#US National Defense

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Michael de Adder

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

January 30, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

JAN 31, 2024

Today, according to Clare Foran, Manu Raju, and Morgan Rimmer of CNN, House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) told his Republican colleagues that he will not bring forward the bipartisan immigration bill senators have been working on for months, calling it “absolutely dead.” 

Although Johnson insisted in November that border security was so crucial that he wouldn’t bring up aid to Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan, and Gaza until such legislation was attached to it, Trump has made it clear he wants immigration and border security left on the table for him to use as an issue in his run for the presidency.

Instead of addressing border security through legislation, House Republicans instead are moving forward with their plan to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. They wrote articles of impeachment even before holding hearings. Today, members of the House Homeland Security Committee held a hearing to mark up those articles, which claim that Mayorkas committed high crimes and misdemeanors because he allegedly breached the public trust and refused to enforce immigration law. 

In all our history, only one cabinet officer has been impeached. William Belknap, whose eight years as secretary of war under President U. S. Grant had been marked by ostentatious displays of wealth and apparent kickbacks from army contracts, was charged with corruption in March 1876 just hours after he tearfully handed Grant his resignation. 

The House charged Belknap with “criminally disregarding his duty as Secretary of War and basely prostituting his high office to his lust for private gain.” The Senate agreed that it had jurisdiction to hold an impeachment trial even for a former government official, for an officer should not be able to escape justice simply by resigning. After hearing more than 40 witnesses, a majority of senators voted to convict Belknap on each of five charges, but no vote reached the necessary two-thirds threshold for conviction, and he was therefore acquitted. 

Almost 150 years later, the impeachment of Mayorkas would be the second effort to impeach a cabinet member. Yet there is no suggestion that Mayorkas has done anything but try to implement the law, even as the administration has repeatedly asked for more funding to make it possible for him to do his job.

In the hearing today, Representative Seth Magaziner (D-RI) noted that “across the system, we are at and above capacity, and so, what should the secretary do? The secretary, because he has not received the funding to provide adequate detention capacity, has to use his judgment for who to detain and who to release. That is not illegal. It is certainly not impeachable. And it is the exact same kind of discretion that every other director before him has used. In the last two years of the Trump administration, 52% of migrants apprehended at the southern border were released, not detained…. Nearly a million people. I did not hear my Republican colleagues trying to impeach the secretary or acting secretary under the Trump administration during those years. But here they are, trying to impeach Secretary Mayorkas for doing the exact same thing.”

Rather than passing the laws the country needs, the extremist Republicans appear to be determined to tee up an issue on which Trump can run for president in 2024. House speaker Johnson has demanded “ZERO” illegal crossings into the U.S., but this is a standard that no previous homeland security secretary has met because it is impossible to wall off every single means of entering this country by water, air, or land. And—despite Republicans’ false claims that Biden has established “open borders”—immigrants were more likely to be released into the country during Trump's term than during Biden’s. 

What is going on here is an attempt of the extremist Republicans to undercut the administration by attacking a key cabinet officer not for actual misbehavior but on policy grounds.  

There is no chance the Senate, dominated by Democrats, will convict Mayorkas even if the House, with its razor-thin Republican majority, impeaches him, but the extremist minority in the House that is going after him is attempting to set a precedent that a minority can stop the government from functioning. 

The cost of that obstruction has been clear in domestic politics over government funding, but it has now become a global issue over the question of U.S. support for Ukraine. Johnson had said he would not bring forward a bill to provide supplemental funding for Ukraine unless it included measures for increased border security; now his rejection of a bill to provide that border security threatens Ukraine aid. 

Ukraine is defending itself against an invasion by Russia, but the struggle there is larger than one between two countries: it is the question of whether the rules-based international order put in place after World War II will survive, or whether the world will go back to a system in which stronger countries can gobble up less powerful ones. 

Military aid for Ukraine is widely popular among Americans and among American lawmakers, who recognize the larger questions at stake. But extremist Republicans are siding with Trump, who has made his preference for Russia and its autocratic leader over Ukraine clear. The realization that a few extremist Republicans are scuttling Ukraine aid has prompted officials from both parties to warn of the consequences if the U.S. stops providing support to Ukraine.

