The View From Here: January 2020

By Fareed Khan

The US has an insane man as a President, and there are respected medical professionals who have made detailed public statements to this effect.

Since becoming the leader of the US and the most powerful politician in the world, Donald Trump has been the equivalent of a wrecking ball, both in American and international politics. During his three years in office he has abused the powers of the Oval Office, he has shredded the US Constitution, ignored the rule of law, violated and torn up international treaties that he didn’t like, dismantled the international legal order that has kept the world at peace since World War 2, and in the process is destabilizing the world. The parallels between what happened in the lead up to the Second World War and what Donald Trump has done as President are too numerous to mention, except today we have the experience of 1930s Europe to learn from – an experience that is being ignored.

Unfortunately the so-called adults in the US administration and the US Congress are letting a child play with matches, and he has started a brush fire that is already spreading, and could potentially set the world alight.

In his Twitter rants since the assassination of Iran's top general on January 3rd Trump is also threatening to destroy important Iranian cultural sites if Iran retaliates. Such an act would be a war crime under international law and would result in further US isolation, and attacks against US interests around the world. But it seems the psychopath-in-chief and his enablers don't seem to care how many innocents might die as a result of Trump's insanity. Imagine how Americans would react if there was an attack against the Statue of Liberty or Mount Rushmore or any other significant American cultural or historic site?

There is also the issue of how US mainstream media have been enablers of America's past wars by cheer leading America's illegal acts. What role will they decide to play in the forthcoming evil that Trump has instigated by assassinating the top military leader of another nation? Will they play the role of real journalists or will they whip up rabid American nationalism by once again being cheer leaders for the criminality of the US government (as they were in the lead up to the Iraq War)?

In the judgement of the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg following World War 2 there is a section that contains the following statement:

"War is essentially an evil thing. Its consequences are not confined to the belligerent states alone, but affect the whole world. To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."

By assassinating a foreign military leader Trump has very likely committed the "supreme international crime". He has lit the fuse that will lead to a wider conflagration, where potentially tens of thousands if not millions of innocents will die, and of course the vast majority of those innocents who will die at the hands of the US will once again be Muslims.

It is conservatively estimated that four million Muslims have been killed directly and indirectly as a result of actions by the US and its western allies since 1990. In addition, tens of millions have been made refugees. The fact that the targets of aggressive US foreign policy over the last three decades have been Muslims should be proof that US foreign policy comes from a mindset of bigotry against Muslims, racism against Arabs, Iranians and South Asians, and an ideology of hate against the brown skinned peoples of the wider Middle East and North Africa.

People outside the US can do nothing to stop the lunatic who currently occupies the Oval Office. All we can do is appeal to the sanity of those Americans who don't want to see their country and the world embroiled in another futile war where the end result will be hundreds of thousands if not millions of innocent dead and a world more dangerous than it was before.

It is estimated that George W. Bush's illegal Iraq War will eventually cost the US $6 trillion by the time all the bills are paid in the 2050s. Imagine what could have been accomplished for the American people if that money had been spent in the US on education, health care, social services, rebuilding America's crumbling infrastructure, protecting the environment, and other national projects.

The US is currently being governed by a criminal oligarchy led by the biggest criminal megalomaniac to ever hold public office in the US. The demise of the America that has been held up as a beacon to democracy, justice, civil liberties and human rights is getting ever closer unless Americans rise up to remove Trump and his criminal cabal from office. Since Trump’s election Americans and the rest of the world have already paid a price for his criminal insanity. But the price is sure to be far higher and deadlier for the entire world unless sanity returns to the political class in Washington DC.

Those of us watching from outside the US hold out hope that sanity will once again prevail, particularly Muslims who have been the main victims of US foreign policy and its wars for the past three decades.

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Sunday, January 05, 2020

Donald Trump's insanity is leading the world to war