[Peace-discuss] Wilkerson interview

[C. G. Estabrook]

And the US political establishment - which aggressively conducted “American empire war” in the previous administration (and long before) - very much wants us to believe that Trump is the problem - so that the war-making can continue undisturbed, with his departure. It’s a particularly cynical attempt to mislead US public opinion.

Trump was the first major party presidential candidate in 40 years to *attack* the government’s expanding neocon and and neolib policies (more war and more austerity). Those attacks made him president (not America racism, as the Democrats insisted.) But in office he’s largely adopted those policies. 

Obama was the first US president ever to be at war throughout two presidential terms, but we may with luck have an election between two candidates thrown up by the burgeoning populist wave, Trump and Sanders, populism being the conviction that "a virtuous and homogeneous people [is under attack from] a set of elites and dangerous ‘others’ who are together depicted as depriving (or attempting to deprive) the sovereign people of their rights, values, prosperity, identity, and voice.” 

The political establishment - working for the 1% - are desperate to see that the populist wave is suppressed (in both parties), and conventional candidates (like Pence and Biden) confront one another, so that American empire war & immiseration continue, regardless of the election returns.

========================
Wilkerson on 'Democracy Now': "America exists today to make war. How else do we interpret 19 straight years of war and no end in sight? It’s part of who we are. It’s part of what the American Empire is. We are going to lie, cheat and steal, as Pompeo is doing right now, as Trump is doing right now, as Esper is doing right now, as Lindsey Graham is doing right now, as Tom Cotton is doing right now, and a host of other members of my political party, the Republicans, are doing right now. We are going to cheat and steal to do whatever it is we have to do to continue this war complex. That’s the truth of it. And that’s the agony of it.

"What we saw President Trump do was not in President Trump’s character, really. Those boys and girls who were getting on those planes at Fort Bragg to augment forces in Iraq, if you looked at their faces and, even more importantly, if you looked at the faces of the families assembled along the line that they were traversing to get onto the airplanes, you saw a lot of Donald Trump’s base. That base voted for Donald Trump because he promised to end these endless wars. He promised to drain the swamp. Well, as I said, an alligator from that swamp jumped out and bit him. And when he ordered the killing of Qassem Soleimani, he was a member of the national security state in good standing. And all that state knows how to do is make war.”

At that point, Amy Goodman (speaking for the political establishment) says, "I want to turn to President Trump”! Of course she does.

—CGE


> On Jan 13, 2020, at 4:31 PM, Morton K. Brussel via Peace-discuss <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote:
> 
> As strong a statement as one is likely to encounter against Trump and Company.  I was impressed byhis fervor.
> 
> https://www.democracynow.org/2020/1/13/lawrence_wilkerson_american_empire_war?utm_source=Democracy+Now%21&utm_campaign=55dd9c28cd-Daily_Digest_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_fa2346a853-55dd9c28cd-190166725
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Peace-discuss mailing list
> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
> https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss