#Trump causes chaos with government staff and contractors

[republicansaredomesticterrorists]

They have no idea what they are doing. It’s like watching monkeys playing with guns.

[valentin10]

USAID contractors fire staff, face cash crunch as Trump causes chaos in aid world - World - DAWN

Blanket stop-work orders have thrown aid industry into panic, both at home and abroad as the contractors usually front costs, then bill US government. — À lire sur www.dawn.com/news/1889724/usaid-contractors-fire-staff-face-cash-crunch-as-trump-causes-chaos-in-aid-world

[sad-wet-cat-hannibal]

From Common Cause's latest email

Elon Musk is out of control, [recipient's name]. It’s time to Fire Elon Musk. Since assuming his unelected, unchecked position leading the so-called “DOGE”, he's reportedly attempted to slash billions in congressionally funded programs that millions of Americans rely on. The only thing DOGE is efficient at is cutting public services to line billionaires’ pockets, [recipient's name].

In just two weeks, Elon Musk has:

Tried to shut down an entire congressionally sanctioned agency, USAID, locking out more than 1,000 contractors and halting their efforts to save lives.

[1] Pressured civil servants into resigning via mass email, putting their critical work at risk.

[2]Threatened to stop Treasury payments he doesn't agree with, overruling Congress and potentially destabilizing our entire economy.

[3] And because he’s done all of this without a Senate confirmation and no clarity as to whether he’s a private citizen or federal employee – there is no one holding him accountable.

Let’s be clear: Elon Musk’s actions are already hurting people and are almost certainly illegal – plus he’s taking them without Senate confirmation or any meaningful oversight whatsoever. He’s a walking constitutional crisis, but President Trump is still letting Musk call the shots in his White House – endangering millions of Americans, including many who voted for him. We’ve seen this story before - power-hungry billionaires using their money to buy influence and pushing their divisive and harmful agenda at the expense of people like you and me.

Except now, Musk is testing our democracy to its limits. In addition to using our government as his playground, he’s using his newfound popularity among white nationalists to spread misinformation and vitriol – including reportedly influencing Trump to issue a blanket pardon for violent January 6th insurrectionists. [4]

Enough is enough. That’s why Common Cause has launched our Fire Elon Musk campaign, to demand the immediate removal of Elon Musk from ANY position of influence within our government.

This is an all hands on deck moment. Fighting back against Elon Musk’s hostile takeover will require grassroots participation at every level.

So, we’re building out a massive campaign – including rallies in D.C., deliveries at district offices for members of Congress, and public education to put real faces on the people who pay the price when billionaires like Elon Musk try to plunder our government for profit.

The good news is – if his first term is any indication, Donald Trump loves to fire people, often as abruptly as he brought them on. And with Musk’s approval rating at 39% (and falling more by the day), it’s only a matter of time before Trump decides to cut Musk loose – provided we keep shining a spotlight on how his unconstitutional, anti-democracy acts hurt us all. [5]

We launched a campaign to end Elon Musk’s reign, but we need your help: Will you chip in $10 right now to help fund our advocacy, lobbying, and public messaging efforts to DEMAND Trump fire Elon Musk? Our democracy deserves better, and we won’t rest until we get it.

Thank you for your continued support,

Virginia Kase Solomón, President & CEO and the Team at Common Cause

[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/elon-musk-doge-usaid-treasury-government-rcna190450

[2] https://www.wired.com/story/doge-hr-elon-musk-resignation-fork-road-leaked-staff-meeting/

[3] https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/04/politics/musk-washington-chaos/index.html[4] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/29/us/politics/elon-musk-trump-administration.html

[5] https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5114095-most-in-new-poll-disapprove-of-musk-role-in-trump-administration/

Tell Elon Musk: Hands off our government!

[eagle-eyez]

When it comes to speeches, Joe Biden is no Barack Obama, but he is no Donald Trump either. With his rather limited vocabulary, Trump somehow manages to get his message across. Biden is not an orator. He frequently mumbles up words and sometimes forgets what he was about to say, but still loves to speak with a flourish, frequently searching for punchlines and idiomatic expressions. One of Biden’s favourite phrases is: “the United States will again lead not just by the example of our power but the power of our example.”

Let’s just say the punchline didn’t age well.

As the world stays witness to unprecedented, dreadful scenes from Kabul where the magnitude of the humanitarian crisis still remains unfathomable, “power of America’s example” is ironically raising serious questions of Washington’s credibility and competence, not to speak of doubt among its allies and partners over its reliability. The way the cookie has crumbled in Afghanistan, it appears to confirm the notion that the US is an unreliable ally. Conversely, the developments have made it vulnerable to rhetorical attacks from adversaries, who have wasted no time in driving home the advantage.

