TBR News August 2, 2017

The Voice of the White House

Washington, D.C., August 2 , 2017: “US Military Casualties 1950-present

• Korean War 1950–1953 128,650
• S.S.R. Cold War 1947–1991 44
• China Cold War 1950–1972 16
• Vietnam War 1955–1975 211,454
• 1958 Lebanon crisis 1958 7+  
• Bay of Pigs Invasion 1961 4
• Dominican Republic 1965–1966 330
• Iran 1980 12
• El Salvador Civil War 1980–1992 0
• Beirut deployment 1982–1984 0
• Persian Gulf escorts 1987–1988 0
• Invasion of Grenada 1983 0
• 1986 Bombing of Libya 2
• Invasion of Panama 1989 0
• Gulf War 1990–1991 1,143
• ‘Operation Provide Comfort’ 1991-1996 23
• Somalia 1992–1993 0
• Haiti 1994–1995 0
• Colombia 1994–present 0
• Bosnia-Herzegovina 1995–2004 0
• NATO bombing of Yugoslavia 1999 22+
• Iraq War 2003–2011 36,710
• Afghanistan War 2001–present 35,904”

 

Table of Contents

• The End of Globalism
• Collateral Damage
• Republicans urge Trump to keep critical health subsidies for low-income people
• Can this marriage be saved? Relationship between Trump, Senate GOP hits new skids.
• Other times, other problems
• Toward an ‘America First’ foreign policy

 

The End of Globalism

The heck with “promoting democracy” – it’s time to put protecting America first

August 2, 2017

by Justin Raimondo

August 2, 2017

AntiWar

Progress is slow. That’s what I’ve learned – and come to expect – after twenty-plus years at this post, commenting on world events and swimming against the tide. However, after all this time, it looks to me as if the tide is turning – slowly, unevenly, yet surely – against the War Party.

Oh yes, the times they are a changin’, as Bob Dylan once put it, and here’s the evidence:

“Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has ordered his department to redefine its mission and issue a new statement of purpose to the world. The draft statements under review right now are similar to the old mission statement, except for one thing – any mention of promoting democracy is being eliminated.”

All the usual suspects are in a tizzy. Elliott Abrams, he of Contra-gate fame, and one of the purest of the neoconservative ideologues, is cited in the Washington Post piece as being quite unhappy: “The only significant difference is the deletion of justice and democracy. We used to want a just and democratic word, and now apparently we don’t.”

Abrams’ contribution to a just and democratic world is well-known: supporting a military dictatorship in El Salvador during the 1980s that slaughtered thousands, and then testifying before Congress that massive human rights violations by the US-supported regime were Communist “propaganda.” US policy, of which he was one of the principal architects, led to the lawlessness that now plagues that country, which has a higher murder rate than Iraq: in Abrams’ view, the Reagan policy of supporting a military dictatorship was “a fabulous achievement.” The same murderous policy was pursued in Nicaragua while Abrams was Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs, as the US tried to overthrow a democratically elected government and provoked a civil war that led to the death of many thousands. In Honduras and Guatemala, Abrams was instrumental in covering up heinous atrocities committed by US-supported regimes.

And it was all done in the name of “promoting democracy.” This has been the ideological rubric under which the neoconservatives have been marketing their agenda of perpetual war since the days of the cold war, but the left-wing of the War Party has now adopted a similar mantra – or, rather, revived it. After all, their progenitor, Woodrow Wilson, launched a crusade to “make the world safe for democracy.” And so the Post gives them equal time in the person of one Tom Malinowski, whose position under the Obama administration – Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor – was nearly identical to Abrams’ title, with the addition of “labor” signifying the taxonomic differentiation between neoconservative and liberal internationalist versions of warmongering.

“Tom Malinowski, who served as assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor for the Obama administration, said the new proposed mission statement brings U.S. foreign policy into closer alignment with that of some of America’s chief adversaries, including Russia.

“’It’s a worldview similar to that of Putin, who also thinks that great powers should focus exclusively on self protection and enrichment, rather than promoting democracy,’ he said. “By removing all reference to universal values and the common good it removes any reason for people outside the United States to support our foreign-policy.’”

It’s also a worldview similar to that of the Founding Fathers, those Putinists of yesteryear who admonished us not to go abroad in search of monsters to destroy, and who gave us wise advice which has lately gone unheeded:

“The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements, let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us stop. Europe has a set of primary interests which to us have none; or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves by artificial ties in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics, or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities.

“Our detached and distant situation invites and enables us to pursue a different course…. Why forego the advantages of so peculiar a situation? Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground? Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor or caprice?”

While Malinowski might disdain John Quincy Adams and George Washington, those two well-known tools of the Kremlin, many of the rest of us find their arguments against sallying forth into the world with a sword in one hand and the banner of capital-“D” Democracy in the other quite persuasive, especially given the history of the past decade.

Ah, but ideologues such as Malinnowski and Abrams are immune to the lessons of history and the wisdom of the Founders: they seek to make the world anew, and to heck with the consequences. They are “idealists” – the most dangerous sub-species of Homo politicus, with more victims to their credit than all the predators of the animal kingdom combined.

Let’s look at what’s being revised and what’s replacing it. The old State Department purpose and mission statement reads as follows:

“The Department’s mission is to shape and sustain a peaceful, prosperous, just, and democratic world and foster conditions for stability and progress for the benefit of the American people and people everywhere.”

The draft of the new statement of the State Department’s purpose is:

“We promote the security, prosperity and interests of the American people globally” and its mission is defined as to “Lead America’s foreign policy through global advocacy, action and assistance to shape a safer, more prosperous world.”

