agreement. It limits the number of strategic nuclear warheads that can be deployed by the US and Russia to 1,550 each. It further restricts nuclear capable bombers, submarines and missile launchers to 800. All this to be verified by mutual inspections.

 

Seven weeks ago Russian President Putin reached out to Trump to get the New Start renewal ball rolling. Trump’s response? Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov expressed dismay there has been no reaction to the proposal as of yet. “After all, my colleague in Washington announced that Trump would personally respond to this initiative. But so far, there's been no response from the American.”

 

When a reporter recently asked Trump what he thought of Putin’s request to renew New Start, Trump meekly replied “Sounds like a good idea to me” before turning away to avoid a follow up question.

 

When it comes to initiating, staying in, renewing nuclear agreements with Russia that just might prevent nuclear Armageddon, Trump adheres to the NATO formula: No Action, Talk Only.

Rare US Peace President: Warren G. Harding

 

Rare US Peace President: Warren G. Harding

 

Growing up in the 50’s, we were taught by popular culture, even in school, that the worst president among America’s 34 thru Eisenhower, was Warren Gamaliel Harding (March 4, 1921 – August 2, 1923). Harding was ancient history to us school kids, having died in office 3 decades earlier in just his 29th month as president. We couldn’t be bothered seeking to understand his true governance.

 

What warranted Warren’s 34th place presidential finish among historians? Oh, he had a few scandals in which some appointees made a killing swindling Uncle Sam while Harding was busy playing poker and imbibing bootleg booze with his ‘Ohio Gang’ cronies at their K Street playhouse. His affair and resulting love child with a young secretary from back home helped cement his lowly standing after publication of her tell all book.

 

But that narrative offered not one word on Harding’s policy governance which crammed much good into his brief administration, especially peace, both at home and abroad.

 

Domestically, Harding was way ahead of both his predecessors and successors on racial equality. He told the Convention that nominated him in his 1920 acceptance speech, "No majority shall abridge the rights of a minority. I believe black citizens of America should be guaranteed the enjoyment of all their rights, that they have earned their full measure of citizenship bestowed, that their sacrifices in blood on the battlefields of the republic have entitled them to all of freedom and opportunity, all of sympathy and aid that the American spirit of fairness and justice demands.” That was gutsy talk for presidential nominee in white supremacist America. Not surprising Harding was hounded on the campaign trail that he had a trace of black blood, making him unfit to serve.

 

Harding followed words with deeds. He promptly reversed the removal of black civil service employees from federal offices practiced by his 3 predecessors, initiated by uber racist Woodrow Wilson. On August 26, 1921, Harding became the first president to advocate for black political, educational and economic equality before southern whites. In the segregated audience in Deep South Birmingham, AL, only the black section cheered.

 

But it was in foreign affairs that Harding’s words and deeds of peace resonated worldwide. He not only didn’t initiate a single international intervention, he made strides toward reconciliation with foreign targets of US interference. More importantly, he promoted disarmament, which was both successful and lasted over a decade after his death, only done in by German and Japanese expansionism.

 

Harding was America’s first Good Neighbor to Latin America long before FDR coined the phrase. He withdrew US troops from Cuba his predecessors sent multiple times to protect US business interests. He criticized his predecessor’s endless interference in Haiti, Dominican Republic and Nicaragua as well. He achieved a treaty with Columbia that payed them $25 million in reparations for TR’s fomented revolution there to build the Panama Canal. He also worked with Mexican President Alvaro Abregon to reestablish diplomatic relations with Mexico that had been severed by Woodrow Wilson as part of Wilson’s several Mexican interventions.

