Trump Went Hunting

Published in El Observador
(Uruguay) on 17 April 2017
by Pablo Aragón (link to originallink to original)
Translated from by Tom Walker. Edited by Christine Murrison.
There was a time when U.S. citizens got fed up with the stupidity and warmongering hypocrisy of their governing elite and decided to do something about it.

They would have heard neo-conservatives in the Bush administration, as well as liberal imperialists in the Obama administration, agree that the world needs a U.S. active on a global scale, committed to all the causes, ready to discipline all the fractious states. As in Iraq! Was it worth it, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was asked, to wield such authority there, at the price of an estimated half million children killed? The well-mannered battle-ax concluded, “the price is worth it.”

So, when the 2016 electoral campaign began, U.S. voters detected this stench of interventionism not only on Hillary Clinton’s candidacy (one of her advisers was Albright herself), but also on those of Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, John Kasich and the cracked voices of the usual suspects: John McCain, Lindsay Graham and Mitt Romney. Until Donald Trump showed up.

A joke on two legs, Trump exemplified the ridiculous. But then hard-hitting truths started to spill out of his mouth: the war in Iraq had been a “terrible” mistake; intervening in conflicts like those in the Middle East was meddling with people “that we know nothing about;” the U.S. has everything to gain and nothing to lose by cooperating with Russia; the only enemy of the civilized world today is the Islamic Army …and, above all, “America first.”

His hair continued to look absurd. His personality continued to be unfriendly. Profanities continued to fly out of his mouth. But Trump was sounding incredibly promising: he had denounced the warmongers who have homesteaded in the intelligence services; he wouldn’t fall into the traps of the “Arab Springs” or the Eastern Europeans; he would use U.S. military power to combat Islamic terrorism.

Within a couple of weeks, however, Trump succeeded in wiping out all of the gains mentioned above.

As though we were stepping back into the real world after a performance of a comic play in a theater, those of us in international audiences have heard, in just a few days, a variety of novel news items: that NATO, rightly considered “obsolete” by Trump a few weeks ago, is no longer obsolete; that China, threatened by Trump over its currency manipulations, is no longer manipulating anything; that Russia and its president, whom the press portrayed as controlling Trump, have now been advised that their presence in the Middle East is unwelcome; that Syrian president Bashar Assad, whose overthrow was of no interest to Trump in March, has in April been called an “animal” with no future.

And along with all of this have come some impressive facts: the launching of 59 Tomahawk missiles against a Syrian air base; the sending of aircraft carriers to the Korean coast; and the dropping of the “mother of all bombs” ($16 million to kill a hundred terrorists) on Islamic State targets in Afghanistan.

Trump is at war, and he is enjoying it like nobody else.

One more Holy Week has passed, then, and we have awakened in the middle of a nightmare. The assaults in Syria were carried out, completely ignoring the U.N., and based on dubious information with respect to the use of chemical weapons by Assad in the province of Idlib. The Syrian war, which everyone anticipated would end once and for all as the northern hemisphere summer got closer, has gained new momentum. Washington has once again ended up supporting the terrorists of al-Qaida and the Islamic State group army in the field. Russian control of Syrian airspace has been called into question, and Russia itself is being held indirectly responsible for the use of chemical weapons … and this in spite of the fact that we know Russia doesn’t want to – in fact, can’t – extricate itself from this campaign, in which its internal stability is at risk because of terrorist connections in the Caucasus.

And it gets worse.

Unlike with Syria, nothing can hide the fact that mobilizing submarines and aircraft carriers in the vicinity of the Korean coast is, technically, an act of war. Washington and Pyongyang are legally at war, a war suspended by an armistice signed in 1953. In Korea, there is no possibility of a simple deterrent bombing, any hostile act whatsoever will involve an immediate North Korean attack on the South Korean capital. Seoul is located 40 km (Approximately 25 miles) from the border, and everyone knows that neither the U.S. nor Superman would be able to do anything in the first 24 to 48 hours of carnage in this city of 10 million inhabitants.

And what can we say about the Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb dropped on Afghanistan? It doesn’t matter what bombs you drop there: nothing can conceal the fact that the U.S. has lost the war in Afghanistan, just as it was lost by the British Empire, the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. The “mother of all bombs” may have succeeded in destroying the system of tunnels used by the Islamic State group in Afghanistan. But the winners in this will be Taliban troops who, beyond any doubt, are fighting for primacy in the country, but who detest the U.S. with every fiber of their being.

