The Trump Presidency

[iceaura]

Oh, you denie Obama's killing lists?

No. I addressed that - please read:

Obama certainly did not command drone strike operations, or personally control them on any but the most distant and general policy level, occasionally signing off, maybe, on particular very touchy murderings.

So we see that such was exactly the case, according to your sources,

which actually contradict your posting - this:

To intensify these drone wars himself a lot. So, this was not "control" in the meaning of reducing it to some minimum,

was apparently not the case, instead it was apparently control in the sense of curbing and minimizing the amorality and atrocity, to some degree, even of the rendition program replacement drone strikes;

for some reason (both cynical and moral are plausible). Contrary to your presumptions.

So you have information, you have been corrected on your basic error and pointed directly to its source in US fascist propaganda - you going to learn anything about Trump, here? Note that your boy Trump has approved not only intensified drone strikes but a restoration of CIA control, in a context of having spoken in favor of the renditions and torture program and in favor of more severe and dramatic torturing, and no weekly oversight meetings to keep things half-way civilized are on record.

We seem to be looking at a full restoration of the W&Cheney black ops program Obama cut back, and possibly more, if this Republican administration is not curbed by the opposition to such ventures within the intelligence agencies themselves.

Exactly as forecast by those aware of Trump's fascism, and aware of the nature of fascism.

 

[Schmelzer]

Of course, what matters is that Obama has signed himself the killing lists. Of course, the execution will be done by others. (There are yellow press level informations that he liked to take videos of the shootings at home, but, of course, he did not do the job of the killers themselves.)

And that the drone war became much more extensive in comparison with W is something you accept? Whatever, let's google, the first hit tells me "A total of 563 strikes, largely by drones, targeted Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen during Obama’s two terms, compared to 57 strikes under Bush." https://www.thebureauinvestigates.c...r-in-numbers-ten-times-more-strikes-than-bush

That Obama takes control of signing the killing lists himself, in combination with the increase in the role of drone wars, was the base for my comment. So, this was not "control" in the meaning of reducing it to some minimum, but "control" in the sense of "nice game, I want to do this myself, and more of this". (And, don't worry, I have very well recognized that these two first google hits of my last posting were presenting this as control in the sense of minimizing. They are, last but not least, Western propaganda sources.)

Your repetition of your "you don't see Trump's fascism" becomes boring too. Just to remember you: The economic system of fascism rules the whole world today, from BRICS to US and EU, everything. From the political point of view we see complete ignorance of international law, with open support of terrorist and killing lists executed in foreign countries without any declaration of war, and we see it from all sides. From a moral point of view all sides do things which are sufficiently despicable to be comparable with the average fascist regime. Internally we see militarization of the police, PC becoming totalitarian, an increasing prison population, increasing media concentration, all this bipartisan too. So, in all this I see no reason at all to reject a classification of the US as fascist. In all its variants - from Obama to Trump.

What distinguishes the fascist from the left wing totalitarianism is nationalism vs. internationalism. This would be a point where I would accept that the left say Trump is fascist (because nationalist) but Obama not (because internationalist/globalist). But this is, surprisingly, the point where you disagree, naming Trump an internationalist/globalist.

 

[Quantum Quack]

Of course, what matters is that Obama has signed himself the killing lists. Of course, the execution will be done by others. (There are yellow press level informations that he liked to take videos of the shootings at home, but, of course, he did not do the job of the killers themselves.)

Taking responsibility for his role as commander in chief is no easy thing... Obama took his role very seriously...

And that the drone war became much more extensive in comparison with W is something you accept? Whatever, let's google, the first hit tells me "A total of 563 strikes, largely by drones, targeted Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen during Obama’s two terms, compared to 57 strikes under Bush." https://www.thebureauinvestigates.c...r-in-numbers-ten-times-more-strikes-than-bush

As technology improved this would be expected. Drones were fairly novel in WB times.

As mass production kicks in the USA could launch millions of the buggers if they really wanted to...


If you were the Commander in chief of a nation full of red necks all carrying guns and waving their national flag what would you do?

Probably play hide and seek or something equally trite...unfortunately this is a gown ups world full of nasty people and sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.

You obviously have no idea what it takes to lead a nation of 300 million people in an, at times, seriously hostile world.

Being a global super power has a tragic side to it for sure and one, Obama and now Trump, have to live with.

 

[Schmelzer]

As if the possibility of mass production would justify to start mass killings under mass violations of international law.