Gone is the globalist nonsense about benefiting “people everywhere”: the focus now is on benefiting the American people, whose protection and welfare is the purpose of having a State Department (and a government) in the first place. We are back to the vision of the Founders – in theory, at least. But what about in practice?

I won’t even bother to itemize the transgressions of the Trump administration in the foreign policy realm: even listing the many ways in which the “America first” theory is contradicted in practice by Trump and his appointees would take many more thousands of words. And yet there are indications, none of them minor, that the policy is at least in some respects coming into line with the rhetoric.

The termination of US aid to the Syrian rebels is the clearest indication yet that the regime change orientation of US foreign policy is being turned around. This has been, perhaps, the single most destructive US foreign policy initiative since the invasion of Iraq, and that it has been ended – despite howls of protest from some of the most powerful lobbies in Washington – is solid evidence that we are slowly but surely changing direction.

Another signal that the ship of state is doing a U-turn is President Trump’s extreme reluctance to send more troops to Afghanistan, despite the insistence of some of his generals. He’s even contemplating getting out entirely. As the Wall Street Journal reports:

“President Donald Trump’s reservations about sending more troops to Afghanistan have triggered a new exploration of an option long considered unlikely: withdrawal.

“Unable to agree on a plan to send up to 3,900 more American forces to help turn back Taliban advances in Afghanistan, the White House is taking a new look at what would happen if the US decided to scale back its military presence instead, according to current and former Trump administration officials.”

The Journal goes on to report that “the idea is anathema to American military leaders” – no surprise there – but what’s interesting is what Trump had to say recently during a White House luncheon: “I want to find out why we’ve been there for 17 years.”

Trump might want to ask our British allies about this: after all, they spent decades trying to subdue the Afghans, without success. Or he might ask the Russians, although no American is now allowed to talk to them: they exhausted themselves trying to conquer and Sovietize that intractable land, an effort that arguably led to their ultimate downfall. For more examples of the death of imperial hubris in the mountains of the Hindu Kush, a look at the history books might prove enlightening: even Alexander the Great failed to take that mountainous redoubt of born warriors, and almost lost his life in what proved to be a futile effort.

This is not to say that the Trump administration is embracing non-interventionism – far from it – or that we are on the way out of the quagmires we’ve been stuck in since the reign of George W. Bush. What’s happening is that the domestic political conditions for a foreign policy of perpetual war are no longer existent: indeed, Trump’s victory in 2016 was arguably due to his relatively anti-interventionist rhetoric. I believe this made the crucial difference in Trump eking out a razor-thin margin of victory.

In short, the American people are sick and tired of constant warfare, whether it be in the name of “promoting democracy” or “fighting terrorism.” When Trump raised the banner of “America first,” they responded favorably, and people in the White House like Steve Bannon – the populist ideologue who engineered Trump’s electoral triumph, and who is cited by the Journal as pushing for withdrawal from Afghanistan – are well aware of this.

These recent lunges in the direction of rationality on the part of the Trump administration are explained by my theory of “libertarian realism,” which is based on the proposition that there is no such thing as “foreign policy” – all policy is about domestic politics. As the country sours on foreign intervention, and the distance between the political class and ordinary people widens – with the former pushing for more wars and the latter embracing “isolationism,” i.e. minding our own business – the ship of state is forced into making a U-turn.

Yes, there are many factors militating against this: and no, it won’t happen overnight, or even beyond what seems like a snail’s pace. The American ship of state is a mighty and unwieldy vessel, which coasts along largely on the power of its own momentum. It isn’t turned around quite so easily. Yet, given the massive pressure from below – and the political utility of going with the flow – our policymakers must, in the end, bow to the strong currents that are pushing us away from the course of empire.

It’s hard to see amid the hurly-burly of daily events: the underlying reality is obscured by the political back-and-forth, the sudden reversals, the stop-and-go nature of social and political change. It’s especially hard with a transitional phenomenon such as the Trump administration, which is caught between two eras: the fulsomely internationalist “American Century” and the more constrained twenty-first century, in which we’ll have to confront the problems – financial and social – created by our globalist elites. Yet there it is, plain as day, if you take the trouble to look beyond the immediate and see the overall pattern.

No, I’m not positing some teleological vision of inevitability. There is no such thing as being “on the right side of history.” History has no direction, only ups and downs. And yet, if we step back from the daily give-and-take, we can see that, from the perspective of someone who opposes our foreign policy of “democratic” imperialism and international do-goodism, the winds of change are blowing in our favor. Not always, not consistently, and not nearly hard enough – but just hard enough for us to note that change for the better is in the air.

So take heart, and take up the fight with renewed vigor and confidence. The War Party, for all its resources and influence, is on the defensive. The people are with us. Our task is to mobilize them against a political class that is increasingly distanced from – and hostile to – the interests of ordinary Americans.

 

Collateral Damage

U.S. Sanctions Aimed at Russia Strike Western European Allies

July 28, 2017

by Diana Johnstone

The Unz Review

Do they know what they are doing? When the U.S. Congress adopts draconian sanctions aimed mainly at disempowering President Trump and ruling out any move to improve relations with Russia, do they realize that the measures amount to a declaration of economic war against their dear European “friends”?

Whether they know or not, they obviously don’t care. U.S. politicians view the rest of the world as America’s hinterland, to be exploited, abused and ignored with impunity.

The Bill H.R. 3364 “Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act” was adopted on July 25 by all but three members of the House of Representatives. An earlier version was adopted by all but two Senators. Final passage at veto-overturning proportions is a certainty.

This congressional temper tantrum flails in all directions. The main casualties are likely to be America’s dear beloved European allies, notably Germany and France. Who also sometimes happen to be competitors, but such crass considerations don’t matter in the sacred halls of the U.S. Congress, totally devoted to upholding universal morality.