The stupidity spreads. The “mother of all bombs,” according to the story Trump himself tells us, is in reality… a warning to North Korea! Yes: the country governed by a psychotic, who is prone to executing his closest family members, tying them to missiles or the mouths of cannons. A man who has ordered five nuclear tests, has developed an intercontinental ballistic missile and, like Trump, childishly loves his armaments.

Everything is going great now in Washington and the Western capitals. Everyone is applauding the fact that the U.S. president has gone back to being what people had hoped he would be: all mention of the alleged Russian hack of the Democratic campaign has disappeared; it would appear that Putin no longer has compromising video with which to blackmail Trump. But even the most sophisticated chancelleries in the world rushed to vote to condemn, not Washington for having bombed a country without any mediation, but Syria for having committed crimes alleged by Washington, even though no evidence has been presented!

This, then, is the Trump that everyone has been waiting for: shaken by video of the bodies of infants on the Fox network, infuriated to see the suffering awakened in his favorite daughter, Ivanka, by these scenes, quick to drop the “mother of all bombs” while eating a beautiful chocolate cake with the Chinese president. Who misses Hillary, then, now that we have before us a president who can hurl his cake and eat it too?

It is to be hoped that Trump may be able to enjoy all of this, and for a long time. But the reality of the processes that he has put in motion with this caper is that wars in the real world are not at all like the wars on TV screens. And the urge to be a gunslinger, which ambushes every U.S. president, has invariably proven to be fool’s gold, and, in the end, enough rope to hang whatever respect they may have.


Trump salió de cacería
El presidente de EEUU está en guerra y lo está disfrutando como nadie

El observador (Uruguay)
Por Pablo Aragón
17 de abril de 2017

Hubo una época en la que los estadounidenses se hartaron de la estupidez y la hipocresía belicista de su elite gobernante, y decidieron hacer algo al respecto.

Habían oído a los neo-conservadores de la administración Bush, así como a los liberales-imperiales de la administración Obama, coincidir en la necesidad que el mundo tenía de contar con unos EEUU activos a escala global, comprometidos con todas las causas, dispuestos a disciplinar a todos los díscolos. ¡Como en Irak! ¿Acaso valía la pena ejercer tanta autoridad allí, al precio estimado de medio millón de niños asesinados?, se le preguntó a la ex Secretario de Estado Madelaine Albright. “Es un precio que vale la pena pagar”, concluyó la educada arpía.

Cuando comenzara, pues, la campaña electoral de 2016, los estadounidenses detectaron este tufo intervencionista ya no solamente en la candidatura de Hillary Clinton (una de cuyas asesoras era la mismísima Albright), sino también en la de Mark Rubio, Jeb Bush, John Kasich, y en las cascadas voces de los sospechosos de siempre: John McCain, Lindsay Graham y Mitt Romney. Hasta que apareció Donald Trump.

Un chiste en dos piernas, Trump ejemplificaba el ridículo, pero de su boca empezaron a emerger verdades de a puños: la guerra en Irak había sido un error “grande y gordo”; intervenir en conflictos como los de Medio Oriente era meterse con gente “de la que no sabemos nada”; EEUU tenía todo para ganar y nada que perder cooperando con Rusia; el único enemigo del mundo civilizado hoy es el Ejército Islámico … y, por sobre todo, “América está primero”.

El cabello seguía luciendo absurdo. El personaje seguía cayendo antipático. Su boca seguía repitiendo groserías. Pero Donald Trump sonaba increíblemente auspicioso: había delatado la tramoya de los guerreristas que anidan en los servicios de inteligencia; no caería en las trampas de las “primaveras árabes” o euro-orientales; emplearía el poderío militar estadounidense a fin de combatir el terrorismo islámico.

En una quincena, sin embargo, Trump viene de borrar todo lo anterior.

Como si emergiéramos de una pantomima teatral, los auditorios internacionales hemos escuchado, en apenas pocos días, varias novedades: que la OTAN, atinadamente calificada como “obsoleta” por Trump hace pocas semanas, ya no lo es más; que China, amenazada por Trump a causa de sus manipulaciones monetarias, ya no está manipulando nada; que Rusia y su presidente, a quienes la prensa retrataba como sus controladores, han sido ahora advertidos sobre su no bienvenida presencia en Medio Oriente; que el presidente sirio Bashar al-Assad, cuyo derrocamiento no era de interés de Trump en marzo, ha pasado a ser un “animal” sin futuro en abril.

