aspyslife-blog - Tumblr blog

aspyslife-blog · 6 years

Text

The White Lies of the White House (March 3, 2018)

Once upon a time, the tale tells us, the people of America trusted the government –local, state, and the federal institutions in Washington, D.C. We believed that our elected leaders looked out for our common weal. We believed in the good intentions of our elected leaders. We believed the words spoken and written by our elected leaders. We also believed in Santa Claus, the Great Pumpkin, the Easter bunny, Hanukkah Harry, ghosts, and goblins. We believed the guys who sold snake oil, land in the Everglades, and bridges linking Manhattan to Brooklyn. We believed the men who occupied the Oval Office.

The tale tells us that the trust began to corrode with LBJ and the war in Vietnam. It collapsed with Nixon and Watergate. Ever since Tricky Dick resigned his office, we have not trusted our elected leaders. Worse, we have not trusted each other. I believe that the tale is not correct. I believe the American people have never trusted their elected leaders. History provides numerous examples, from Shays Rebellion (1787) to the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan (1981). The difference between then and now is a matter of measure. There has never been a more dysfunctional White House than the one we have now. There has never been a faster and more virulent disintegration of the national fabric than what we are now experiencing. There has never been more distrust of our elected leaders, especially the one who occupies the Oval Office.

There has never been a time when the American public has been lied to so thoroughly and constantly by the president than today (not to mention how pathetic his lies sound – seriously, Donald, would you rush into an armed hostage situation protected only by your courage? You, who mastered the art of the Vietnam War deferment – student and medical? Would your bone spurs even allow you to rush toward a situation? Obviously, it would be a slow rush, given your girth, but, still…). The rot has spread from the Oval Office throughout the White House and into the layers of the Cabinet secretaries. Does anyone expect John Kelly to speak the truth? Sarah H. Sanders lies as she breathes. Scott Pruitt claims he must fly first class because people in coach class are mean to him…okay, so maybe he is the one Trump appointee who tells the truth…he is a very unlikable man.

The difference between the lies of the above mentioned individuals and the lies of Hope Hicks is simply that Hicks opened her mouth and against all expectations, a watered down version of the truth tumbled out. She admitted to uttering lies for President Donald Trump. She attempted to clarify her statement by insisting that the lies were only of the white variety, an excuse akin to a murderer telling the judge and jury that he only used a steak knife, not a machete, to kill his victim.

The greatest lies of this faux administration are yet to come, but we are being prepared for them by Trump’s lawyers, who occupy high offices in the Orwellian nightmare in which our current days pass. They insist that Trump can’t be questioned by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, because Trump will lie to him. If Trump breathes, so goes their logic, he lies. When Trump opens his mouth, he lies. When Trump’s heart (does he actually have one) beats, he lies. The lawyers call this phenomenon a perjury trap.

How is this a trap? It’s just another example of the bloviated, orange blowhard in the Oval Office uttering more falsehoods. Yet, there is a difference: if Trumps under oath lies to Mueller, he can be sent to jail (thus the imbecilic term, perjury trap). Perhaps sending Trump to jail will begin the healing that America needs. South Africa had its Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Germany had its Nuremberg Trials. Japan had its Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal. Perhaps we need our version of a political-cum-social cleansing to cure us of the torrent of lies flowing from the White House and their cancerous results: our country needs the impeachment of Donald Trump.

#Impeachment Donald Trump Special Consul Robert Mueller Hope Hicks Richard Nixon Ronald Reagan LBJ Perjury Trap

0 notes

aspyslife-blog · 6 years

Text

A Nation of Gerbils (February 24, 2018)

As a small child in grade school, I hunkered beneath my wooden desk while waiting for the nuclear missiles of the Soviet Union to destroy me, my family, and my country…drills for an event which fortunately never happened. As an adult, I now watch scenes of carnage from our schools, as killers with easy access to assault rifles – the same weapons used by our military to kill terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan – kill children in schools, children who came to study math and history, not to be exterminated. The children are victims not only of deranged individuals but of our political system, in which our elected leaders accept campaign contribution from the Mammon of the National Rifle Association.

In the past, the tobacco industry wielded enormous influence, until the American people woke up to the medical facts that cigarettes cause cancer. Long ago, smoking was a sign of superior social status. Not anymore. Smokers carry the social status once reserved for lepers.

In the past, the alcohol industry was also a lobbying superpower, until the American people woke up to the facts that alcohol abuse is a social issue causing tragic deaths and bearing high social costs, not to mention its suffocating impact upon the medical system. The opprobrium toward alcoholics increased as evidence of alcohol’s related familial abuse became understood.

No parent wishes lung cancer on a son, just as no parent hopes for cirrhosis of the liver for a daughter. Parents became a lobbying force more powerful than the tobacco and alcohol industries, forcing Congress to enact laws to neuter the influence of the tobacco and alcohol industries – despite the millions of dollars that elected officials received from them – which stiffened penalties for their abuse and reduced the ease of their procurement.

Today, tobacco and alcohol carry extreme social stigmas, not high social status, proof that the American people can defeat lobbyists who seek to sell instruments of death to the people. Likewise, the NRA is credited with blocking gun control measures through millions of dollars in political campaign contributions. It is one of the most powerful lobbying forces in the country. As such, Congress refuses to hold it accountable for the deaths of schoolchildren, not to mention the deaths of innocents shot by family members and strangers across the country.

The NRA, which has turned America into a nation gerbils willing to eat its offspring, may have met its Waterloo in Parkland. In the months leading to the school shooting tragedy, a few companies had cut their ties with the NRA, due to the pressure of social media. Since the Valentine’s Day tragedy in Parkland – thanks to the bravery of the student survivors – many more major companies have ended their partnerships with the NRA, including Enterprise Holdings, First National Bank of Omaha, Symantec, Hertz, and Avis.

The force behind this still small change is a social media movement, #BoycottNRA. It aims to hit the NRA in its bank account. It is not a tactic of high morality, but morality no longer sways our elected officials to act rightly. It is a down-and-dirty, in-your-face tactic, and it may work to effect change where speeches and op-eds have failed.

Support the #BoycottNRA movement. Kick the NRA in its bank account, but don’t stop there. Vote out of office the elected officials who are beholden to NRA lobbyist money. We are better than a nation of gerbils. We should not sacrifice our children to the Mammon of the NRA.

#NRA Parkland Second Amendment BoycottNRA Lobbyists

0 notes

aspyslife-blog · 6 years

Text

In Honor of Presidents Day (February 19, 2018)

Thomas Friedman’s article of Donald Trump’s treasonous activities (wording and italics mine) follows below. It is a succinct condemnation of the man who would be president. It is a painful but necessary read.

“Whatever Trump Is Hiding Is Hurting All of Us Now” by Thomas Friedman

Our democracy is in serious danger.

President Trump is either totally compromised by the Russians or is a towering fool, or both, but either way he has shown himself unwilling or unable to defend America against a Russian campaign to divide and undermine our democracy.

That is, either Trump’s real estate empire has taken large amounts of money from shady oligarchs linked to the Kremlin — so much that they literally own him; or rumors are true that he engaged in sexual misbehavior while he was in Moscow running the Miss Universe contest, which Russian intelligence has on tape and he doesn’t want released; or Trump actually believes Russian President Vladimir Putin when he says he is innocent of intervening in our elections — over the explicit findings of Trump’s own C.I.A., N.S.A. and F.B.I. chiefs.

