Posted on April 19, 2017
by John Myers


No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare. James Madison

If America grew nostalgic for undertaking Middle Eastern wars in the years following two Bush administrations, all they had to do was elect Jeb. Instead the country chose Donald Trump, a man with such ambitions and ego that he no doubt likens himself to a 21st Century Teddy Roosevelt.

Bully, say the old Republican guard cheering on the presidents missile strike on Syria and bomb drop on Afghanistan. Attacking the Syrian airbase endangered Russian personnel while the biggest conventional bomb crushed jihadists in a catacomb of Afghan tunnels. Both were a startling change from former President Barack Obamas old lady leadership. More importantly, they reveal a startling foreign policy shift in the Trump administration.

For Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, Donald Trump is now a bona fide member of the Republican Party; the Party of George W. Bush who days after 9/11 said: This crusade, this war on terrorism, is going to take a while.

It has been 14 years since American tanks rolled through Iraq, and it seems possible the whole region will implode.

In the late 1990s, American neocons didnt appreciate how easy it was to start a war and how difficult it was to end one. America is still bogged down in Afghanistan, the second longest war in our history. That is not what the Pentagon envisioned during the immediate aftermath of Vietnam. America was to have fewer military interventions.

The birth of Pax Americana

With the collapse of the Soviet Union the neoconservative movement was born, and in less than a decade their influence on Washington grew.

In 1997 William Kristol and Robert Kagan created the Project for the New American Century, a non-profit think tank. Their stated objective was to promote American global leadership.

In 1996, Kristol and Kagan co-authored an article in Foreign Affairs titled, Toward a Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy. In the article, they asserted that American conservatives were adrift on foreign policy. To right the ship of state they championed a more elevated vision of Americas international role. They wrote that Americas role in the world should be that of a benevolent global hegemony.

Brilliant minds no doubt, but without an iota of common sense. Individuals act with benevolence, nations do not; particularly not empires.

No one seemed to consider this and the neocons had a dominating presence in the Bush II administration. Opportunity fell onto their laps just as the Twin Towers were falling that September morning in 2001. An outraged and shocked nation was a perfect precursor for the neocons that included Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy Paul Wolfowitz. These men and their neocon confederates saw opportunity in tragedy. They would shape George W.s foreign policies over the objections of moderates in the administration like Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security advisor Condoleezza Rice.

For the neocons, 9/11 was like winning the lotto. Suddenly they were making decisions for the president; they determined how and where to use hard power to overhaul the Middle East. Their long-term objective was to turn the Persian Gulf into the French Riviera. The Middle East was to conform to neocon blueprints, even though there is no history there of democracy, which became intrinsic to Europe only after 400 years of resistance and wars.

The neocons never considered how the populace of more than 300 million people in the region would feel about Democracy given 1,000 years of religious tribalism and a lifetime of learning the preachings of the prophet. Too many are maniacal Muslims who spend a life of daily instruction from the Quran, the holy book that includes this verse: Believers, make war on the infidels who dwell around you.

It should be no surprise that America has not shown one iota of progress in the Middle East after 14 years. Life is full of second chances, and the neocons may have found theirs in a back alley deal with President Trump. But the Middle East has been Americas nightmare, and regardless of how much the neoconservatives want to see that change, I am convinced that far worse times are ahead.

Candidate Jekyll, President Hyde

Three thousand Americans died on 9/11, an attack born out of Osama bin Ladens need to avenge the scandal of Americas military bases on Arab lands (Saudi Arabia) in 1990-91. Two thousand Americans have been k**led in the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and nearly 4,000 Americans have died in Iraq. The cost of the two wars is just under $5 trillion, or one quarter of the current U.S. federal debt. That was all the debt the federal government had accumulated from 1789 to 1997.

President Donald Trump promised to make America great again. He spoke of an America at peace at home and abroad. He spoke of making America the economic dynamo that it had once been and an America in which foreign policy no longer stumbled along aimlessly. Trump campaigned on that and as recently as April 5 that was his message. On that day he told a group of American workers that he does not want to be president of the world.

I believe the powers that operate the United States, the oligarchy that directs Americas foreign policy, has reeled Trump in by showing him a future where he would be constantly besieged by a hostile media that would stir never-ending protests, their objective nothing short of his impeachment. The real power brokers have Trump just where they want him; desperate enough to give in to the neocons continued lunacy of more war, more weapons and more money for the petroleum industry and defense and technology corporations.

On April 10 the Website Consortiumnews.com ran the headline: Neocons Have Trump on His Knees.

The story read:

After slapping Donald Trump around for several months to make him surrender his hopes for a more cooperative relationship with Russia, the neocons and their liberal-interventionist allies are now telling the battered President what he must do next: escalate war in the Middle East and ratchet up tensions with nuclear-armed Russia.

