{"id":50038,"date":"2024-11-13T12:28:09","date_gmt":"2024-11-13T20:28:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=50038"},"modified":"2024-11-13T12:28:09","modified_gmt":"2024-11-13T20:28:09","slug":"trump-and-the-warmongers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2024\/11\/13\/trump-and-the-warmongers\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump and the Warmongers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reprinted from Bracing Views<\/a> with the author\u2019s permission.<\/i><\/p>\n

Trump and the war hawks. Or war sluts<\/a>. Or war pigs. I thought about all three of these. Then I thought: Why insult hawks, sluts, or pigs?<\/p>\n

Donald Trump is forming his cabinet by rounding up the usual warmongers. In 2016, he gathered the generals<\/a>, men like James Mattis and John Kelly. This time around, he\u2019s tapping people like Marco Rubio<\/a>. \u201cLittle Marco\u201d as Secretary of State, a man who\u2019s rarely met a war he didn\u2019t like. For Secretary of Defense he\u2019s nominated Pete Hegseth<\/a>, whose main concern seems to be waging a war on \u201cwoke\u201d generals. One thing is certain: Rubio and Hegseth won\u2019t challenge the military-industrial complex. They will feed it\u2026 and feed it again.<\/p>\n

Other nominations include Elise Stefanik, a rabid Zionist, as UN ambassador, along with Mike Huckabee, a pro-Israel evangelical who believes in the \u201cend times,\u201d as U.S. ambassador to Israel. Trump may trump Biden as being more slavishly pro-Israel. \u201cBombs for Bibi to kill babies\u201d should be their motto.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Kristi Noem, who shot and killed her own dog because she couldn\u2019t train it, will run Homeland Security. (If you work for DHS, it might be a good idea to watch your back, or at least to avoid being alone with Noem at a gravel pit<\/a>.) Mike Waltz will be the National Security Advisor; here\u2019s how Caitlin Johnstone describes him:<\/p>\n

Waltz is a warmongering freak. Journalist Michael Tracey has been filling up his Twitter page since the announcement with examples of Waltz\u2019s insane hawkishness, including his support for letting Ukraine use US weapons to strike deep into Russian territory<\/a>, criticizing Biden for not escalating aggressively enough<\/a> in Ukraine, advocating bombing Iran<\/a>, opposing the US military withdrawal<\/a> from Afghanistan, and naming Iran, North Korea, China, Russia and Venezuela as \u201con the march<\/a>\u201d against the United States toward global conflict. The mainstream press are calling Waltz a \u201cChina hawk\u201d<\/a>, but from the look of things he\u2019s a war-horny hawk toward all the official enemies of the United States.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Once again, Trump isn\u2019t draining the swamp. He\u2019s filling it with warmongers and Zionists who are even more extreme than the warmongers and Zionists of the Biden administration.<\/p>\n

Of course, the fundamental problem is that Republicans want to boost military spending even higher than Biden and Harris have.\u00a0 Republicans are “all in” on revamping the nuclear triad, for example, which is likely to cost $2 trillion factoring\u00a0in the usual cost overruns.<\/p>\n

It’s possible Trump\/Vance will be more likely to pursue diplomacy with Russia; perhaps the war in Ukraine will finally stumble to an end. But the imperial vision remains, aggravated perhaps by a war within to expel “illegal” immigrants, together with a coup within the military against \u201cwoke\u201d officers.<\/p>\n

That sounds pessimistic.\u00a0 If I’m being optimistic, perhaps Trump can have a “Nixon goes to China” moment.\u00a0 Trump can sell virtually\u00a0anything to his followers. He is also driven by ego.\u00a0 Maybe there’s a way to drive him toward peace, dangling the carrot of a Nobel Peace Prize for him.\u00a0 Trump loves accolades, and if he could be influenced to stop throwing all of America’s chips into the Pentagon, that would be a good thing.<\/p>\n

But, if personnel is policy, America had better prepare for more war, catastrophically so, even as more bombs are sent to Bibi to kill babies. There\u2019s certainly nothing \u201cwoke\u201d about that.<\/p>\n

William Astore, a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF) and history professor, is a senior fellow at the Eisenhower Media Network (EMN)<\/a>, an organization of critical veteran military and national security professionals.\u00a0He writes at Bracing Views<\/a>. <\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author\u2019s permission. Trump and the war hawks. Or war sluts. Or war pigs. I thought about all three of these. Then I thought: Why insult hawks, sluts, or pigs? Donald Trump is forming his cabinet by rounding up the usual warmongers. In 2016, he gathered the generals, men like […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":290,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-50038","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":"More Bombs for Bibi to Kill Babies"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50038","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/290"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50038"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50038\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50044,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50038\/revisions\/50044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50038"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=50038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}