Economic “Soft Power” Hits Hard

Under U.S. sanctions, any EU nation doing business with Russia may find itself in deep trouble. In particular, the latest bill targets companies involved in financing Nord Stream 2, a pipeline designed to provide Germany with much needed natural gas from Russia.

By the way, just to help out, American companies will gladly sell their own fracked natural gas to their German friends, at much higher prices.

That is only one way in which the bill would subject European banks and enterprises to crippling restrictions, lawsuits and gigantic fines.

While the U.S. preaches “free competition”, it constantly takes measures to prevent free competition at the international level.

Following the July 2015 deal ensuring that Iran could not develop nuclear weapons, international sanctions were lifted, but the United States retained its own previous ones. Since then, any foreign bank or enterprise contemplating trade with Iran is apt to receive a letter from a New York group calling itself “United Against Nuclear Iran” which warns that “there remain serious legal, political, financial and reputational risks associated with doing business in Iran, particularly in sectors of the Iranian economy such as oil and gas”. The risks cited include billions of dollars of (U.S.) fines, surveillance by “a myriad of regulatory agencies”, personal danger, deficiency of insurance coverage, cyber insecurity, loss of more lucrative business, harm to corporate reputation and a drop in shareholder value.

The United States gets away with this gangster behavior because over the years it has developed a vast, obscure legalistic maze, able to impose its will on the “free world” economy thanks to the omnipresence of the dollar, unrivaled intelligence gathering and just plain intimidation.

European leaders reacted indignantly to the latest sanctions. The German foreign ministry said it was “unacceptable for the United States to use possible sanctions as an instrument to serve the interest of U.S. industry”. The French foreign ministry denounced the “extraterritoriality” of the U.S. legislation as unlawful, and announced that “To protect ourselves against the extraterritorial effects of US legislation, we will have to work on adjusting our French and European laws”.

In fact, bitter resentment of arrogant U.S. imposition of its own laws on others has been growing in France, and was the object of a serious parliamentary report delivered to the French National Assembly foreign affairs and finance committees last October 5, on the subject of “the extraterritoriality of American legislation”.

Extraterritoriality

The chairman of the commission of enquiry, long-time Paris representative Pierre Lellouche, summed up the situation as follows:

“The facts are very simple. We are confronted with an extremely dense wall of American legislation whose precise intention is to use the law to serve the purposes of the economic and political imperium with the idea of gaining economic and strategic advantages. As always in the United States, that imperium, that normative bulldozer operates in the name of the best intentions in the world since the United States considers itself a ‘benevolent power’, that is a country that can only do good.”

Always in the name of “the fight against corruption” or “the fight against terrorism”, the United States righteously pursues anything legally called a “U.S. person”, which under strange American law can refer to any entity doing business in the land of the free, whether by having an American subsidiary, or being listed on the New York stock exchange, or using a U.S.-based server, or even by simply trading in dollars, which is something that no large international enterprise can avoid.

In 2014, France’s leading bank, BNP-Paribas, agreed to pay a whopping fine of nearly nine billion dollars, basically for having used dollar transfers in deals with countries under U.S. sanctions. The transactions were perfectly legal under French law. But because they dealt in dollars, payments transited by way of the United States, where diligent computer experts could find the needle in the haystack. European banks are faced with the choice between prosecution, which entails all sorts of restrictions and punishments before a verdict is reached, or else, counseled by expensive U.S. corporate lawyers, and entering into the obscure “plea bargain” culture of the U.S. judicial system, unfamiliar to Europeans. Just like the poor wretch accused of robbing a convenience store, the lawyers urge the huge European enterprises to plea guilty in order to escape much worse consequences.

Alstom, a major multinational corporation whose railroad section produces France’s high speed trains, is a jewel of French industry. In 2014, under pressure from U.S. accusations of corruption (probably bribes to officials in a few developing countries), Alstom sold off its electricity branch to General Electric.

The underlying accusation is that such alleged “corruption” by foreign firms causes U.S. firms to lose markets. That is possible, but there is no practical reciprocity here. A whole range of U.S. intelligence agencies, able to spy on everyone’s private communications, are engaged in commercial espionage around the world. As an example, the Office of Foreign Assets Control, devoted to this task, operates with 200 employees on an annual budget of over $30 million. The comparable office in Paris employs five people.

This was the situation as of last October. The latest round of sanctions can only expose European banks and enterprises to even more severe consequences, especially concerning investments in the vital Nord Stream natural gas pipeline.

This bill is just the latest in a series of U.S. legislative measures tending to break down national legal sovereignty and create a globalized jurisdiction in which anyone can sue anyone else for anything, with ultimate investigative capacity and enforcement power held by the United States.

Wrecking the European Economy

Over a dozen European Banks (British, German, French, Dutch, Swiss) have run afoul of U.S. judicial moralizing, compared to only one U.S. bank: JP Morgan Chase.

The U.S. targets the European core countries, while its overwhelming influence in the northern rim – Poland, the Baltic States and Sweden – prevents the European Union from taking any measures (necessarily unanimous) contrary to U.S. interests.

By far the biggest catch in Uncle Sam’s financial fishing expedition is Deutsche Bank. As Pierre Lellouche warned during the final hearing of the extraterritorial hearings last October, U.S. pursuits against Deutsche Bank risk bringing down the whole European banking system. Although it had already paid hundreds of millions of dollars to the State of New York, Deutsche Bank was faced with a “fine of 14 billion dollars whereas it is worth only five and a half. … In other words, if this is carried out, we risk a domino effect, a major financial crisis in Europe.”