Y todo esto ha venido aderezado por elocuentes hechos: el disparo de 59 misiles Tomahawk contra una base aérea siria, el envío de portaviones a las costas de Corea, y el disparo de la “madre de todas las bombas” (US$ 16 millones para matar a una centena de terroristas) contra objetivos del Ejército Islámico en Afganistán.

Donald Trump está, pues, en guerra, y lo está disfrutando como nadie.

Ha transcurrido, pues, una Semana Santa más, y nos hemos despertado en medio de una pesadilla. Los bombardeos en Siria se han efectuado ignorando completamente a la ONU, y basados en información dudosa respecto al empleo de armamento químico por parte de Assad en la provincia de Idlib. La guerra siria que todos anticipábamos terminara de una buena vez hacia el verano boreal, ha ganado un nuevo impulso: Washington ha vuelto a respaldar a los terroristas de Al Qaeda y el EI en el terreno. El control que Rusia ejercía sobre el espacio aéreo sirio ha sido puesto en entredicho, y Rusia misma indirectamente responsabilizada por su supuesta connivencia con el empleo de armas químicas… y pese a que todos sabemos que Rusia no quiere, porque no puede, salir de esta campaña, en la que su estabilidad interna está en juego, a causa de las conexiones terroristas en el Cáucaso.

Y se pone peor.

A diferencia de Siria, nada puede esconder el hecho de que movilizar submarinos y portaviones en las inmediaciones de la costa coreana es, técnicamente, un acto de guerra: Washington y Pyongyang están, jurídicamente, en guerra, suspendida por un armisticio aprobado en julio de 1953. No hay en Corea posibilidad de ejecutar un mero bombardeo disuasorio: cualquier acto hostil representa el inmediato ataque norcoreano a la capital de Corea del Sur, Seúl, ubicada a 40 kms. de la frontera, y todos sabemos que no hay ni EEUU ni Superman que logre hacer nada en las primeras 24 a 48 horas de matanza en esa ciudad de 10 millones de habitantes.

¿Y qué decir de la Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb, arrojada en Afganistán? Una peligrosa compadrada sin sustancia. Se arroje allí el armamento que se arroje, nada puede esconder el hecho de que la guerra en Afganistán está irremisiblemente perdida por EEUU, tal como le ocurriera al Imperio Británico, al Imperio Ruso y a la URSS. La “madre de todas las bombas” habrá logrado destruir el sistema de túneles empleados por ISIS en Afganistán, pero quienes se beneficiarán de ello serán las tropas talibanas que, por cierto, combaten por la primacía en ese país, pero detestan a EEUU con todas las fibras de su cuerpo.

La estupidez se expande. La “madre de todas las bombas”, según nos narrara el mismo Trump, es en realidad … ¡una advertencia para Corea del Norte! Sí: el país gobernado por un psicótico, inclinado a ejecutar a sus familiares más cercanos atándolos a misiles o a bocas de cañón, pero que ya ha ordenado cinco pruebas nucleares, ha desarrollado un misil balístico intercontinental y está tan infantilmente enamorado de su armamento como lo parece Trump.

Todo es satisfacción hoy en Washington y las capitales occidentales. Todos aplauden el hecho de que el presidente de los EEUU ha vuelto a ser lo que se esperaba de él: han desaparecido todas las menciones al supuesto “hackeo” ruso de la campaña demócrata; tal parece que Putin no tiene ya filmaciones comprometedoras con las que extorsionar a Trump. ¡Si hasta las cancillerías más sofisticadas del mundo se han apresurado a votar en la ONU una condena no a Washington por haber bombardeado un país sin haber mediado ultraje, sino a Siria por haber cometido crímenes que Washington asegura que cometiera, aunque no haya presentado pruebas!

Éste es, pues, el Trump que todos queríamos: conmocionado por la filmación de cadáveres infantiles en la cadena Fox; furioso al ver el sufrimiento que estas escenas despertaran en su hija favorita, Ivanka; presto a arrojar la “madre de todas las bombas” mientras comía una hermosa torta de chocolate con el presidente chino. ¿Quién extraña, pues, a Hillary ahora que tenemos ante nosotros a un presidente que puede arrojar la torta, y comérsela al mismo tiempo?

Ojalá Trump pueda disfrutar de todo ello, y por mucho tiempo. Pero la realidad de los procesos que ha puesto en marcha con esta cabriola es que las guerras de la realidad distan de ser las de las pantallas televisivas, y que el afán pistolero que embosca a todo presidente de los EEUU ha probado invariablemente ser el oro de los tontos, y la cuerda con la que cuelgan su poca o mucha respetabilidad.

This post appeared on the front page as a direct link to the original article with the above link .

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