INDECENT SLIMEBALLS

PANKAJ MISHRA—merican liberals, Samuel Moyn wrote last year in Dissent, have never broken ‘with the exceptionalist outlook that cast the United States as uniquely virtuous’, but having Trump in the ‘cockpit of American power’ will reveal ‘just how terrifyingly normal a nation we are, with our populist jingoism and hawkish foreign policy’. The bipartisan support for the president’s bombing campaigns shows that little has changed in this respect, however. As Trump ordered strikes on Syria in April last year, Fareed Zakaria hailed the ‘big moment’: ‘Donald Trump,’ he said, ‘became president of the United States last night.’

DIANA JOHNSTONE—Historically, Westernizers in Russia have repeatedly gained influence and then lost out, because their overtures to the West were rebuffed on one pretext or another. (The British geopolitical tradition, based on the timeless dictum divide et impera, has traditionally favored policies to keep the continent divided) This merges easily with the Brzezinski doctrine of maintaining separation between Western Europe as a whole and Russia to maintain U.S. global hegemony. Western rejection of Russia naturally favors a rise of the Slavophiles. It also obliges Russia to look to Eurasia rather than Western Europe. This is happening again.

PETER KOENIG—What exactly is Washington and its Israeli handlers trying to achieve with Pompeo’s most clumsy approach? – “Regime Change”, perhaps? By activating and mobilizing the Fifth Column in Iran to create an internal revolt, with the objective of putting a new Shah-type puppet in place? – The desperation of creating a strong and oppressive “ally” in the Middle East – as Saudi Arabia and most of the Gulf States are ‘failing’ US trustworthiness – is hidden only by a thin veil.

MJ ROSENBERG—Many years ago, the #2 man at AIPAC, Steve Rosen (later indicted under the Espionage Act of 1917 wrote me the following about AIPAC’s activities: “A lobby is a night flower. It thrives in the dark and dies in the sun.” The same applies to those in Congress who, disregarding their constituents, take their marching orders from AIPAC. It’s time to shine some sunlight on them.

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