In sum, Trump is either hiding something so threatening to himself, or he’s criminally incompetent to be commander in chief. It is impossible yet to say which explanation for his behavior is true, but it seems highly likely that one of these scenarios explains Trump’s refusal to respond to Russia’s direct attack on our system — a quiescence that is simply unprecedented for any U.S. president in history. Russia is not our friend. It has acted in a hostile manner. And Trump keeps ignoring it all.

Up to now, Trump has been flouting the norms of the presidency. Now Trump’s behavior amounts to a refusal to carry out his oath of office — to protect and defend the Constitution. Here’s an imperfect but close analogy: It’s as if George W. Bush had said after 9/11: “No big deal. I am going golfing over the weekend in Florida and blogging about how it’s all the Democrats’ fault — no need to hold a National Security Council meeting.”

At a time when the special prosecutor Robert Mueller — leveraging several years of intelligence gathering by the F.B.I., C.I.A and N.S.A. — has brought indictments against 13 Russian nationals and three Russian groups — all linked in some way to the Kremlin — for interfering with the 2016 U.S. elections, America needs a president who will lead our nation’s defense against this attack on the integrity of our electoral democracy.

What would that look like? He would educate the public on the scale of the problem; he would bring together all the stakeholders — state and local election authorities, the federal government, both parties and all the owners of social networks that the Russians used to carry out their interference — to mount an effective defense; and he would bring together our intelligence and military experts to mount an effective offense against Putin — the best defense of all.

What we have instead is a president vulgarly tweeting that the Russians are “laughing their asses off in Moscow” for how we’ve been investigating their interventions — and exploiting the terrible school shooting in Florida — and the failure of the F.B.I. to properly forward to its Miami field office a tip on the killer — to throw the entire F.B.I. under the bus and create a new excuse to shut down the Mueller investigation.

Think for a moment how demented was Trump’s Saturday night tweet: “Very sad that the FBI missed all of the many signals sent out by the Florida school shooter. This is not acceptable. They are spending too much time trying to prove Russian collusion with the Trump campaign — there is no collusion. Get back to the basics and make us all proud!”

To the contrary. Our F.B.I., C.I.A. and N.S.A., working with the special counsel, have done us amazingly proud. They’ve uncovered a Russian program to divide Americans and tilt our last election toward Trump — i.e., to undermine the very core of our democracy — and Trump is telling them to get back to important things like tracking would-be school shooters. Yes, the F.B.I. made a mistake in Florida. But it acted heroically on Russia. What is more basic than protecting American democracy?

It is so obvious what Trump is up to: Again, he is either a total sucker for Putin or, more likely, he is hiding something that he knows the Russians have on him, and he knows that the longer Mueller’s investigation goes on, the more likely he will be to find and expose it.

Donald, if you are so innocent, why do you go to such extraordinary lengths to try to shut Mueller down? And if you are really the president — not still head of the Trump Organization, who moonlights as president, which is how you so often behave — why don’t you actually lead — lead not only a proper cyberdefense of our elections, but also an offense against Putin.

Putin used cyberwarfare to poison American politics, to spread fake news, to help elect a chaos candidate, all in order to weaken our democracy. We should be using our cyber-capabilities to spread the truth about Putin — just how much money he has stolen, just how many lies he has spread, just how many rivals he has jailed or made disappear — all to weaken his autocracy. That is what a real president would be doing right now.

My guess is what Trump is hiding has to do with money. It’s something about his financial ties to business elites tied to the Kremlin. They may own a big stake in him. Who can forget that quote from his son Donald Trump, Jr. from back in 2008: “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross section of a lot of our assets.” They may own our president.

But whatever it is, Trump is either trying so hard to hide it or is so naïve about Russia that he is ready to not only resist mounting a proper defense of our democracy, he’s actually ready to undermine some of our most important institutions, the F.B.I. and Justice Department, to keep his compromised status hidden.

That must not be tolerated. This is code red. The biggest threat to the integrity of our democracy today is in the Oval Office.

#Friedman Trump White House Democracy Putin Russia Mueller

0 notes

aspyslife-blog · 6 years

Text

C’mon People…Get Together (February 17, 2018)

Usually in these blogs, I address a specific topic, hopefully related (at least tangentially) to issues of espionage. Today, though, I’ll offer random thoughts, starting with a topic that scares me silly: the prospect that our country is tearing itself apart. We have lost our unity…cohesiveness…purpose…we no longer believe in e pluribus unum…honestly, I don’t know what we believe in anymore.

Take the Olympics, the perfect opportunity for Americans to come together as a nation and support our athletes as they go for the gold. No such luck. The country remains divided to the point of hysteria. Last December, Lindsey Vonn, one of the finest American skiers in Olympic history, expressed her dissatisfaction with Donald Trump. It’s her right as an American to express her opinions in a non-threatening manner – which is exactly what she did, stating that she would not visit the White House after the games and that during the games she hoped to represent the people of the United States, not the president.

Following her remarks, she received threats from supporters of Trump. Yesterday, she had a poor run and fell out of the medal round. Most people expressed sympathy. More than a few rabid supporters of Donald Trump, however, took her misfortune as a sign of heavenly redemption and lambasted Vonn (on Twitter, of course). One wrote: Glad to see you lose. You're anti -American. Another gloated: Vonn is the latest to suffer from the Trump Effect…keep your mouth shut and race…don't insult us. A third ranted: Sucka! Trump winning baby!

C’mon people…get together. As a nation, we need civility – without a sense of commonality and purpose, the United States will go the way of Yugoslavia…and if you’ve forgotten how horribly that turned out for all involved, just read about Kosovo and Bosnia.

Switching gears…now from the stupid to the sublime:

#1. Hassan Firuzabadi, the former chief-of-staff of Iran's armed forces, accused western nations of using lizards which could attract atomic waves to spy on Iran’s nuclear program, thereby justifying the recent arrests of environmental activists.

#2. Last month, officials in Washington, DC voted to rename the street on which the Russian Embassy sits to Boris Nemtsov Plaza, after the slain Russian democracy activist who was a vocal critic of Vladimir Putin; Nemtsov was murdered in 2015. In response, the Moscow city government will consider changing the name of the street on which the US Embassy sits to “North American Dead End Street.”

#3. Most parents support a child’s effort to succeed, but not the parents of Kevin Nicholson, who is trying to unseat Wisconsin Senator Tammy Baldwin in the upcoming midterm elections. Nicholson’s mother and father both donated $2,700 to Baldwin’s campaign – the maximum amount permitted under the law, according to the Federal Election Commission.

#4. Finally, in the poetic justice category: in South Africa, a pride of lions attacked and ate a poacher in the Ingwelala Private Nature Reserve.

#Olympics Lindsey Vonn Donald Trump Lions Putin Nemtsov South Africa Tammy Baldwin Kevin Nicholson

0 notes

aspyslife-blog · 6 years

Text

Exit All Stages (February 10, 2018)

Choose a hemisphere. Find a high-ranking government official. Or a regular citizen. Ask a simple question: where is the United States, not on the map, but as a player upon the world stage. Washington used to be everywhere, sharing American values, leading from the front. Where is Washington now? Is America lost?