When Biden speaks of the “power of our example”, he refers to American hegemony and influence in ensuring the state of relative peace that has existed since the Second World War when the US pulled its weight as the chief security guarantor of the global order. That image of a competent hegemon ready to defend the order it has installed through a complex network of allies, partners and institutions now lie in tatters.

It isn’t just the decision to pull out of Afghanistan and leave the beleaguered central Asian state to its violent, theocratic fate after two decades of machinations, it isn’t just the desperate exit deal cut with a terrorist outfit to fashion the final scuttle, it isn’t just the footage of chaos and dysfunction beamed from Kabul that stripped away the aura of US competence, and it isn’t just the lame excuses that a finger-pointing Biden laid out during his address when he blamed everyone else and yet claimed martyrdom for the debacle.

A combination of all these factors leads to the central message — hammered home for a decade by successive Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Biden administrations — that the US has grown tired of its beat as the globocop and wants to return home. This sense of resignation found its fullest expression in the denouement in Afghanistan and the speech that Biden delivered where he attempted to spin the chaos into some sort of a grand strategy.

In 2002, as chairman of the senate foreign relations committee after the 9/11 attacks, Biden had exhorted the then US president George W Bush to open American purse strings towards building institutions and promoting centralized democracy in Afghanistan. In a speech in February 2002, Biden had said: “History is going to judge us very harshly, I believe, if we allow the hope of a liberated Afghanistan to evaporate because we are fearful of the phrase ‘nation-building.’”

On Monday, trying to defend the debacle in Afghanistan, Biden claimed, “Our mission in Afghanistan was never supposed to have been nation building. It was never supposed to be creating a unified, centralized democracy.”

The distance that Biden has travelled from 2002 to 2021 mirrors the time is has taken for the US to reorient its focus. It is this that shows Pax Americana, whose epitaph has been written many times before, may finally be dead.

As professor Brahma Chellaney writes in Project Syndicate, “This is a watershed moment that will be remembered for formalizing the end of the long-fraying Pax Americana and bringing down the curtain on the West’s long ascendancy. At a time when its global preeminence was already being severely challenged by China, the United States may never recover from the blow this strategic and humanitarian disaster delivers to its international credibility and standing.”

Much as the White House has tried to furiously spin the narrative — with Biden doing a clever bit of deception during his speech — the intelligence and policy failures by successive US administrations that led to the shambolic exit plan, and the clusterfuck of an execution strategy after being caught on the wrong foot by The Taliban’s rapid advance, have contributed to massive reputational damage for the United States. And it has come at an ill-timed moment when it is locked in an intense strategic competition with a presumptive superpower.

The decision to withdraw unilaterally from Afghanistan (undermining the authority of the civilian government, its ally) can still be rationally explained, given the increasing domestic antagonism towards ‘forever wars’. No leader in a democracy may remain immune to public sentiment. It is difficult to see why anyone may hold a grudge against the US for ending a 20-year military engagement in a corner of the world that is no longer central to its security concerns. In the long term, it makes the US appear less trustworthy, but it is a debate worth having.

What cannot be debated, however, is how helpless and clueless the world’s most powerful nation seemed — given all its resources — when the Taliban walked into the presidential palace and took charge of Kabul. The answer to questions over the botched-up pullout cannot be “but we cannot stay there forever”, as Biden tried to do.

The scenes of utter chaos with some Afghan nationals clinging on to a moving US Air Force jet in a desperate bid to flee the country have become the “defining image” of American failure in its longest war. It doesn’t speak highly of US diplomatic clout when triggering memories of Saigon, 1975, American diplomatic staff has to be evacuated off the roof, when the US has to plead with the Taliban not to attack its embassy and when the US defense secretary Lloyd Austin admits that the “US military does not have the capacity at this point to extend security forces beyond the perimeter of the Kabul airport in order to get more civilians safely evacuated out of Afghanistan.”

It is a staggering admission, one that accurately reflects the unravelling of US power.

Beyond the immediacy of the tragedy, the US faces some tough questions over its strategic reorientation. Biden has been trying to make a case that withdrawal of troops and military resources from Afghanistan is necessary for the US to concentrate on the strategic challenge it is facing from China and Russia. And yet the message that was underlined throughout the tragedy in Kabul is not that ‘America is back’, but ‘America is going back’.

Biden has identified China as America’s greatest competitor, and one of the key foreign policy tenets of his administration, as he had described in a speech in February 2021, is that “we’ll… take on directly the challenges posed by our prosperity, security, and democratic values by our most serious competitor, China… We will compete from a position of strength by building back better at home, working with our allies and partners, renewing our role in international institutions, and reclaiming our credibility and moral authority, much of which has been lost.”

