July 4, 2020, Independence Day in the United States, saw something that hasn’t happened in the US before, the American military turn on a sitting president. The accusations were something new as well, equating Donald Trump with infamous American traitor, Benedict Arnold, the turncoat that gave the British the vital American fortress at West Point during a critical juncture of the Revolutionary War.
We need to take a second here and understand where America is currently. Tens of millions are unemployed in the United States. Tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of small to medium businesses are closed, never to reopen, or nearly there.
Tens of millions of Americans are unable to pay rent or face losing their homes.
Past that, millions, many millions of young people have missed a year of their lives, school, jobs, marriages, families have put off having children, and all live in fear and uncertainty.
Making things so much worse is a president who lies with every breath, who is rambling and incoherent at times and at others spews venom and hatred.
For weeks now, former military and intelligence leaders, some actually credible people, others “not so much,” having been calling for Trump to step down from office.
Now there is a new accusation, one that might hold more water, as it were, when bolstered by accusations made against Trump by John Bolton, is former National Security Advisor.
Bolton has accused Trump of selling out to China over personal business deals, altering American policy and turning to China for help politically inside the US.
Bolton, it seems, believes “RussiaGate” was always “ChinaGate.”
Adding to the mix we have another set of accusations, this time from Trump’s niece, whose family expose’ postulates that President Trump is and has been criminally insane much of his life. Mary Trump is a licensed Clinical Psychologist.
Both Bolton and Mary Trump are subject to rather extreme efforts from the White House to limit their damage to Trump’s already tattered reputation, efforts made, according to former Trump attorney and now convicted felon Michael Cohen, over 500 times against not just former employees but almost everyone Trump has ever come in contact with.
Trump has, over and over, explained that Bolton can never be believed as he is a lifelong liar and incompetent but it hasn’t escaped the public, and above all members of the military and intelligence community, that Trump says this of all of his appointees, such as former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, after they leave.
That Trump has purposefully surrounded himself with easily discredited individuals has not escaped the notice of those who fear for the United States under Trump’s leadership.
Now newer groups are forming, big numbers, rank and file military, not just Washington bureaucrats and paper shufflers, and the new Russia accusation which we will discuss may well be a “deal breaker” for Trump.
The rationale behind the accusations coming from various groups, all building to a credence on July 4, were many but one stands out above all others and that one is most likely a hoax, the accusation that Trump ignored or actively covered up reports that Russia had financed the murder of American troops in Afghanistan by the Taliban.
The CIA report of this is real, real to the extent that the CIA actually reported it as are the other reports, despite denials, that Trump was given this information and failed to act.
You see, Trump has a long history of acting on spurious reports when the need suits him politically, two missile attacks on Syria in retaliation for gas attacks reported by terrorists on their own Facebook accounts.
One step further, it is bad enough receiving reports from the real CIA, an organization that exists to fabricate intelligence. What Trump did was to turn to, of all things, his daughter Ivanka, a failed purse designer, who “found” what she deemed, in her infinite wisdom, “reliable and actionable intelligence” on an al Qaeda Facebook posting.
Trump politically needed to attack Syria, ordering the missile launch while eating chocolate cake while at a state dinner with the Chinese premier, as a way of showing how cavalier he could act in what he thought was an act of “presidentialism.”
The murder, at Trump’s orders, of Iran’s Soleimani was similarly justified, fake CIA reports supplemented by faked intelligence from Israel.
Soon thereafter, Iran literally stomped on US forces in Iraq in retaliation, a move Trump chose to pretend never happened. Anyone who thinks that wasn’t noticed around the world is blind and deaf.
However, as events spiral out of control during the vital election year of 2020, the retaliation comes from inside the United States.
The move by American military, overtly former but less overtly active military as well over largely unfounded accusations made against Russia represents a new phase. What no one has done is ask why Russia would do such a thing.
If Russia were to seek retaliation against the US, there are more than a few incidents where the US has been more than complicit in the killing of Russians and has been allowed to get away with it. The May 2018 killing of Russian military contractors at Khasham in Syria is one of these as is the downing of a Russian transport plane over the Mediterranean in 2018, blamed on Israel but clearly the US had a hand in the event.
As for others, the US has been involved in hundreds of provocations inside Syria, ramming Russian vehicles or in supplying avionics for ISIS and al Qaeda drone attacks on Russian forces.
Still, the proof of Russian retaliation against the US is 3rd party and anecdotal but, as it comes at a time when Donald Trump sought to use the US military illegally against peaceful demonstrators inside his how country, the accusations against Russia served the purposes of commanders, current and former, who had simply “had enough.”
