Published on Portside (https://portside.org/)
The Reality TV
Star President May Have Just Kicked Off WWIII
Mehdi
Hasan, Eoin Higgins
January
3, 2020
The
Intercept, Common Dreams
- No,
Trump Was Never a Dove
- Immediate
Calls for Congress to Rein in Trump
Mehdi Hassan
The Intercept
IN SEPTEMBER 2015, then-Republican
presidential candidate Donald J. Trump appeared on the syndicated radio
show of conservative media star, Hugh Hewitt, to talk foreign policy.
“Are you familiar
with General Suleimani?” Hewitt asked the real estate mogul from Queens.
“Yes,” said Trump,
before hesitating. “Go ahead, give me a little … tell me.”
When Hewitt told
Trump that Suleimani “runs the Quds Forces,” Trump responded: “I think the
Kurds, by the way, have been horribly mistreated by us.”
“No, not the
Kurds, the Quds Forces,” Hewitt interjected. “The Iranian Revolutionary Guards,
Quds Forces. The bad guys.”
“I thought you
said Kurds,” a sheepish Trump replied.
Got that?
Candidate Trump confused the Quds Force, an elite Iranian military
unit then led by high-profile Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, with the Kurds, a
high-profile ethnic group in the Middle East.
Now fast forward
four years and four months to yesterday, when President Trump ordered the
assassination of Suleimani from his golf course. In an official statement
that misstated the name of the organization that Suleimani was in
charge of, the Pentagon said the strike was “aimed at deterring future
Iranian retaliation plans.”
This is not a
column, however, about the consequences of the U.S. government
assassinating the second-most powerful man in Iran (spoiler: they’re going to
be dire!). Nor is it a column about the legality of such a deadly strike
on a foreign official on foreign soil (spoiler: it’s hard to justify!).
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Rather, this is a
column that allows me to express my ongoing astonishment that Donald Trump
is president of the United States; my ongoing bewilderment with a
world in which an unhinged, know-nothing former reality TV star and property
developer, with zero background in foreign affairs or national security, may
have just kicked off World War III. (From his golf course, no less.)
It’s also a column
that allows me to revisit what I have long considered to be the most
unforgivable take of the 2016 presidential race: “Donald The Dove, Hillary the
Hawk.” That was the ridiculous headline to the New York Times column from
Maureen Dowd in April 2016, in which she falsely claimed that Trump had opposed
the Iraq War “like Obama,” and then credulously suggested that, in contrast to
Clinton, “he would rather do the art of the deal than shock and awe.”
Plenty of people
across the political spectrum foolishly bought into the ludicrous premise that
Trump would be some sort of dove.
A reminder:
Trump pulled out of the landmark Iran nuclear deal less than 18
months after assuming office. He replaced his predecessor’s nuclear diplomacy
with a “maximum pressure” campaign on Tehran, which had pushed the United
States and the Islamic Republic to the brink of war even before this
latest dangerous escalation.
Dowd was wholly,
utterly, and embarrassingly wrong — as some of us tried to explain at
the time. But it wasn’t just her. Plenty of other people across the political
spectrum foolishly bought into the ludicrous premise that Trump would be some
sort of dove, a noninterventionist, an
old-fashioned isolationist.
And plenty of my
colleagues in the media continue to push this deluded view. Remember:
Trump has twice bombed the Assad regime in Syria; reduced Mosul
and Raqqa to rubble; vetoed a congressional attempt to end U.S.
involvement in the Saudi bombardment of Yemen; and overseen a fivefold
increase in drone strikes throughout the region and beyond. Yet on New
Year’s Eve, the New York Times still insisted on bizarrely
referring to “the president’s reluctance to use force in the Middle East.”
That line, of
course, hasn’t aged so well. Less than 72 hours later, the commander of Iran’s
Quds Force and the deputy head of the Iran-backed militias in Iraq,
are dead. Killed via drone.
THE UNITED STATES has
now effectively declared war on Iran. This is no longer a “cold” war
or a “shadow” war. It’s a war-war. And here’s what so terrifying about it: The
current commander-in-chief of the U.S. military as it readies for open conflict
with Tehran is the guy who last week accused Canada’s prime minister
of cutting him out of a Canadian TV version of “Home Alone 2″; who regularly
retweets QAnon, Pizzagate, and white nationalist accounts
on Twitter; who believes that Ukraine is in possession of a
nonexistent Democratic National Committee server;
who thinks climate change is a Chinese hoax; who wants to
use nuclear weapons to stop hurricanes; and who is willing to take a
Sharpie to an official government map in order to prove he was right about
the weather (when he was, in fact, 100 percent wrong).
