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Regime Change
Comes Home: The CIA’s Overt Threats against Trump
By James Petras
January 20,
2017 "Information
Clearing House"
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The norms of US
capitalist democracy include the election of
presidential candidates through competitive elections,
unimpeded by force and violence by the permanent
institutions of the state. Voter manipulation has
occurred during the recent elections, as in the case of
the John F. Kennedy victory in 1960 and the George W.
Bush victory over ‘Al’ Gore in 2000. But despite the
dubious electoral outcomes in these cases, the
‘defeated’ candidate conceded and sought via
legislation, judicial rulings, lobbying and peaceful
protests to register their opposition.
These norms are no
longer operative. During the election process, and in
the run-up to the inauguration of US President-Elect
Donald Trump, fundamental electoral institutions were
challenged and coercive institutions were activated to
disqualify the elected president and desperate overt
public pronouncements threatened the entire electoral
order.
We will proceed by
outlining the process that is used to undermine the
constitutional order, including the electoral process
and the transition to the inauguration of the elected
president.
Regime Change in America
In recent
times, elected officials in the US and their state
security organizations have often intervened against
independent foreign governments, which challenged
Washington ’s quest for global domination. This was
especially true during the eight years of President
Barack Obama’s administration where the violent ousting
of presidents and prime ministers through US-engineered
coups were routine – under an unofficial doctrine of
‘regime change’.
The violation
of constitutional order and electoral norms of other
countries has become enshrined in US policy. All US
political, administrative and security structures are
involved in this process. The policymakers would insist
that there was a clear distinction between operating
within constitutional norms at home and pursuing
violent, illegal regime change operations abroad.
Today the
distinction between overseas and domestic norms has been
obliterated by the state and quasi-official mass media.
The US security apparatus is now active in manipulating
the domestic democratic process of electing leaders and
transitioning administrations.
The decisive
shift to ‘regime change’ at home has been a continual
process organized, orchestrated and implemented by
elected and appointed officials within the Obama regime
and by a multiplicity of political action organizations,
which cross traditional ideological boundaries.
Regime change
has several components leading to the final solution:
First and foremost, the political parties seek to
delegitimize the election process and undermine the
President-elect. The mass media play a major role
demonizing President-Elect Trump with personal gossip,
decades-old sex scandals and fabricated interviews and
incidents.
Alongside the
media blitz, leftist and rightist politicians have come
together to question the legitimacy of the November 2016
election results. Even after a recount confirmed
Trump’s victory, a massive propaganda campaign was
launched to impeach the president-elect even before he
takes office – by claiming Trump was an ‘enemy agent’.
The Democratic
Party and the motley collection of right-left anti-Trump
militants sought to blackmail members of the Electoral
College to change their vote in violation of their own
mandate as state electors. This was unsuccessful, but
unprecedented.
Their overt
attack on US electoral norms then turned into a bizarre
and virulent anti-Russia campaign designed to paint the
elected president (a billionaire New York real estate
developer and US celebrity icon) as a ‘tool of Moscow
.’ The mass media and powerful elements within the CIA,
Congress and Obama Administration insisted that Trump’s
overtures toward peaceful, diplomatic relations with
Russia were acts of treason.
The outgoing
President Obama mobilized the entire leadership of the
security state to fabricate ‘dodgy dossiers’ linking
Donald Trump to the Russian President Vladimir Putin,
insisting that Trump was a stooge or ‘vulnerable to KGB
blackmail’. The CIA’s phony documents (arriving via a
former British intelligence operative-now free lance
‘security’ contractor) were passed around among the
major corporate media who declined to publish the leaked
gossip. Months of attempts to get the US media to ‘take
the bite’ on the ‘smelly’ dossier were unsuccessful.
The semi-senile US Senator John McCain (‘war-hero’ and
hysterical Trump opponent) then volunteered to plop the
reeking gossip back onto the lap of the CIA Director
Brennan and demand the government ‘act on these vital
revelations’!
Under scrutiny
by serious researchers, the ‘CIA dossier’ was proven to
be a total fabrication by way of a former ‘British
official – now – in – hiding…!’ Undaunted, despite
being totally discredited, the CIA leadership continued
to attack the President-Elect. Trump likened the CIA’s
‘dirty pictures hatchet job’ to the thuggish behavior of
the Nazis and clearly understood how the CIA leadership
was involved in a domestic coup d’état.
CIA
Director John Brennan, architect of numerous ‘regime
changes’ overseas had brought his skills home – against
the President-elect. For the first time in US history,
a CIA director openly charged a President or
President-elect with betraying the country and
threatened the incoming Chief Executive. He coldly
warned Trump to ‘just make
sure he understands that the implications and impacts
(of Trump’s policies) on the United States could be
profound…”
Clearly CIA
Director Brennan has not only turned the CIA into a
sinister, unaccountable power dictating policy to an
elected US president, by taking on the tone of a Mafia
Capo, he threatens the physical security of the incoming
leader.
From a Scratch to Gangrene
The worst
catastrophe that could fall on the United States would
be a conspiracy of leftist and rightist politicos, the
corporate mass media and the ‘progressive’ websites and
pundits providing ideological cover for a
CIA-orchestrated ‘regime change’.
Whatever the
limitations of our electoral norms- and there are many –
they are now being degraded and discarded in a march
toward an elite coup, involving elements of the
militarist empire and ‘in`telligence’ hierarchy.
Mass
propaganda, a ‘red-brown alliance, salacious gossip and
accusations of treason (‘Trump, the Stooge of Moscow’)
resemble the atmosphere leading to the rise of the Nazi
state in Germany . A broad ‘coalition’ has joined hands
with a most violent and murderous organization (the CIA)
and imperial political leadership, which views overtures
to peace to be high treason because it limits their
drive for world power and a US dominated global
political order.
James Petras
is a Bartle Professor (Emeritus) of Sociology at
Binghamton University, New York.
http://petras.lahaine.org/ |