As a chief commander of this gang I would do what was Ron Paul's program. Closing all the foreign bases. And restrict the US army to defense of US territory. Canada is no danger at all, Mexico also not really dangerous, for the remaining world the remaining nuclear toys are sufficient, so that protecting US would be no problem at all. Which "seriously hostile world"? The world is hostile against the US because of the aggressive behavior of the US, that's all. The tragic of being a superpower, LOL, is this the new version of Kipling's White Man's Burden?

BTW, I have to correct myself regarding the prison population in #1842: While it was heavily increasing in Clinton time, and a little less under W, it was even decreasing under Obama.

 

[iceaura]

Of course, what matters is that Obama has signed himself the killing lists.

Matters how?

And that the drone war became much more extensive in comparison with W is something you accept?

Yep. New technology, for one thing, that allowed him to keep US soldiers and the publicity of them out of the news (don't want to make him look all good). But also: renditions etc much less, and torture prisons much reduced, and the military rather than the spy agencies killing people who are (supposedly) trying to kill Americans, and a winding down of the Republican warmongering and foreign country mass murdering - especially the terrorist supporting CIA "globalist" kind - under Obama.

The whole scene become much smaller and notably less evil than under W.

So less CIA "globalist" murder under Democrats like Obama, more under Republicans like Trump, in recent years (last fifty or so) - got it?

As a chief commander of this gang I would do what was Ron Paul's program.

As would I.
But not Trump, or any Republican President (Ron Paul opposed the Iraq War as well - he had many Left Libertarian political positions. Trump is fascist, remember.)

BTW, I have to correct myself regarding the prison population in #1842: While it was heavily increasing in Clinton time, and a little less under W, it was even decreasing under Obama.

Republican (fascist) governance again - mostly a State Republican governance matter, btw, another of those US peculiarities you seem to overlook: fascism in the US has saturated all levels of governance.
But all this is domestic stuff - you quite loudly didn't care about that, if you recall, and you certainly don't know anything about it. Let's go back to the attempted global spread of unipolar US based corporate authoritarian hegemony, rightwing imperialism, by Republicans like Trump - the PNAC under W given new life in Trump's administration, say.

Look at the US TV screen, say (you pay attention to such media): Cheney was back, Gingrich was back, Bill Kristol still haunts the realm of the not undead. Paul Ryan is now a Trump ally.

What distinguishes the fascist from the left wing totalitarianism is nationalism vs. internationalism.

You keep telling us you aren't listening to the rhetoric and propaganda, and then out comes something like that.

All over the world, for your entire adult life, the foreign backed and foreigner recruited armies and insurgents and terrorists of the rightwing authoritarians have been battling the domestic and locally recruited armies and insurgents and terrorists of the leftwing authoritarians routinely. At least as often as the other way around. Has this escaped your notice?

Trump the Republican plutocrat has corporate rightwing authoritarian dealings with congenial mob guys and tyrannies all over the planet. So does his Secretary of State, Tillerson. So do the bankers and billionaires in his cabinet generally. So has every Republican (fascist) warmongering, CIA murdering, NSA empowering, terrorist backing, imperial hegemony spreading, unipolar globally meddling administration of the US since Nixon/Kissinger. These interests and dealings will, under Trump's Republican (fascist) agenda, enjoy the muscle and backing of the US military and "fourth branch" (Glenning's term) forces.

That is not a "deep state". That is a regular old authoritarian rightwing militaristic shallow State run by its corrupted, corporate allied or corporate cowed and corporate dominated, elected (in the US case) officials, doing what such States have done since the Pharoahs of Egypt invented the corporation.

 

[Tiassa]

#makethenewones | #WhatTheyVotedFor​

Click to look beneath the astroturf.​

That is not a "deep state". That is a regular old authoritarian rightwing militaristic shallow State run by its corrupted, corporate allied or corporate cowed and corporate dominated, elected (in the US case) officials, doing what such States have done since the Pharoahs of Egypt invented the corporation.

It occurs to mention that to some degree governance in the age of Social Contract has relied in no small part—one can reasonably argue it a fundamental component—on a notion of honorable people doing honorable work in such a manner that the passions and the interests in varying conflict, competition, and cooperation, keep a civilized society within a certain albeit vaguely defined range of balance and function.

It's easy enough for someone like me to notice that, for all my cohort in the argument hears about our lack of proper respect toward police or military, conservatives get away with it all the time—NRA and gun-confiscation conspiracy theories, for instance, or Jade Helm conspiracism reaching the offices of U.S. Senators and a state governor such that public militia assets were deployed against the United States Army—and the whole "deep state" murmur and buzz is just another example, this time denigrating federal law enforcement and intelligence personnel conservatives would ordinarily demand patriotic respect and on occasion even reverence for.

But as long as we're on about the deep state instead of passions and interests, it's not entirely unreasonable to wonder if maybe this time Trump went and broke something. Tough talk about fucking with the wrong people becomes existentially terrifying when we face the genuine prospect of a president picking a fight with the intelligence services who can bring him down. It will be interesting, in one or another context at least, to see how this goes insofar as any of the offended groups could have arbitrarily wrecked him already. And for those who remember that once upon a not so distant time, this is a fascinating moment, because people like me were always reminded, in our darkest hours of stupid criminality, that these were honorable people doing honorable work, and now the president has dispensed with that notion and people like you and me find ourselves at this bizarre nexus where there really is a question of how the offended and threatened and betrayed sectors respond. If the atrocity we denounce really was for all the noble stuff we were supposed to believe, somehow American conservatives have brought that question to bear in President Donald Trump and the Republican Theses on Govenrment Dysfunction.

So as long as people want to mutter about the deep state I confess I find it an amusing sideshow proposition:

• President Trump has insulted, denigrated, harassed, and attempted to intimidate his own law enforcement and intelligence services; furthermore, he has specifically betrayed his military. What, then, is the significance of the fact that Donald Trump is still President of the United States, that the deep state hasn't already undertaken his ouster? Some of us might suggest it's a hopeful sign that we're going to follow some manner of process about all this, but others might throw up their hands and complain that government just doesn't work.​

Okay, it's petty amusement.

Still, I wonder what the anthropologists will say, a hundred years out—so long as any remain in the world—about the particular deep state sosobra of this time and circumstance.

 

[Quantum Quack]

As if the possibility of mass production would justify to start mass killings under mass violations of international law.

As a chief commander of this gang I would do what was Ron Paul's program. Closing all the foreign bases. And restrict the US army to defense of US territory. Canada is no danger at all, Mexico also not really dangerous, for the remaining world the remaining nuclear toys are sufficient, so that protecting US would be no problem at all. Which "seriously hostile world"? The world is hostile against the US because of the aggressive behavior of the US, that's all. The tragic of being a superpower, LOL, is this the new version of Kipling's White Man's Burden?

BTW, I have to correct myself regarding the prison population in #1842: While it was heavily increasing in Clinton time, and a little less under W, it was even decreasing under Obama.

Do you think that there is some sort of "entitlement" under what is referred to as "international law"?
Are you that naive?

Do you realize that laws whether domestic or international are merely contrivances and constructs put in place by people and offer no actual entitlement other than by voluntary consent?


The law only works if the population want it to.. it has no other intrinsic value...

 

[Quantum Quack]

In the national news this morning:

"US President Donald Trump launched a crude Twitter attack on the brains, looks and temperament of a female TV personality on Thursday, drawing strong criticism including from senior Republicans."
"Mr Trump's tweets, aimed at co-host of MSNBC's Morning Joe Mika Brzezinski revived concerns about his views of women in a climate where civility is already in short supply and he is struggling for any support he can get for his proposals on health care, immigration and other controversial issues.

The Republican President called Brzezinski — a journalist and daughter of former White House national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski — "low IQ Crazy Mika" and said she was "bleeding badly from a face-lift" when she visited one of his properties around New Year's Eve.

He referred to Brzezinski's co-host, former Republican US congressman Joe Scarborough, as "Psycho Joe"."
src : http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-...ults-draw-strong-republican-criticism/8665574​

and this is the President of the USA!

It says a lot about the people of the USA.

The sheer fact that he is still in office and apparently gaining ground electorally even with all the scandals and controversies, suggests that he is going to be around for probably 8 years at least.

 

[Schmelzer]

The whole scene become much smaller and notably less evil than under W.

Maybe, maybe not. You are certainly not a reliable source to evaluate this. I recognize that what matters in the media, because it is open, has much more influence than what is done in a hidden way. So, nobody really knows if there was more or less real torture by the CIA under Clinton/W/Obama. What matters in the media was that W tried to torture openly, in a legal way.
Similarly, nobody knows how many people have been really killed by the US. But what is made openly is what scares. So, it is Obama, who personally signed killing lists, which have been, then, executed by drones, and that the number of official drone killing has increased under Obama in comparison to W, which matters here.

In some way, this is, of course, a distortion. One can argue that what really matters are the real murders, not those which become popular. But this is only half of the story. The point is that what is hidden is also bounded, by the necessity to hide it. Once one starts to do something legally, openly, there is no longer any bound, any necessity to hide it. You can double it every year, or every month, if necessary, and nobody cares. This is what makes legal torture, or legal killing lists signed by Obama, much more horrible than, say, the continuing illegal torture under Obama or the number of deaths caused by US-paid terrorists if these payments have been illegal.

But not Trump, or any Republican President (Ron Paul opposed the Iraq War as well - he had many Left Libertarian political positions. Trump is fascist, remember.)

LOL. Ron Paul winning would have been a Republican President.

All over the world, for your entire adult life, the foreign backed and foreigner recruited armies and insurgents and terrorists of the rightwing authoritarians have been battling the domestic and locally recruited armies and insurgents and terrorists of the leftwing authoritarians routinely. At least as often as the other way around. Has this escaped your notice?

Of course, it has. I have, myself, collected money for "solidarity" with those "domestic armies and insurgents and terrorists of the leftwing authoritarians", receiving for this stamps with pictures of guys with weapons. All this was part of a global fight between two globalist powers, US vs. Soviet Union. And that "locally recruited" fighter for the freedom of Bolivia named Che Guevara was one of my childhood heroes. And on the other side, the support for local fascist regimes was done by the US always, bipartisan. It would have been laughable if somebody would have proposed the idea that Democrats winning something was good because US would no longer support fascist regimes all over the world. In this sense, Obama openly supporting Bandera fascists in the Ukraine was neither new nor unexpected.

Their backing by the US has nothing to do with these local fascists being nationalists, instead of internationalists.

That is not a "deep state". That is a regular old authoritarian rightwing militaristic shallow State run by its corrupted, corporate allied or corporate cowed and corporate dominated, elected (in the US case) officials.

I don't care much about names. If you prefer to name the deep state shallow state, so be it. What matters is that it is not the "democratic state" sold by propaganda to the sheeple.

Do you think that there is some sort of "entitlement" under what is referred to as "international law"?
Are you that naive?

Oh, I have made some claims about some entitlements? Can you quote me please to remember?

Whatever, international law is essentially contract law, so once the US has signed the UN charter, it is obliged to follow it. So, other states have some entitlement that the US follows the UN charter as long as the US does not resign its UN membership and withdraw their signature. Same for all other conventions which define the body of international law.

 

[Quantum Quack]

Similarly, nobody knows how many people have been really killed by the US.

maybe not... but we can hazard a guess as to how many have been saved by the USA...
Just look at the foreign aid budget ( or what was the foreign aid budget)
The USA is by many orders the most generous nation on the planet when it comes to keeping people alive.


The number of people alive today because of USA efforts since WW2 is staggering.

For example:
What would have happened if the USA didn't step up and support the UK in WW2?

Do you agree?

 

[Schmelzer]

maybe not... but we can hazard a guess as to how many have been saved by the USA...

Feel free to guess. I doubt it will be more than a guess.

Just look at the foreign aid budget ( or what was the foreign aid budget)
The USA is by many orders the most generous nation on the planet when it comes to keeping people alive.

Bad idea. "Foreign aid" is also known to be the standard cover for color revolution and similar regime change payments. Even worse, "foreign aid" was an essential part of a quite evil strategy which you can find looking for "economic hitman". That means, big credits to various (often fascist, almost always US puppet) regimes, spend for buying US stuff (making US firms happy), in part for corruption of these pro-US elites, paid in part by the US taxpayer, in part remaining as a horrible debt burden which remains on these states even if the political power changes in some future.

Of course, there will be also some part of foreign aid which really saved lives in real natural disasters or so. But how to disentangle these really live saving operations from such economic hit man operations? I don't know.

The number of people alive today because of USA efforts since WW2 is staggering.
For example:
What would have happened if the USA didn't step up and support the UK in WW2?
Do you agree?

If you have to go back to WW II ....

