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ACCORDING TO LIZ - As Trump frog-marches the country towards a protracted and bloody war with Iran, the questions raised are:
Where are the Democrats fighting this new abuse of presidential power?
Where are the media voices excoriating yet another unilateral waste of taxpayers’ money and American lives deployed in playing out a madman’s toy soldier fantasies?
Where are the ethicists deploring the attack of a theocracy by a country that is teetering on the edge of becoming one itself?
Why doesn’t anyone in authority take action to protect the people from further ravages of the social contract that once existed between Lincoln’s triad of government of the people by the people for the people?
Americans need to be marching in the streets, overwhelming their Congress and Senate representatives’ offices with demands to do something to stop this debacle barreling inexorably for us, pounding on our state and city officials to pile on in.
Instead, U.S. forces are edging closer and closer to attacking Iran and plunging the country into yet another foreign war, before Americans can mobilize the protests necessary to enable some sort of control over the demented Toddler in the White House.
And this would not be a one-and-done operation like the Obama administration’s murder of Osama bin Laden or the recent kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife.
This is the American Mad Hatter, drunk on power, promising to plunge not only the United States but the entire world into yet another conflagration in the Middle East with Iran promising that, if U.S. war toys are deployed, “all bases, facilities and assets of the hostile force in the region would constitute legitimate targets.”
Purported presidential advisors are no better.
Mike Huckabee, Trump’s hand-picked ambassador to Israel, just pounded his Christian Bible, pontificating to Tucker Carlson, the disgraced but still influential podcaster to the religious right, that Israel has a God-ordained right to take over the entire Middle East and “ It would be fine if they took it all... Israel is a land that God gave, through Abraham, to a people that he chose. It was a people, a place and a purpose.”
If Huckabee and Trump were the Christians that they claim to be, they would adhere to the way of unselfish righteousness, of compassion, and of following the rule of law. That loving your enemies and doing unto others what you would have done unto you are far more effective policies than massacres in the long run.
But clearly the Unworthy Autocrat has not long to live so doesn’t care.
The bulk of the American public is emotionally exhausted.
Congress is on recess.
Major media outlets are distracted by the multiple White House gyrating dervishes that have to be coped with, focusing far less on all the news that’s fit to print and more on whether their corporate overlords sniff lawsuits in the making.
Although this past year has Trump has proven incapable of listening to Congress or following any type of procedure other than his own cruel and selfish whims, when the opportunity to forcibly confront Trump’s threats of massive military action in retaliation for the Ayatollahs’ suppression of anti-government protesters, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer wimped out, simply saying that Trump had not consulted Congress.
“It has to be debated by Congress. Something like that, the War Powers Act, the Constitution, requires a discussion in Congress. We’ve had no reach-out from the administration at this point.”
The scope of the recent Supreme Court decision on Trump Tariffs reaffirms the division and separation of powers between Congress and the president. Which would extend to the declaration of war.
Where is the strong leadership America now needs?
The less pushback he gets, the more the American Führer feels he has the authority to venture beyond the pale of modern civilized society.
Congress clearly has the right but seems unwilling to exert it.
Despite the public’s strong aversion to any more war, mainstream media and many online sources continue to beat the drums for attack, scarily reminiscent of their dereliction of duty in the months leading up to the Bush administration’s economically disastrous Iraq Attack which set this country on its downward spiral in international respect and world opinion.
Morality is no longer on America’s side. It is the aggressor, the bully.
Trump needs to dial back the bluster before it comes back to bite him from the very nations he mocks.
Before he throws the United States to the same fate of ancient Rome, of Hitler’s Germany. Before Americans are condemned to living in the rubble of what was once great and good.
(Liz Amsden is a former Angeleno now living in Vermont and a regular CityWatch contributor. She writes on issues she’s passionate about, including social justice, government accountability, and community empowerment. Liz brings a sharp, activist voice to her commentary and continues to engage with Los Angeles civic affairs from afar. She can be reached at [email protected].)
