(ANTIMEDIA Op-ed) In a bold move, President Trump condemned the violent, oppressive behavior and policies of the U.S. and its allies while speaking at the U.N. this week.
He described the decline of “a wealthy country, with a rich history and culture, into an economically depleted rogue state whose chief exports are violence, bloodshed, and chaos.”
His description accurately fits the United States, which has devolved from a country with high-minded (if not fully realized) ideals, courageous struggles for human and civil rights, and a strong sense of independence into a nationalistic, militant nation with a fledgling economy and an increasingly impoverished population whose government has spent its wealth arming radical extremists and waging endless war. The U.S. government has sowed chaos around the world over the years, from Iran to Iraq to Libya to Chile and Guatemala, spilling the blood of countless innocents as it plays geopolitical chess to favor its own hegemonic interests.
Sad!
Trump also called out the despicable behavior of U.S. allies, blasting entities that use their oil profits to support “terrorists that kill innocent Muslims.” He asserted that such wealth is used to “fuel Yemen’s civil war, and undermine peace throughout the entire Middle East,” an apt description of the Saudi Arabian Kingdom.
“We cannot let a murderous regime continue these destabilizing activities…,” he bravely said.
Further, apparently condemning the behavior of both the U.S. and its allies, Trump warned that evildoers “must stop supporting terrorists, begin serving [their] own people, and respect the sovereign rights of [their] neighbors.”
It is easy to make the case that the Saudis themselves are engaging in terrorism by directly targeting civilians in Yemen for a political purpose.
During his speech at the U.N., Trump described all of the behavior displayed by the U.S. and Saudi Arabia — but he wasn’t talking about either. In all of the excerpts listed above, he was unironically talking about Iran, condemning the admittedly repressive regime for the exact same crimes the U.S. government and its allies commit.
The U.S. is responsible both for war crimes and for arming radical Islamists — who Trump loves to condemn — from the mujahideen in the 1980s to “moderate” (read: al-Qaeda-affiliated) rebels in Syria. The U.S. and its allies have grotesquely violated the “sovereign rights” of countries around the world for decades, and the Saudis are actively violating the rights of their neighbor, Yemen, using American-made weapons to maintain power for their murderous regime while they destabilize the region.The Saudis have been documented supporting ISIS and using their oil profits to export radical ideologies while beheading, flogging, and attempting to crucify political dissidents at home (candidate Trump condemned the Saudis’ alleged support for terrorism before selling them billions of dollars in arms as president; he also criticized their human rights record while before he rose to power).
Laughably, in his speech he bragged about the U.S.’ success in battling ISIS in Syria, completely ignoring Iranian-backed militias’ contributions to defeating the terror group while actually respecting Syria’s sovereignty (Iran is an ally of the Syrian government whereas the U.S. does not have official authorization to be there).
Further, Trump’s own administration has admitted Iran is complying with the nuclear deal Trump vehemently condemns. “No nation on Earth has an interest in seeing this band of criminals arm itself with nuclear weapons and missiles,” he said at the U.N.
He bemoaned the possibility of other countries like Iran and North Korea having nuclear weapons while his own war criminal government holds one of the largest caches of nukes in the world and is the only country to have ever intentionally used them on civilian populations.
Even worse, Trump’s claims about Iran’s undemocratic government may be true, but this modern reality did not come about absent American influence. The Iranian regime is repressive. It does support terror groups like Hezbollah (though Hezbollah is far less globally influential than ISIS, which, again, the Saudis have been exposed for fostering and funding). Iran’s government is no friend to freedom, but how did Iran get to this point?
Might it have something to do with, yet again, the U.S. government’s own flagrant disrespect for the sovereignty of other nations? Its own proliferation of bloodshed and chaos? Is toppling Iran’s democratically elected government for the sake of oil profits in 1953 — installing the ousted leader with an autocratic shah — supposed to qualify as ‘respecting sovereign rights’? Is the world supposed to pretend that over two decades of such an oppressive, American-installed monarch were entirely unrelated to the reactionary Iranian revolution that broke out against that ruler in 1979 and the political conditions that have developed since?
As the president grandstands to the world, boasting of American compassion and spewing American exceptionalism while condemning his enemies for the exact same behavior of the empire he now rules over, it is clear the emperor has no clothes.
Op-ed / Creative Commons / Anti-Media / Report a typo
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