Biden was ostensibly taking a swipe at the outgoing Trump administration, but it is difficult to defend American moral authority when the world notices how it has abandoned the Afghan nationals to their fate who had risked their lives to assist the US. This is a nation that is struggling to evacuate the thousands of American citizens still hiding in different parts of Afghanistan who cannot even make it to the airport. The fate of around 80,000 visa applications for Afghans who worked with the US government is even more uncertain.

For all his faults, and there were many, Trump wasn’t a hypocrite. He didn’t care what would happen to America’s ally, the civilian government in Afghanistan, and had no moral pretensions on defending the safety and rights of Afghan women and minorities. His mission was clear — to get the military to end its engagement in Afghanistan and he cut a deal with the Taliban bypassing Ashraf Ghani. It robbed the Afghanistan government of the semblance of authority and empowered the Taliban. Not that it caused Trump any bother.

The trouble with Biden is that on one hand he talks about restoring America’s ‘moral authority’, claims that ‘America is back’, vows to work with allies and partners and then doubles down on a deal that was cut by throwing Afghanistan’s civilian government under the bus. Some critics have pointed out that Taliban’s ascendance and the collapse of the civilian government and its military was caused by America’s abandonment of its ally.

This betrayal happened at two levels. Policy and strategy. Putting the cart of military withdrawal before the horse of a political settlement faced with a deadly fighting force weakened America’s hands and consequently sucked the morale out of the Afghan forces (many of whom were poorly paid and lacked motivation). And the rapid withdrawal of the troops, tech and support bulwark (including US contractors who kept Afghan fighter jets airworthy) was the coup de grace. In the final few days, many members of Afghan security forces and warlords battling the Taliban simply cut side deals and ran away.

As HR McMaster and Bradley Bowman write in Wall Street Journal, “Negotiators from Washington pursued diplomatic engagement with a brutal and determined enemy without complementary military action and after announcing our intention to withdraw. The late George Shultz’s observation holds true: ‘Negotiations are a euphemism for capitulation if the shadow of power is not cast across the bargaining table’.”

In the final reckoning, these events not only damage confidence in US capacity for judgment and competence but also erode America’s credibility as an ally. To quote Husain Haqqani, former Pakistan ambassador to the US, in The Hill, “In their eagerness to withdraw from Afghanistan, two successive presidents refused to respect the views of America’s ally, the government of Afghanistan. That does not send a great signal to America’s allies around the world. American allies will now have to worry that the US can abandon them at short notice for domestic political reasons — not a good reputation to have while preparing for peer competition with China.”

US actions, in turn, have strengthened the notion that its power is in terminal decline. It is difficult to argue otherwise when the US president makes an impassioned plea about why it is not America’s job any more to remain invested in battles in faraway lands — forgetting that it is precisely these commitments that had made US hegemony possible.

And China has jumped in. Afghanistan has presented China with the perfect opportunity to drive home the message that the US is a declining power, increasingly lacks the ability to fashion outcomes favourable to itself, and consequently is in no position to uphold its elaborate commitments and security guarantees.

In a series of articles and editorials, the Chinese state media has “exulted in the US withdrawal, with official outlets slamming Washington for its ‘messy failure’, ‘humiliation’, and ‘impotence’.”

Of particular interest to Beijing is the Taiwan question. The nationalistic Global Times has warned Taiwan that it cannot repose faith in the US and that the debacle in Afghanistan is a “lesson for the DPP”. To reinforce its message, the Chinese military on Tuesday carried out “assault drills near Taiwan, with warships and fighter jets exercising off the southwest and southeast of the island.”

“America is now widely seen as a superpower in rapid decline”, announced an op-ed in Global Times. “A pale shadow of what it once was. Its defeat in Afghanistan will have major implications across the world; It brings into question the competence of its political and military leadership, its willingness to engage in further military entanglements, and its reliability and commitment as an ally. If it can make such a huge miscalculation and suffer such a catastrophic defeat in Afghanistan, then who is going to trust its judgement in East Asia, or the South China Sea.”

American allies and partners are taking note. Taiwan, an ‘unofficial’ American ally that lies at the crossroads of US-China competition and great-power muscle flexing has reacted with worry and dismay over whether the US may be relied upon during an emergency.

Its president Tsai Ing-wen in a Facebook post admitted on Wednesday that “recent changes in the situation in Afghanistan have led to much discussion in Taiwan,” and added that “I want to tell everyone that Taiwan’s only option is to make ourselves stronger, more united and more resolute in our determination to protect ourselves.”

The US has been forced to come out with a statement that its commitment to Taiwan “remains as strong as it’s ever been” and that Taiwan is a “fundamentally different question in a different context.” It is evident, however, that China feels more emboldened at US weakness on display in Afghanistan and it is likely to increase its bullying of Taiwan. It is evident that Afghanistan will cast a long shadow over US security partnerships in Asia.

