The Dangerous Death of Diplomacy: Trump's Greatest Failure

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Category: Darren Weeks

Published on Sunday, 19 May 2019 22:42

 

Darren Weeks
Coalition to Govern America
May 19, 2019

I voted for Donald Trump. Knowing full well that elections have become largely a political con job, dished out every couple of years to make people believe that they are the people's opportunity to have a say in government. Contrarily, while I don't believe elections are entirely irrelevant, I do believe that they are not as relevant as the Establishment media would have us believe. If elections are the only time a person ever makes their voice heard on what is happening in government, then I would say that said person is derelict in their duties to govern the country.

That being said, I didn't so much as vote in favor of Donald Trump as I voted against Hillary Clinton. Trump was, at least, saying some of the right things about his desire to remedy the free trade agreements that have devastated the middle class and was destroying the country. His stated desire to stem the tide of illegal aliens (not "immigrants") and control the borders was and remains important to me. The protection of the Second Amendment was very important. And my hope was that Trump would follow through on his campaign rhetoric and begin the process of repairing some of the damage that was done to U.S.-Russia relations by the Obama administration with Hillary Clinton and John Kerry as Secretaries of State.

However, I entered into the election with very low — that is, realistic — expectations. In fact, if I had any expectations, it would be that Trump would disappoint me the way that most politicians have in the past. But since Hillary Clinton is so corrupt and dangerous for our country, we had to do all we could to avoid her becoming president. So I told my audience that we might as well "roll the dice and vote for Trump". We really didn't have anything to lose.

For a while, it appeared that Trump was genuinely trying to do some good things. He killed the dangerous Trans Pacific Partnership. He pulled the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Agreement, even though, as I pointed out at the time, that move was largely symbolic. He has made an effort to get the borders and migrants coming through them under control, though he has not addressed the root of the asylum problem — which is the UN system — head on. And to be fair, all of his efforts have been largely thwarted by the corrupt Mockingbird media, corrupt politicians, the corrupt FBI, the corrupt politicians from both major parties, and the corrupt Mueller "investigation".

On that latter point, many people have called the Mueller "probe" a failure, or a waste of money. This writer couldn't disagree more. With estimates varying widely about the total cost of the "witch hunt" — as the President calls it — I would argue that it accomplished exactly what it set out to accomplish. The real intent of the Mueller "probe", and the ongoing false allegations of Russian collusion, was to create a political atmosphere that would make it impossible for Trump to begin the process of repairing relations with Russia and its president, Vladamir Putin.

Despite the fact that there was never any real proof offered that the Russians "hacked" the U.S. elections, the lie has been repeated so often that most Americans believe it. After failing to prove their claims of Russian hacking, they moved to make the ridiculous claim that the Russians were hacking people's minds by placing ads on social media sites, and utilizing bots on Twitter. Yet, there was no consistent message to these ads, so the claim became that the Russians were playing both sides in an attempt to divide and conquer the people in the United States. You talk about a conspiracy theory!

We have watched the U.S. media blast away lie after damnable lie, whipping up the populace into a fevered frenzy that has already led to scattered bloodshed, violence, civil unrest, and at times has nearly approached the threshold of an all-out civil war. The United States has become a political powder keg, and it is the U.S. media that has worked hard to fuel the fires of discontent — to shamefully divide and conquer the people in a way that would make any foreign adversary green with envy. They are the ones who are the usurpers, and they are working hand-in-glove with the intelligence establishment, America's shadow government.

The media's number one job was to villainize Russia. Unproven accusations of Russian hacking into the U.S. elections gave way to to false accusations of Russian collusion by Trump and his associates. Though the Mueller "investigation" was one of the longest and most-expensive of its kind, it only indicted people for unrelated offenses, mostly process crimes such as lying to the FBI when an error of fact was inadvertently stated. The dialectic this created was intended to cow Trump into attempting to prove with action that he was not guilty. And it worked. For all of Trump's hard rhetoric, it is on this front, that Trump has experienced his greatest failure — a foreign policy that is nearly identical to that of Obama / Clinton / Kerry.