In Foreign Affairs today, Central Intelligence Agency director Wililam Burns noted that the war has weakened Putin’s Russia significantly. Aid to Ukraine has amounted to less than 5% of the U.S. defense budget, “a relatively modest investment with significant geopolitical returns for the United States and notable returns for American industry,” he wrote.

“For the United States to walk away from the conflict at this crucial moment and cut off support to Ukraine would be an own goal of historic proportions,” Burns said. The secretary general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Jens Stoltenberg, has been in Washington, D.C., this week, urging Republicans to back the aid, if only on the grounds that most of the money appropriated goes to support jobs in the U.S. 

The man behind the extremists, Trump, was in the news today for the fact that the political action committees that back him spent about $50 million covering his legal bills in 2023. That money came from donors and arrived primarily in the months after the 2020 presidential election, when Trump lied that he had actually won the election and needed financial support to challenge the results.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[liberty1776]

Col. Douglas Macgregor (ret.) is one of the most innovative thinkers of our time. In today's Liberty Report he explains his recently-published detailed blueprint for a less expensive - and better - US military and a safer America.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Jason Wilson at The Guardian:

Pete Hegseth, Trump’s nominee for secretary of defense, has attacked several key US alliances such as Nato, allied countries such as Turkey and international institutions such as the United Nations in two recent books, as well as saying US troops should not be bound by the Geneva conventions. At the same time, the man who would head America’s gigantic military has tied US foreign policy almost entirely to the priority of Israel, a country of which he says: “If you love America, you should love Israel.” Elsewhere, Hegseth appears to argue that the US military should ignore the Geneva conventions and any international laws governing the conduct of war, and instead “unleash them” to become a “ruthless”, “uncompromising” and “overwhelmingly lethal” force geared to “winning our wars according to our own rules”. Hegseth’s policy preferences may raise concerns about the future of Nato, the escalation of tensions with Israel’s arch-foe Iran, and impunity for US war criminals, such as those who Hegseth persuaded Trump to pardon in his first term. [...]

‘Europe has already allowed itself to be invaded’

While in the more distant past Hegseth was a foreign policy hawk aligned with neoconservatism, since what he has called his “Trump conversion”, he has written scathingly of multilateral institutions. In American Crusade (AC), published in 2020, Hegseth asks bluntly: “Why do we fund the anti-American UN? Why is Islamist Turkey a member of Nato?” Elsewhere in that book, Hegseth disparages the International Security Assistance Force, the UN security council’s peacekeeping force sent to Afghanistan in 2006, with claims based on his own service in Afghanistan: “On my camouflage uniform, I wore an American flag on one shoulder and an Isaf patch on the other,” he writes, adding: “The running joke of US troops in Afghanistan was that the Isaf patch actually stood for ‘I Saw Americans Fighting’.” Like Trump, Hegseth characterizes Nato allies as not paying their way: “Nato is not an alliance; it’s a defense arrangement for Europe, paid for and underwritten by the United States.”

He also embeds criticisms of Nato in apocalyptic, “Great Replacement”-style narratives of European immigration. Hegseth writes at one point in AC: “Europe has already allowed itself to be invaded. It chose not to rebuild its militaries, happily suckling off the teat of America’s willingness to actually fight and win wars.” Hegseth is particularly incensed by the inclusion of Turkey in Nato. He argues that the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, “openly dreams of restoring the Ottoman empire” and is “an Islamist with Islamist visions for the Middle East”.

“The defense of Europe is not our problem; been there, done that, twice,” Hegseth writes, adding: “Nato is a relic and should be scrapped and remade in order for freedom to be truly defended. “This is what Trump is fighting for,” he concludes. The UN, meanwhile, he calls “a fully globalist organization that aggressively advances an anti-American, anti-Israel, and anti-freedom agenda. Here’s one set of rules for the United States and Israel, another for everyone else.” On Hegseth’s characterization of Turkey as Islamist – the same descriptor he uses for militant non-state actors such as Isis – Hill said: “It’s extremist rhetoric that’s trying to paint literal treaty allies as illegitimate actors.”