The good news is that we’re not lost; we are where we’ve always been, south of Canada and north of Mexico. You can come visit. We’re open for business; at least, for people of Scandinavian descent and the proper religious persuasion. For the rest of the world, well, it’s tricky, knowing if you’re welcome here. The White House says one thing. The courts (sometimes) say another. Congress, as usual, is too busy bickering to take a stand.

The bad news is that we’ve exited from all stages, which is why no one knows where we are, or who we are, or how we stand on issues that were once anchored in concrete. The first sign of our general retreat was Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s absence at the unveiling of the Human Rights Report. He couldn’t be bothered. His calendar was full.

Thirteen months into the tenure of the Trump administration, it is supremely obvious that the United States had abdicated its global leadership role in return for…what? Sadly, the answer is nothing. In the Middle East, Washington is absent, save for a few dozen cruise missiles tossed at an airbase in Syria. Russia has filled the void. In Asia, China has taken charge.

It’s not as if the United States was defeated militarily or economically; Washington simply decided it didn’t want to lead, so it picked up its bat and ball and went home. If you doubt this analysis, simply look at the preponderance of dictators around the world who are emboldened by the knowledge that they no longer must worry about the response of the United States. Worse, it’s not as if Washington is simply looking the other way while journalists are jailed and civic leaders are beaten and killed. Unfortunately, Washington is offering its support to the dictators – sometimes fulsome encouragement, sometimes backhanded inducement, but always with a green light.

In Cairo, Egypt’s president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi is campaigning for a second term in office. He’s leaving nothing to the whims of democratic choice. Political rivals have been jailed. He’s bought the country’s journalists. His “opponent” is a long-time supporter, and his biggest fan is Donald Trump, who calls Mr. Sisi a “fantastic guy.”

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, the country’s ruler for the past thirty-three years, has cracked down on his political opponents. He also has a fan in Donald Trump, who flashed a thumbs-up when he posed with the Cambodian leader for a picture. In turn, Mr. Sen praised Trump for his lack of interest in human rights.

In Honduras, President Juan Orlando Hernández was won a second term, despite demands for a new election from the Organization of American States, which accused the strongman of rigging the vote. Washington’s response was to call upon all parties to behave themselves.

Neither last nor least, Russia’s Vladimir Putin barred his main challenger from participating in the next election. The United States has remained silent. The entire world knows of Trump’s infatuation with the former KGB colonel. Hopefully, Robert Mueller will soon reveal the genesis of this mysterious admiration. When the facts are finally known, perhaps Trump will have the decency, like Richard Nixon before him, to finally exit all stages.

#Trump Putin Washington Russia Hondura Egypt Cambodia Hun Sen Sisi #Hernandez China

0 notes

aspyslife-blog · 6 years

Text

Victor Cha and the First, Best Line of Defense Against Nuclear War (February 3, 2018)

The Devin Nunes memo. Trump orders Mueller fired but backs down. Trump, Jr. tweets that the McCabe at the FBI “was fired.” Congressional leaders accuse other members of McCarthyism and doing Vladimir Putin’s dirty work. The stock market suffers its worst week in two years, with the Dow Jones falling 665 points in one session. Have I forgotten anything? Oh, yes…will the Director of the FBI submit his resignation? Will Trump fire Rosenstein? Did Trump really call Sean Hannity at Fox News for policy advice?

In the whirlwind of deceit and skullduggery that is Washington, why am I writing about Trump’s failure to appoint an ambassador to the U.S. Embassy in Seoul, Korea? A two word answer: nuclear war. Fact #1: North Korea possesses both nuclear weapons and viable delivery system. Fact #2: North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, is a mystery wrapped inside an enigma. (Is he insane? A genius?) Fact #3: Trump’s chosen method of diplomacy – insulting Kim via Twitter – has failed to convince the North Korean to surrender his nuclear arsenal.

Additional facts: North Koreans and South Koreans are one people divided by a political boundary, the heavily fortified DMZ. If North Korea were to launch its (nuclear) missiles at South Korea and/or Japan, millions of people will die, an entire country (North Korea) will be obliterated, and the world economy will suffer horribly (televisions, washing machines, automobiles…most are products of South Korea and Japan).

A final fact: Armageddon could be avoided if Trump would appoint an Ambassador to our embassy in Seoul. Some of our most accomplished ambassadors have served in the top floor office at Number 188 Sejong-daero, including Philip C. Habib, Christopher R. Hill, and Alexander R. Vershbow. These ambassadors did not always tell the White House what it wanted to hear concerning our South Korean allies and our North Korean adversaries, but they delivered blunt assessments that the president needed to know. None was fired for speaking the truth.

Our last ambassador departed his post 378 days ago. During that time, the threat of war with North Korea has grown exponentially. In this dangerous situation, it is imperative that we have an ambassador in the embassy. Unfortunately, the position remains unfilled, because Trump’s nominee, Victor Cha, possessed the temerity to speak the truth to a president who only accepts facts that he likes. So Trump scuttled his nomination.

Cha is a professor at Georgetown University. He served with distinction on the National Security Council during the tenure of George W. Bush. He is acknowledged as a pre-eminent expert on North Korea by both Republicans and Democrats, as well as academics and diplomats. His “mistake” was to counter Trump’s urge to teach North Korea a lesson by “punching it in the nose.” He spoke strongly against such a preventive military strike.

Cha, who understands North Korea and its leader as well as anyone in the U.S., stated that such an action by Trump “would be putting at risk an American population the size of a medium- size U.S. city — Pittsburgh, say, or Cincinnati — on the assumption that a crazy and undeterrable dictator will be rationally cowed by a demonstration of U.S. kinetic power."

In other words, if Trump were to launch a strike against North Korea, Kim would strike back against the U.S. or South Korea, where close to 500,000 Americans are resident, military and civilian.

Such sagacity is expected from an ambassador. Such courage is necessary to tell the president that his instincts are wrong. It is a very sad commentary upon the weakness of our political leadership that a dissenting voice is not given the opportunity to express a counter-opinion. A president who will only accept quislings at his table is at best a weak and inefficient leader and at worst an egomaniacal wanna-be tyrant whose vanity and narcissism will propel the country toward unnecessary disaster.

Victor Cha spoke the truth. Donald Trump did not listen. If American, South Korean, and Japanese citizens die in an unnecessary war with North Korea, the blame lies upon the uneasy head of Donald Trump.

#North Korea Victor Cha Donald Trump Nuclear War Seoul Japan #South Korea

1 note · View note

aspyslife-blog · 6 years

Text

Gold Toilets, The Water Palace, Vincent van Gogh, and the Failure of American Leadership (January 27, 2018)

Desert heat is a savage beast for the unfamiliar. In Baghdad during the summer of 2007, the mercury rose above 120 degrees Fahrenheit. The air was so hot and so dry it seared the mucous membranes. My eyes felt as if they were frying in their sockets and my lips, despite balm, felt like shriveled embers. The walls of my nostrils felt as if I had snorted flames. I imagined myself as a bleached skeleton, the white bones that Hollywood movies used as visual props.

If Iraq was a Hollywood movie it certainly wasn’t a John Wayne film, where the villains are vanquished and the hero rides into the sunset. A movie about Iraq in 2007 would be a grade-B slasher flick, full of gore and guts. Fortunately, slasher movies usually end after 90 minutes or so. Unfortunately, the second American war in Iraq had already run longer than four years.

