Ian Fleming On The Trump Administration
“Mr Bond, they have a saying in Chicago: 'Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it's enemy action'.”-- Ian Fleming,Goldfinger
Not once, not twice, but three times now Trump or spokespersons for his administration have referenced non-existent terrorist attacks.
Specifically, non-existent Islamic terrorist attacks.
These are not simple misstatements, confusing a place name, or a single slip of the tongue in an otherwise factual statement.
Read the transcripts. Trump and his spokespersons refer repeatedly to events that have not occurred as if they have and are in fact either common knowledge or would be if the media was not deliberately hiding the information.
That last part makes no sense. Mass media makes its profits off of viewership; they have every motive to over-report incidents (and often do).
There is a reason for these lies about non-existent terrorist attacks, and that reason is to lay the groundwork for a war against…somebody, just so long as they’re Islamic.
The most likely target will be Iran, for reasons I’ll go into shortly, but if ISIS or some other group obliges Trump and stages a successful attack on Americans in the US or abroad, that will be sufficient for the Trump administration to send hundreds of thousands of American service personnel in harm’s way for no other reason than to glorify the draft dodger who mocks genuine war heroes.
Say what you will about Presidents John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Lyndon Baines Johnson, and Richard Milhous Nixon, but when their country called they served in time of war.
Not Trump.
The reason Iran will be the most likely target can be found in the mindset of his chief strategist, Steven Bannon.
Bannon was a Navy lieutenant aboard the USS Paul F. Foster when President Jimmy Carter, a former nuclear submarine commander, authorized a mission to rescue Americans being held hostage in Tehran.
As to why Americans were being held hostage in Tehran, check below the jump. What happened was that the mission, later criticized as too complex and too ambitious for the resources allotted it, failed before it even got started, resulting in the accidental death of eight American service personnel and the lost of a helicopter.
Bannon has pointed to that failed mission as the start of his interest in politics, blaming President Carter for undercutting the mission. (If that sounds familiar, it’s because conservatives used that same trope against President Kennedy when the Bay of Pigs invasion failed.)
History is replete with demagogues, failing leaders, floundering governments, and brazen opportunists who have sought -- all too successfully all too often -- to stir up needless wars in an effort to bolster their own positions.
America has historically marched off to war with great enthusiasm…and far too often trudged back with the sad realization the sacrifice and effort was misspent.
We are good at invading, we historically have done poorly at holding what we’ve taken, much less building a successful peace (the aftermath of World War Two being the one bright spot in our history).
Bannon has openly talked about war with China, a rising economic power in the Middle East and Africa where their brand of foreign involvement steers clear of the pitfalls Europe and America fell into.
To build up to that -- as other warmongers have sought to build up to their grand campaigns -- the Trump administration is focusing on anti-Islamic prejudice to justify a warm-up conflict that will let the US test out new strategies, tactics, and technology before taking a swing at China.
[Do not look at China and assume it will be a simple replay of World War Two. For one thing, China massively outnumbers the United States, Japan in World War Two had a population of 71,380,000 while the US outnumbered them almost two-to-one with 131,028,000. China has over four times our population: 1,382,000,000+ vs 324,000,000+ for the US. At the start of the war Japan’s fleet was vastly outnumbered by the United States Navy and they had to fight not only us but the British and Australian fleets as well as elements of the Free French navy. Much of Japan’s war effort was devoted to maintaining control over occupied China in the face of coordinated attacks by Chiang Kai-Shek and Mao Tse-tung. Most importantly, Japan was an island that could be and was cut off from supplies and resources; China is the fourth largest country in the world in terms of land mass, trailing behind the US by only 230,000 square miles, and bordered by several nations more friendly to them than the United States. They have only 260 nuclear weapons compared to our 6,800 but that’s more than enough to devastate the US and its military if the balloon goes up.]
We know Putin has ambitions towards the Ukraine and the former Soviet States in Eastern Europe. He probably has sense enough to avoid anything that could be construed as a direct attack on Western Europe (because tell the Germans they can give the Russians some payback and this time they’re on the side of the angels and you’ll find that part of the world ablaze all too easily), but he does want the US out of the way, which is why he’s been encouraging Trump to make noises about abandoning long standing treaties with staunch allies. A US / China war would suit Putin’s plans just fine, taking two potential rivals out of immediate play by pitting them against one another.
There’s no reason for this to happen, of course. No real reason.
But neither Trump nor Bannon are men of reason.
The Iranians stormed the US embassy in Tehran and took its staff hostage >>>BECAUSE>>> the United States refused to return the Shah to Iran to stand trial.
The Shah fled the United States >>>BECAUSE>>> the Ayatollah Khomeini and several secular and religious factions in Iran overthrew his government in a revolution.
The revolution occurred >>>BECAUSE>>> the Shaw was viewed as an ineffectual yet brutal puppet of the West, in particular for persecuting Iranian nationalists and for imposing Western cultural values while playing havoc with the economy of the country.
The Shah was viewed as a Western puppet >>>BECAUSE>>> the British and the Americans had overthrown the popular democratically elected government of Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh and promoted the Shah to supreme authority.
Britain and the US overthrew Mossadegh >>>BECAUSE>>> he nationalized the Iranian oil industry for the benefit of all Iranians, not just the rich elite.
Mossadegh nationalized the Iranian oil industry >>>BECAUSE>>> the Shah cut a sweetheart deal with Britain and let them virtually loot the country at the expense of millions of impoverished Iranians.
The Shah cut a sweetheart deal with Britain and let them loot the country >>>BECAUSE>>> the British and the Soviets invaded Iran in 1941 to depose the Shah’s father and install him instead.
The British and the Soviets invaded Iran in 1941 to depose the Shah’s father >>>BECAUSE>>> he was another ineffectual yet brutal strongman, but one with sympathy towards the Axis powers in World War Two.
So basically, if we had minded our own #%@&ing business in 1951 and not overthrown Mossadegh, there would have been no revolution in 1979, the Ayatollah Khomeini would not have wielded nearly as much power, there would have been no failed rescue mission because there would have been no hostages to rescue, and we would have no Steve Bannon whispering in Trump’s ear -- indeed, we probably wouldn’t Trump in the White House because we would have avoided a great deal of trouble in the Middle East which spawned radical Islamic groups.
Astonishing, isn’t it, what can be achieved through a simple application of the golden rule?