It is not a surprise, therefore, to note that Japan, that has tied own security with the defence stability of Taiwan, express growing concern over the realignment in balance of power in Asia. Japan’s defence minister Nobuo Kishi, according to Sydney Morning Herald, has said “the shifting power balance between the US and China ‘has become very conspicuous’ while a military battle over Taiwan had ‘skewed greatly in favour of China’.”

Consequently, Japan has announced that it will spend more in defence, tipping the defence spending in next fiscal over the long-standing cap of 1 percent of gross domestic product for the very first time.

The increasing lack of faith among its allies and partners on US security guarantee and worry over China’s growing hegemony in Asia further reinforce the narrative of US decline. It may fuel further Xi Jinping’s expansionist designs.

An interesting aspect to consider is whether the developments in Afghanistan will impact India-US ties, or affect the growing strategic partnership?

Walter Russell Mead raises the question in the Wall Street Journal in arguing: “For more than 70 years India, whose massive population and economy make it a linchpin of any American strategy in Asia, has seen the world through the lens of its competition with Pakistan. Now, as Islamabad cements its ties with Beijing, the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan hands Pakistan a strategic victory and strengthens the most radical anti-Indian and anti-Western forces in its government. Few in New Delhi will perceive this catastrophe as a sign of Washington’s competence or reliability.”

Questions over US reliability in the present context are inevitable, but, as scholar Tanvi Madan points out in Twitter, such questions are not new to India and are “almost baked into calculations regarding the US.” 

I’ve been asked a lot about the impact of devps in Afghanistan on India’s rel w US. Been hesitating to get into it rn cuz: -not what matters at the moment -still an evolving dynamic -too soon to tell -it depends on a few factors 1/

— Tanvi Madan (@tanvi_madan) August 17, 2021

Unlike Japan or even Taiwan, India doesn’t rely on a US security guarantee and its strategic closeness with Washington has been necessitated and fuelled by China’s growing heft and expansionism in the region. This has found expression in the framing of a Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or Quad, that is not an Asian NATO. Therefore, questions on US competence and reliability are likely to remain peripheral to the India-US equation and should continue as long as China continues with its belligerent ways. That said, the spillover effect from Afghanistan may affect the pace of the strategic alignment, that may further depend on the change in US-Pakistan dynamics post Taliban’s ascension.

The larger point, however, remains that the Afghanistan debacle has dealt possibly a fatal blow to US power, prestige and influence. It spells the end of the American unipolar moment in history.

from Firstpost World Latest News https://ift.tt/3y54IAy

[7newx1]

Donald Trump, the US president, on Friday threatened to seal off the entire US-Mexico border if Congress does not approve funding for a border wall. His comments came as the federal government shutdown entered its seventh day, with Mr Trump failing to come to a budget agreement with his Democratic opponents. The continued standoff means around a quarter of the US government will likely remain closed well into 2019, when the Democrats will take control of the House of Representatives. The shutdown began on Saturday after Democrats rejected Mr Trump’s demand for $5 billion (£3.93 billion) for a border wall to be included in a funding bill to keep the government open. "We will be forced to close the Southern Border entirely if the Obstructionist Democrats do not give us the money to finish the Wall & also change the ridiculous immigration laws that our Country is saddled with," Mr Trump tweeted Friday. Analysts have warned that closing the border would cost hundreds of millions of dollars a day, with an estimated $558 billion in goods being transported across the border in both directions last year. Such a move would also cause chaos for the nearly half a million people who are estimated to enter the US through its southern border each day. An agreement on border funding will be the first big confrontation between Mr Trump and newly empowered Democrats, who won a majority in the House of Representatives in November’s midterm elections. We will be forced to close the Southern Border entirely if the Obstructionist Democrats do not give us the money to finish the Wall & also change the ridiculous immigration laws that our Country is saddled with. Hard to believe there was a Congress & President who would approve!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 28, 2018 The Democrats are vehemently opposed to the construction of Mr Trump’s proposed wall, suggesting that funding should instead be used on border security. As he doubled down yesterday, Mr Trump also reissued threats to shut off aid to the three Central American countries from which a majority of migrants attempting to enter the US originate. "Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador are doing nothing for the United States but taking our money. Word is that a new Caravan is forming in Honduras and they are doing nothing about it. We will be cutting off all aid to these 3 countries - taking advantage of US for years!" he wrote in one of a series of tweets. The president has also signalled he is in no rush to seek a resolution, welcoming the fight as he heads toward his own bid for re-election in 2020. Yesterday Mick Mulvaney, the president’s acting chief of staff, said Mr Trump had cancelled his plans to travel to Florida for a New Year’s Eve celebration. Mr Trump cancelled a planned trip last week to visit his private Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, where he usually spends the Christmas period. During an appearance on Fox News, Mr Mulvaney said that Democrats are no longer negotiating with the administration over an earlier offer to accept less than the $5 billion Mr Trump wants for the wall. "There’s not a single Democrat talking to the president of the United States about this deal," he said, admitting that the White House expected the shutdown "to go on for a while". Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic leader in the House, has vowed to pass legislation to end the shutdown as soon as she takes control of the chamber, which is expected when the new Congress convenes on January 3. "While we await the president’s public proposal, Democrats have made it clear that, under a House Democratic Majority, we will vote swiftly to re-open government on Day One," her spokesman Drew Hammill said yesterday. However passing any legislation will be difficult without a compromise, since the Republican-controlled Senate and Mr Trump’s signature will be needed to turn any bill into law. The shutdown is forcing hundreds of thousands of federal workers and contractors to stay home or work without pay, and many are experiencing mounting stress from the impasse. Washington’s Smithsonian museum complex announced that it would soon have to close all museums, research centres and the National Zoo in the US capital as the reserve funds it has been relying on are running dry.

