Iraq War

2017 Horrible Year Of Reversal, In Many Ways The Most Tragic Year For America Since 1968!

Ronald Leave a comment

In the past half century, since the tumultuous year of 1968, acknowledged by many scholars and experts as the most significant single year in American history since 1945 (the end of World War II), America has gone through much turmoil and tragedy. This includes Richard Nixon and Watergate; the end of the Vietnam War; the rise of terrorism in the 1990s, leading up to September 11, 2001; two other unwinnable wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; and the Great Recession of 2007-2009, which finally has led to full employment and an economic revival after nearly ten years, but with many Americans left behind.

It has also been a fifty year period of much progess toward civil and human rights amid massive social change , with the Barack Obama years being seen as a positive time in so many ways.

But now, 2017 has revealed that we are in a dramatic retreat from much of the reform and change that has gone on since 1968, and the nation and the world are in total chaos and anarchy, due to the rise of a truly Fascist wannabe, Donald Trump, who has clearly stolen the Presidential election of 2016 and is in process of destroying all of the positive changes of the past 50 years.

Domestic and foreign policy, and constitutional law is in revolution, and 2018 will likely be a continuation of the nightmare of 2017, but with the hope that at least Donald Trump will be forced out of office in some manner, not yet clear.

But the likelihood that Vice President Mike Pence will become the 46th President sometime in 2018, bodes ill for the future, with his extreme right wing evangelical conservative beliefs, which would make him more conservative and extremist than even the most conservative Presidents of the past century, Calvin Coolidge and Ronald Reagan.

So we who are progressives have a lot of work to do next year to attempt to bring America back from the brink of destruction perpetrated by a man who is the most evil President in American history; and a party which has tarnished the reputation historically of Abraham, Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and so many others who proudly carried the Republican mantle in the past 150 years until now.

It is time for progressives to fight with all their energy and strength to return this nation to the great advancements promoted by a century of Presidents and Congresses from the time of Theodore Roosevelt to Barack Obama.

Donald Trump Seems Ready To Use Military Force In Three Places: North Korea, Iran, Venezuela!

Ronald 1 Comment

Donald Trump ran his 2016 Presidential campaign as a critic of our military engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But now, after 8 months in the White House, Trump is promoting the possibility of war with North Korea, Iran, and Venezuela.

Trump is a madman, ratcheting up tension and hostile language, and stirring war fever, which would lead to massive loss of life, and overextend our military.

His military generals–John Kelly, H. R. McMaster, and James Mattis–are unable to stop him rhetoric on Twitter or in public speeches.

The temperature is rising rapidly, and soon, we could be in three major conflicts, adding on to the Afghanistan War and the fight against ISIL (ISIS) in the Middle East.

The Vietnam War draft dodger loves to talk about military prowess and military superiority, almost as if it is a sexual high for him.

Clearly, Trump is a mentally ill man, with likelihood of early dementia, which his father had, and also bipolar disease, with its highs and lows.

We are, clearly, in the most dangerous position we have been in since the age of nuclear power, and a nightmare scenario of a major disaster is no longer just fear, but more becoming reality!

No Discrimination Should Be Allowed Against Transgender Military, As They Are, Willingly, Sacrificing For Their Country, And Should Be Honored!

Ronald Leave a comment

Donald Trump has shown just how biased and prejudiced he is, by declaring that Transgender military personnel shall be forced out of the military, and any recruitment in the future shall be denied.

For a person who was a draft dodger in the 1960s to do this shows just how despicable a human being Trump is, as transgender military has served in our armed forces, and some have won special honors and recognition, and the vast number of military people do not care about this issue, as long as one is fit and ready and willing to serve with honor for our country.

At a time when so few men and women volunteer for the military, to deny those who wish to serve and sacrifice, as many have in Iraq and Afghanistan, is truly a mark of the lack of patriotism of Donald Trump, whose only loyalty is to money!

The fact that Secretary of Defense James Mattis is given the leeway to make decisions on those military personnel, who are transgender and serving, should lead to Mattis ignoring Trump, and the top military people should inform the President that they will not discriminate against anyone willing and able to serve.

The next thing we could expect from our President is to ban gays and lesbians, and say that women cannot serve in front line military positions, so this is a slippery slope.

This action of Trump, and the possible future actions, would fulfill the “wet dreams” of right wing extremist Phyllis Schlafly before her death last year, and also of the extreme right wing lunatics of the Alt Right and of the Tea Party Movement.

Trump continues to disgrace the oath that he took as President!

The Attack On Transgenders In The Military A Major Step Backward On Human Rights, And Must Be Resisted In Any Way Possible!

Ronald 2 Comments

The decision of Donald Trump to declare that transgender individuals are not to be allowed to serve in the military is a major step backwards on human rights.

Transgender men and women have served in the military heroically in Iraq and Afghanistan, and they serve in the military in Israel, the United Kingdom, France, Germany and other advanced democracies with no troubles or complications.

This is simply an appeal to the bigoted Religious Right of Franklin Graham, Pat Robertson, and other preachers who claim wrongly to speak for Jesus Christ, who would reject their prejudice and hypocrisy.