‘If you love America, you should love Israel’

Hegseth’s belief in the UN’s bias against Israel mirrors his deepest apparent commitments: that any vision of international cooperation is rooted in his support of Israel, which at times he couches in religious terms. In a striking passage in AC he presents his support for Israel against as a renewal of medieval crusades. “Our present moment is much like the 11th century,” he writes in AC, adding: “We don’t want to fight, but, like our fellow Christians a thousand years ago, we must. We need an American crusade.” He adds: “We Christians – alongside our Jewish friends and their remarkable army in Israel – need to pick up the sword of unapologetic Americanism and defend ourselves.” Hegseth continues: “For us as American crusaders, Israel embodies the soul of our American crusade – the ‘why’ to our ‘what’.” Hegseth concludes: “Faith, family, freedom, and free enterprise; if you love those, learn to love the state of Israel. And then find an arena in which to fight for her.”

[...]

‘We will rip your arms off and feed them to hogs’

In 2024’s The War on Warriors, Hegseth argues at length that US forces should ignore the Geneva conventions and other elements of international law governing the conduct of war. In the book, Hegseth asks: “The key question of our generation – of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan – is way more complicated: what do you do if your enemy does not honor the Geneva conventions? “We never got an answer. Only more war. More casualties. And no victory.” Hegseth’s answer is that the conventions should be ignored. “What if we treated the enemy the way they treated us?” he asks. “Would that not be an incentive for the other side to reconsider their barbarism? Hey, Al Qaeda: if you surrender, we might spare your life. If you do not, we will rip your arms off and feed them to hogs.” He then writes: “We are just fighting with one hand behind our back – and the enemy knows it … If our warriors are forced to follow rules arbitrarily and asked to sacrifice more lives so that international tribunals feel better about themselves, aren’t we just better off winning our wars according to our own rules?!”

He continues: “Who cares what other countries think?” Hill said Hegseth’s rhetoric blamed “liberal ideas” for military defeat in a way that resembled the narratives far-right movements have historically used to scapegoat their political opponents for military defeats.

The Guardian reports on potential Trump Misadministration II Defense Secretary nominee Pete Hegseth wrote in two different books that the US should ignore the Geneva Conventions, launches childish criticisms against NATO, and unapologetically defends Israel’s Apartheid by whining about “anti-Israel” bias against the UN.

[davidaugust]

Pete Hegseth has been nominated to become US Secretary of Defense, a position he is unqualified for and will be destructive in.

“Hegseth explicitly rejects democracy in American Crusade, characterizing it as a leftist demand: ‘For leftists, calls for ‘democracy’ represent a complete rejection of our system. Watch how often they use the word,’ adding: ‘They hate America, so they hate the Constitution and want to quickly amass 51 percent of the votes to change it.’”

“He explicitly supports forms of election-rigging through gerrymandering. Fair electoral boundaries, he writes, amount to ‘Playing nice to placate the so-called middle,’ which ‘has been a losing strategy for patriots for decades’. Since ‘the other side is stacked with enemies of freedom’, Hegseth argues, ‘Republican legislatures should draw congressional lines that advantage pro-freedom candidates – and screw Democrats.’”

“Hegseth’s rhetoric about perceived ‘internal’ or ‘domestic enemies’, along with media reports highlighting his tattoo of the crusader motto ‘Deus Vult’, may ring alarm bells for those concerned by Donald Trump’s repeated threats to unleash the US military, which Hegseth would directly control, on those he has described as ‘the enemy within’.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/22/trump-defense-secretary-pete-hegseth-book

[anxiously-sidequesting]