[takebackthedream]

Trump's General Just Announced a New Cold War. Who Will Stop It? by Richard Eskow

Defense Secretary James Mattis announced a dramatic shift in military policy last week, and it threatens to plunge the world into new forms of conflict.

The secretary, known as “Mad Dog” Mattis when he was a four-star Marine general, now commands the most powerful military force in human history. Mattis insists the nickname came from the press. That may be true, although generals are notoriously canny about their own publicity.

Whatever the nickname’s provenance, Mattis is not “mad.” He is, in fact, a rational and articulate spokesperson for the national security ideology that has dominated American political life since the end of World War II. That’s disturbing in a very different way.

Mattis, a clear-eyed cold warrior, has just announced the start of a new cold war.

Team Player

Mattis made his announcement in a speech to the Paul Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins. Mattis began the speech by paying tribute to what his prepared remarks called the “character” of Paul Nitze, a noted Cold War hawk. Together with fellow cold warriors Richard Pipes and Paul Wolfowitz, Nitze created “Team B,” a private Cold War think tank whose sole purpose was to overrule the CIA’s more modest estimates of the Soviet military threat.

Nitze’s “background,” according to Mattis’ text, made the SAIS “a fitting place” to unveil the administration’s new national defense strategy.  That’s true, although perhaps not for the reasons Mattis may think.

Team B’s estimates were “grossly inaccurate,” as former Reagan defense official Lawrence Korb noted in a 2004 Los Angeles Times op-ed; even the CIA’s more modest estimates of Soviet power turned out to be overstated. Nevertheless, its findings were “widely leaked to the press” shortly before Jimmy Carter became president.

Team B’s backers got the military spending they wanted, with a buildup that began under Carter and accelerated under Ronald Reagan. Wolfowitz and his fellow neoconservatives eventually used equally spurious data to drum up support for the invasion of Iraq, with catastrophic consequences.

As president-elect, Donald Trump promised an end to “intervention and chaos” and insisted that “our focus must be on defeating terrorism and destroying ISIS.” With this speech, Trump’s administration has fallen even more in line with the bipartisan consensus of the last eighty years.

Axis of Adults

Not long ago, the generals on Donald Trump’s team were being lauded by pundits and politicians as the “adults in the room,” or the “axis of adults,” who would prevent him from doing anything reckless. The commentary on Trump’s three former generals – Mattis, John Kelly, and H.R. McMaster – bordered on the hagiographic at times.

“They are everything our commander-in-chief is not,” Daniel Kurtz-Phelan gushed in New York Magazine of Mattis and the other ex-generals on Trump’s team: “steady-handed, competent and decent professionals, truthful and generally cogent communicators.”

Kelly’s true colors became more apparent while he was Homeland Secretary, when he acted with surprising brutality against immigrants and their families and made wild and unfounded claims about a “nation under attack” from Islamic terrorism. (The 94 people killed in the US by terrorists since 9/11 is essentially equal to the daily death toll from gun violence.) Later, as White House Chief of Staff, Kelly distorted American history in order to make sympathetic comments about pro-slavery forces in the Civil War. One historian said his comments reflected “profound ignorance.”

The other designated “adult,” McMaster, is the National Security Advisor who once wrote a highly influential work on military ethics entitled “Dereliction of Duty.” But McMaster, who is notoriously hawkish on North Korea, has reportedly been relegated by Trump to the children’s table and is currently denying rumors of an imminent departure.

The Warrior Monk

That leaves Mattis. According to Kurtz-Phelan, Mattis was “known as both tough and cerebral, a ‘warrior monk’ who goes home to bachelor’s quarters to read history, he retired in 2013 after overseeing military operations in the Middle East as head of Central Command.”