Thus, those who seek to blame Russia do so simply because it provides yet another avenue to weaken Trump’s dictatorial ambitions.
Behind this further is the lingering story of Trump’s own military record, having avoided service in Vietnam by faking an injury to his foot using a report from a doctor who rented space from Trump’s “junklord” father, Fred.
That report is quite substantiated and was repeated in attacks on Trump made by VoteVets, an organization tied to General Wesley Clark, Clinton’s choice for Supreme Commander of NATO.
Those who dodged military service but who love war, hug the flag and love saluting and praising heroes are called “Chickenhawks.” Bush 43, who now is a leading critic of Trump, was himself a Chickenhawk, having served in a military reserve unit during the Vietnam War that was restricted from combat or deployment of any kind.
Another blistering attack on Trump came from his own former Secretary of Defense, General James Mattis. From his statement, cosigned by 6000 prominent American war veterans:
“I have watched this week’s unfolding events, angry and appalled. The words “Equal Justice Under Law” are carved in the pediment of the United States Supreme Court. This is precisely what protesters are rightly demanding. It is a wholesome and unifying demand – one that all of us should be able to get behind. We must not be distracted by a small number of lawbreakers. The protests are defined by tens of thousands of people of conscience who are insisting that we live up to our values – our values as people and our values as a nation.
When I joined the military, some 50 years ago, I swore and oath to support and defend the Constitution. Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstances to violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens – much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander in chief, with military leadership standing alongside.
We must reject any thinking of our cities as a “battlespace” that our uniformed military is called upon to “dominate.” At home, we should use our military only when requested to do so, on very rare occasions, by state governors. Militarizing our response, as we witnessed in Washington D.C., sets up a conflict – a false conflict – between military and civilian society. It erodes the moral ground that ensures a trusted bond between men and women in uniform and the society they are sworn to protect, and of which they themselves are a part. Keeping public order rests with civilian state and local leaders who best understand their communities and are answerable to them.
James Madison wrote in Federalist 14 that “America united with a handful of troops, or without a single soldier, exhibits a more forbidding posture to a foreign ambition than America disunited, with a hundred thousand veterans ready for combat.” We do not need to militarize our response to protests.”
Then Mattis got to the meat of the issue:
“Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people – does not even pretend to try. Instead he tries to divide us. We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership. We can unite without him…”
VoteVets went further, and this organization increasingly represents “rank and file” of not only veterans but serving military who are discouraged with America’s militaristic stance and Trump’s endless list of wars he says need to be fought, by others of course. From Huffington Post:
“Donald Trump has taken over from Benedict Arnold as ‘America’s number one traitor,’ according to a group of veterans seeking to vote the president out of office this November.
‘No one has betrayed those in uniform like Donald Trump,’ said the voiceover in the latest ad released by the progressive PAC VoteVets on Friday.
The 65-second spot references Trump’s siding with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin over U.S. intelligence on Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election and his dismissal of reports that U.S. officials knew Russia allegedly paid Taliban members to kill American troops.
‘This July Fourth, Benedict Arnold can step aside, because Benedict Donald is America’s number one traitor – he consorts with a foreign enemy, puts bounties on the heads of American troops. He takes the word of Putin over the best American military intelligence.’
The #BenedictDonald and #TRE45ON hashtags trended on Twitter as the ad was viewed more than 2 million times in its first 12 hours online.”
Conclusion
Politically, in the US, there are ways for those who hold the presidency to insulate themselves from the consequences of criminal acts. Above all, loyalty to Israel, particularly above any US interest is paramount.
Key pro-Israeli business leaders, particularly Las Vegas/Macao gambling boss Sheldon Adelson, the single biggest financier of Trump’s campaign and the Republican Party, protects Trump from investigation. It was Sheldon Adelson’s billions that paid for the votes that protected Trump from impeachment in the US Senate. In return, Trump fully and openly supports Netanyahu’s illegal seizure of the West Bank, something even British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has refused to do.
With the US military increasingly abandoning Trump, only a major terror attack on the United States could save the Trump presidency from its current morass. However, with Trump blamed by many, perhaps even a clear majority, for killing over 130,000 Americans with the COVID virus, as of early July 2020, even a 9/11 type attack would now seem trivial.
Gordon Duff is a Marine combat veteran of the Vietnam War that has worked on veterans and POW issues for decades and consulted with governments challenged by security issues. He’s a senior editor and chairman of the board of Veterans Today, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”