POMPEO AND BOLTON: TRUMP'S TAG TEAM OF DEATH AND DESTRUCTION!

by Antonius Aquinas

With the welcome departure of war mongering UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, the Trump Administration’s neocon tag team of death and destruction – Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo and National Security Advisor (NSA), John Bolton – have enthusiastically taken up where the repellent Haley has left off. It is highly doubtful that the former Ambassador will meekly stay under the rock beneath which she crawled. It seems possible that she will reappear as a primary challenger to her former boss in 2020, and, most certainly, as a Presidential contender in 2024.

VAST INTERNATIONAL COALITION OF THREE COUNTRIES BOMB EMPTY SYRIAN ROOMS

by Trad News

A vast international coalition of nations, spanning the world from Washington to London, over the English Channel to Paris, and then back to Washington again, has taken action to show its opposition to unverified videos of children having water poured on them and crying.

IF THE NEOCONS ARE WRONG, WHY ARE THE RUSSIANS ACTING AS IF THEY ARE RIGHT?

by Brett Stevens

Trump struck Syria, and the Alt Right lost its mind. They had hoped that Trump would go farther to the Alt Right, when in fact he has always been a moderate who likes cultivating opposites under his roof so he can pick the right decision on a case-by-case basis. Key fact: the man still believes in democracy and diversity. He is step one of a hundred back toward health.

By the same token, it is foolish to describe this as a strike on Syria when it was actually a warning to Russia. Trump blew up a few older planes at an airfield where Russian personnel had been present. He gave the Syrians time to remove all equipment and people they cared about. He warned the Russians in advance. This was not a military strike, but a signal to Putin: go no further.

THE PARALLEL GROWTH OF “BIG GOVERNMENT” AND “MOVEMENT CONSERVATISM”

A slightly modified version of this article originally appeared in The Great Purge: The Deformation of the Conservative Movement, edited by Paul Gottfried and Richard Spencer, and issued by Washington Summit Publishers in 2015.

by Keith Preston

Among the few successes the “conservative movement” can reasonably claim is having established the descriptive epithet of “big government” as a term of opprobrium in American political discourse. Indeed, a review of the literature, websites, and broadcast media associated with American conservatism reveals “big government” to be an ongoing and consistent target of rhetorical invective. For example, an August 15, 2014 piece of commentary appearing on the Townhall.Com website bears the title, “Dismantling Big Government One Step at a Time.”[1] Two days earlier, a post with the curious title of “How to Transcend Obamacare” appeared on National Review Online, and discussed the widely held conservative view that Obamacare “represents our best opportunity to roll back Big Government” largely because of the “less entrenched” nature of this “newest entitlement.”[2] Even the most casual conversation with rank and file conservative movement activists, dutiful Republican voters, fans of “conservative” talk radio, and loyal viewers of the FOX news network will reveal a mentality that regards “big government” as a primordial evil approximating that of original sin. It is therefore fascinating to compare the striking difference between the movement’s rhetoric and stated ambitions, and the reality of what the conservative movement has actually produced when it has had access to power in the political realm.

THE 'SHIT HAPPENS' FOREIGN POLICY

America's answer to Polandball.

by Colin Liddell

"The West is the best and we'll do the rest," sang Jim Morrison on that damning 1967 indictment of poor parenting and pharmacological excess, The End. Despite it's intended irony, the lyric nevertheless reflected the realities underlying US foreign policy at the time, which consisted of believing in the Western way, stepping up to the mark when challenged, taking responsibility for what happened on one's watch, and trying to win in the cold light of day and with the world's media watching. Heck, America still gets it in the neck for that famous photo of one gook shooting another gook in the head.

With the Soviet Union doing such a good job of being a shining beacon of progress in those days with its cheap shots against neo-colonialism, inequalities of wealth, and mean differences in height and body mass, America had to do its best to fight the good fight and to go down with the ship when holed below the waterline, as it did in the 1970s, a decade which can be likened to one enormous session of navel gazing: cue Apocalypse Now.