In short, U.S. sanctions amount to a sword of Damocles threatening the economies of the country’s main trading partners. This could be a Pyrrhic victory, or more simply, the blow that kills the goose that lays the golden eggs. But hurrah, America would be the winner in a field of ruins.

Former justice minister Elisabeth Guigou called the situation shocking, and noted that France had told the U.S. Embassy that the situation is “insupportable” and insisted that “we must be firm”.

Jacques Myard said that “American law is being used to gain markets and eliminate competitors. We should not be naïve and wake up to what is happening.”

This enquiry marked a step ahead in French awareness and resistance to a new form of “taxation without representation” exercised by the United States against its European satellites. They committee members all agreed that something must be done.

That was last October. In June, France held parliamentary elections. The commission chairman, Pierre Lellouche (Republican), the rapporteur Karine Berger (Socialist), Elisabeth Guigou (a leading Socialist) and Jacques Myard (Republican) all lost their seats to inexperienced newcomers recruited into President Emmanuel Macron’s République en marche party. The newcomers are having a hard time finding their way in parliamentary life and have no political memory, for instance of the Rapport on Extraterritoriality.

As for Macron, as minister of economics, in 2014 he went against earlier government rulings by approving the GE purchase of Alstom. He does not appear eager to do anything to anger the United States.

However, there are some things that are so blatantly unfair that they cannot go on forever.

 

Republicans urge Trump to keep critical health subsidies for low-income people

Donald Trump has threatened to stop payments that help millions to afford insurance, amid frustration over his party’s failure to repeal Obamacare

August 1, 2017

by Lauren Gambino

The Guardian

Republicans lawmakers are urging Donald Trump to continue paying critical health insurance subsidies that help lower-income people afford it, amid growing concern that the president will follow through on his threat to cancel them.

Frustrated by his party’s failure to repeal the Affordable Care Act, Trump has dangled the possibility that he would stop the payments – a move that experts say would send insurance markets into turmoil and cause premiums to rise dramatically.

Democrats have called the threat an attempt to “sabotage” the Affordable Care Act, often referred to as Obamacare.

Senator Lamar Alexander, the chairman of the Senate health, education, labor and pensions Committee, announced on Tuesday that his committee would begin holding hearings after Labor Day to discuss bipartisan legislation “to stabilize and strengthen the individual health insurance market” in 2018.

“There are a number of issues with the American healthcare system but if your house is on fire you want to put out the fire,” Alexander said in introductory remarks at the start of a committee hearing on Tuesday afternoon. “And the fire in this case is the individual health insurance market. Both Republicans and Democrats agree on this.”

Alexander publicly called on the president to continue the payments to insurance companies, knowns as cost sharing reduction (CSR) subsidies. The payments help insurance companies offset low-income customers’ out-of-pocket medical expenses such as deductibles and co-payments.

“Without payment of these cost-sharing reductions Americans will be hurt,” he said.

He described the impact of cutting off the payments, which total an estimated $7bn in 2017 and cover roughly 7 million people. Without the funding, he said, the insurance markets would unravel and insurers would likely exit the marketplaces, leaving consumers with few, or possibly no, coverage options to buy insurance through the marketplace exchanges.

The insurers that stay will likely have to raise insurance premiums in order to offset the loss of the payments. He cited an analysis by the America’s Health Insurance Plans that found insurance premiums would increase by roughly 20%. Middle-class Americans would largely bear the brunt of the increases, as poorer customers could still access the subsidies.

The announcement was the first attempt by senators of both parties to cooperate on healthcare after a Republican plan to repeal the Affordable Care Act collapsed in dramatic fashion on the chamber floor. On Monday, the Problem Solvers Caucus, a bipartisan group of House members, unveiled a suite of fixes to the healthcare law to stabilize the insurance markets. The most significant of their five proposals would appropriate funding for the law’s cost-sharing subsidies.

Trump has repeatedly raised the possibility that he might cancel the payments to insurance companies in an attempt to undermine the Affordable Care Act.

“If ObamaCare is hurting people, & it is, why shouldn’t it hurt the insurance companies & why should Congress not be paying what public pays?” Trump tweeted on Monday.

Democrats have accused the administration of trying to inject uncertainty into the insurance market.

“The American people need a president who puts their interests first,” Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer said in a floor speech on Tuesday, “not someone who plays political games with their healthcare.”

On Tuesday, several Republican senators joined Democrats in urging the president to continue payments.

“Just thinking about those families that would be hurt were they not [continued], I think it would be better to continue them,” said Senator Bill Cassidy, a Republican from Louisiana. “And I think it would be better then for Congress to do the constitutional thing and get it appropriated for a year or two.”

Susan Collins, a Republican from Maine who helped thwart the effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act, said it was “absolutely essential” that the president continue funding for the subsidies.

“When I hear them described as insurance company bailouts, that is just not an accurate description,” she said. “The reason that we have CSRs is to help low-income people who earn only between 100% and 250% of the poverty rate afford their out-of-pocket costs. That seems to be lost in the debate.”

Trump has referred to the payments as “bailouts” for the insurance companies, implying that the subsidies are compensation for business failings. Rather they help reimburse insurance companies for the money they lose.

But not all Republicans agree. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, a fierce critic of the healthcare law who pushed for its full repeal, agreed with Trump: “We need to honor our promise to repeal Obamacare and billions for the insurance companies isn’t doing that,” Cruz said.

During the committee hearing, Alexander said reducing the uncertainty about whether the payments will be continued should bring down premiums in 2018.

“If the president were to approve continuation of cost-sharing subsidies for August and September, and if Congress in September should pass a stabilization plan that includes cost-sharing for one year … it is reasonable to expect that the insurance companies in 2018 would then lower their rates,” he said.

