Freedom for Iran - Tyranny for America

Donald Trump & Benjamin Netanyahu just launched a war on Iran.

The declared mission is regime change to free the Iranian people from the oppressive leadership of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and to prevent Iran from pursuing nuclear weapons in the future. No one argues that these are not issues of concern to the world.

The real issue is that according to the US Constitution only Congress has the authority to declare war…not the president. And given the fact that the Republican-led Congress has essentially surrendered to the whims of Trump’s corrupt and self-serving policies America is now in an illegal war that could easily turn into a middle east conflagration.

Trump’s MO is to ‘flood the zone with shit’ to distract from the latest illegal act, bad polling or predatory sex scandal to hit the news cycle. While it’s impossible to recall all the outrageous revelations over the past year, it’s important to remember Trump’s regime started using US military power to illegally blow up alleged ‘drug boats’ off Venezuela last September which continue to this day.

He attacked Venezuela at the beginning of January, spiriting President Maduro back to the US for a trial for dubious changes, leaving the regime intact…pressuring them in mob boss fashion into letting him sell their oil… putting the money in a bank account in Qatar.

He’s effectively blockaded Cuba which relied on Venezuelan oil…with the goal of starving them into submitting to a ‘friendly takeover’ as he suggested on Friday.

And don’t forget the threat to takeover Greenland. No, it’s not over.

Americans can take comfort in the fact that Trump is overseeing the war he campaigned on never starting from the safety & comfort of Mar a Lago (where the FBI seized the classified documents he stole when his attempted coup failed after losing the 2020 election).

But hey…it’s Trump…he’s gets away with everything because he has low friends in high places.

So why the attack on Iran. And why now?

American historian and author of the book ‘On Tyranny’, Timothy Snyder (now living in Canada) laid out the connections between this war and Trump’s tyrannical aspirations at home.

How to understand the war with Iran? We must get away from the propaganda and ask why this might be happening, in light of the facts that we do know.

These facts suggest two interpretive frameworks: a foreign war as a mechanism to destroy democracy at home; and a foreign war as an element of personal corruption by the president of the United States.

From the United States, the most plausible angle of view is domestic politics, not foreign policy. Wars are a tool of undermining and undoing democracies. Given that we have multiple examples of this from both modern and ancient democracy, and given the behavior of Trump and his allies in general, this must be an interpretive method for these attacks.

The relationship between foreign war and domestic authoritarianism can take two basic forms: 1) we must all rally because there is a war and everyone who oppose the war is a traitor; 2) we must hold elections under specific conditions favorable to the party in power. This is utterly predictable and should be easy to halt and indeed to reverse.

The American propaganda about our foreign policy motivations is impossible to believe as such. But it does lead us, indirectly, to the second possible interpretive framework: personal corruption.

I recommend reading the whole article.

The Trump regime is hands-down the most blatantly corrupt administration in US history. It’s not even close.

From Qatar gifting Trump a $400 million plane, to his pay for pardons program, to his family crypto schemes it’s been estimated that he’s increased his personal wealth up to $4 billion…just 13 months into his second term.

Canadian journalist and former speechwriter for George W. Bush, David Frum connects the war on Iran with Trump’s total disregard for the law and anyone who opposes his actions at home.

The danger: The war is being made by a president who has repeatedly shown his contempt for law and free elections—enabled by a tiny congressional majority that seems to see its job as Trump’s co-conspirator against the Constitution. Trump taxed without Congress, disbursed funds to farmers without Congress, took a stake in private corporations without Congress, brazenly broke anti-corruption and anti-bribery laws despite Congress, tried to send members of Congress to prison for making a video reminding members of their duty to obey the law. Now Trump has started what could be a huge and expensive regional war without even a figment of congressional authorization. War empowers presidents. No president in American history has shown himself less trustworthy with power than Donald Trump.