To repeat: generals are notoriously canny about their own publicity

Mattis’ appointment as Defense Secretary was largely welcomed by Democrats in Washington. His nomination received 81 Senate votes, after Democrats expressed the hope that he would act as a check on Trump’s worst impulses, or serve as the “anti-Trump,” in the words of a Politico headline.

“Adults in the room” is an old Washington expression. It has routinely been applied to political insiders who prove willing to ignore popular opinion in order to carry out the Beltway consensus of the day. “Centrists’ who want to cut popular and necessary social programs are a prime example.

The term suits Mattis, whose speech reflects a longstanding bipartisan consensus about national security – one that is hawkish, profligate, and indifferent to the suffering of others.

The New Cold War

In the SAIS speech, Mattis declared that “Great Power competition between nations (is) becoming a reality once again.” He continued: “Though we will continue to prosecute the campaign against terrorists … Great Power competition, not terrorism, is now the primary focus of U.S. national security.”

Nitze named China and Russia as the primary threat, describing them as “nations that … seek to create a world consistent with their authoritarian models, pursuing veto authority over other nations’ economic, diplomatic and security decisions.” He also cited North Korea and Iran, describing them as “rogue nations” that “persist in taking outlaw actions that threaten regional and even global stability.”

The “peace dividend,” the cut in defense spending that many people expected at the end of the first Cold War, is now officially dead. Counterterrorism, once said to be the top priority for recent US military policy, requires less investment in high-cost weaponry, including ships, aircraft, missiles, and nuclear arms than traditional war.

Mattis has now declared, however, that the primary goal of the US military is to prepare for state-to-state conflict with “Great Powers” and “rogue nations.” If that goal isn’t challenged, it will be much harder to argue against massive investment in cost-intensive military technology.

In a question-and-answer session after the speech, Mattis declared that his number-one priority is a “safe and effective nuclear deterrent,” followed by a “decisive conventional force.”

The founding members of “Team B” would be pleased.

Sky High and Soaring

Mattis also complained about “spending caps” and declared that the US military is “overstretched and under-resourced.” That is, by all rational measures, an extraordinary statement. The United States is responsible for 36 percent of the world’s total military spending.

  The U.S. military budget is larger than that of the next ten biggest spenders – put together. It is four times bigger than China’s and nearly ten times bigger than Russia’s. China, Mattis’ leading Great Power threat, spends 13 percent of the global total, while Russia spends 4.1 percent. If the United States cannot defend itself from these nations, even with these disparities in spending, the military has a serious management problem.

The disparity is even more striking when this country’s share of the world’s military spending is contrasted with its 4 percent share of the world’s population.

The Enablers

Congress shows no sign of changing the status quo any time soon. When Trump requested a substantial increase in military spending, Republicans on Capitol Hill – and most Democrats – responded by giving him even more than he had requested.

As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said: “Congress appropriates military funds with alacrity and generosity. It appropriates poverty funds with miserliness and grudging reluctance.”

It is against this backdrop that Mattis’ characterization of the military as “under-resourced” must be viewed. Despite the massive disparities in spending, Mattis insists that “our competitive edge has eroded in every domain of warfare, air, land, sea, space and cyberspace, and it is continuing to erode.”

That statement does not have the ring of truth. But, if Mattis is right, is he the right person to fix it?

Meet James Mattis

By all accounts, Mattis excelled at military service. Overall, he appears to have taken a humane, hands-on, and reasonably intelligent approach to military leadership. Moderate remarks he has made as Defense Secretary been welcomed by liberals as a rare break from the racist rhetoric flowing from the White House.

Nevertheless, there is some cause for serious concern. One at least on occasion, Mattis made intemperate remarks about Afghan civilians. Ethical questions have also been raised about Mattis’ relationship to Theranos, the now-discredited blood testing company which he helped while in the military – and whose board he joined when he left. The board’s now-apparent negligence in the face of seemingly obvious flaws and fakery has been the subject of informed commentary.

Before he took office, Congress had to grant Gen. Mattis a waiver from the law which states generals must wait seven years before serving as defense secretary. Given the current climate of unqualified admiration for generals – a sentiment, incidentally, that’s not shared by many of the World War II veterans I’ve met – Mattis got his waiver.

Conflict of Interest

Mattis didn’t need a waiver for having been on the board of defense contractor General Dynamics. He should have – and it should not have been granted.

The conflict of interest is financial, of course, but it is not only that. In 2016, Mattis’ last full year on the board, General Dynamics reportedly did nearly $19 billion worth of business with the US government.  Total revenues included $6.6 billion for aircraft, over $5 billion for nuclear submarines, more than $8 billion for command-and-control and IT services, and $2.4 billion for wheeled combat vehicles.