Though Republicans were not able to dismantle the healthcare law this year, its immediate fate lies largely in the hands of the president.

Beyond canceling subsidies, the administration could also refuse to enforce the individual mandate, which requires Americans to purchase healthcare or face a penalty. It could also refuse to help customers sign up for insurance coverage on the marketplace when enrollment opens in November.

“The ball is in the president’s court,” Schumer said. “He can make the payments as the law requires and needs, or he can sabotage our healthcare system.”

 

Can this marriage be saved? Relationship between Trump, Senate GOP hits new skids.

August 1, 2017

by Sean Sullivan

The Washington Post

The relationship between President Trump and Senate Republicans has deteriorated so sharply in recent days that some are openly defying his directives, bringing long-simmering tensions to a boil as the GOP labors to reorient its stalled legislative agenda.

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), head of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, announced Tuesday that he would work with his Democratic colleagues to “stabilize and strengthen” the individual insurance market under the Affordable Care Act, which the president has badgered the Senate to keep trying to repeal. Alexander also urged the White House to keep up payments to insurers that help low-income consumers afford plans, which Trump has threatened to cut off.

Several Republican senators have sought to distance themselves from the president, who has belittled them as looking like “fools” and tried to strong-arm their agenda and browbeat them into changing a venerated rule to make it easier to ram through legislation along party lines.

Some are describing the dynamic in cold, transactional terms, speaking of Trump as more of a supporting actor than the marquee leader of the Republican Party. If he can help advance their plans, then great, they say. If not, so be it.

“We work for the American people. We don’t work for the president,” Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) said. He added, “We should do what’s good for the administration as long as that does not in any way, shape or form make it harder on the American people.”

The friction underscores the challenge Republicans face headed into the fall. As they seek to move beyond a failed health-care effort in pursuit of an elusive, first big legislative win, the same infighting that has plagued them all year threatens to stall their push to rewrite the nation’s tax laws, which Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Tuesday he wants to do beginning in September and finish by year’s end.

While some Republicans try to tune out what they see as distracting and sometimes destructive rhetoric and action from Trump, they recognize that they cannot fully disavow him without also dashing their hopes of implementing the conservative policies they championed in the campaign.

For many Republican senators, the challenge is trying to walk an increasingly fine line.

As public opinion polls show a decline in Trump’s approval rating, some Republican senators have sought to address difficult questions about what the president’s diminishing popularity means for his mandate by insisting that congressional Republicans, not Trump, are the ones driving the GOP agenda.

“Ever since we’ve been here, we’ve really been following our lead,” said Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.). After ticking through major Republican initiatives so far, he added, “Almost every bit of this has been 100 percent internal to Congress.”

Senate GOP leaders have openly flouted Trump’s attempts to steer them back to repealing and replacing the ACA, an endeavor that collapsed in failure last week. On Tuesday, McConnell laid out the rest of the Senate’s plans before adjourning for the summer recess. Health care was not among them.

Instead, Alexander signaled he would go around the president. He and Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) announced they would hold fall hearings to shore up the individual health insurance markets. It was the most concrete sign yet of bipartisan work in the Senate on strengthening the existing health-care law, and it followed a proposal offered Monday by a bipartisan group of 43 House members.

Trump, who installed John F. Kelly as his new chief of staff a day earlier, on Tuesday was noticeably tame toward fellow Republicans on Twitter. But White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders blamed the GOP-controlled Congress for the lack of major accomplishments this year.

“I think what’s hurting the legislative agenda is Congress’s inability to get things passed,” she said Tuesday.

Trump had spent the preceding few days in an antagonistic posture.

He used his favorite social media platform to push Senate Republicans to end the 60-vote threshold for most legislation, writing: “Republicans in the Senate will NEVER win if they don’t go to a 51 vote majority NOW. They look like fools and are just wasting time.” He also demanded they vote again on health care, despite an inability to round up enough votes for a far narrower bill than they had long promised.

By Tuesday, it was wearing thin on Capitol Hill.

Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) said that if the rules were changed as Trump wants, “it would be the end of the Republican Party. And it would be the end of the Senate.” Trump’s repeated insistence “doesn’t help,” Hatch said. “But he just doesn’t understand that.”

McConnell was able to muster only 49 votes for his health-care bill. Under special rules he was using, it would have passed with 50 — and a tiebreaking vote by Vice President Pence. Ending the 60-vote threshold as Trump has demanded would not have changed the outcome — a point McConnell was quick to bring up Tuesday.

“It’s pretty obvious that our problem on health care was not the Democrats. We didn’t have 50 Republicans,” he told reporters. He added, more forcefully, “There are not the votes in the Senate, as I’ve said repeatedly to the president and to all of you, to change the rules of the Senate.”

The concerns about the 45th president extend beyond arguments over how the Senate conducts its business, to his discipline, strategy and core values. Such concerns often are expressed in private, but one Republican senator, Jeff Flake of Arizona, has laid them out in lacerating fashion in his recently published book, “Conscience of a Conservative.”

“In the tweeting life of our president, strategy is difficult to detect,” Flake writes. “Influencing the news cycles seems to be the principal goal; achieving short-term tactical advantage, you bet. But ultimately, it’s all noise and no signal. . . . We have quite enough volatile actors to deal with internationally as it is without becoming one of them.”

Flake argues that the “Faustian bargain” that conservatives made in embracing Trump has “put at risk our institutions and our values” and that “the strange specter of an American president’s seeming affection for strongmen and authoritarians . . . is almost impossible to believe.”

Asked about a Washington Post report that Trump dictated his eldest son’s misleading statement about meeting with a Russian lawyer, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) replied: “I don’t know if it’s true or not. But the statement was misleading. And when you have a misleading statement, it just continues to breed distrust, so that means the investigation continues.”

