Trump bombed Iran and left America vulnerable to retaliation. That's no accident

Source: Raw Story · Bias: Far Left

Summary

History doesn’t repeat, as Mark Twain allegedly said, but it sure does seem to rhyme. And right now, the rhyme between the first year of the George W. Bush presidency and the first year of Donald Trump’s second term is staring us in the face and it’s getting scary.After “Poppy” George H.W. Bush finished his 1991 “little war” against Iraq, he left American troops stationed at Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia. Those soldiers on what Osama bin Laden considered sacred Muslim soil — the home to Mecca — became his primary grievance against America.He said so publicly, raving at the New York Times and anyone else who’d listen. American men were drinking alcohol and looking at pornography and thus defiling Saudi holy land, he said, and American women were showing their bare arms and driving cars in a country where such things are absolutely forbidden. When Bin Laden declared war on us, he meant it as part of a religious and moral crusade.That war came home on September 11, 2001, and it arrived at a miraculously convenient moment for an otherwise hapless George W. Bush. The new president had taken office under a cloud of illegitimacy after five Republicans on the Supreme Court, two of them appointed by his own father, stopped the Florida recount — that would have handed the election to Al Gore — and thus gave Bush the presidency.Millions of Americans believed the 2000 election had been stolen, between Jeb Bush purging 90,000 Black voters from the Florida rolls just before the election, and the five Republicans on the Court handing Bush the Oval Office. His approval ratings were mediocre at best, he had no mandate, and he struggled to find any sort of an agenda beyond more tax cuts for billionaires that could excite the public.Then the towers fell, and overnight Bush became the most popular president in the history of modern polling: his approval rating hit 90 percent. The man who’d been floundering became, overnight, a “wartime president,” which was exactly what he’d wanted all along.Back in 1999, Bush told his ghostwriter Mickey Herskowitz that if he ever got the presidency, what he really needed was a war:“One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander in chief ... My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it. If I have a chance to invade, if I had that much capital, I’m not going to waste it.”Bin Laden’s 9/11 attack on the US gave Bush his “chance to invade,” his war capital. He spent it to invade Iraq, a country that had nothing to do with the September 11 attacks, and to drive an even larger tax cut for billionaires than originally anticipated.Exposed by the Downing Street Memos, his administration had fabricated intelligence, ginned up fake connections between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, and lied about weapons of mass destruction. Hundreds of thousands of people died as a result of his lies, but Bush got his “successful presidency.”Now look at Trump.His poll numbers right now are worse than Bush’s were in the summer of 2001; worse in many regards than any president in polling history. His approval ratings on literally every topic — from immigration to ICE to taxes to inflation to healthcare, etc., etc. — are underwater and sinking.Further, there are allegations that the FBI is sitting on evidence related to claims Trump raped at least one and possibly two 13-year-old girls. His family is openly monetizing the presidency, with his nepo sons and son-in-law cutting real estate deals and cryptocurrency schemes with the governments of Saudi Arabia and the UAE while Trump pushes — against the advice of our intelligence agencies — to send advanced AI chips to those same countries.The corruption is so brazen it barely qualifies as corruption anymore. Trump and his lickspittles have pulled off what was previously unimaginable: the reinvention of government as a machine to generate profit for the ruling family — much like Saddam Hussein had done in Iraq and Vladimir Putin has done in Russia — all right out in plain sight.Meanwhile, Trump’s ICE agents are terrorizing communities across the country, beating and intimidating American citizens, deporting legal residents without due process, and violating the Fourth and Fifth Amendments so routinely that constitutional scholars have stopped being shocked and started being terrified. Reports of ICE-related deaths of American citizens like Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis are piling up as the Trump regime refuses to cooperate in state-level murder investigations.On top of all these crises, the electoral landscape for November is looking catastrophic for Republicans.

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Trump bombed Iran and left America vulnerable to retaliation. That's no accident
Raw Story

Trump bombed Iran and left America vulnerable to retaliation. That's no accident

Far Left

History doesn’t repeat, as Mark Twain allegedly said, but it sure does seem to rhyme. And right now, the rhyme between the first year of the George W. Bush presidency and the first year of Donald Trump’s second term is staring us in the face and it’s getting scary.After “Poppy” George H.W. Bush finished his 1991 “little war” against Iraq, he left American troops stationed at Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia. Those soldiers on what Osama bin Laden considered sacred Muslim soil — the home to Mecca — became his primary grievance against America.He said so publicly, raving at the New York Times and anyone else who’d listen. American men were drinking alcohol and looking at pornography and thus defiling Saudi holy land, he said, and American women were showing their bare arms and driving cars in a country where such things are absolutely forbidden. When Bin Laden declared war on us, he meant it as part of a religious and moral crusade.That war came home on September 11, 2001, and it arrived at a miraculously convenient moment for an otherwise hapless George W. Bush. The new president had taken office under a cloud of illegitimacy after five Republicans on the Supreme Court, two of them appointed by his own father, stopped the Florida recount — that would have handed the election to Al Gore — and thus gave Bush the presidency.Millions of Americans believed the 2000 election had been stolen, between Jeb Bush purging 90,000 Black voters from the Florida rolls just before the election, and the five Republicans on the Court handing Bush the Oval Office. His approval ratings were mediocre at best, he had no mandate, and he struggled to find any sort of an agenda beyond more tax cuts for billionaires that could excite the public.Then the towers fell, and overnight Bush became the most popular president in the history of modern polling: his approval rating hit 90 percent. The man who’d been floundering became, overnight, a “wartime president,” which was exactly what he’d wanted all along.Back in 1999, Bush told his ghostwriter Mickey Herskowitz that if he ever got the presidency, what he really needed was a war:“One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander in chief ... My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it. If I have a chance to invade, if I had that much capital, I’m not going to waste it.”Bin Laden’s 9/11 attack on the US gave Bush his “chance to invade,” his war capital. He spent it to invade Iraq, a country that had nothing to do with the September 11 attacks, and to drive an even larger tax cut for billionaires than originally anticipated.Exposed by the Downing Street Memos, his administration had fabricated intelligence, ginned up fake connections between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, and lied about weapons of mass destruction. Hundreds of thousands of people died as a result of his lies, but Bush got his “successful presidency.”Now look at Trump.His poll numbers right now are worse than Bush’s were in the summer of 2001; worse in many regards than any president in polling history. His approval ratings on literally every topic — from immigration to ICE to taxes to inflation to healthcare, etc., etc. — are underwater and sinking.Further, there are allegations that the FBI is sitting on evidence related to claims Trump raped at least one and possibly two 13-year-old girls. His family is openly monetizing the presidency, with his nepo sons and son-in-law cutting real estate deals and cryptocurrency schemes with the governments of Saudi Arabia and the UAE while Trump pushes — against the advice of our intelligence agencies — to send advanced AI chips to those same countries.The corruption is so brazen it barely qualifies as corruption anymore. Trump and his lickspittles have pulled off what was previously unimaginable: the reinvention of government as a machine to generate profit for the ruling family — much like Saddam Hussein had done in Iraq and Vladimir Putin has done in Russia — all right out in plain sight.Meanwhile, Trump’s ICE agents are terrorizing communities across the country, beating and intimidating American citizens, deporting legal residents without due process, and violating the Fourth and Fifth Amendments so routinely that constitutional scholars have stopped being shocked and started being terrified. Reports of ICE-related deaths of American citizens like Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis are piling up as the Trump regime refuses to cooperate in state-level murder investigations.On top of all these crises, the electoral landscape for November is looking catastrophic for Republicans.

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