There is an inherent conflict between the insular perspective of the privileged insider and the public interest’s much broader range of needs.  And post-retirement paydays aren’t the only problem. The promise of future riches can color the decisions senior military officers make while they are in uniform – and, in Mattis’ case, while he runs the Defense Department.

Mattis may very well see himself as a person of integrity – and, to be fair, he may act with integrity according to his own standards. But those standards are the problem. It’s hard for a government official to maintain objectivity about the corporate activity he she oversees after years spent working and socializing with their executives– and becoming wealthy by their side. Mattis may have believed he had the country’s best interests at heart when he called for this change of strategy. It will still be very, very good for business

Hopefully, liberals will one day find the appointment of a defense contractor to lead the military as objectionable as the appointment a Goldman Sachs executive to lead the Treasury Department – and for similar reasons.

Wanted: Real Resistance

The new cold war promises to be as expensive, as dangerous, and as pointless as the last one. Negotiation with Russia, the world’s second-largest superpower, seems to be out of the question. Democrats oppose it because the intelligence services have reported that Russia interfered in the last election. Republicans oppose it because they’re predisposed to dislike all negotiation.

Tensions were already on the rise in 2016, before Trump took office, after U.S.-backed NATO troops began conducting maneuvers and taking positions on Russia’s front line. In that sense, Mattis is simply making an existing state of cold-war hostility official.

The stance toward China, which Mattis has named as the leading threat, is paradoxical at best. On one hand, the Secretary of Defense has declared that we must be prepared to wage full-scale war against it if the need arises – and that we are not yet able to do so. On the other hand, the US trade deficit with China reached an all-time high in 2017. Washington’s “adults in the room” scorn any attempt to rectify this imbalance as “protectionism” and “trade war.” But actual war with the most populous nation on earth is apparently not out of the question.

There was a large and vibrant movement against the last cold war. Left-leaning movements held rallies against runaway militarism, and even most mainstream Democrats supported negotiations and “détente.” It remains to be seen whether “the Resistance” will oppose the new cold war or fall in line behind those Democrats who are currently waxing sentimental about George W. Bush.

“I found myself agreeing on a panel with Bill Kristol,” MSNBC’s Joy Reid recently said of the neoconservative Iraq war promoter. “I agree more with (hard-right columnist) Jennifer Rubin, (Bush speechwriter) David Frum, and (hawkish commentator) Max Boot than I do with some people on the far left.”

I believe her. Last August, Reid tweeted: “Mattis doing the job of leadership his boss can’t and won’t do.”

We need new and humane values and goals for our military and foreign policy. Nevertheless, Democrats like Reid continue to marginalize the voices of sanity while exalting the same “adults in the room” that nearly caused a global conflagration in the last century. If this continues, the “resistance” will fail to protect the world from from a grave threat to our nation and the world. The new cold war can only be stopped by a mass movement of people who are willing to stand against the reckless rush into chaos.

[wavenetinfo]

A suicide attacker struck the fortified heart of the Afghan capital with a massive truck bomb Wednesday, killing 90 people, wounding 400 and raising new fears about the government’s ability to protect its citizens nearly 16 years into a war with insurgents.

The bomber drove into Kabul’s heavily guarded diplomatic quarter during the morning rush hour, leaving behind a bloody scene of chaos and destruction in one of the worst attacks since the drawdown of foreign forces from Afghanistan in 2014.

Most of the casualties were civilians, including women and children, said Ismail Kawasi, spokesman of the public health ministry. But the dead also included Afghan security guards at the facilities, including the U.S. Embassy, while 11 American contractors were wounded — none with life-threatening injuries, a U.S. State Department official said.

“I have been to many attacks, taken wounded people out of many blast sites, but I can say I have ever seen such a horrible attack as I saw this morning,” ambulance driver Alef Ahmadzai told The Associated Press. “Everywhere was on fire and so many people were in critical condition.”

There was no claim of responsibility for the attack, which came in the first week of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. The Taliban flatly denied any involvement in an email to news outlets and condemned all attacks against civilians.

The explosives were hidden in a tanker truck used to clean out septic systems, said Najib Danish, deputy spokesman for the interior minister. The number of dead and wounded was provided by the Afghan government’s media center, citing a statement from the Afghan Ulema Council, the country’s top religious body that includes Muslim clerics, scholars and men of authority in religion and law.

The blast gouged a crater about 5 meters (15 feet) deep near Zanbaq Square in the Wazir Akbar Khan district, where foreign embassies are protected by a battery of their own security personnel as well as Afghan police and National Security Forces. The nearby German Embassy was heavily damaged.