I think that the US fought on the right side in WW II. And even if some of the most famous actions of the US in WW II - bombing German towns like Dresden, and atomic bombs in Hiroshima - were clear cases of war crimes, the war crimes of the other side, Germany as well as Japan, were more horrible. So, at that time I would have supported the US (as well as the Soviet Union), despite their crimes, as the less evil side.

Similarly, I would support the US up to the end of the Cold War, again, as less evil in comparison with Soviet Union. This despite a lot of evil things they have done, from Korea and Vietnam war to support of fascist regimes and "contras" terrorists in South America and so on.

The US becoming the Empire of Evil started with the collapse of the Soviet Union.

This change in my evaluation what the US is also corresponds to the results of what US foreign policy has reached. After WW II foreign policy of the US has supported the economic revival of its WW II enemies Germany and Japan. And the result was really positive. Similarly South Korea - even if this was only support for own allies in the actual Cold as well as hot war, it was successful, good for Japanese, South Korean and West German people. And the Pinochet regime which the CIA installed in Chile 1973 was, from an economic point of view, quite successful.

The result of actual US foreign policy is, in comparison, devastating. Compare Germany and Japan, say, 10 years after US puppets ruling (in Germany this was the time of "Wirtschaftswunder" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirtschaftswunder ), with Afghanistan or Iraq. Even if you like to blame the Islam for the failure in Afghanistan and Iraq, compare the Ukraine, say, with the "occupied" Crimea (ok, this makes no sense if you use NATO sources, here I presuppose you use something neutral). Here, the collapse of the Soviet Union is a nice limiting moment too. Almost all former communist states switched the market economy. Those states who did this using US guidance (former Soviet block) had a much harder time than those who managed this themselves (China, Vietnam).

 

[Tiassa]

​

The sheer fact that he is still in office and apparently gaining ground electorally even with all the scandals and controversies, suggests that he is going to be around for probably 8 years at least.

We're about thirteen months out from the Nixon schedule.

Some reflection on this point from Frank Rich:

• "Just Wait" (New York, 25 June 2017)↱

• The Last Word w/Lawrence O'Donnell (msnbc, 29 June 2017)↱​

From New York magazine:

In the decades since, Watergate has become perhaps the most abused term in the American political lexicon. Washington has played host to legions of "-gates," most unworthy of the name, and the original has blurred in memory, including for those of us who lived through it. Now, of course, invocations of Watergate are our daily bread, as America contemplates the future of a president who not only openly admires Nixon—he vowed to put a framed Nixon note on display in the Oval Office—but seems intent on emulating his most impeachable behavior. And among those of us who want Donald Trump gone from Washington yesterday, there's a fair amount of fear that he, too, could hang on until the end of a four-year term that stank of corruption from the start. Even if his White House scandals turn out to exceed his predecessor's—as the former director of national intelligence James Clapper posited in early June—impeachment is a political, not a legal, matter, and his political lock on the presidency would seem secure. Unlike Nixon, who had to contend with Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, Trump has the shield of a Republican Congress led by craven enablers terrified of crossing their Dear Leader's fiercely loyal base. That distinction alone is enough to make anti-Trumpers abandon all hope.

I'm here to say don't do so just yet. There's a handy antidote to despair: a thorough wallow in Watergate, the actual story as it unfolded, not the expedited highlight reel that most Americans know from a textbook précis or cultural artifacts like the film version of All the President's Men. If you look through a sharp Nixonian lens at Trump's trajectory in office to date, short as it has been, you will discover more of an overlap than you might expect. You will learn that Democratic control of Congress in 1973 was not a crucial factor in Nixon's downfall and that Republican control of Congress in 2017 may not be a life preserver for Trump. You will find reason to hope that the 45th president's path through scandal may wind up at the same destination as the 37th's—a premature exit from the White House in disgrace—on a comparable timeline.​

Hope? Sure. Still, though, these are Americans we're talking about; at some point it comes down to how many excuses we can make and believe for ourselves.

 

[joepistole]

It comes down to how much pain "moderate" Republicans are willing to take in the name of party solidarity, and how patriotic these "moderate" Republicans are.

 

[Quantum Quack]

Feel free to guess. I doubt it will be more than a guess.

Bad idea. "Foreign aid" is also known to be the standard cover for color revolution and similar regime change payments. Even worse, "foreign aid" was an essential part of a quite evil strategy which you can find looking for "economic hitman". That means, big credits to various (often fascist, almost always US puppet) regimes, spend for buying US stuff (making US firms happy), in part for corruption of these pro-US elites, paid in part by the US taxpayer, in part remaining as a horrible debt burden which remains on these states even if the political power changes in some future.