Not to keep beating dead horses like I so much love to do but I am still completely Flabbergasted and Astonished at how you (Merle Ambrose) could discover the most terrifying fact that a child that is essentially under your care has been indoctrinated into a cult (which, by the way, a process that has taken over the course of years) ((by an agent that has been stationed in a direct position to make it easier to access and manipulate children, that has easily escaped your notice for such a long time)) that worships a nihilistic entity whose ultimate goal is the absolute and total destruction of Everything and Everyone around you, and your one, single, simple-sentenced response to that is to say "Oh, that's a shame. He (Duncan) always was pretty terrible. Hope he gets better someday." And then to move on from those extremely worrying and dangerous bundle of issues permanently without taking any sort of action to protect the vulnerable and make sure nothing like this ever happens again

[mollysunder]

What about Silco as Medea? The two are so alike in the way that their actions are essentially held by a different standard because they act as agents of fate. Where Medea is bound to Jason to fulfill the gods' task for him, so does Silco exist to aid Vander to create the nation of Zaun.

On the surface their both easily read as violent and spiteful figures whose actions draw disgust and condemnation, and yet they escape true punishment. That is because the actions of Medea and Silco are above divine reproach. It is their respective partners that walked back on their divine tasks, where Vander abandoned Zaun's independence just as Jason a champion of Hera abandoned his blessed union with Medea.

After both Silco and Medea had their revenge on the men they that loved and helped achieved great heights, they didn't have easy lives but they still found success and even peace in the end. They were both devoted to their divine responsibility and were rewarded in turn. Medea married another king and was rewarded with a place in Elysium. Meanwhile Silco built an empire, got to avoid experiencing the true bloodshed his choice to protect Jinx (the spirit of Zaun), and was able to die with the knowledge that he wasn't betrayed by the last person he ever loved.

[news4dzhozhar]

[aeolianblues]

Every time I see someone qualify habits by saying something like 'especially Americans/North Americans' on here, I can't help but think 'ah but all that means is you haven't met as many of the rest of us, right'. Everything isn't America-exclusive behaviour, there are awesome people and assholes everywhere and it probably helps not to moralise nationality. I dunno.

[zoey-angel]

Thinking about the Iranian person who asked to translate my work into persian and, when I said I'm from Israel, replied by saying they don't see why that's relevant, and can they please translate my work because they really like it and want to make it accessible to their friends. Made me question my entire worldview. Had it been a western leftist I would have been crucified I'm pretty sure

[dontmean2bepoliticalbut]

[tmarshconnors]

Julian Assange is FREE!

Today marks a historic moment for press freedom and free speech advocates worldwide. After spending 1,901 harrowing days in Belmarsh Prison, Julian Assange is finally a free man. The news of his release, following a plea deal with the US, has brought tears of joy and relief to many who have tirelessly campaigned for his freedom.

Assange, 52, has been a central figure in the fight for transparency and government accountability. His work with WikiLeaks, which disclosed critical information about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, sparked global debates about the balance between national security and the public's right to know. However, it also led to severe legal repercussions, culminating in his incarceration in a high-security British prison since 2019, where he fought against extradition to the US on charges of conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defense information.

The emotional response to Assange's release is palpable. His wife, Stella Assange, expressed deep gratitude to his supporters, stating, "Words cannot express our immense gratitude to YOU - yes YOU, who have all mobilised for years and years to make this come true. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU,” in a heartfelt post on X, formerly known as Twitter. This acknowledgment highlights the power of collective advocacy and the unwavering dedication of Assange's supporters over the years.

According to CBS, Assange will spend no time in US custody and will receive credit for the time he has already spent incarcerated in the UK. The plea deal, which requires him to plead guilty to one charge, is set to be finalized in a court in the Northern Mariana Islands on Wednesday, 26 June. This unique location, a US commonwealth in the Pacific much closer to Australia, underscores the unusual nature of Assange's legal journey.

The US has long argued that the release of the WikiLeaks files endangered lives, a claim that has been hotly contested by Assange's supporters and various human rights organizations. The debate over his actions and their implications for press freedom and government transparency has been one of the most significant of our time.

As Assange prepares to return to his native Australia, as confirmed by a letter from the US Department of Justice, the global conversation about press freedom and free speech is reignited. His case has underscored the crucial role that journalists and whistleblowers play in holding power to account and the significant risks they face in doing so.