It is also an attempt to take attention off the failed Health Care attempts to destroy ObamaCare, and also to take people’s minds off the investigation of the Russian collusion of the Trump campaign and Presidency.

It undermines the great progress made on gay rights and gay marriage, and now, the Attorney General Jeff Sessions is arguing that gays and lesbians and transgenders should not be considered as covered under the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a total outrage!

Leave it to the right wing whackos, and we might see a future situation where women’s rights to an abortion, and even interracial marriages, might be reversed by a right wing Supreme Court majority.

It is good to see that the military is not, at least at this point, obeying a tweet of our unstable President, and hopefully, Secretary of Defense James Mattis, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff will fight against it, and convince Trump that this will undermine military discipline and morale, and endanger the declared Transgenders already out in the military.

One can sadly expect more prejudice and discrimination against transgenders now in society, and some will die as a result.

Ironically, this bigoted, ignorant, and prejudiced statement by Trump occurred on the 69th anniversary of Harry Truman integrating the military in 1948, and one can be certain that if Truman were alive, he would have appropriate salty language visited upon Trump, and would probably wish to give Trump a swift kick in his rear end and in his private area as well, something million of Americans would cheer!

From 9-11 To 11-9: One American Tragedy To Another!

Ronald Leave a comment

The 21st century began with the horrific attack on September 11, 2001 on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, killing nearly 3.000 civilians of many nations.

It ushered in a 15 year period of turmoil, division, and tremendous spending to fight terrorism and wage two unwinnable wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It has led to persecution of Muslims in America, and promotion of nativism, racism, and antisemitism.

It has caused the two major political parties to fight each other in a way that prevents any cooperation on just about anything.

And then, in the midst of all this chaos and anxiety, along came a charlatan, a rookie in politics, a crooked businessman, a narcissist to the extreme, who was able to convince working class white males that he was their “Superman”, and would end terrorism, crime, and fight Wall Street, all fabrications.

So from the 9-11 tragedy, we went to 11-9, November 9, 2016, the declared victory of Donald Trump, who has caused more division and hatred than anyone in the past 15 years.

And he won due to the quirks of the Electoral College, having only one serious opponent who won electoral votes, but only winning 46 percent of all votes cast.

And November 9 is also the day in 1938 when we had Kristallnacht, the “Night of the Broken Glass”, when thousands of Jews became victims of a pogrom, as businesses and synagogues went up in flames and ushered in the beginning of the Holocaust in Nazi Germany, which killed six million Jews by 1945.

With the rise of white supremacy, and characters such as Richard Spencer and David Duke backing Donald Trump’s attacks on Mexicans. Muslims, and all immigration under attack, one can sense that we might be moving toward Fascism, with only the scandals around Donald Trump giving us the hope that his agenda may be stalled and prevented permanently.

The Pure Ignorance And Stupidity Of Donald Trump Is Beyond Belief!

Ronald 2 Comments

Donald Trump is supposed to be an intelligent man, but if one listens to much of what he says, one can come to the conclusion that he is extremely ignorant and stupid.

He claims to be smarter than everyone, and that his best advisor is who he looks at in the mirror.

So he tells us that climate change and global warming is a hoax.

He informs us that Korea was part of China.

He tells us that his First Hundred Days are the most accomplished of any President, forgetting Franklin D. Roosevelt.

He talks about Frederick Douglass as if he was still alive, although he died in 1895.

He informs us that ISIL (ISIS) is due to Barack Obama, although it is actually due to the Iraq War initiated by George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.

He claims that the unemployment rate and jobs report under him is fantastic, while repudiating similar figures in the last months in office of Barack Obama as fake statistics.

He says that Barack Obama left a mess, even though Obama created more jobs in his Presidency than any President, and left us with a tripling of the stock market and halved the unemployment rate when he came in, having inherited the worst economic conditions since Herbert Hoover and the Great Depression.

He lies about inauguration crowds, and the numbers at the New England Patriots White House event.

The man is a perpetual liar and deceiver of the facts, and yet has millions of clueless people still honoring him.

It is in many ways as if America elected a totally inept, unstable, ill informed leader, and yet not an issue to millions of gullible Americans, which says legions about them, and is a sign of the massive problems we face.

Alternative facts, which means pure right wing propaganda, is rampant, and millions of Americans are totally unaware of the realities of science and history, and simply believe what right wing media tells them.

Donald Trump, The Warmonger: ISIL, Syria, North Korea, Iran—The Military Training School 14-18 Year Old Bully Gone Mad!

Ronald Leave a comment

Donald Trump was a bully as a kid and a teenager, and his misbehavior made his parents decide to send him to a military training school for his high school years from age 14 to 18, and Trump never matured beyond that stage.

As an adult, with a “gift” of one million dollars from his father, Donald Trump set out on a career of bullying people, harassing women, and demonstrating racism, misogyny, nativism, and willingness to cheat workers, contractors, and fellow businessmen, and possessing no moral compass or ethics.

Now he is the 45th President, and is showing he is a warmonger, a man who is determined to show the American imperialistic bent that became part of the 20th and early 21st century under most of his predecessors in the White House, and sacrificing generations of young Americans, most of them poor whites or minorities, who see the military as their last bastion of a chance for success in life.