My memories of Iraq are bleak: violent sandstorms, fields of garbage, barrages of mortars…and the Water Palace, one of Saddam’s mansions, so-called because it was situated in the middle of a man-made lake and reached by a long bridge. Its most memorable feature was a rococo privy, where I peed into a gold toilet.

If Iraq were a drug, it would be a hallucinogen, and the time spent within the country a very bad trip…which is why finding a solid gold toilet in a fairy tale palace in the middle of a lake in the midst of a desert was not a surprise. I wondered about the worth of the toilet and how I could bring it home with me. In the end, I departed Iraq, but with only a photograph of the toilet.

So when I read that the Guggenheim Museum had rejected President Trump request to hang Vincent van Gogh’s "Landscape With Snow” in his private White House quarters, countering with an offer of an 18-karat-gold toilet titled “America” by its creator, sculptor Maurizio Cattelan, I remembered the Water Palace. How has our country regressed from deposing a brutal tyrant with an abnormal fear of germs who surrounded himself with golden baubles (that would be Saddam) to electing as president a wannabe dictator with advanced germophobia who decorated his private jet with golden bathroom hardware (Trump).

If Trump is America’s Saddam, what is our fate? To be invaded? To have our government overthrown? Civil strife? Religious warfare? The unwarranted, useless, tragic deaths of millions of Americans?

Our democracy deserves more than a gold toilet and a wannabe dictator. 2018 is an election year. To support our democracy, we must all vote loud and vote proud. Even better – become part of the process. Run for office. Hold your incumbents responsible for their actions – or lack of actions. Each of us is responsible for the protection of our democracy. Don’t flush our heritage down a gold toilet.

#Trump Toilets Gold White House Democracy Saddam Iraq Water Palace Baghdad Dictators

0 notes

aspyslife-blog · 6 years

Text

The Delicacy of Our Democracy (January 19, 2018)

Earlier this week, Senator Jeff Flake (R-AZ) spoke on the floor of the Senate. His words were somber and worthy of respect; they were also a clarion call for us to awake to the dangers facing our democracy.

Thomas Jefferson wrote that Cicero was one of a handful of major figures who contributed to a tradition “of public right” that informed his draft of the Declaration of Independence. Flake never claimed to stand on the level of the Roman Consul, but the words he delivered on the floor of our Senate are as important today as the Roman statesman’s were in the years preceding the demise of the Second Triumvirate.

Take a few moments to read Flake’s speech (below)…and to remember that in perilous times, men and women are judged by rightness (and wrongness) of their actions – and inactions.

*****************************************************************************************************

At a moment when it seems that our democracy is more defined by our discord and our dysfunction than by our own values and principles, let me begin by noting the somewhat obvious point that these offices that we hold are not ours indefinitely. We are not here simply to mark time. Sustained incumbency is certainly not the point of seeking office and there are times when we must risk our careers in favor of our principles. Now is such a time.

It must also be said that I rise today with no small measure of regret. Regret because of the state of our disunion. Regret because of the disrepair and destructiveness of our politics. Regret because of the indecency of our discourse. Regret because of the coarseness of our leadership.

Regret for the compromise of our moral authority, and by our, I mean all of our complicity in this alarming and dangerous state of affairs. It is time for our complicity and our accommodation of the unacceptable to end. In this century, a new phrase has entered the language to describe the accommodation of a new and undesirable order, that phrase being the new normal.

But we must never adjust to the present coarseness of our national dialogue with the tone set up at the top. We must never regard as normal the regular and casual undermining of our democratic norms and ideals. We must never meekly accept the daily sundering of our country. The personal attacks, the threats against principles, freedoms and institution, the flagrant disregard for truth and decency.

The reckless provocations, most often for the pettiest and most personal reasons, reasons having nothing whatsoever to do with the fortunes of the people that we have been elected to serve. None of these appalling features of our current politics should ever be regarded as normal. We must never allow ourselves to lapse into thinking that that is just the way things are now.

If we simply become inured to this condition, thinking that it is just politics as usual, then heaven help us. Without fear of the consequences and without consideration of the rules of what is politically safe or palatable, we must stop pretending that the degradation of our politics and the conduct of some in our executive branch are normal. They are not normal. Reckless, outrageous and undignified behavior has become excused and countenanced as telling it like it is when it is actually just reckless, outrageous and undignified.

And when such behavior emanates from the top of our government, it is something else. It is dangerous to a democracy. Such behavior does not project strength because our strength comes from our values. It instead projects a corruption of the spirit and weakness. It is often said that children are watching. Well, they are. And what are we going to do about that? When the next generation asks us, ‘Why didn’t you do something? Why didn’t you speak up?’ What are we going to say?

Mr. President, I rise today to say: enough. We must dedicate ourselves to making sure that the anomalous never becomes the normal. With respect and humility, I must say that we have fooled ourselves for long enough that a pivot to governing is right around the corner, a return to civility and stability right behind it.

We know better than that. By now, we all know better than that. Here today I stand to say that we would be better served — we would better serve the country — by better fulfilling our obligations under the Constitution by adhering to our Article 1 — “old normal,” Mr. Madison’s doctrine of separation of powers. This genius innovation which affirms Madison’s status as a true visionary — and for which Madison argued in Federalist 51 — held that the equal branches of our government would balance and counteract with each other, if necessary.

“Ambition counteracts ambition,” he wrote. But what happens if ambition fails to counteract ambition? What happens if stability fails to assert itself in the face of chaos and instability? If decency fails to call out indecency? Were the shoe on the other foot, we Republicans — would we Republicans meekly accept such behavior on display from dominant Democrats?

Of course, we wouldn’t, and we would be wrong if we did. When we remain silent and fail to act, when we know that silence and inaction is the wrong thing to do because of political considerations, because we might make enemies, because we might alienate the base, because we might provoke a primary challenge, because ad infinitum, ad nauseam, when we succumb to those considerations in spite of what should be greater considerations and imperatives in defense of our institutions and our liberty, we dishonor our principles and forsake our obligations. Those things are far more important than politics.

Now, I’m aware that more politically savvy people than I will caution against such talk. I’m aware that there’s a segment of my party that believes that anything short of complete and unquestioning loyalty to a president who belongs to my party is unacceptable and suspect. If I have been critical, it is not because I relish criticizing the behavior of the president of the United States.

If I have been critical, it is because I believe it is my obligation to do so. And as a matter and duty of conscience, the notion that one should stay silent — and as the norms and values that keep America strong are undermined and as the alliances and agreements that ensure the stability of the entire world are routinely threatened by the level of thought that goes into 140 characters — the notion that we should say or do nothing in the face of such mercurial behavior is ahistoric and, I believe, profoundly misguided.

A president, a Republican president named Roosevelt, had this to say about the president and a citizen’s relationship to the office: “The president is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able and disinterested service to the nation as a whole.”

He continued: “Therefore, it is absolutely necessary that there should be — that there should be a full liberty to tell the truth about his acts and this means that it is exactly as necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile.” President Roosevelt continued, “To announce that there must be no criticism of the president or that we are to stand by a president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”

Acting on conscience and principle in a manner — is the manner — in which we express our moral selves and as such, loyalty to conscience and principle should supersede loyalty to any man or party. We can all be forgiven for failing in that measure from time to time. I certainly put myself at the top of the list of those who fall short in this regard. I am holier than none.