Trump’s criticism of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, a former senator, has also irked Republicans in the chamber. The president’s threats against GOP senators during the health-care debate, including Sens. Dean Heller (R-Nev.) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), also rubbed many the wrong way.

Some said Tuesday they were hopeful that Trump’s staff shake-up would produce better results.

“I’m very pleased that [former communications director Anthony] Scaramucci is gone and that General Kelly, I believe, will bring a sense of order and discipline that is needed,” said Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine).

Sanders said Tuesday that Kelly has “spoken to a number of members of Congress,” a sign that relations could improve.

Graham, who has been one of the most outspoken Republican critics of Trump, laid out his thinking on the president. Increasingly, his colleagues are sounding more like him in their willingness to offer curt assessments.

“I ran out of adjectives, and I voted for a guy I never met,” Graham said. “What was that guy’s name? Evan?”

Evan McMullin, reporters reminded him, mentioning the independent 2016 candidate’s full name.

“President Trump won. I respect his victory. I want to help him with health care and do other things that I think we can do together like cut taxes,” Graham said. “I’ll push back against ideas I think are bad for the country, like changing the rules of the Senate. And that’s the way I’m going to engage the president.”

James Hohmann contributed to this report.

 

Other times, other problems

August 2, 2017

by  Harry von Johnston, PhD

 

There is no question whatsoever that during the Roosevelt administration, many radical leftists joined his New Deal and their ill-conceived and abrasive activities infuriated many Americans. In a democracy, such behavior can usually be curbed if it becomes too prevalent. However, during the Roosevelt era, the President was battling the Great Depression, which suddenly flared up again in 1938, and his skillful presentation of right-wing dictatorships in Germany, Italy and Japan were viewed as potential threats to America. These two factors, economic and ideological, helped keep Roosevelt in office. Although, after his own dictatorial attempt to control the Supreme Court failed in Congress in 1936, his popularity in the polls was steadily shrinking.

After Roosevelt actively aided and abetted the United States’ entry in the war, his tenure in the White House was secure until the war was over. Those historians who praise Roosevelt as a great man, claim that he, indeed, schemed to involve America in global war but did so because Germany and Japan were planning to invade the continental United States. However, post-war searches of captured German and Japanese state archives have not produced a shred of evidence in support of this invasion theory.

Throughout his entire life, Roosevelt was dominated by his mother who was possessed of exceptionally strong personal prejudices. She ran her only child like a Swiss railroad. On her annual European trips, Mrs. Roosevelt preferred to mingle with correct British society and found her hotel stays in Germany abhorrent. Mrs. Roosevelt was anti-Semitic and her deep hatred of Germans was instilled in her son from an early age. She constantly referred to black Americans as “niggers,” and so her prejudice became his prejudice, also.

The flowering of leftist views in Washington left many Americans furious but because of the President’s general popularity, America was powerless to vote him out of office. This continuing frustration produced a flood of savage anti-Roosevelt commentary and a heightened detestation of the shrill importunings of the extreme left governmental appointees.

When Roosevelt died suddenly in 1945, his successor Harry Truman was viewed as an unknown entity. Truman, who was no fan of Stalin or his ideology, acted cautiously to remove the New Deal activists from power. This earned Truman unpopularity with some factions of the media and especially the American motion picture industry, which was a strong supporter of left-wing causes.

The mainstream American media, still very much anti-Roosevelt, was loudly predicting Truman’s defeat at the hands of the colorless Thomas Dewey.

There was the belief in conservative circles of the US government that Dewey would be a better man than Truman, and that he would give the order for a general cleansing of the Rooseveltian stables. Truman, as a Democrat, may have been anti-communist, but he was still compelled to seek the support of his party. Of course, he had to walk with great care, lest he lose his political support from the party machinery.

Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin has been described as a madman on the socio-political scene, and depicted as a power-mad politician who accused innocent Americans of communist beliefs or activities. In fact, McCarthy was kept well-informed of facts either known to official Washington or uncovered by various investigative agencies. Much of his information came from senior Catholic church sources in Washington who, in turn, received their information from anonymous, but accurate, official sources. McCarthy’s statement inaugurating his attacks on American communists, in which he stated that more than 80 known communists worked in the US Department of State, was entirely accurate. McCarthy either did not know, or neglected to mention, that they were identified communists who had been removed from the OSS by Truman in 1945, and were awaiting a graceful departure from government service.

Although Truman and his successor, Dwight Eisenhower, have been depicted by biographers and historians as appalled and disgusted by the activities of McCarthy, neither man made the slightest effort to silence him, even though there was certainly sufficient material to accomplish this. McCarthy, who drank heavily, eventually lost his sources, became incoherent and brought the wrath of the Senate down upon him.

Some ideological historians and journalists have portrayed McCarthy as the sole and discredited voice of anti-communism in America. Such a portrayal, however, is a gross error. strong anti-communist attitudes were well entrenched in the United States and if McCarthy had not attacked the ultra left, then someone else would have pursued

Post-1948 List of Communist Identified Organizations

Abraham Lincoln Brigade

Abraham Lincoln School, Chicago, Illinois

Action Committee to Free Spain Now

Alabama People’s Educational Association

American Association for Reconstruction in Yugoslavia, Inc.

American Branch of the Federation of Greek Maritime Unions

American Committee for Protection of Foreign Born *

American Committee for Spanish Freedom

American Committee for the Settlement of Jews in Birobidjan, Inc.

American Committee for Yugoslav Relief, Inc.