Also in the area is Afghanistan’s Foreign Ministry, the Presidential Palace and its intelligence and security headquarters, guarded by soldiers trained by the U.S. and its coalition partners.

“The terrorists, even in the holy month of Ramadan, the month of goodness, blessing and prayer, are not stopping the killing of our innocent people,” said President Ashraf Ghani.

President Donald Trump spoke with Ghani after the attack, and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson condemned it as a “senseless and cowardly act.”

“The United States stands with the government and the people of Afghanistan and will continue to support their efforts to achieve peace, security, and prosperity for their country,” Tillerson said in a statement.

Afghanistan’s war, the longest ever involving U.S. troops, has shown no sign of letting up, and the introduction into the battle of an Islamic State affiliate has made the country only more volatile.

Although they are small in number, militants from the Islamic State in Khorasan — an ancient name for parts of Afghanistan, Iran and Central Asia — have taken credit for several brazen assaults on the capital.

“Let’s be clear: This is an intelligence failure, as has been the case with so many other attacks in Kabul and beyond. There was a clear failure to anticipate a major security threat in a highly secured area,” said Michael Kugelman of the U.S.-based Wilson Center.

“The fact that these intelligence failures keep happening suggest that something isn’t working at the top, and major and urgent changes are needed in security policy,” he said by email.

Still, there are questions about whether a U.S. pledge to send more troops to Afghanistan will curb the violence.

“The sad reality is that more foreign troops would not necessarily ensure these attacks happen less,” Kugelman said. “But they could help by supplementing training programs meant to enhance Afghan intel collection capacities, which have long been a deficiency in Afghanistan.”

There are currently 8,500 U.S. troops in Afghanistan with a U.S. promise of more to come.

Afghan lawmaker and analyst Nasrullah Sadeqizada bemoaned the abysmal security, saying “the situation is deteriorating day by day.”

In an interview, Sadeqizada criticized U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan, saying they have done little to improve protection in the country.

“If the situation continues to deteriorate, Afghans will lose all trust in the foreigners who are in Afghanistan as friends,” he warned.

Gen. Mirza Mohammad Yarmand, former deputy interior minister, said more troops won’t help, although he urged the global community to stay committed to Afghanistan.

“I don’t think that more U.S. or NATO soldiers can solve the security problems in Afghanistan,” he said.

“When we had more than 100,000 foreign soldiers, they were not even able to secure Helmand province” in southern Afghanistan, where the Taliban controls roughly 80 percent of the area, he said.

In the past year, U.S. troops have largely focused on thwarting a surge in Taliban attacks.

The stricken neighborhood was considered Kabul’s safest, with the embassies protected by dozens of 10-foot-high blast walls and government offices guarded by security forces. More than 50 cars were either destroyed or damaged.

“I’ve never seen such a powerful explosion in my life,” said Mohammad Haroon, who owns a nearby sporting goods store. All the windows in his shop and others around him were shattered, he added.

Shocked residents soaked in blood stumbled in the streets before being taken to hospitals. Passers-by helped them into private cars, while others went to the nearby Italian-run Emergency Hospital.

Besides the German Embassy, damage was reported at the embassies of China, Turkey, France, India and Japan, according to officials from those countries. Other nearby embassies include those of the U.S., Britain, Pakistan and Iran, as well as the NATO mission.

Nine Afghan guards at the U.S. Embassy were killed and 11 American contractors were wounded, with one Afghan guard missing, according to a U.S. State Department official, who was not authorized to talk publicly on the matter and spoke on condition of anonymity. None of the wounded Americans appeared to have life-threatening injuries, the official said.

The BBC said one of its drivers was killed and four of its journalists were wounded. Afghanistan’s private TOLO Television also reported a staffer killed; Germany said an Afghan security guard outside its embassy was among the dead.

German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel said that along with an Afghan guard who was killed, a German diplomat was slightly wounded and an Afghan staffer had severe injuries.

Chancellor Angela Merkel condemned the attack, saying that “terrorism has no borders.”

It “targets all of us — whether in Manchester or Berlin, Paris, Istanbul, St. Petersburg or today in Kabul,” she said in the southern German city of Nuremberg.

“Today we’re united in shock and sadness across all borders,” she added.

She vowed: “We will lead the fight against terrorism, and we will win it.”

Germany has had troops in Afghanistan for 15 years, primarily in the north in and around Mazar-e-Sharif. It is one of the biggest contributors to the NATO-led Resolute Support mission, with about 980 soldiers supporting and training Afghan forces.

Neighboring Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the bomb damaged residences of some of its diplomats and staff and caused some minor injuries.

———

Gannon reported from Islamabad. Associated Press writers Amir Shah in Kabul, Matthew Lee in Washington and David Rising in Berlin contributed to this report.

31 May 2017 | 7:34 pm

Source : ABC News

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