Showing posts with label Ben Armbruster. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ben Armbruster. Show all posts

Thursday, October 24, 2019

Trump On Going To War With Iran: ‘We May Have To’

Donald Trump addresses the NRA (Gage Skidmore via Flickr)
By Ben Armbruster
President Trump said this week that he may have to start a new war, specifically singling out Iran.
“I’m trying to get out of wars. But we may have to get in wars, too. OK? We may have to get in wars,” he said. “We’re better prepared than we’ve ever been. If Iran does something, they’ll be hit like they’ve never been hit before. I mean, we have things that we’re looking at.”
Last year, Jim Lobe noted on this website a troublesome line of thinking from  Trump’s past: using war to distract the masses. Indeed, Lobe identified at least six times between late 2011 and early 2013 that Trump predicted via Twitter that President Obama was going to attack Iran as a way of diverting attention from his domestic political misfortunes.
Given his impending impeachment, is Trump signaling that he’s prepared to test this particular theory?
See Lobe’s full piece below:

MIGHT A BELEAGUERED TRUMP GO TO WAR…AGAINST IRAN?

by Jim Lobe
Let’s assume for a minute—and it’s a perfectly reasonable assumption under the circumstances—that President Trump’s political problems and popularity only get worse over the next months, both before and after the elections. What with anonymous “senior officials,” new revelations from “crazytown” provoked by Bob Woodward’s latest book, new indictments and/or plea bargains flowing out of the Mueller investigation, let alone little to no likelihood of a real breakthrough on North Korea or anywhere else., it’s difficult to see how Trump’s and the GOP’s current downward trajectory will be easily reversed.
So, faced with these prospects, what might a politically beleaguered president do to rally the public behind him or stave off the worst? Of course, it’s a cliché that leaders in trouble, both authoritarian and democratically elected, are often tempted to invent or exploit or manipulate a foreign crisis—including even war—against a convenient “enemy” in order to at least distract attention, if not reverse their fortunes. History is replete with examples.
Would Trump be so tempted?
Judging from all we have learned about him, you bet.
And what “enemy” would likely be the target?
Again, judging from all we know, Iran must rank at the top.
And how can we be so certain?
Because of Trump’s tweets when he thought that President Obama found himself in political trouble or on the defensive.
Trump Attacks Obama
Consider these tweets by Trump between 2011 to 2013:

So, Trump clearly believes that war, or at least military action of some kind against a perceived enemy—specifically, Iran—is a good recipe for reversing the political fortunes of weak or failing presidencies. In fact, it seems to be his first impulse. The association between political problems and taking them out militarily on Iran appears virtually automatic in his mind.
These assessments by Trump took place when he wasn’t even a presidential candidate, let alone president. It was a time when Bibi Netanyahu and Sheldon Adelson and the other billionaire donors from the Republican Jewish Coalition who are backing him financially and have already gotten more than their money’s worth on Israel-Palestinian issues—let alone Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) and his partner and mentor in war crime, UAE Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed (MbZ)—weren’t bending his ear about the evils of the Islamic Republic. Nor was it a time when anti-Iran super-hawks John Bolton and Rudy Giuliani (both recipients of the MEK’s largesse) or Secretary of State Mike Pompeo were among his principal “national security” advisers.
My own guess is that military action against Iran—absent some very clear and dramatic provocation—would prove politically counter-productive because all but the most diehard Trumpists would see the cynical motives that provoked it. But perhaps that perception would not be immediate. In the absence of U.S. casualties—say, a good, “clean” series of air strikes long advocated by Bolton and others against nuclear facilities and command-and-control and training centers—it might indeed rally much of the country behind him, at least temporarily.
Adults in the Room?
But that scenario assumes that Trump would carry out an unprovoked attack, a possible but unlikely development that, for example, Pentagon chief James Mattis, despite his long-held hostility toward Iran, and the Joint Chiefs are almost certain to oppose, and quite vehemently. Even Pompeo, despite his past advocacy of preemptive bombing of Iran’s nuclear sites, would very probably balk at such an action given his position of trying to persuade Washington’s traditional allies that the Trump administration is not out to obliterate the Western-led post-World War II global order. Perhaps the “adults in the room” and the anonymous “senior official(s)” who insist that Trump can be controlled and that his worst most reckless instincts will not prevail will indeed have the authority and the will to prevent such an eventuality. One can presumably take heart from the fact that the three military operations that Trump reportedly urged on his top officials in the last 18 months—against Syria, Venezuela, and North Korea—never happened.
That said, however, what of the possibility that Israel, the Saudis, or the Emiratis—or some permutation of those three—is able to stage a provocation or themselves initiate an attack of some kind that could quickly escalate out of control and involve U.S. forces? This site has not infrequently over the past year and a half published posts that raise this possibility in any number of hotspots throughout the Middle East, from Syria and the Golan Heights to the Bab-el-Mandeb off Yemen to just about anywhere in the Persian Gulf itself.
Consider further that, given the likelihood that Trump’s political position may be in terminal decline and that the Republicans will lose control of at least the House of Representatives, Netanyahu, MbS, and MbZ—either individually or collectively—may believe that the period between now and the installation of a new Congress that might seriously constrain Trump’s (or Pence’s) freedom of action may be the optimal window for initiating a conflict with Iran. This is not a prediction, of course, but it’s a possibility that, given Trump’s past tweets about the political desirability of war with Iran, should be taken seriously.
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Saturday, June 01, 2019