America has not “won” a war since 1945, and has engaged in wars that have undermined the American reputation in the world, first in Korea, then in Vietnam, then in Iraq and Afghanistan, along with many interventions in nations we did not have a long term commitment of troops.

Donald Trump lives in his own parallel universe, however, and seems to think that being a warmonger against four adversaries at once is a smart idea, as he has now challenged ISIL (ISIS), Syria, North Korea, and Iran, along with using the MOAB (Mother Of All Bombs) in Afghanistan.

Thinking that he can wage four wars or more at once is a sign of maniacal behavior, of insane behavior, that will make our military cannon fodder for Donald Trump’s imperial ambitions.

It is something that should not be allowed to happen, as it will cause massive casualties and deaths to glorify a man who is dangerous to world stability and peace.

A Sobering Centennial: America Enters “The Great War” On April 6, 1917

Ronald 2 Comments

It has been a century since America entered world affairs in a full sense, as on April 2, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson spoke to Congress and asked for a declaration of war against the Imperial German Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the Ottoman Turkish Empire, and allied with Great Britain, France and Italy, in what was called “The Great War” at the time, and later World War I or the First World War.

The controversy over whether Wilson could have kept us out of the war has raged for a century, and his handling of the war effort, and the promotion of restriction on civil liberties during the war has remained highly contentious, and has caused Wilson to decline from Number 6 in the C Span Presidential poll of 2000, to Number 9 in the C Span Presidential poll of 2009, and now Number 11 in the C Span Presidential poll of 2017, all participated in by reputable scholars.

American sacrifices in war had been avoided, as America remained isolated from world affairs and foreign conflict until 1917, but in the last century, we have been in many major wars since then, including World War II, the Korean conflict, the Vietnam War, the Persian Gulf War, the Iraq War, and the Afghanistan War, along with many other foreign interventions in Latin America and the Middle East.

No one can be anything but sober to realize that when Congress voted for war on April 6, 1917, it transformed America in a permanent way, helping to create the concept of an American Empire, and America as a world leader since the end of World War II.

And now, with Donald Trump, the whole history of American foreign relations is in flux, and we face many challenges and crises in international affairs, and the hope is that we will avoid further military conflicts in the future, but hard to believe that is the scenario under Donald Trump.

PBS will have a six hour presentation on The American Experience on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday evenings April 10, 11, and 12 on America and The Great War, our nation’s engagement in the First World War, from many different perspectives, highly recommended to all who read this blog.

April The Month For Many American Wars Beginning, And Now Likelihood Of War Against North Korea Soon

Ronald Leave a comment

When one examines American history, if we do not count wars against native Americans; interventions in Latin America; and the Filipino Insurrection from 1899-1902, we have had 12 wars in the nation’s historical experience.

Six of those wars began in April–The Revolutionary War, the Mexican American War, the Civil War, The Spanish American War, the First World War, and the escalation of the Vietnam War.

These events took place in 1775, 1846, 1861, 1898, 1917, and 1965.

Additionally, two wars began in March–the Second World War if one counts the Lend Lease Act of 1941 as the real beginning of naval engagement before Pearl harbor in December; and the Iraq War on March 20, 2003, the 14th anniversary of that tragic war being yesterday.

And also, two wars began in June—the War of 1812 and the Korean War in 1950.

So only two wars did not begin in the Spring months from early March to late June–the Persian Gulf War in January 1991 and the Afghanistan War in October 2001.

There is something about the Spring months, and particularly April, that seems, maybe coincidentally but maybe not, to be the time for wars to commence.

Based on recent warnings from Secretary of State Rex Tillerson while on a trip to Japan South Korea, and China, war could be coming very soon against Kim Jong Un of North Korea, maybe in April or shortly after, as concern about North Korean nuclear development being a growing threat to Seattle, Portland and San Francisco, as well as Hawaii, and also the threat to South Korea and Japan, is alarming.

Iraq War, “Operation Iraqi Freedom”, Began 14 Years Ago Today—And Now On To Likely War Against North Korea

Ronald Leave a comment

14 years ago, Operation Iraqi Freedom, the Iraq War, began, leading to an eight year and nine month war, the longest war in American history except for the war in Afghanistan.

It also caused the death of close to 4,500 Americans and loss of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, and the collapse of stable government, and the rise of ISIL (ISIS), leading to the horrific destruction and terrorism threat of the past three years.

It was a war based on falsehoods about “Weapons of Mass Destruction”, and undermined the reputation of President George W. Bush and his administration.

And now, there are strong hints that we are on the way to another major war against North Korea, with uncertainty whether that means nuclear war or a massive invasion.

And the effect on South Korea and Japan of the threat from North Korea is unnerving with their massive standing army, and what it means for US Troops in South Korea.

There is no debate about the dangers of North Korea and its leader, Kim Jong Un, but the question is what can or should be done about it.

The fact that we have a very unstable President in Donald Trump, with his recklessness in dealing with other nations in diplomacy, adds to the tension and nervousness about what is likely to occur soon.