But too often we rush to salvage principle — not to salvage principle, but to forgive and excuse our failures so that we might accommodate them and go right on failing until the accommodation itself becomes our principle. In that way and over time, we can justify almost any behavior and sacrifice any principle. I am afraid that this is where we now find ourselves.

When a leader correctly identifies real hurt and insecurity in our country, and instead of addressing it, goes to look for someone to blame, there is perhaps nothing more devastating to a pluralistic society. Leadership knows that most often a good place to start in assigning blame is to look somewhat closer to home. Leadership knows where the buck stops.

Humility helps, character counts. Leadership does not knowingly encourage or feed ugly or debased appetites in us. Leadership lives by the American creed, “E pluribus unum.” From many one. American leadership looks to the world and just as Lincoln did, sees the family of man. Humanity is not a zero sum game. When we have been at our most prosperous, we have been at our most principled, and when we do well, the rest of the world does well.

These articles of civic faith have been critical to the American identity for as long as we have been alive. They are our birthright and our obligation. We must guard them jealously and pass them on for as long as the calendar has days. To betray them or to be unserious in their defense is a betrayal of the fundamental obligations of American leadership and to behave as if they don’t matter is simply not who we are.

Now the efficacy of American leadership around the globe has come into question. When the United States emerged from World War II, we contributed about half of the world’s economic activity. It would have been easy to secure our dominance keeping those countries who had been defeated or greatly weakened during the war in their place. We didn’t do that. It would have been easy to focus inward.

We resisted those impulses. Instead, we financed reconstruction of shattered countries and created international organizations and institutions that have helped provide security and foster prosperity around the world for more than 70 years.

Now it seems that we, the architects of this visionary rules-based world order that has brought so much freedom and prosperity, are the ones most eager to abandon it. The implications of this abandonment are profound and the beneficiaries of this rather radical departure in the American approach to the world are the ideological enemies of our values. Despotism loves a vacuum and our allies are now looking elsewhere for leadership. Why are they doing this? None of this is normal.

And what do we, as United States senators, have to say about it? The principles that underlie our politics, the values of our founding, are too vital to our identity and to our survival to allow them to be compromised by the requirements of politics because politics can make us silent when we should speak and silence can equal complicity. I have children and grandchildren to answer to.

And so, Mr. President, I will not be complicit or silent. I’ve decided that I would be better able to represent the people of Arizona and to better serve my country and my conscience by freeing myself of the political consideration that consumed far too much bandwidth and would cause me to compromise far too many principles.

To that end, I’m announcing today that my service in the Senate will conclude at the end of my term in early January 2019. It is clear at this moment that a traditional conservative, who believes in limited government and free markets, who is devoted to free trade, who is pro-immigration, has a narrower and narrower path to nomination in the Republican Party, the party that has so long defined itself by its belief in those things.

It is also clear to me for the moment that we have given in or given up on the core principles in favor of a more viscerally satisfying anger and resentment. To be clear, the anger and resentment that the people feel at the royal mess that we’ve created are justified. But anger and resentment are not a governing philosophy.

There is an undeniable potency to a populist appeal by mischaracterizing or misunderstanding our problems and giving in to the impulse to scapegoat and belittle — the impulse to scapegoat and belittle threatens to turn us into a fearful, backward-looking people. In the case of the Republican Party, those things also threaten to turn us into a fearful, backward-looking minority party.

We were not made great as a country by indulging in or even exalting our worst impulses, turning against ourselves, glorifying in the things that divide us, and calling fake things true and true things fake. And we did not become the beacon of freedom in the darkest corners of the world by flouting our institutions and failing to understand just how hard-won and vulnerable they are.

This spell will eventually break. That is my belief. We will return to ourselves once more, and I say the sooner the better. Because we have a healthy government, we must also have healthy and functioning parties. We must respect each other again in an atmosphere of shared facts and shared values, comity and good faith. We must argue our positions fervently and never be afraid to compromise. We must assume the best of our fellow man, and always look for the good.

Until that day comes, we must be unafraid to stand up and speak out as if our country depends on it, because it does. I plan to spend the remaining 14 months of my Senate term doing just that.

Mr. President, the graveyard is full of indispensable men and women. None of us here is indispensable nor were even the great figures of history who toiled at these very desks, in this very chamber, to shape the country that we have inherited. What is indispensable are the values that they consecrated in Philadelphia and in this place, values which have endured and will endure for so long as men and women wish to remain free.

What is indispensable is what we do here in defense of those values. A political career does not mean much if we are complicit in undermining these values. I thank my colleagues for indulging me here today.

I will close by borrowing the words of President Lincoln, who knew more about healthy enmity and preserving our founding values than any other American who has ever lived. His words from his first inaugural were a prayer in his time and are now no less in ours.

“We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break the bonds of our affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely as they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

Thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor.

#Senator Jeff Flake Cicero Senate Democracy Thomas Jefferson Declaration of Independence Enemies of the People Trump Dictatorship Lincoln

0 notes

aspyslife-blog · 6 years

Text

Happy New Year v.2018 (January 12, 2018)

I turned off the computer last month, stashed the laptop, hid the cellphone. I cut the cord, pretended that the country and the world were sane…and the politicians were good, hard-working folks who only wanted to create a strong, healthy, unified country. I forgot that hot wars rage throughout the Middle East, cold wars are in deep freeze mode. I played with my unicorn friends, ate lunch with Easter bunnies, tossed a football with Santa. Life was good.

This morning I returned to the reality of life in the early days of 2018. I turned on the laptop – I need to drink a few more cups of coffee before I’ll turn on the television. The following report slapped my face – welcome back!

Reuters: President Trump acknowledged reports that his trip to London expected early this year has been canceled, and in a tweet blamed the Obama administration. He cited the imminent relocation of the U.S. Embassy for the cancellation of his visit, tweeting early Friday morning, "Reason I canceled my trip to London is that I am not a big fan of the Obama Administration having sold perhaps the best located and finest embassy in London for 'peanuts,' only to build a new one in an off location for 1.2 billion dollars. Bad deal. Wanted me to cut ribbon-NO!"

However, the embassy website showed that the decision to move the location was taken months before Barack Obama took office in January 2009. The U.S. Embassy & Consulates in the UK said in October 2008 the embassy would be relocated for security reasons. To further bludgeon the facts, Sarah Sanders disputed a report in the Daily Mail that the trip had been scrapped, only to be contradicted by Trump.

How can the President disown an American embassy? Well, I guess it makes sense…he was a real estate magnate…if he says the new neighborhood stinks, maybe the USG should sell the building? At least, it’s brand new. Maybe the Iranians will buy it – after all, their embassy was attacked and burned a few years ago.

Of course, this being America in 2018, the news became more bizarre – but not because of a tweet. During a White House meeting with congressional lawmakers on immigration, the president of the United States of America again proved that he lacked a filter between his brain and his lips. Worse was the fact that he even created the thought. Trump asked why the United States would accept immigrants from "shithole countries" in Africa and the Caribbean, rather than people from places like Norway.