How Mainstream U.S. Media Is Failing Us On Trump And Bolton’s March To War With Iran


Foundation for Defense of Democracies CEO Mark Dubowitz
by Ben Armbruster 
The Trump administration and its allies are slow-walking the United States into war with Iran, and, with a few notable exceptions, mainstream U.S. media is helping them.
Much of this assistance has been overt. Just like during the run-up to the Iraq war, outlets like CNN, NBC, and the New York Times have in recent weeks simply parroted without scrutiny claims from Bolton and other administration officials of a dire Iranian threat based on intelligence no one has seen (these claims would in turn compel officials within the U.S. intelligence community to tell reporters that the intelligence in question shows nothing new or that it was being blown out of proportion).
But the media is also failing us in other, less overt ways, namely by quoting and promoting those pushing for regime change and/or war and presenting them as, at best, neutral “experts,” or at worst, proponents of a “strong” or “tough” U.S. policy vis-a-vis Iran.
In a story earlier this week about how President Trump is showing signs of souring on Bolton, particularly because of Bolton’s quest for war with Iran, the Times gave Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) CEO Mark Dubowitz prominent billing to praise Bolton as the one giving Trump the “diplomatic space for him to go back and forth between a very hard-line position and holding talks.”
Except the reality is that Dubowitz has no interest in the U.S. holding talks with Iran. In fact, over the past decade or so, he’s essentially been the titular head of the pro-regime change/Iran war movement that worked to prevent President Obama from reaching a nuclear agreement with Iran, and subsequently pushed to destroy it.
Dubowitz himself has called for regime change in Iran and the organization he runs, FDD, has been underwritten by right-wing billionaire funders Bernie “I think Iran is the devil” Marcus, and Sheldon Adelson, who’s on record calling for the U.S. to nuke Iran. FDD has also been the leader in promoting the false narrative that Iran is in league with al-Qaeda, and its staffers regularly publish op-eds and papers pushing a militaristic approach or outright calling for war with Iran. Indeed, Bolton recruited one of his most hawkish staffers, Richard Goldberg, from FDD. Months before joining the administration, Goldberg wrote a piece urging Trump to attack Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.
The Times story mentioned none of this. It actually portrayed FDD somewhat positively, identifying it only as a “group that advocates a tough approach to Iran.”
USA Today made a similar mistake this week in a piece about Bolton’s relationship with Trump on Iran. The story identified Dubowitz as an “expert” and quoted him praising Bolton’s aggressive push toward conflict with Iran as “a well-orchestrated campaign,” and downplaying any worries that Bolton has outsize influence over Trump and his Iran policy.
Of course Dubowitz would want to downplay any public perception that Bolton is controlling Trump’s Iran policy, not only to calm concerns about a potential war with Iran, but also to placate Trump himself, who has a penchant for firing aides after conventional wisdom emerges that they have more power than he does.
Again, USA Today made no mention that Dubowitz is a regime change proponent or that employees of his organization have called for war. Instead, the piece identified FDD favorably as “a Washington-based foreign policy research institute that supports strong pressure on Iran.”
And if “strong pressure on Iran” and a “tough approach to Iran,” as the Times put it, are euphemisms for FDD’s militaristic positions, why are USA Today and the New York Times portraying a hawkish Iran policy as “strong” and “tough”? Is pushing for regime change in Tehran or war with Iran—one that would likely dwarf the catastrophe that was the invasion of Iraq—a “tough” position? Do we look back on the Iraq war and say George W. Bush’s policy was “strong?” Or rather, is it strong and tough to organize and unite a broad international coalition—including U.S. adversaries China and Russia—to pressure Iran into an agreement that boxed in its nuclear program so that it could not build a nuclear weapon?
Unfortunately, reporters quote Dubowitz all the time without providing the proper context as to what he’s up to. And it’s somewhat understandable. He’s the CEO of an influential and well-funded “think tank,” a position that gives it, and Dubowitz, a fairly thick veneer of credibility. Moreover, oftentimes reporters don’t have time to dig deep into the details of their sourcing, particularly if the source in question is one many of their colleagues turn to, and has seemingly already been vetted.
But the reality is that FDD oozes with bad faith to cover for its subtle push for regime change in Iran. Dubowitz himself famously called for a “nix and fix” strategy with regard to the Iran nuclear deal—in that, he said Trump should withdraw from the agreement and negotiate a better one. While those who closely follow these issues were aware of Dubowitz’s disingenuousness at that time, the fact that he’s now promoting an astroturfed hashtag on Twitter—likely engineered with the help of FDD—calling for no deal at all should put to rest any notion that he, or FDD, has any interest in diplomacy with Iran.
Ben Armbruster is the communications director for Win Without War and previously served as National Security Editor at ThinkProgress.
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