American Committee to Survey Labor Conditions in Europe

American Committee for a Democratic Greece

American Council on Soviet Relations

American Jewish Labor Council

American League Against War and Fascism

American League for Peace and Democracy

American Peace Crusade

American Peace Mobilization

American Poles for Peace

American Polish Labor Council

American Polish League

American Rescue Ship Mission

American Russian Institute (aka American Russian Institute for Relations

with the Soviet Union)

American Russian Institute, Philadelphia

American Russian Institute of San Francisco

American Russian Institute of Southern California, Los Angeles

American Slav Congress

American Women for Peace

American Youth Congress *

American Youth for Democracy

Armenian Progressive League of America

Benjamin Davis Freedom Committee

Boston School for Marxist Studies, Boston, Massachusetts

Bridges-Robertson-Schmidt Defense Committee

Bulgarian American People’s League of the United States of America

California Emergency Defense Committee

California Labor School, Inc., 321 Divisadero Street, San Francisco, California

Carpatho-Russian People’s Society

Cervantes Fraternal Society

China Welfare Appeal, Inc.

Chopin Cultural Center

Citizens Committee for Harry Bridges

Citizens Committee of the Upper West Side (New York City)

Citizens Committee to Free Earl Browder

Citizens Emergency Defense Committee

Citizens Protective League

Civil Liberties Sponsoring Committee of Pittsburgh

Civil Rights Congress (and its affiliated organizations, including

Civil Rights Congress for Texas)

Veterans Against Discrimination of Civil Rights Congress of New York

Comite Coordinador Pro Republica Espanola

Comite Pro Derechos Civiles

Committee for a Democratic Far Eastern Policy

Committee for Constitutional and Political Freedom

Committee for Peace and Brotherhood Festival in Philadelphia

Committee for the Defense of the Pittsburgh Six

Committee for the Negro in the Arts

Committee for the Protection of the Bill of Rights

Committee for World Youth Friendship and Cultural Exchange

Committee to Abolish Discrimination in Maryland

Committee to Defend the Rights and Freedom of Pittsburgh’s

Political Prisoners

Committee to Uphold the Bill of Rights

Commonwealth College, Mena, Arkansas

Communist Party, USA (its subdivisions, subsidiaries and affiliates)

Communist Political Association (its subdivisions, subsidiaries and affiliates, including:

Alabama People’s Educational Association

Florida Press and Educational League

Oklahoma League for Political Education

People’s Educational and Press Association of Texas

Virginia League for People’s Education)

Congress Against Discrimination

Congress of American Revolutionary Writers

Congress of American Women

Congress of the Unemployed

Connecticut Committee to Aid Victims of the Smith Act

Connecticut State Youth Conference

Council for Jobs, Relief and Housing

Council for Pan-American Democracy

Council of Greek Americans

Council on African Affairs

Daily Worker Press Club

Dennis Defense Committee

Detroit Youth Assembly

East Bay Peace Committee

Emergency Committee to Save Spanish Refugees

Everybody’s Committee to Outlaw War

Families of the Baltimore Smith Act Victims

Families of the Smith Act Victims

Finnish-American Mutual Aid Society

Frederick Douglas Educational Center

Freedom Stage, Inc.

Friends of the Soviet Union

George Washington Carver School, New York City

Harlem Trade Union Council

Hawaii Civil Liberties Committee

Hellenic-American Brotherhood

Hollywood Writers Mobilization for Democracy

Hungarian-American Council for Democracy

Hungarian Brotherhood

Idaho Pension Union

Independent Party, Seattle, Washington

Industrial Workers of the World

International Labor Defense *

International Workers Order (its subdivisions, subsidiaries and affiliates) *

Jewish Culture Society

Jewish People’s Committee

Jewish People’s Fraternal Order

Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee

Joseph Weydemeyer School of Social Science, St. Louis, Missouri

Labor Council for Negro Rights

Labor Research Association, Inc. *

Labor Youth League

League for Common Sense

League of American Writers *

Macedonian-American People’s League

Maritime Labor Committee to Defend Al Lannon

Massachusetts Committee for the Bill of Rights

Massachusetts Minute Women for Peace

Maurice Braverman Defense Committee

Michigan Civil Rights Federation

Michigan Council for Peace

Michigan School of Social Sciences

National Association of Mexican Americans

National Committee for Freedom of the Press

National Committee for the Defense of Political Prisoners

National Committee to Win Amnesty for Smith Act Victims

National Committee to Win the Peace

National Conference on American Policy in China and the Far East

National Council of American-Soviet Friendship

National Federation for Constitutional Liberties

National Labor Conference for Peace

National Negro Congress *

National Negro Labor Council

Nature Friends of America

Negro Labor Victory Committee

New Committee for Publications

North American Committee to Aid Spanish Democracy *

North American Spanish Aid Committee

North Philadelphia Forum

Ohio School of Social Sciences

Oklahoma Committee to Defend Political Prisoners

Pacific Northwest Labor School, Seattle, Washington

Palo Alto Peace Club, Palo Alto, California

Peace Information Center

Peace Movement of Ethiopia

People’s Drama, Inc.

People’s Educational Association (Los Angeles Educational Center)

People’s Institute of Applied Religion

People’s Programs (Seattle, Washington)

People’s Radio Foundation, Inc.

Philadelphia Labor Committee for Negro Rights

Philadelphia School of Social Science and Art

Photo League

Pittsburgh Art Club

Political Prisoners’ Welfare Committee

Polonia Society of the IWO

Proletarian Party of America

Protestant War Veterans of the United States, Inc.

Provisional Committee of Citizens for Peace, Southwest Area

Provisional Committee on Latin American Affairs

Quad City Committee for Peace

Queensborough Tenants League

Revolutionary Workers League

Romanian-American Fraternal Society

Russian American Society, Inc.