Here’s the twist,
though: There were two recent amendments to the 2020 National Defense
Authorization Act, or NDAA, in the House of Representatives that might
have prevented this week’s escalation with Iran: Rep. Ro
Khanna’s amendment to block funding for any military action against
Iran that lacks congressional approval, and Rep. Barbara
Lee’s amendment to repeal the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military
Force. Both of these amendments, however, were stripped from the
final NDAA that passed the House and Senate — with the approval of elected
Democrats in both chambers.
Shame on those
Democrats.
And God help the
rest of us.
Eoin Higgins
Common Dreams
Progressives on
Friday, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, called for Congressional
action to rein in the administration after a drone strike ordered by
President Donald Trump killed Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani, a
move seen by observers as an act of war that is nearly certain to exacerbate a
historically tense moment in the Persian Gulf region.
"Right now is
the moment to decide if you are pro-peace or not," tweeted Ocasio-Cortez,
a New York Democrat.
Last night the President engaged in what is widely being recognized as an
act of war against Iran, one that now risks the lives of millions of innocent
people.
Now is the moment to
prevent war & protect innocent people - the question for many is how,
publicly & Congressionally:
— Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) January 3, 2020
"Congress now
has a moral and legal obligation to reassert its power to stop this war and
protect innocent people from horrific consequences," the
congresswoman added.
Ocasio-Cortez
joined a growing chorus from the left urging restraint and diplomacy from the
U.S. and Iran.
"There is no
military solution to this crisis," Reps. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) and Pramila
Jayapal (D-Wash.), co-chairs of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said in a
statement. "Instead, we must pursue meaningful diplomacy to achieve peace
and stability in the region."
There is no military solution to this crisis — instead, we must pursue
meaningful diplomacy to achieve peace and stability in the region.
Full statement
from @repmarkpocan & @RepJayapal ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/x5Yz3o40pI
— Progressive
Caucus (@USProgressives) January 3, 2020
Jayapal added in
a tweet that Soleimani's killing "dangerously doubles down on reckless
military brinkmanship."
The attack on
Soleimani, one of the leaders of Iran's Quds Force and a major figure in the
Iranian government, and Iraqi militia leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis came on
Friday morning near the Baghdad airport.
By striking the
Iranian leader, Ploughshares Fund director of programs Michelle Dover
told Common Dreams in an email, the U.S. "has imperiled
any near term chances for diplomacy."
"The primary
question now is whether the U.S. government is prepared for the Iranian
response," said Dover. "The U.S. public should be calling on Congress
to assert its authorities and oversight roles to prevent an unintentional slide
into war."
Rep. Barbara Lee
(D-Calif.) in a statement called for peace and noted that the
Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), first passed by Congress in
2001 days after the 9/11 attacks with Lee as the sole dissenting vote, was used
by the White House as the justification for the strike.
"We must work
to prevent further military action in the region," said Lee. "We have
known for years that there is no military solution, and it's past time to
return to a diplomatic strategy with our allies. We must protect our national
security, our brave troops, our allies, and the American people."
Lee included in
the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) an amendment which would
have repealed the AUMF, but, as Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) pointed out on
Twitter, that language was stripped from the final bill delivering the
president billions in war funding, which passed Congress with bipartisan
support.
There were two amendments stripped from the NDAA that could have prevented
tonight's escalation.
My amendment to
prevent funding for war with Iran without Congressional approval.@BLeeForCongress's
amendment to repeal the 2001 AUMF.
— Ro Khanna
(@RoKhanna) January 3, 2020
Liberal advocacy
group MoveOn on Friday launched a petition asking Congress to halt
the march to war.
"Congress is
the only branch of government that has the constitutional power to decide where
and whether to send U.S. forces into harm's way," the group said. "We
urge you to act immediately to stop a catastrophic war with Iran."
The Nation's Jeet
Heer warned Friday that Congress has not been known recently for its
bravery in the face of war-time presidents.
"Trump's
petty motives and incoherent policy have been enabled by a Congress that has
long been derelict in its duty to provide oversight over foreign policy,"
said Heer. "This abdication of responsibility is all too typical of
American politics since the 9/11 terrorist attacks—under both Democratic and
Republican presidents."
There is no justification for starting a war w/ Iran.
Endless wars kill
innocent people and put trillions of $ in the pockets war profiteers.
We can't allow
Trump to thrust us into another costly & deadly war.
Sign here to Stop
War with Iran:https://t.co/7NafViabSq
— jordan
(@JordanUhl) January 3, 2020
In a statement
to Common Dreams, Alliance for Peacebuilding president and CEO Uzra
Zeya said that the correct response to the continuing tensions is trying to
find a way forward without violence.
"We must
reject retribution and military action towards all-out war that endangers the
future of Iranians and Americans alike," said Zeya. "Peacebuilding—in
the form of de-escalation, dialogue, restraint, and diplomacy—is now more
important than ever."
Our work is
licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. Feel
free to republish and share widely.
Eoin Higgins is a
Common Dreams staff writer
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