The danger continued: Trump has governed by setting Americans against Americans. A week before starting his big war, he denounced the U.S. Supreme Court—or six of its members, anyway—as being under the sway of foreign powers because it found he imposed tariffs illegally. Two days before starting his big war, he delivered a nearly two-hour speech to Congress speckled with insults and stunts to demonstrate to the world his lack of respect for half the country—and by now, much more than half. Federal agencies are still occupying U.S. cities, where they have made arrests without due process and killed U.S. citizens without accountability. Trump has invoked emergency powers of all kinds when there was no justification for them. Some of his supporters are circulating a plan to use emergency powers to seize presidential control of the 2026 congressional elections his party would likely badly lose if those elections were free and fair. Now there’s a genuine military emergency at hand of a kind that federal courts have historically deferred to. It’s frightening to imagine the sinister domestic use that Trump will make of these powers—especially if Trump’s war lasts long.

No one knows where this is going or how it ends now that it’s underway. The predictions run from a couple of weeks of air strikes to bring down the regime to escalation into a broader middle east ‘forever war’…completely in conflict with his whining about not receiving the richly deserved (in his mind) Nobel Peace Prize.

Recently seven experts weighed in on the potential consequences of (at the time) a potential war with Iran including depleting US munition supplies. You can be sure China (which buys Iranian oil) is watching. If China anticipates the war will be prolonged Xi could choose the opportunity to take over Taiwan while the US is unable or unwilling to intervene. Trump really doesn’t care about Taiwan and it would give him the perfect excuse for not intervening.

The biggest question mark now that regime change is the stated goal is…what comes next?

President Donald Trump either does not fathom the growing domestic and international opposition to a war with Iran, or he is making facile assumptions about how it might play out afterwards. Before the 12 Day War last year, Trump called for “unconditional surrender.” This time around, on February 13, he said a change in power “would be the best thing that could happen” in Iran. While the theocracy is clearly no longer sustainable long-term, Trump has not yet made a single clear-eyed case about who or what might come next. The previous four administrations made historic blunders — costly in thousands of American lives and trillions from the national treasury — in their calculations about Afghanistan and Iraq. If all Trump wants is a new nuclear deal, that means the current government remains in power. Then what?

I, for one, remain bewildered. Others seem confused, too. The majority of Americans oppose a U.S. military campaign against Iran under the current circumstances, according to a poll last month. Dozens of members of Congress, from both parties, have publicly warned in recent weeks that the White House does not have the legal authority to engage in a new war without getting congressional approval. Much of the world, including powerful players in the Middle East, is wary too. Britain, which participated in the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, is refusing to allow U.S. warplanes to use its military bases for air strikes on Iran.

Implicitly or explicitly, Washington backed opposition movements during the Arab uprisings launched in 2011. The autocratic leaders in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen — who had collectively ruled for 123 years — were ousted. There are lessons here, too. Some of the leaders democratically elected in Tunisia are now in jail. The current Egyptian government is more brutal than the one ousted in 2011. Libya is hopelessly divided between two rival governments. And poor Yemen: The autocrats in those countries did not deserve to hold on to power. The protesters in those countries and in Iran today, facing such brutality, have inspired us all. The Middle East has consistently been the world’s most volatile region for 78 years. More than ever, all the arms of power in Washington need to be careful not to mess up whatever they opt to do next.

Trump’s presidency is in chaos as he battles cascading disasters on the home front…from a stagnating tariff-laden economy to an administration-wide coverup of his well-documented connections to pedophile Jeffrey Epstein…including a credible account of raping a 13 year old girl in the 1990s.

The accumulating damage from Trump’s chaotic 2nd term, unencumbered by oversight from a spineless Republican Congress is coming back to haunt them as the mid term elections approach this November. All indications point to the Republicans losing the House and now very possibly the Senate. If that comes to pass Trump’s presidency is effectively over since he would face immediate impeachment in the House and possibly a conviction in the Senate.

Democrats, Independents and disenchanted Republicans are motivated to fight for democracy and will do whatever it takes to vote the complicit bums out. Trump and the Republican party are trying every possible way to suppress the vote, stop the election or muddy the results so they can again claim a false victory just like 2020.

The next eight months are the lead up to the most fraught and important election in America’s 250 year history. Let’s hope they succeed in saving what so many Americans and allies around the world fought and died for…bringing relative peace & prosperity to the world for the past 80 years…democracy.