Blind in the Establishment

“The Quiet Resistance Inside the Trump Administration”, written anonymously and published by The New York Times, singles out Trump’s Russia policy for condemnation:

“On Russia, for instance, the president was reluctant to expel so many of Mr. Putin’s spies as punishment for the poisoning of a former Russian spy in Britain. He complained for weeks about senior staff members letting him get boxed into further confrontation with Russia, and he expressed frustration that the United States continued to impose sanctions on the country for its malign behavior. But his national security team knew better — such actions had to be taken, to hold Moscow accountable.”

With these words, the writer calls for foreign policy as usual and not as Trump would have it:

“Take foreign policy: In public and in private, President Trump shows a preference for autocrats and dictators, such as President Vladimir Putin of Russia and North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, and displays little genuine appreciation for the ties that bind us to allied, like-minded nations.”

Trump is right to attack American foreign policy of the past 50 years and more. It’s too bad that he isn’t more consistent at it and doesn’t articulate a return to American neutrality, but let’s take what we can get.

Once the government abandoned neutrality, foreign policy became more and more reckless, dangerous, and costly. It became less and less done on behalf of U.S. interests properly judged and became more and more a vehicle for interventionists, unilateralists, moralists, neocons, deep-staters, special business interests, special foreign interests, power-hungry politicians, and all the beneficiaries of a huge military-industrial complex.

These groups, whose interests are not the vital national interests of the American people, designate Russia as an enemy because they need enemies to sustain their power and money grabs. They made terrorism an enemy. They made the Taliban an enemy. They made Iraq an enemy. They have made Iran an enemy. They made Gaddafi an enemy. The more enemies they can create, the better it is for them. The worse it is for us.

Trump is right to attack sanctions on Russia and to want not to be boxed into an anti-Russia posture.

The op-ed writer supports the establishment foreign policy posture of the empire, which is interventionist. This is the posture that brought us wars in places of no vital interest to our nation: Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, Haiti, Serbia, Kuwait, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Ukraine, Syria, Yemen. This posture supports a military presence throughout Africa and further wars. It supports alliances that can bring on more wars.

What we should have as a foreign policy basis is NEUTRALITY. This is so far from the mind, the worldview, and the indoctrination of the op-ed writer that he considers Trump to be unfit for office. So strongly raised in the interventionist faith, the writer is unable to see the pervasive failures of U.S. foreign policy, decade after decade. He sees an anti-Russia posture as right, when it is could not be more wrong and dangerous.

The writer seeks Trump’s removal, accusing him of a long list of failings. These he sees as the source of Trump’s wrong attitude toward Russia and Putin. This Trump critic expresses absolutely no doubt that he’s right on Russia and that Trump’s wrong. He’s so sure of himself on this issue that he uses it as an example of how wrong Trump is, attributing it to Trump’s reckless instability or any number of his other alleged disorders. The writer has establishment blinders on. He literally cannot see the failures of U.S. interventionism when they are evident to millions and millions of Americans.

According to the op-ed writer, we are supposed to accept the hi-jacking of American neutrality by a foreign policy/national security/military/industrial establishment that has failed us time and again while enriching itself. He asks us to join him in his peculiar madness and incapacity to face the reality of the utter failure of interventionism, unilateralism and phony national security arguments as foreign policy principles.

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5:12 pm on September 6, 2018