On Russia, Trump has continued to issue sanctions against the Russian government and officials under the Magnitsky Act — a law that was supported by Senators John McCain and Barack Obama, and pushed by billionaire William Browder of Hermitage Capital Management. Browder made a fortune as a predator capitalist in Russia, after the fall of the Soviet Union. The Magnitsky Act was named after his accountant, Sergei Magnitsky, who was prosecuted in Russia after Browder was pursued by the Russian government for alleged tax crimes. He was convicted in absentia by a Russian court and banned from the country. Browder calls Magnitsky his attorney, though he admitted in a 2016 sworn deposition that Magnitsky had never been to law school and had no law degree. Magnitsky died in a Russian prison, mainly from neglect, though Browder tells a different story. Inconsistencies in Browder's story was chronicled in a movie by Andrei Nekrasov called The Magnitsky Act: Behind the Scenes, and in the book, Grand Deception by Alex Krainer — both of which have been highly censored by Browder's attorneys.

The Magnitsky Act allows the U.S. treasury department to unilaterally sanction anyone for alleged human rights violations. "Alleged" means no trial, no jury, just an accusation and determination by treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin, a former Goldman Sachs banker that is a close associate and business partner with the highly questionable George Soros. This is the best Trump could do for a treasury secretary?

Trump has appointed other people in his administration who have served to undermine his stated goals, such as "never-Trumper" Nikki Haley to UN ambassador, and neocon warmongers John Bolton — who never met a war he didn't want to start — and admitted liar, cheater, and stealer, Mike Pompeo. All have continued the dangerous anti-Russian narrative, while expanding U.S. imperialist outreaches that have proven to be expensive in terms of lives, dollars, and lost U.S. respect around the world.

On North Korea, Trump took a hard line against Kim Jong Un's nuclear testing — a move that ultimately brought the young Un to the negotiating table. But even as a deal looked possible, the efforts were sabotaged by Trump's consultation with war hawk, John Bolton, who advised Trump to walk. Now, Kim is negotiating with the Russians, as rumors abound that nuclear testing is resuming.

On Iran, Trump has pulled the U.S. out of the Iran denuclearization agreement, while imposing harsh sanctions against the country, despite the fact that, by most accounts, Iran was in compliance with the treaty. In doing so, he has damaged the credibility of the United States in conducting future such agreements, efforts that could well have worked against him when dealing with the North Koreans. Trump's miscalculation seems to be that he could blow up the old agreement, and the Iranians would come crawling back, very much the same way that Mexico and Canada did to renegotiate NAFTA. It was a miserable failure. Furthermore, he has allowed his bloodthirsty neocon war cabinet to pound the drums for regime change in Iran, sending aircraft carriers to the region to "send a message" — something that is extremely dangerous given Iran's close relationship with Russia, and something that lends itself to a high risk of creating a false flag attack.

On Afghanistan and Iraq, Trump expressed a desire to end the wars, just like Obama did on the campaign trail. Yet, over three years into his administration, the U.S. still has thousands of soldiers deployed to both countries.

Still worse, is Trump's willingness to allow the warmongering neocons to grasp the reigns of his foreign policy, as Trump plays on the sidelines tweeting and watching Fox News read his tweets. His cabinet picks are inconsistent with much of his stated mission.

On Syria, Trump has repeatedly expressed his intention to pull the troops out, only to be manipulated by a false flag attack that his advisors blamed on Bashar Al Assad, causing Trump to conduct a bombing campaign against Syria. It was Trump's State Department spokesman, Heather Nauert, who repeatedly offered high praise for the White Helmets, a propaganda group that was funded by the State Department. The White Helmets were instrumental in orchestrating the false flag event in Douma, which was deceptively characterized as a chemical attack and blamed on Assad as a pretense for U.S. bombing in the country. However, there was no evidence that chlorine or any other chemical was used. In fact, according to medical personnel at the hospital where the White Helmets had shot video showing children being hosed down, the treatment was actually for dust inhalation from heavy shelling going on in the region — not chemicals as claimed by the Mockingbird media.

Prior to that attack, Trump had been ready to pull U.S. troops from the country twice. The Associated Press published a story, candidly detailing how Trump's cabinet officials are actively working to undermine, deceive, and trick him into making decisions and coming to conclusions of policy that are consistent with their objectives. The AP article had given me hope that Trump might be smart enough to see through the tactics and take the necessary actions to reign in, or perhaps replace, the offending parties. Alas, as time has passed, it seems those hopes were misplaced. Trump bombed Syria more than once, making him a war criminal, like his predecessors.