Star neocon Robert Kagan spelled out Trumps future assignments in a column on Sunday in The Washington Post, starting out by patting the chastened President on the head for his decision to launch 59 Tomahawk missiles at an airstrip in Syria supposedly in retaliation for a chemical weapons attack blamed on the Syrian government (although no serious investigation was even conducted).

Trump earned widespread plaudits for his decisive action and his heart-on-the-sleeve humanitarianism as his voice filled with emotion citing the chemical-weapons deaths on April 4 of small children and even beautiful little babies.

However, for Kagan, the missile strike was only a good start. An advocate for regime change in Syria and a co-founder of the Project for the New American Century which pushed for the Iraq War, Kagan praised Trump for doing what the Obama administration refused to do, i.e. involve the U.S. military directly in attacks on the Syrian government.

The endgame for the neocons is for the United States to reassert itself as the worlds sole superpower. The early evidence is Trump is morphing his foreign policy to replicate President George W. Bush. Trumps bosses will insist on a continuation of dtente with China and aggressive actions against Syria and its benefactor Russia.

Plans have been made to install a pro-American regime in Syria that will replace Bashar al-Assad, who has been bought and paid for by the Kremlin. The only glimmer of light in this black bank of clouds is that the neocons have made the Democrats look like fools over their conspiracy propaganda that Putin and Trump were in cahoots.

I knew Trump would be nothing like Obama. What I didnt know is that he would adopt the failed neoconservative policies of George W. Bush.

Yours in good times and bad,

John Myers

Each day we visit OPP to see what others are thinking... to add our own thoughts, and some say to correct misleading or misunderstood facts. This is all fine and well until the dreaded Trolls arrive with their one line comments that include “wake up, sheeple” or perhaps “you are all fools.” Many of us just by pass these remarks because these people are a type of troll.... meaning they have nothing useful to apply to the conversation or topic.

There are two other types of Trolls that seem to have made their homes on OPP. The first, I term as Gish Galloping. These folks seem to have no limit to their ability to present a cyber-flood of individually-weak arguments. They seem to do this to prevent rebuttal without expending much energy. They are the Johnny Appleseed of unrelated ideas and comments which they insert into conversation to sow confusion to make themselves appear (mostly to themselves) that they are intellectually better equipped or knowledgeable in a wide range of topics.

The other Troll we deal with is the JAQing Off; or the Just Asking Questions. These folks are very much like the Gish Galloper, with an exception. They simply toss out question after question. They have nothing to say, but they pick a line from your last response and ask real off the wall questions. Their goal, to take over the conversation and have you defend or prepare response to which they have only one interest, to find something they can send you off researching... and they keep this up as long as you make the effort to prepare responses. It does not take long for all other who normally would add to the conversation to abandon the thread leaving only two people involved; one doing research and the other JAQing Off!

And both of these types of Trolls (yes, there are other types) are extremely affective. They seem to be limitless in summoning "alternative facts" one after the other, making it impossible to counter all of them and in the end when you walk away, it appears as though they won the "argument" or the discussion. This reinforces their mindsets and they will repeat those actions which they feel are successful.

At this point, I ask why do we feed those Trolls, should we feed them, or put in the effort to respond to them? Do they deserve a cogent reply? For my opinion.... I say yes! Not to make them happy or even to "win" the debate, but because while doing research to respond to our Trolls, one can not help but learn something new. The OPP Trolls force us to be intellectually honest intellectually honest.

All opinions, and yes even the Trolls, are welcome to share their views..... so what say you? Feed them or let them starve for attention?

If a third of the world population is lost, we certainly would be part of that number.

Regardless who launches first, the early warning shield allows time for a retaliatory launch. There would be massive loss on no th sides of the ocean.

I understand your position. My comment is that the same prediction has been put forth many times. Same ending but different details as time has gone on. We are nearer to being able to fulfill it now than ever before and thanks to our politicians we have given an instrument of massive death to more than one lunatic.

My father was a missile engineer for McDonald Douglas. He started with Douglas Aircraft just prior to WWII at the Santa Monica, Calif plant. I have a master's degree and none of my education was paid for by my parents. I worked my own way through college. I had two years before entering service. I knew my education would mean more to me if I earned it myself. I worked and paid for all my education with some veteran benefits later. Contrary to your consistently false assumptions, I knew about black people all my life and had many who were close friends. I only learned, in my old age, about n****rs through the successful, purposeful creation of racial unrest agenda of comrade Obama ........and people like yourself. Knowing that n****rs exist does not make anyone a r****t, it's a simple statement of fact, reality and t***h. In fact, I suspect it is a term used more between b****s than w****s.