For many, including myself, this news is overwhelming. The fight for freedom of speech and the protection of those who dare to speak truth to power is far from over, but today's victory is a testament to what can be achieved through persistent and passionate advocacy. Assange's release is not just a personal victory for him and his family but a beacon of hope for journalists, activists, and free speech defenders worldwide.

As we celebrate this momentous day, we must also reflect on the importance of continuing to defend press freedom and the rights of individuals to expose wrongdoing without fear of persecution. Julian Assange's journey has been a stark reminder of the stakes involved, and his release is a powerful affirmation that the fight for truth and transparency is worth every effort.

In the words of Stella Assange, "Thank you" to all who have stood by Julian and advocated for his freedom. Today, we witness the impact of our collective voice and the undeniable power of solidarity in the face of adversity.

[liberty1776]

The Case For Radical Changes In US National Defense, With Guest Col. Dou...

Col. Douglas Macgregor (ret.) is one of the most innovative thinkers of our time. In today's Liberty Report he explains his recently-published detailed blueprint for a less expensive - and better - US military and a safer America. We need to defend America, We need new strategy, America first.

Defending the Antichrist Zionist state of Israel is not worth a single American Life. A real MAGA president's first act would be to end all support for Israel. 

[workersolidarity]

🇺🇸 🚨 THE US FOREIGN AID AND DEFENSE SPENDING RACKET EXPLAINED IN THREE GRAPHS

In three graphs, why the United States is clearly in extreme, rapid decline, and the evidence for why ordinary Americans will pay the price for the decades of perpetual-war policies in their own standard of living.

There's a reason why the minimum wage hasn't been raised since 2009. Why there's no money for schools, why our hospitals and doctors are a mess, why theres homeless people on every city's streets, including the mentally ill, the drug addicted, and veterans, no money to deal with out of control crime in American cities, the waves of constant immigration meant to destroy your wages... There's only ever money for more federal law enforcement, more war, more "foreign aid" aka corruption rackets for US vassal states.

During the very years we watched this decline take place, spending on foreign aid and defense spending have gone constantly upwards while wages declined and income Inequality skyrocketed.

The evidence for the betrayal of the American people by their corrupt elite is everywhere, and the debt we will be saddled with for generations is unimaginably large: $34.209 trillion at the time of writing this.

Every American will suffer the consequences for the imperialism of their elites, and in fact already are as displayed clearly by the flattening of US wage growth simultaneously alongside the increase in foreign aid and defense spending.

It's elites taking money out of your pocket, out of your retirement, your children's college education, your family's healthcare, your wages, your life, and putting it into the same super wealthy, billionaire elites who've wanted to kill social security and Medicare and use the US Military to enforce a system of control, impoverishment and censorship on all of us across the world. Or fund genocides, you know, whatever's profitable. 🇵🇸

It is nothing more than an old fashioned racket, an upward transfer of wealth, and it always has been.

@WorkerSolidartyNews

[tomorrowusa]

There's been another tranche of student debt forgiveness by the Biden administration.

The Biden administration on Friday announced another $5 billion in debt forgiveness for 74,000 student loan borrowers. Why it matters: Although the Supreme Court blocked Biden's signature student loan forgiveness plan, his administration has found alternative ways to provide relief to more than 3.7 million people.

The Republican Supreme Court has tried to block student loan relief, but the Biden administration hasn't stopped looking for legal ways around SCOTUS for specific groups of Americans burdened by such debt.

Since 1981 Republicans have serially backed enormous tax breaks for their filthy rich contributors, but they vehemently oppose loan forgiveness for middle class and poorer taxpayers.

House GOP advances bill to block Biden’s student loan repayment program

Supreme Court, Republicans to blame for lack of debt forgiveness, students say in poll

In general, Republicans oppose higher education. Their base is made up of dumbass morons who believe conspiracy theories and they need more voters like that who won't question the bullshit that comes out of the GOP.

The Republican jones for deregulation since the Reagan-Bush era has led student debt to spiral out of control. The vicious circle of more burdensome loans feeding ever-increasing tuition fits well into the GOP agenda. It's a system that discourages post-secondary education for anyone who isn't rich.