Even worse, Trump legitimized the Israeli theft of the Golan Heights, formally recognizing it as Israeli territory for the first time. The Golan is mineral-rich land that Israel seized from Syria during the Six Day War in 1967, and formally annexed it in 1981. Trump's son-in-law and advisor, Jared Kushner, is so close to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, that, as a boy, he surrendered his bed to Bibi when Netanyahu came to visit the Kushner family. It was Kushner who brought Ira Greenstein, president of Genie Energy at the time, into the White House to vet candidates for the Trump administration. Genie Energy was granted exclusive drilling rights by Israel to the oil under the Golan Heights in 2013. Genie Energy's strategic advisory board sports very impressive names such as former Vice-President Dick Cheney, U.S. Senator Marry Landrieu, former governor of New Mexico Bill Richardson, former Clinton Treasury Secretary and World Bank official Larry Summers, former CIA director James Woolsey, and banker Jacob Rothschild. Don't look to Fox News to expose any of this as the owner of that network, Rupert Murdoch, is also on the board. It is conflicts-of-interest that threaten to further destabilize the Middle East and embroil the United States into more costly wars for Israel's gain.

And then we have Venezuela, a communist country with its own set of problems, made worse by the imperialist United States government. The persecution of Venezuelan leader, Nicolás Maduro, the duly elected leader of Venezuela, began under the Obama administration. Again, for all of the harsh rhetoric, you can't tell a dime's worth of difference between Obama's and Trump's policies. The United States, so far, has attempted repeated failed coups on Maduro, in addition to enacting sanctions, sabotaging their economy, as well as quite likely being responsible for attacks which led to the failure of their power grid — something that would be considered an act of terrorism had the roles been reversed.

For what purpose does Bolton and Pompeo wish to oust Maduro? What threat does he pose to the U.S. government? The only crime that the Venezuelans seem to have committed is selling a lot of oil and announcing they were abandoning the petrodollar. Is the U.S. currency so fragile that we must go to war with the world to prop it up? Apparently so.

Sadly, most conservatives blindly go along with the administration because "communism is bad" they say. Maduro's regime is failing because of communism. That is the talking point that is blared from Fox News, and other conservative outlets that serve as propaganda channels for the right. But that meme has even been picked up and spread by many in the so-called alternative media.

The reality is that the State Department has been long working to undermine and sabotage Maduro. While communism is indeed bad, communism has nothing to do with it. Human rights has nothing to do with it. The U.S. government has long been allied with some of the worst offenders such as the head chopping, bone-saw wielding Saudis.

Juan Gaido, the political stooge that the U.S. has arrogantly and unilaterally declared to be the new president of Venezuela, is just as much of a socialist as Maduro. The fact that Donald Trump and his administration have openly pronounced to a sovereign country that they have chosen for them a new leader, takes imperialism to a new level and escalates U.S. hypocrisy to an all-time high. It puts the lie, once and for all, to the constant State Department rhetoric that they are "promoting Democracy" around the world.

Coup attempts and regime changes are nothing new for the United States, to be sure. But in the past, these were relegated to covert operations of the CIA, and there were at least some attempts, perhaps thinly-veiled, to make them look organic. The recent U.S. activities in Venezuela, illustrate a brazenness by the Trump cabinet, that demonstrate that the warring class believe they no longer have to cover up their efforts to rule the world with an iron fist. It is a posture that won't end well for the United States. Russia began sending its military to Venezuela to checkmate U.S. power plays in the country, which led to Secretary of State Pompeo to issue threats of retaliation. The U.S. sent aircraft carriers to the region.

All of this is occurring at a time when China is moving to dump its U.S. dollar reserves as a result of an escalated trade war. While the trade imbalances needed to be addressed for a long time, it is difficult to address real crises when our country is embroiled in numerous avoidable conflicts elsewhere. Negotiation is best conducted from a position of strength.

Trump has put complete psychopaths in full control of U.S. foreign policy. John Bolton was one of the people that were involved in the Project for a New American Century, the now-defunct neocon think tank which published the document, Rebuilding America's Defenses, mapping out all of the countries whose governments they wanted to overthrow, in September 2000. They stated in the report that they realized the transformation they sought "is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event — like a new Pearl Harbor." Exactly one year later, they conveniently got their "pearl harbor" event, on cue, with the September 11, 2001 "attacks". 9/11 served as a springboard to launch the United States into a never-ending war against phantom bogeymen abroad, and freedom and privacy at home.

As the first presidential term of Donald Trump wanes toward the finish line, any hopes that Trump would end this madness have been eaten by the swamp that he, so often, has promised to drain.