Against the outcries and warnings of the mandarins of the establishment, the President is withdrawing all US troops from Afghanistan. America’s longest war ends in a in a deal that was offered years ago but was rejected by the same dead-enders in the Pentagon who are pouting mightily at the moment.
Meanwhile Trump continues to hurl regular fusillades at deadbeat NATO, and, most important of all, he continues the process begun at Singapore – pulling the rug out from under a longtime bastion of the military-industrial complex. His meetings with Kim Jong un are a dire threat to the incredibly lucrative cornucopia of cash, careers, and elite prestige that comes out of that long-frozen conflict to this day.
That’s where the chorus of opposition is coming from and, the closer the Koreans get to an agreement, every kind of (state-sponsored) “@expert” is bound to pop out of the wall averring that no agreement is possible.
That’s because they don’t understand the historical role Trump is playing as an entirely new chapter in the history of the human race begins.
Think of it: the conflicts and power struggles that have our present society tied up in knots are all products of the ideas and technologies of the nineteenth century: Marxism? In an automated world? And then there’s our own system of oligarchical capitalism – institutionalized cronyism and corruption – that has produced a reaction of increasing virulence – Trumpism and its international spore.
Trump’s historical role as the “clean up man” after the mess left by our current elites is essential to understanding how we can be dismantling the essential infrastructure of our empire and yet still be threatening Venezuela and Nicaragua.
Run by sclerotic ideologues trapped in a dream of the nineteenth century, the rebellions in these fringe lands have nothing to do with Trump. They would have erupted – and been defeated – in any case because Marxism cannot adapt to the new modes of production, and is irrelevant to the political and social interaction of the new era.
So Trump let Bolton and his fellow neocons have their moment in the sun in return for supporting his re-election. And I don’t care how many yellow pads Bolton possesses: if a single US soldier winds up occupying Venezuela, it’ll be for a very short “victory parade.” And I wouldn’t count on that, either: Maduro has the army and his supporters are militant. As for Daniel Ortega down in Nicaragua, he isn’t going anywhere either.
Communism fell, but the detritus and downright destruction wreaked by the system lay where it fell. From Eastasia to Europe, things are, as Trump might say, “a mess. They left me a real mess.”
Let the neocons have the – bound to fail – adventure of regime change in Venezuela: in the end it will all amount to a hill of beans.
All the drama, the color, the sense of danger and of war is in the Venezuela story, and that is getting the attention. Which is just what Trump wants to see – while, in their Vietnam meeting, Trump and Kim continue the Cold War cleanup project.
Please
note: my job here is to explain, rather than advocate. While my anti-intervention
views are clear, what I want most for my readers is understanding.
An Important Message to My Readers
Things are looking good! It took a while, lots of physical suffering with these medical treatments but I seem to be on the upswing. New ideas, fact/based analysis rather than opinion, speculation, and axe-grinding.
To my longtime readers: now is when I need you to come through with your tax-deductible contribution. We must get this fundraiser over asap.
I’m not just fighting for my life, I’m fighting to preserve the one institution that has stood up to the War Party through thick and thin – Antiwar.com.
NOTES IN THE MARGIN
You can check out my Twitter feed by going here. But please note that my tweets are sometimes deliberately provocative, often made in jest, and largely consist of me thinking out loud.
I’ve written a couple of books, which you might want to peruse. Here is the link for buying the second edition of my 1993 book, Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement, with an Introduction by Prof. George W. Carey, a Foreword by Patrick J. Buchanan, and critical essays by Scott Richert and David Gordon (ISI Books, 2008).
You can buy An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard (Prometheus Books, 2000), my biography of the great libertarian thinker, here.