Of course, there will be also some part of foreign aid which really saved lives in real natural disasters or so. But how to disentangle these really live saving operations from such economic hit man operations? I don't know.


If you have to go back to WW II ....

I think that the US fought on the right side in WW II. And even if some of the most famous actions of the US in WW II - bombing German towns like Dresden, and atomic bombs in Hiroshima - were clear cases of war crimes, the war crimes of the other side, Germany as well as Japan, were more horrible. So, at that time I would have supported the US (as well as the Soviet Union), despite their crimes, as the less evil side.

Similarly, I would support the US up to the end of the Cold War, again, as less evil in comparison with Soviet Union. This despite a lot of evil things they have done, from Korea and Vietnam war to support of fascist regimes and "contras" terrorists in South America and so on.

The US becoming the Empire of Evil started with the collapse of the Soviet Union.

This change in my evaluation what the US is also corresponds to the results of what US foreign policy has reached. After WW II foreign policy of the US has supported the economic revival of its WW II enemies Germany and Japan. And the result was really positive. Similarly South Korea - even if this was only support for own allies in the actual Cold as well as hot war, it was successful, good for Japanese, South Korean and West German people. And the Pinochet regime which the CIA installed in Chile 1973 was, from an economic point of view, quite successful.

The result of actual US foreign policy is, in comparison, devastating. Compare Germany and Japan, say, 10 years after US puppets ruling (in Germany this was the time of "Wirtschaftswunder" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirtschaftswunder ), with Afghanistan or Iraq. Even if you like to blame the Islam for the failure in Afghanistan and Iraq, compare the Ukraine, say, with the "occupied" Crimea (ok, this makes no sense if you use NATO sources, here I presuppose you use something neutral). Here, the collapse of the Soviet Union is a nice limiting moment too. Almost all former communist states switched the market economy. Those states who did this using US guidance (former Soviet block) had a much harder time than those who managed this themselves (China, Vietnam).

I think you will find if you do the study that the USA has saved billions of people over all, just by being the major super power.

Sure it ( the USA) is not perfect but by and large the USA has had an extremely positive influence on global power dynamics.

Even if we take into the account of the atrocities in Kosovo or else where we see that the USA dominance acts as a severe deterrent and prevents the repetition of cyclic genocide that human kind seems so inclined to get into.

The rebuilding of wealth creation for Western Europe, Japan, South Korea and numerous other nations since the end of WW2 has granted the world most of it's current wealth and standard of living ( although not uniformally across the globe due mainly to local infighting and minor wars)

Do you dispute this?

 

[Quantum Quack]

Schmelzer,
Perhaps if the USA withdrew a container load of humanitarian aid for every hate filled comment you make and place the responsibility for the consequences on your shoulders would be sweet justice... yes?

The USA has no "divine" obligation to help any body...

So perhaps a little gratitude for saving your butt and allowing you the freedom to express your hate is in order yes?

 

[joepistole]

Trump and his aids may have committed yet another felony: extortion. According to Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough Trump's aids threatened to smear them in the National Enquirer if they didn't speak with Trump and apologize for their coverage of him and provide him flattering coverage going forward. Think about that for a moment. That's yet another assault by Trump and his administration on America's First Amendment: the right of free speech.

http://www.businessinsider.com/trum...national-enquirer-laurence-tribe-crime-2017-6

 

[iceaura]

Maybe, maybe not. You are certainly not a reliable source to evaluate this. I recognize that what matters in the media, because it is open, has much more influence than what is done in a hidden way. So, nobody really knows if there was more or less real torture by the CIA under Clinton/W/Obama.

Yes, we do. You don't, mostly because you refuse to know stuff like that.

What matters in the media was that W tried to torture openly, in a legal way.

He didn't. He got caught, attempted to claim a retroactive legality (he had set up this ass-covering in advance, because even a guy like him knows what that shit looks like to most Americans), fought successfully to conceal major aspects of his outed program from public view, blamed low level minions (like the foot soldiers in the Abu Ghraib photos, who were courtmartialed), and still hasn't admitted to the bulk of the program he launched.

Once one starts to do something legally, openly, there is no longer any bound, any necessity to hide it. You can double it every year, or every month, if necessary, and nobody cares.

When W got caught and tried to make it legal, it turned out lots of people cared.

So, it is Obama, who personally signed killing lists, which have been, then, executed by drones, and that the number of official drone killing has increased under Obama in comparison to W, which matters here.

Nonsense. What matters here is that Trump has revoked some of the Obama limits and curbs on the clandestine killings of all kinds, and intensified the drone strikes at the same time as he has restored the former Republican administration's CIA control of them. Just as predicted by informed people, who know fascism when they see it.
In the future, if Trump remains in office, his apparent agenda is to restore setups like this Republican one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Ghraib_torture_and_prisoner_abuse - and allowing greater severity of abuse.

LOL. Ron Paul winning would have been a Republican President.

Which is why he had no chance even for Party nomination.

I don't care much about names. If you prefer to name the deep state shallow state, so be it. What matters is that it is not the "democratic state" sold by propaganda to the sheeple.

But it is the State they voted for, run by the people they voted into office. Such as Trump.

And the Pinochet regime which the CIA installed in Chile 1973 was, from an economic point of view, quite successful.

The result of actual US foreign policy is, in comparison, devastating

The Pinochet coup was an instance of exactly the stuff you claim to oppose - similar to what the US had set about doing in Iraq (on the scale appropriate for an oil field).

The US becoming the Empire of Evil started with the collapse of the Soviet Union.

More accurately, WWII and its immediate aftermath was a temporary hiatus in the "evil" that the US had been consistently doing since its consolidation across the continent - for a few years there it looked as if the US was going to undertake being an unchallenged force for good worldwide. (governed by liberals, it was, then).

The rise of the military/industrial complex and its interests in the Cold War changed that, and the cooption of the Republican Party by fascism (a downside of fighting leftwing totalitarianism) set us on our current path. The collapse of the Soviets merely opened a couple of doors - the US was already guilty of Vietnam, etc.

You have underestimated the legacy, the history, of this kind of foreign policy as employed by the US. Recall that the plantation slavery and colonial ambition that has shaped the US and its political life to this day was significantly a foreign policy.

 

[iceaura]

Compare Germany and Japan, say, 10 years after US puppets ruling (in Germany this was the time of "Wirtschaftswunder" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirtschaftswunder ), with Afghanistan or Iraq. Even if you like to blame the Islam for the failure in Afghanistan and Iraq, compare the Ukraine, say, with the "occupied" Crimea (ok, this makes no sense if you use NATO sources, here I presuppose you use something neutral). Here, the collapse of the Soviet Union is a nice limiting moment too. Almost all former communist states switched the market economy. Those states who did this using US guidance (former Soviet block) had a much harder time than those who managed this themselves (China, Vietnam).

If you look at the US politics behind this rolling disaster overseas, you will find the influence of the political faction and domestic ideology you now look to for opposition or at least curbing - the Trump/Republican Party, it is now.

You can expect them to keep doing what they've been doing - it's been working for them so far.

 

[Schmelzer]

But it is the State they voted for, run by the people they voted into office. Such as Trump.

And Obama.

The Pinochet coup was an instance of exactly the stuff you claim to oppose - similar to what the US had set about doing in Iraq (on the scale appropriate for an oil field).

Yes. If you have interpreted the observation that it was economically successful as I support it, you are, as usual, wrong.

If you look at the US politics behind this rolling disaster overseas, you will find the influence of the political faction and domestic ideology you now look to for opposition or at least curbing - the Trump/Republican Party, it is now.

Of course, I know already from communist time, that if you carefully look for the reasons of a disaster, you will always find the influence of the political factions of the dissenters from the Party line.

 

[Schmelzer]

I think you will find if you do the study that the USA has saved billions of people over all, just by being the major super power.

I don't think so.

Even if we take into the account of the atrocities in Kosovo or else where we see that the USA dominance acts as a severe deterrent and prevents the repetition of cyclic genocide that human kind seems so inclined to get into.

No. Kosovo was similar to the last Aleppo hospitals, a genocide created by the Western propaganda out of a quite legitimate anti-terrorist operation, in preparation of the war.

The rebuilding of wealth creation for Western Europe, Japan, South Korea and numerous other nations since the end of WW2 has granted the world most of it's current wealth and standard of living ( although not uniformally across the globe due mainly to local infighting and minor wars)

I would blame for this the technical progress, together with the economic system of capitalism. All what one can blame the US for is that it did not prevent this, did not start to build socialism or so.