President Dwight Eisenhower was no radical. But he knew what made America strong. The highest federal income tax rate for the filthy rich during most of his administration was 91%. And it was universally regarded as a period of enormous economic growth and prosperity.

A portion of that tax revenue went into the National Defense Education Act which, among other features, provided for grants and loans for post-secondary education – particularly for STEM, teacher education, and foreign languages. That was the impressive start of the federal student loan program. It was never meant to be a permanent chain around the necks of college graduates.

National Defense depends on smart Americans. But certain Russia-friendly Republicans have no interest in standing in Putin's way.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Al Jazeera:

As elections in the United States draw closer, polls indicate that former President Donald Trump could be back in the Oval Office by early 2025. One possible indication of what a second Trump administration might look like is Project 2025, a transition plan spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation, a prominent conservative think tank in Washington, DC. The 922-page doorstopper is essentially a how-to guide for a right-wing model of governance, proposing a dramatic overhaul of the federal government with plans to expand presidential power and purge the civil service of “liberals”. While largely focused on dismantling the “Deep State”, the document also offers pointers on foreign policy, striking a hawkish tone on China – “the most significant danger to Americans’ security, freedoms, and prosperity” – prioritising nuclear weapons production and curtailing international aid programmes.

How does Project 2025 see America’s place in the world?

On defence and foreign policy, Project 2025 aims for a definitive break with the administration of President Joe Biden. Christopher Miller, who served as defence secretary under Trump, slams Biden’s track record in the project’s hefty Mandate for Leadership section, speaking of “disturbing decay” and a “dangerous decline” in the “nation’s capabilities and will”. The signs are all there, Miller says, pointing to the “disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, our impossibly muddled China strategy, the growing involvement of senior military officers in the political arena, and deep confusion about the purpose of our military”. [...]

Taking on China

China is the project’s main defence concern. Miller fears the country is “undertaking a historic military buildup”, which “could result in a nuclear force that matches or exceeds America’s own nuclear arsenal”.

[...]

Targeting international aid

Max Primorac, senior research fellow in the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom at the Heritage Foundation, dislikes the “woke ideas” being pushed by the US Agency for International Development (USAID). “The Biden Administration has deformed the agency by treating it as a global platform to pursue overseas a divisive political and cultural agenda that promotes abortion, climate extremism, gender radicalism, and interventions against perceived systemic racism,” he says in the project’s Mandate for Leadership. The project’s main bugbears appear to be “gender radicalism” and abortion rights.

Primorac argues that promoting “gender radicalism” goes against “traditional norms of many societies where USAID works”, causing “resentment” because recipients have to reject their own “firmly held fundamental values regarding sexuality” to receive “lifesaving assistance”. It has also, he says, created “outright bias against men”. He claims that abortion on demand is “aggressively” promoted under the guise of “sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights”, “gender equality” and “women’s empowerment”. To counter “woke ideas”, Project 2025 wants to “dismantle” all diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, which it views as “discriminatory”. Among other things, this would involve scrubbing from all USAID communications references to the terms “gender”, “gender equality”, “gender equity”, “gender diverse individuals”, “gender aware”, “gender sensitive”, “abortion”, “reproductive health” and “sexual and reproductive rights”.

What does Project 2025 propose on the domestic front?

Much of the manifesto bears a strong resemblance to Trump’s known policy proclivities with proposals to deport en masse more than 11 million undocumented immigrants and give states more control over education, limiting progressive initiatives on issues such as LGBTQ rights. But on some issues, it goes further than Trump’s campaign, calling on federal authorities to ban pornography and reverse approval of a pill used in abortions, mifepristone. It also calls for anyone providing or distributing abortion pills by mail to be prosecuted. Project 2025 pledges to restore “the family as the centerpiece of American life and protect our children”. It recommends the authorities “proudly state that men and women are biological realities” and that “married men and women are the ideal, natural family structure because all children have a right to be raised by the men and women who conceived them”.

Project 2025 spells disaster from a foreign policy and a national defense standpoint.