By Eric Margolis
`Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn and cauldron bubble.’ The witches in Macbeth.
May 23, 2017 "Information Clearing House" - President Trump’s administration is now at a high boil as he faces intense heat from all sides. The Republican Party has backed away from their embattled president. US intelligence agencies are baying for his blood. The US media plays the role of the witches in ‘Macbeth’ as it plots against Trump.
One increasingly hears whispers about impeachment or the wonderful 1964 film about a military coup in Washington, ‘Seven Days in May.’
As in Shakespeare’s King Lear, Trump stands almost alone on a blasted heath, howling that he has been betrayed. The world watches on in dismay and shock.
One thing is clear: the US presidency has become too powerful when far-fetched talk of possibly Russian involvement in Trump’s campaign could send world financial markets into a crash dive. And when Trump’s ill informed, off the cuff remarks can endanger the fragile global balance of power.
Trump has made this huge mess and must now live with it. Yes, he is being treated unfairly by appointment of a special prosecutor when the titanic sleaze of the Clintons was never investigated. But that’s what happens when you are widely detested. No mercy for Trump, a man without any mercy for others.
Trump is not a Manchurian candidate put into office by Moscow though his bungling aides and iffy financial deals often made it appear so. His choice of the fanatical Islamophobe Gen. Michael Flynn was an awful blunder. Flynn was revealed to have taken money from Turkey to alter US Mideast policy. Who else paid off Flynn? Disgraceful.
But what about all the politicians and officials who took and take money from the Saudis and Gulf emirates, or Sheldon Adelson, the ardent advocate of Greater Israel? What about political payoffs to the flat-earth Republicans who now act as Israel’s amen chorus in Washington?
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The growing scandals that are engulfing Trump’s presidency seem likely to delay if not defeat the president’s laudatory proposals to lower taxes, prune the bureaucracy, clean up intelligence, end America’s foreign wars, and impose some sort of peace in the Mideast.
By recklessly proposing these reforms at the same time, Trump earned the hatred of the media, federal government, all intelligence agencies, and the Israel lobby, not to mention ecologists, free-thinkers, cultured people, academia and just about everyone else who does not raise cotton or abuse animals for a living.
No wonder Trump stands almost alone, like Rome’s Horatio at the Bridge. One increasingly hears in Washington ‘what Trump needs is a little war.’
That would quickly wrong-foot his critics and force the neocon media – Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and CNN – to back him. We already saw this happen when Trump fired salvos of cruise missiles at Syria. It would also provide welcome distraction from the investigations of Trump that are beginning.
Trump has appeared to be pawing the ground in a desire to attack naughty North Korea or Syria, and maybe even Yemen, Somalia or Sudan. A war against any of these small nations would allow the president to don military gear and beat his chest – as did the dunce George W. Bush. Bomb the usual Arabs!
The Pentagon wants 50,000 more troops for Afghanistan. US warplanes are buzzing angry North Korea. In Syria, the US and Russia are a falafel’s length from open clashes. Now is the time for extreme caution, but an enraged President Trump, who avoided military service in his youth, is ready to lash out.
For Trump, next week’s visit to the Mideast should prove a welcome respite after the madness of Washington. But isolated and besieged as Trump is, he may have to depend more on support from Israel and its American partisans rather than forcing a Mideast peace settlement. Israel insists there be no change to the status quo that leaves Palestine an open air prison.
America has not so far become great again.
Eric S. Margolis is an award-winning, internationally syndicated columnist. His articles have appeared in the New York Times, the International Herald Tribune the Los Angeles Times, Times of London, the Gulf Times, the Khaleej Times, Nation – Pakistan, Hurriyet, – Turkey, Sun Times Malaysia and other news sites in Asia. https://ericmargolis.com/