A brief yet incomplete catalog of Trump’s racist, xenophobic comments follows:

"When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best. They're sending people that have lots of problems. ... They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists, and some, I assume, are good people." - June 16, 2015

“We need a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what the hell is going on." - Dec. 7, 2015

"Look at my African-American over here. Look at him." - June 3, 2016 (pointing to a black man surrounded by white supporters at a rally)

“The Mexican ancestry of U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel should disqualify him from presiding over a fraud lawsuit against me.” - June 5, 2016

"Our inner cities, African-Americans, Hispanics are living in hell because it's so dangerous. You walk down the street, you get shot." - Sept. 22, 2016

“Haitian immigrants all have AIDS and Nigerian immigrants will never go back to their huts in Africa.” - June 2017

"I think there is blame on both sides. You also had people that were very fine people on both sides. Not all of those people were neo-Nazis, believe me. Not all of those people were white supremacists by any stretch." - Aug. 15, 2017

"You were here long before any of us were here. Although we have a representative in Congress who they say was here a long time ago. They call her Pocahontas." - Nov. 27, 2017

Trump is a racist. He does not represent America. His toadies in Congress do not represent the citizens of their states. In 2018, we have the opportunity to right the ship of state. In November, vote for people who care about the country. Vote for true patriots, not snake oil salesmen. Vote for people who wear clothes - vote to remove the enablers of a naked, dysfunctional septuagenarian who would crown himself emperor of the United States of America.

#Trump Racism White House Vote 2018

1 note · View note

aspyslife-blog · 6 years

Text

Spy Thrillers and Reality Checks (December 22, 2017)

I recently watched No Way Out, the 1987 political thriller with Kevin Costner and Gene Hackman. Costner plays a KGB sleeper agent assigned to the Pentagon. If you haven’t watched it, it’s worth renting. Movies aren’t my only route into nostalgia – I recently reread Nelson DeMille’s 1988 spy thriller, The Charm School. Set in Moscow, the story follows the efforts of three U.S. Embassy officials to disrupt a KGB school for sleeper agents bound for America. If you haven’t read it, it’s a lot of fun.

Watching the movie and reading the book reminded me of my own adventures in Russia. I’ve traveled throughout the vast country, from St. Petersburg to Rostov-na-Danu and from Moscow to Vladivostok, with dozens of stops in-between. It is an extraordinarily perplexing country, rich with history and culture and impoverished by hatred, greed, and an inferiority complex as wide as its borders.

I’ve received the deepest acts of generosity and the most depraved actions of violence. In Tomsk, a babushka took me for a strannik and offered me her meager meal. On the road from Moscow to Borodino – much like the unfortunate American tourist in The Charm School – I was detained by the sluzhba on a “technical travel issue” pole and extensively “questioned.”

Visiting the grave of Boris Pasternak in Peredelkino, I politely listened as a professor from Moscow State Pedagogical University explained that Russians and American have more commonalities than differences – we are both great empires, we have both vanquished indigenous peoples, and we both are blessed with natural wealth, scientific geniuses, and artists of the highest caliber. We contribute more than any other countries to the welfare of the world, she continued, but our munificence is misunderstood. Unfortunately, she sighed, our leaders have turned our people against each other. She concluded by quoting Dwight Eisenhower: “People want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of their way and let them have it."

Russians believe that their leaders fall into two categories: the hirsute and the bald(ing). Usually, the former are weak like Brezhnev and Yeltsin (Stalin is an exception) and the latter are strong – Lenin and Khrushchev. Russians exploit the former and fear the latter. Putin, the balding current leader, is certainly feared.

A former KGB agent turned mid-level apparatchik, Putin possesses a special attribute: he exhibits the saurian qualities of a python stalking its prey. I met him shortly after his appointment as deputy chief of the Presidential Staff. He embodied the essence of evil…and his calculated patience seemed primeval.

If I were to stand next to Donald Trump in line at his favorite fast food restaurant (American leaders seem to fall into two categories – fat for Trump and Clinton, fit for Bush and Kennedy), I would warn him to treat Putin with a large measure of trepidation. Pythons hunt their prey only rarely, but when they strike, they prefer bovine victims who aren’t smart enough to respect their cunning and power – and fast enough to escape.

Today’s blog is my final entry for this year – in the six weeks since I started writing, I’ve penned a dozen of these pieces. For me, it’s been a thoughtful and insightful exercise. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading the blogs…agreeing, disagreeing, questioning…and will continue reading next month, when I’ll again offer my thoughts on the words and actions of our elected officials– and political and military leaders around the globe. The best of the holidays to all, and a happy and healthy new year in 2018!

#Trump Putin Cold War KGB #Pasternak #Peredelkino #Lenin Stalin Yeltsin #Brezhnev #Khrushchev #Eisenhower

1 note · View note

aspyslife-blog · 6 years

Text

The Tenth Circle of Hell (December 19, 2017)

Words are weapons – it’s why dictators such as Mao, Castro, Stalin, and Hitler stood before crowds for hours, extolling their personal virtues and the righteousness of their brutal systems. Even Donald Trump, the most bombastic and atavistic political demagogue to step onto the American political since George Wallace, understands the passions which words inspire. His schoolyard taunts of “lock her up” and “little Marco” offer insights into his personal puerility.

His sycophants - well paid by the U.S. taxpayer in the White House and generously salaried by Fox News – recently raised the levels of Trump’s demagoguery to the gradation of an agitator who falsely cries “fire” in a crowded theater. Consider the escalation of the rhetoric spewing from the mouths of these zealots:

1) Fox commentator Sean Hannity stated that Robert Mueller has put the country on the brink of becoming a banana republic;

2) Tom Fitton, president of the conservative Judicial Watch, posited that the FBI has been turned into the KGB;

3) Fox commentator Jesse Watters, Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz (R-FL), and conspiracy theorist radio host Mark Levin all have insisted that Mueller is orchestrating a coup d’état.

In Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, I witnessed successful coups, failed coups, and counter-coups, each vicious and bloody. To charge Mueller with sedition is as ridiculous as stating that a Lhapsa Apsa is a lion. The talking heads and quisling politicians who stir fear from the rear, like REMFs conducting Soviet-style agitprop, are exhibiting their desperation, and the further Mueller deep-dives into Trump’s dirt, the more strident their attacks will grow against the institutions of American democracy. Their proclamations prove that they possess a pimp’s morality.

I have worked in countries ruled by dictators. I have felt the fear of living beneath authoritarian rule. I have been detained by the FSB in Russia, the SSS in Nigeria, and the Mukhabarat in Iraq. To compare the FBI – or any institution of American democracy – to the KGB is craven. To insinuate that Mueller operates with Beria’s disdain for the law is a travesty.

When the miasma of the evil that has been foisted upon America by Trump and his underlings clears, the names on the list of shame will be extensive, and the reputations of those who sought to undermine the foundations of our democracy to enrich and empower themselves will forever occupy a special place in tenth circle of hell, reserved for traitorous demagogues and their sycophants.

#Mueller Trump Fox News Hannity Asia Africa Middle East #coup d’état

1 note · View note

aspyslife-blog · 6 years

Text

The Next Middle Eastern War (December 15, 2017)

The most recent Middle Eastern war is bleeding toward its conclusion. Who won? Who lost? The Syrian Alawites? The Iranian Pasdaran? The Lebanese Hezbollah? The Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces? The Syrian al-Nusra? The Afghani Fetamiyun? The Pakistani Zaynabiyun? The Iraqi al-Nujba? ISIS? Al-Qaeda? Assad? Rouhani? Netanyahu? Putin? Trump? Even with a scorecard, it’s hard to figure out who’s who, as well as who’s on first…and on which battlefield.

