Trumps New War For America By Jacob G. Hornberger!!
(2017-04-07 at 20:06:11 )

Trumps New War for America by Jacob G. Hornberger

With President Trumps undeclared attack on Syria, a sovereign and independent nation, he has confirmed, once and for all, that he is just another foreign interventionist, no different from his predecessors Barack Obama and George W. Bush. That means, of course, another four years of war, bombings, assassinations, shootings, terrorism, war on terrorism, travel restrictions, walls, surveillance, incarceration, POW camps, torture, out of control federal spending and debt, and everything else that comes with an imperialist and interventionist national security state.

It is important to point out that Trumps decision to fire 59 Tomahawk missiles at a Syrian air force base was carried out without a congressional declaration of war. This should, of course, mean something to conservatives, given their purported devotion to the Constitution, which prohibits the president from waging war without first securing a declaration of war from Congress. But do not count on opposition to Trumps new war coming from conservatives. They love foreign wars because it means ever-bigger government, along with more spending, taxation, and debt to fund them.

No congressional declaration of war against Syria is important for two reasons:

One, it is the law - the higher law that we the people have imposed on federal officials, including the president, the Pentagon, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. When these people enact laws against us, such as drug laws, they expect us to obey them even if we disagree with their legitimacy. By the same token, we expect them to obey the laws that we impose on them, as represented by the Constitution.

Two, going to Congress to seek a declaration of war against Syria would require Trump and his national-security state people to provide evidence and justification for going to war against Syria.

No one really knows whether the Syrian regime actually initiated the attack. So far, all we have are the pronouncements and accusations, none of which constitute evidence. It might well be the Syria regime that conducted the attacks, but, by the same token, it might well be someone else. One might reply, "But, Jacob, who else could it be?" It could be anyone who would like to make it seem like the Syrian regime is guilty, including people who would like to destroy the friendly relationship that exists between the Trump administration and Russia.

Recall Operation Northwoods. It was a top-secret Pentagon plan that called for terrorist attacks and airplane hijackings to be carried out by secret agents of the United States national security state. The attacks would be made to look as though they were carried out by communists from Cuba. Under the plan, the president, who was John Kennedy, would then formally blame Fidel Castro and Cuba for the attacks, thereby providing a false and fraudulent pretext for invading Cuba and effecting regime change there. (To his everlasting credit, Kennedy rejected the plan.)

Is it really beyond reasonable possibility that some other groups around the world would take a page out of the Pentagons handbook and implement their own modified version of Operation Northwoods?

What better way to provide a justification for a United States bombing attack on Syria, which would be certain to damage United States-Russia relations, than a supposed chemical attack carried out by the Syrian regimes?

As an aside, it is somewhat ironic that United States interventionists are celebrating the 100th anniversary of World War I because that was the war in which the British government knowingly and deliberately used false and fraudulent propaganda as a way to get the United States embroiled in the war.

For example, they put out stories that Germans were impaling Belgium babies, knowing full well that they were making it up but also knowing full well the impact it would have in inducing America to get involved in the war. Of course, by the time Americans discovered that they had been deceived, the war was over. That is one of the many reasons they so fervently opposed getting embroiled in World War II.

Even if Syria did carry out the attack as part of its attempt to suppress a revolution in that country, what business is that of the United States? That is, who appointed the United States government the policeman of the world? Thus, even if Trump had followed the law and secured a congressional declaration of war, that still would not make his war legitimate given that the United States government has no legitimate business going abroad in search of monsters to destroy.

Trump said that he was only doing it for the Syrian children and other victims of the chemical attack. Really? Are these not the same children, along with their parents, who he will not permit to freely come to the United States as war refugees? Is this not the same president who does not give a hoot about American children of illegal immigrants whose parents he is deporting? What is with this new-found compassionate conservatism?

Moreover, let us not forget some inconvenient truths about the United States national-security establishment in all this.

One, the Central Intelligence Agency partnered with Syrias president Assad in the torture of Canadian citizens Mahar Arar. We still do not know how the partnership got established and what its exact terms were because the mainstream press has never pressed the Central Intelligence Agency for an answer. But there is no question but that the Central Intelligence Agency did partner with this brutal dictator whose nation they are now bombing because he is a brutal dictator.

Two, Assad is not the only brutal dictator the Central Intelligence Agency has partnered with over the years. The Shah of Iran and Gen. Pinochet come to mind.

Indeed, today the United States is partnering and reinforcing the dictatorships of Egypt and Bahrain. Indeed, let us not forget the infamous Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein himself. I will bet that many Americans have forgotten that the United States government partnered with him and even provided him with chemical weapons that he could use against the Iranian people. (See "Where Did Iraq Get Its Weapons of Mass Destruction, "Part One" and "Part Two", by Jacob G. Hornberger."

Indeed, I wonder if the United States position on Assads supposed use of Weapons of Mass Destruction would change if Assad were to say that the reason he used them was to bring a quick end to the war and to save the lives of Syrian soldiers?

Why might that change the perspective of United States officials? Because that is the answer they still give to justify the United States use of Weapons of Mass Destruction on children, seniors, and women at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

What we all need to realize is that Trumps attack on Syria means that the United States is now at war with Syria, just as the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor meant, as a practical matter, that the United States was, at that point, at war with Japan. While the national-security establishment under President Obama was attacking targets within Syria, Obama could claim that he was not really attacking Syria but rather ISIS. Trumps attack is different. It is a direct attack on Syria itself.

That means, of course, that Syria might well strike back. We do not know when and we do not know how. But it is the nature of war for combatant nations to attack and counterattack. If and when the counterattack comes, you can bet your bottom dollar that Trump is going to say the same thing that his predecessors have said - that they just hate us for our "freedom and values" and that that the counterattack has nothing to do with the fact that Trump, like Bush and Obama, has initiated a war with another sovereign and independent nation.

What Americans need to realize that the fundamental problem facing our country is not Donald Trump. Instead, it is a structural problem - one involving the Cold War era structure of the United States government - and a philosophical problem - one involving the entire concept of foreign empire and foreign interventionism. As long as the American people continue to keep the federal government as a national-security state, one whose mission includes imperialism and foreign interventionism, America will continue traveling down the road to bankruptcy, moral debauchery, hypocrisy, death, and destruction of liberty and privacy here at home. There is but one solution to all this: the restoration of a constitutional republic to our land and the complete rejection of empire and foreign intervention.

Printed here with permission from Mr. Jacob G. Hornberger of The Future of Freedom Foundation!! Their Great Website!!