Samuel Adams School, Boston, Massachusetts

Santa Barbara Peace Forum, Santa Barbara, California

Schappes Defense Committee

Schneiderman-Darcy Defense Committee

School of Jewish Studies

Seattle Labor School, Seattle, Washington

Serbian-American Fraternal Society

Serbian Vidovidan Council

Slavic Council of Southern California

Slovak Workers Society

Slovenian-American National Council

Socialist Workers Party, including American Committee for European

Workers’ Relief

Southern Negro Youth Congress

Syracuse Women for Peace

Tom Paine School of Westchester, New York

Trade Union Committee for Peace

Trade Unionists for Peace

Tri-State Negro Trade Union Council

Ukranian-American Fraternal Union

Union of New York Veterans

United American Spanish Aid Committee

United Committee of Jewish Societies and Landsmanschaft

United Committee of South Slavic Americans

United Defense Council of Southern California

United Harlem Tenants and Consumers Organization

United May Day Committee

United Negro and Allied Veterans of America

United World Federalists

Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade

Virginia League for People’s Education

Voice of Freedom Committee

Walt Whitman School of Social Science, Newark, New Jersey

Washington Bookshop Association

Washington Committee for Democratic Action

Washington Committee to Defend the Bill of Rights

Washington Commonwealth Federation

Washington Pension Union

Wisconsin Conference on Social Legislation

Workers Alliance

Yiddisher Kultur Farband

Young Communist League *

Yugoslav-American Cooperative Home, Inc.

Yugoslav Seamen’s Club, Inc.

The incredible proliferation of Marxist groups was only matched by their choice of misleading titles. The great majority of these entities sprang up after Roosevelt’s election in 1933 and were extremely active during the Second World War. After Roosevelt’s death in 1945, there was a general withering of these groups. With the advent of the Cold War their fortunate demise was certain. the communists—perhaps with more explosive results.

 

Toward an ‘America First’ foreign policy

A national strategy is emerging that avoids conflicts impervious to American military solutions

July 30, 2017

by Douglas Macgregor, Colonel, USA ret

The Washington Times

Andrew Jackson observed, “One man with courage makes a majority.” President Donald Trump is demonstrating the truth of Jackson’s adage.

In the space of just six months, Mr. Trump shattered the power of the entrenched liberal media and reduced illegal immigration to a mere trickle. In Europe, Mr. Trump not only reaffirmed the United States’ Western identity, he also warned Americans and Europeans that if we and our European allies lack the courage to defend our nations, our institutions, our language and our culture, then our civilization’s end is near.

Now, for first time since he took office, Mr. Trump is signaling a new focus in American foreign and defense policy. His decision to suspend aid to the Sunni Islamist fighters attacking the Syrian government and its allies suggests that he is ready to discard the bankrupt ideology of the last 25 years — the idea that defending the American people is not enough, that whenever possible the U.S. Armed Forces should be employed in open-ended missions around the world to punish evildoers.

Mr. Trump is beginning to translate “America First” into a coherent national military strategy for the use of American military power that avoids investing American blood and treasure in debilitating conflicts that are impervious to American military and political solutions. Halting the ongoing, inconclusive military operations in Afghanistan is likely to be the first test case for his new approach.

For the moment, Mr. Trump’s National Security team in the Pentagon and the White House is recommending policies that treat Afghanistan as if it has a cold. They are recommending a haircut and a shave when the patient needs a heart transplant. Something Washington cannot provide.

Even worse, his advisers are nurturing schemes designed to intimidate the Pakistani government into acting against Pakistan’s own strategic interest. Sending four, five or fifty thousand Soldiers and Marines to train the Afghan army and police, let alone drive back the Taliban will make no impression on Afghanistan or the millions of Muslims who live there. Afghanistan’s hopelessly corrupt government, military and police cannot be transformed into replicas of Western armies.

In the absence of an American and allied military presence, the regional struggle for dominance in Central and Southwest Asia involving India, Pakistan, Russia and Iran will resume with the resurgence of the Russian and Iranian-backed Northern Alliance composed of anti-Taliban forces in Western Afghanistan. These things will happen for reasons that have nothing to do with the United States. The Russian armed forces are already engaged in a sporadic war with Islamist Turks in the Caucasus and Central Asia.

The assertion that, “If we don’t fight them in Afghanistan, the Taliban will come here,” must be dismissed. None of the terrorist acts in the West have ever had any tangible connection to the Afghan Tribesmen fighting under the umbrella name “Afghan Taliban.” That’s why American support for continued U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan is razor thin. The lack of support is not a function of a declining national “will to fight.” Instead, Americans reasonably question what we’re doing there.

The truth is that no amount of American military power or capital investment will “fix” Afghanistan. Washington’s only rational course of action is to withdraw American forces with the publicly stated understanding that how the people of Afghanistan choose to govern themselves is their business. In the meantime, Washington must accept the fact that the states with vital strategic interests at stake in Afghanistan — Iran, Russia, India, Pakistan and, more distantly, China — will reengage.

History is littered with politicians that lacked the courage to face unpleasant facts; men who stuck with policies and strategies long past the point when it made no sense to do so. President Harry Truman was not one of them. Truman had the courage to back Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s plan to envelop the North Koreans at Inchon when the Joint Chiefs universally opposed it. And President Truman had the courage to remove MacArthur when MacArthur insisted on widening the Korean War to China.

Truman’s example points the way for President Trump. The sooner Mr. Trump acts to remove American forces from Afghanistan, the sooner he can focus on the issues that shape the “America First” agenda; the restoration of economic prosperity and homeland defense — the security of U.S. land borders and coastal waters to cope with the criminality and terrorism emanating from the Caribbean Basin and Mexico.