In the Middle East, violence abhors a vacuum. Conflict and deceit are the ancient region’s true milk and honey, chronicled in the earliest chapters of Genesis – the first mention of evil is found in Chapter 2:9. Whether the casus belli is religious or political, fueled by greed or vengeance, internally agitated or externally influenced, war is an endemic condition in the Middle East. From the First Crusade to the Second Gulf War, from the Battle of Jamal to the Battle of Raqqa, from the Battle of Siddim to the 2014 Gaza War, the lands of the Fertile Crescent (and beyond) have been bathed in the blood of combatants and the innocent.

Currently, the final stages of the Syrian Civil War are being fought along the Iraqi border between the remnants of ISIS, the Syrian Democratic Forces (supported by the United States), the Syrian army, and Shiite militias backed by Iran. Unless the Kurds successfully carve out an enclave (which will upset the Syrians, Iranians, Iraqis, and Turks), the ayatollahs will achieve their long-sought land bridge between Teheran and Beirut, one thousand miles of Shi’a dominance from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean Sea. A new, encompassing Middle Eastern war, perhaps nuclear, might soon follow, in all likelihood initiated by Israel, which would view its preemptive actions as existential to its survival (a scenario similar to the situation in June 1967).

War gamers at U.S. Central Command and (USCENTCOM) and U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) at MacDill Air Force Base, as well as their counterparts at the CIA, DIA, and other intelligence agencies, have prepared extensive plans to address this contingency, but military action will costs tens of thousands of lives and billions of dollars; military action is the failsafe option. The strategic use of diplomacy, the tip of the military’s spear, is needed, but strong diplomacy demands decisive leadership. When our leaders are wise and experienced, they rally the American public to their decisions, and we triumph. When our leaders are inexperienced and hubristic, they alienate the American public, and we fail.

Our current leadership is bombastic and febrile. It has alienated the American public, which holds it in historically low esteem. It has squandered its trust with the American people. It is without foreign allies. Its enemies perceive its weakness and do not fear it. If confronted with the reality of another war in the Middle East, how will our leadership respond? With the courage and tenacity of Abram and his 318 trained men at the Battle of Siddim, or with the cowardice and duplicity of Talha and Zubayr and the fifty false messengers at the Battle of Jamal?

#Middle East Trump Putin Syria Assad Iran Ayatollah Israel ISIS

0 notes

aspyslife-blog · 6 years

Text

From Moore to Moscow: Buyer’s Remorse (December 12, 2017)

As candidate for president, Donald Trump delivered insults like a spoiled bully, confident that his wealth would compensate for his lack of principles and knowledge. After all, he was the only presidential candidate in the post-Hiroshima age to not understand the concept of the nuclear triad. Whether he comprehends the dangers of nuclear war (how else could he engage in his puerile Twitter spats with Kim Jong-un) is a question which demands an answer.

During his candidacy, Trump’s atavistic need for adoration offered entertainment vice information. Each time he insulted an establishment Republican candidate during a debate, the audience cheered. Why not? Policy is so dull. After a hard day at work or in school, a little light pleasure is much more enjoyable than learning, for example, the nuances of a candidate’s thoughts on Russian efforts to exert control over the former republics and satellites of the defunct Soviet Union. Name calling – Little Marco, Low Energy Jeb, Fat Chris – substituted for explanations of economic theory. Vainglorious boasts – I know more than the generals – replaced thoughtful analysis.

In the eleven months since taking office, Trump has buried the quaint concept of a presidential pivot, as well as the hopes for presidential behavior and presidential aptitude. He has overseen the most corrupt administration since Harding – in less than a full year in the White House. His tweets have set us upon the abyss of a nuclear war. He has not only exacerbated the divisions endemic to our society but labored to destroy the notion of public civility. He has degraded the respect that the Oval Office once held in the American conscience, no matter who sat at the presidential desk.

His administration is being investigated for high treason – collaboration with a foreign power (Russia) to steal an American presidential election. Think of it! Never in our history has such a charge been leveled. The scope of the action is so bewildering that it defies understanding. The President of the United States of America may have accepted the assistance of the Kremlin to gain the White House. To quote Kurtz: The horror!

Trump understands better than anyone P. T. Barnum’s coda that "I am a showman by profession...and all the gilding shall make nothing else of me.” Now Trump and the sycophantic Republican Party are casting their pearls (and cash) before the swine that is Roy Moore, giving full support to an accused pedophile who was once removed and once suspended from his two terms as the Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court for refusing to obey lawful orders.

How far the presidency has fallen since the writing of the Preamble of the Constitution (“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice…”), when the 45th President states that "We can't afford to have a liberal Democrat who is completely controlled by Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer. We can't do it. So get out and vote for Roy Moore." The headline should be a banner: “The President Pumps for the Pedophile.”

This is the sewer into which Trump has dragged us: the President of the United States says it is better to have a man disgraced by not only his defiance of the law but by his fondness for sexual predation upon underage children in the United States Senate than a Democrat who, as a U.S. Attorney, prosecuted the two Ku Klux Klan members responsible for the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama.

How far we have already fallen. How much lower will Trump drag us?

#Trump Alabama Moore Moscow Mueller Putin #Kim Jong-un

1 note · View note

aspyslife-blog · 6 years

Text

Halfway Measures and Full-Fledged Repercussions (December 8, 2017)

Two days ago, Trump declared the United States now recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. His decision stems not from personal conviction but his need to distract from Mueller’s investigation into his role in the Russia scandal and buttress his standing among evangelical Christians, whose support he will need if Congress impeaches him in 2018.

My problem with Trump’s decision was not that he took it but that he took it in a incompetent fashion. In effect, he walked into a tense situation, tossed a punch, declared himself the winner, and went home. A competent president – or fighter – would have prepared a plan of action that covered the opening, middle, and end rounds, with options for contingencies. Unfortunately, Trump continues to treat the presidency as a reality television show; he is incapable of undertaking the strong, decisive steps necessary for the geopolitical stage.

Put aside personal opinions on the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians and consider the American position: Trump’s decision exposes Americans around the world, not only those serving in embassies and consulates but those who work for American companies in foreign countries, to a long-term series of attacks by protesters. His decision is criminal in its short-sightedness. It is a halfway measure that will result in full-fledged repercussions – the price to be paid by others.

Trump should have done his homework. He should have listened to his Secretaries of State and Defense and his Director of the CIA, who advised caution. He should have taken the time to win over our European allies (that they fully distrust him is a fault of his own statements and actions). He should have engaged in more comprehensive dialog with Middle Eastern leaders, who we need in our struggles against al-Qaeda, ISIS, and Iran, instead of ignoring their warnings.

By not announcing a firm timeline and specific details for the move of our embassy to Jerusalem, the location of the embassy, if it will be secured by Inman rules or if a Congressional waiver will be needed, where our diplomats will live, and the fate of the current embassy building in Tel Aviv, he attacked a Gordian situation not comprehensively but piecemeal. He guaranteed that each time a new development in the process is announced, protestors will again attack Americans. Already, rioters are burning effigies of Trump in the Middle East. How much longer until flesh and blood Americans are attacked?