 

But his greatest legacy was promoting what today’s America wouldn’t dream of: disarmament. He achieved the largest global-disarmament agreement ever at the November 1921 Washington Naval Conference he convened with Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes including representatives from the Japan, Britain, France, Italy, China, Belgium, Netherlands and Portugal. It negotiated the halt of new battleship construction for over a decade. It achieved reduction in dozens of warships by the US, Britain and Japan. A reporter remarked that the Harding-Hughes duo “sank in 35 minutes more ships than all of the admirals of the world have sunk in centuries.” Tho America had the world’s largest navy, Harding pegged its future strength to parity with Britain and Japan. 

 

The conference produced six treaties and twelve resolutions on issues ranging from signatories agreeing to honor their respective territorial integrity in the Pacific, limiting tonnage of naval ships, and modernizing custom tariffs.

 

Back at home, Harding pardoned socialist presidential contender Eugene Debs, jailed by the anti free speech Woodrow Wilson for criticizing the WWI draft, and released 22 other antiwar dissidents as well. Julian Assange should have been so lucky to reveal America’s dirty foreign policy laundry under a President Harding.

 

A century after his death, only JFK, another short term president who pivoted to peace in just his last year, could arguably be judged as promoting such a profoundly impactful peace agenda.

 

Wouldn’t the US be better off today if we had, occupying the Oval Office, a hard drinking, adulterous, poker playing president who promoted peace, instead of one with an infinitely more defective character who glories in prosecuting and provoking senseless war?

 

Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn IL 

 

We’re all socialists….some of us democratic socialists, some authoritarian socialists

 We’re all socialists….some of us democratic socialists, some authoritarian socialists

 

I chuckle when I hear derogatory charges hurled at political leaders branded ‘democratic socialists.’

 

The label became popular with the rise of Bernie Sanders as the democratic socialist mayor of Burlington, Vermont in 1981, US House in 1990, US Senate in 2006, and especially with his Democratic Party presidential campaigns in 2016 and 2020. Elected Senator as a Democrat, Sanders shed that label for ‘Independent’ tho of course he caucuses with the Democratic Party to promote his democratic socialist agenda that establishment Democrats do not fully embrace.

 

When asked how a democratic socialist can effectively govern a big city such as Burlington, Vermont, Sanders brushed aside the moniker, stating that effectiveness was simply delivering critical social services to his constituents. And he did.

 

Think about that. We’re all socialists in that we reside in a society we want to serve our needs. There are a few who live outside society such as Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, but even Ted had to use the socialist postal service to deliver his deadly messages.

 

I fervently supported Sanders in ’16 and ’20 because he epitomized the values and services society should provide all its citizens from the richest to the poorest. That implies fair, progressive taxation and laser focus on uplifting the commons instead of endless warfare worldwide costing trillions.

 

Sanders’ message was marginalized by elites in his own party spooked by the democratic socialist label. They were too tied in with endless war and minimal rather than robust uplifting of the marginalized and poor.

 

Today, Sanders has been replaced as the whipping boy of democratic socialism by newly elected democratic socialist New York mayor Zohran Mamdani. His critics are hysterically calling his democratic socialism agenda communism. Even major Democratic leaders were terrified by his winning the Democratic mayoral nomination, refusing to endorse him against Primary loser and deeply flawed independent candidate Andrew Cuomo. Over half New York voters either embraced or simply ignored his democratic socialist label to give him a mandate for societal change.

 

But what about the socialists who are not democratic, seeking instead a society that favors, indeed enriches the few at the expense of the have nots? These folks are authoritarian socialists. They rig the electoral system to keep in power elected officials who keep the tax codes further enriching h haves. They don’t promote substantive policies to provide universal health care, free higher education, combat climate change, expand public transportation and infrastructure, fund the arts among important societal functions. They’re obsessed with projecting US military power to dominate the world in the guise of national security. While the commons suffers, they squander trillions on economic sanctions, regime change operations, even outright wars that kills, injures or degrades the lives of millions.

 

So let’s stop this nonsense of demonizing democratic socialists like Bernie Sanders and Zohran Mamdani. If we support their prescription to uplift society while promoting true democracy, we are also democratic socialists. Sure preferable to being an authoritarian socialist.