Trump is an incompetent president and, as usual with his missteps, others will pay for his ignorance. To change a longstanding policy often represents an act of moral courage, but Trump’s statement is the stuff of desperation, the flailing of a man struggling to remain afloat in a maelstrom of his own making. His halfway measures will bring full-fledged repercussions upon innocent Americans.

#Trump Middle East Jerusalem Israel Palestine

1 note · View note

aspyslife-blog · 6 years

Text

The Tepid War: Forward into the Past (December 5, 2017)

In the most frigid days of the Cold War, the United States established a global picket line around the Soviet Union, consisting of military bases, listening posts, and missile sites, from Scotland to Japan. Along with the diplomatic strategy of containment formulated by George Keenan, the military picket strategy was designed to cage the Soviet Union and diminish its ability to export its theories of world revolution and communist domination.

Driven by its historical desire to establish warm water ports for its navy, Moscow reacted to these efforts with a simple elegance: it leapfrogged the American pickets to establish military bases and provide political/military advisors in Syria and Egypt (plus other Middle Eastern/African countries), challenging American dominance in the region. Despite Sadat’s 1972 expulsion of the Soviets from Egypt and the overwhelming victory of Israel over Moscow’s Arab clients the following year, Soviet influence in the Middle East continued, especially in Syria, where it maintained naval, air force, and spy bases.

In 1991, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States discarded its strategies of containment and pickets. After Vladimir Putin became Prime Minister in 1999 with the avowed intent to (1) create a resurgent Russia and (2) degrade the global influence of the United States, European nations, aware that America’s interest had shifted away from maintaining the defense of Europe to exploiting the markets of Asia, sought to accommodate Russian interests in an effort to contain Putin’s ambitions, a policy which lost all semblances of credence in the face of Russian actions in Ukraine and the Crimea. In realpolitik terms, a Tepid War had replaced the Cold War.

Seven years after Sadat expelled the Soviets from Egypt, the ayatollahs removed the Shah from the Peacock Throne in Teheran and created the Islamic Republic. Since 1979, Iran has challenged the United States in the Middle East by pursuing (1) a nuclear weapons program and (2) a contiguous crescent of Iranian/Shi’a influence from Tehran to Beirut. The ayatollahs dominate the politics of Iraq (a country with a Shi’a majority population). They pull the strings of their Syrian puppet, al-Assad (an Alawite Shi’a in a country that is 75% Sunni). Since the 1975 civil war in Lebanon, they have controlled the fractured government in Beirut and defanged the military while enabling the Shi’a terrorist organization, Hizballah, to effectively rule Lebanon. Additionally, they are fighting a vicious proxy war in Yemen.

At the conclusion of 2017, the tectonic plates of political realignment are again shifting in the Middle East. Russia and Iran, through application of primary power and calculated use of proxies, are gaining physical territory and political influence, while the United States, following disastrous choices by both Republican and Democratic administrations, finds itself ignored and ridiculed by the Levantine and Gulf nations. The chaos within the Trump administration, in addition to its lack of clear a foreign policy for the region (and beyond), has hastened the demise of American influence.

For the first time since the end of World War Two, the United States is perceived as having renounced its position as the world’s moral, economic, diplomatic, and military leader. While blame for past policy mistakes can be heaped upon the Obama, Clinton, and both Bush presidencies, Trump is wholly responsible for abdicating the mantle of global leadership. His isolationist “America First” policy has weakened our global standing. In 2018, playing ostrich will increase the perception of American weakness among our enemies and competitors. Our allies will ignore or abandon us. Trump’s isolationism is disastrous path which will lead us into conditions of weakness and irrelevance. In 2018, the Tepid War will certainly become much, much colder – unless it boils over into a shooting war. Given Trump’s lack of policy direction and fixation upon his political woes, his miscalculations could force the United States into an unnecessary war – or he might start a war to distract the American people from the ongoing investigations into his presidency.

#Cold War Trump Iran Russia Soviet Union Putin Middle East

1 note · View note

aspyslife-blog · 6 years

Text

Black, Grey, White, and Extremist: Propaganda in the Age of ISIS (December 1, 2017)

We’ve all seen the ISIS propaganda videos and pictures – the beheadings of prisoners by swords, the burning of a Jordanian air force officer inside a cage, the severed heads set upon pikes. ISIS uses the images to inspire fear among its enemies and loyalty among its fighters. Its extremist message is simple: stand against us and die horribly; join with us and live as a holy warrior. ISIS fights its propaganda wars in the manner as Joseph Goebbels, Pol Pot, Ali Hassan Salameh, and Andreas Baader, waving shocking scenes of violence as its standard.

Propaganda is the flip side of war. Its facets are as old as the first battle, but in the 21st century, its black, grey, and white aspects seems as quaint as the Cold War in which they were utilized. Simply, black propaganda consists of outright lies spread by a government (think of the USSR) to discredit the moral standing of its enemy (think of the USA). Examples of Soviet black propaganda include the calumnies that the United States developed AIDS to enslave the people of Africa and that Americans adopted babies from Asia in order to harvest their organs for transplants into their own offspring.

Grey propaganda contained greater amounts of truth and subtlety. Often, the USSR would use its official news outlets (TASS and Pravda) to distribute propaganda in the guise of serious journalism, adding inventions and stretches of the imagination to a bare foundation of fact. Although not as sensational as black propaganda, its grey version was more difficult to discern. Examples include Moscow supported worker organizations, such as the World Federation of Trade Unions, and peace movements, including the World Peace Council. It used American newspapers and magazines to promote JFK assassination theories, rumors of J. Edgar Hoover’s homosexuality, and Martin Luther King’s role as an FBI agent provocateur. Moscow’s use of Facebook and Twitter to influence the 2016 presidential election is its latest example of grey propaganda.

Of course, the United States also used black and grey propaganda to discredit the USSR during the Cold War, but unlike the Soviet union, its strongest weapon was white propaganda, upon which it placed its name as a badge of honesty. Simply, white propaganda is government’s telling of its story, pros and cons, warts and beauty marks. During the Cold War and until 1999, the United States Information Agency (known as the United States Information Service abroad) was charged with promoting the white propaganda of the United States – “telling America’s story” was the motto of USIA, and its activities ranged from providing news to the world via its affiliates (Voice of America, Radio Liberty, TV Marti) and its press offices in embassies worldwide. USIA also offered insights into the government, society, history, and culture of the United States to foreign audiences, through the work of its cultural attaches in embassies worldwide.

One unrecognized reason for the fall of communism was the unsung efforts of America’s white propaganda efforts – putting forward the face of America for the world to see, warts and blemishes included. USIA served as the model for similar agencies throughout Europe and Asia. The demise of USIA (via incorporation into the Department of State in 1999) presaged the end of America’s highly effective program of white propaganda – a victim of bureaucratic inefficiencies and infighting. Under Secretary of State Tillerson’s neutering of the diplomatic corps, the effectiveness of America’s efforts to tell its own story has been eliminated. In the age of Trump, when the world no longer looks to the United States for moral leadership and, indeed, disdains our involvement, in a time when tribalism threatens to overturn the post-World War Two order which brought unparalleled prosperity to democracies around the globe, the United States needs to once again put its best face forward and assume its moral leadership.

The alternative is the world of ISIS, a world of tribalism, a world of extremism.

#ISIS Propaganda Spies Espionage Cold War Soviet Union Communism

0 notes