J Robert Smith
- Jan. 16, 2021
- 4 min read
So, earlier this week, U.S. Rep. Liz Chaney, daughter of Dick, decided it was time to exact a little revenge on President Donald J. Trump. She led nine other misfit Republicans in treachery. She and her RINOs joined Democrats in a vote to impeach Trump an historic second time.
You see, long ago, the president committed the unpardonable sin of criticizing the Bush-Chaney commitment to unending warfare and occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Then Trump, as president, compounded his sin by shrinking America’s presence in both nations (if you can call them nations; they’re more like strife-torn tribal lands). Had Trump not had a second term stolen from him, it’s a great bet that ongoing U.S. on-ground involvement in the aforementioned lands would have ceased.
Liz, like her old man, is a “neocon,” which is code for – yes, you guessed it – U.S. overseas commitments to unending occupations and warfare. Here, we’ll add in “wherever.” For about the last 30 years it’s been Iraq – starting with Iraq’s containment – and for about 20, it’s been Afghanistan. But if the neocons are unleashed under the pretender president’s term, it could be Estonia and Chad and hell knows.
Neocons like to claim that they’re proud torchbearers of the Wilsonian ideal of “making the world safe for democracy.” That was claptrap in the 19-teens and is claptrap now. Neocons have that as a bedrock tenet, though. It’s a vainglorious commitment to – claim neocons – transforming nations far and wide into little Americas. What it actually is a swell means of spending America’s treasure and spilling the blood of our young warriors in conflicts we have no business in – or protracting justified conflicts to serve a skewed worldview and the financial and power interests of the “military industrial complex.”
No, I didn’t make that up. The late, great general and president, Dwight D. Eisenhower, warned us of that powerful web of interests in his farewell address to the nation in January, 1960. Yep, there are those who gain from war and want to keep the gravy train rolling. But it’s at the expense off our patriotic sons and daughters that their war wagons push forward.
“Nation building,” which Neocons love, is yet another excuse to keep America embroiled overseas. They love to cite the success of nation building in Germany and Japan after World War II. But they conveniently fail to add that the Allies pulverized Germany first. Plus, Germany, despite its Nazi sin, shared commonalities in Western Civilization. Rebuilding Germany – or, at least, those portions not under the Soviet yoke – was doable.
Japan’s military might was reduced in bloody island-hopping campaigns across the Pacific. Then, when U.S. bombers moved in range, the Japanese homeland was laid waste through extensive fire bombings. The nukings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the coup de grâce. And throughout its modern history, the Japanese had imbibed enough Western sensibilities to embrace the U.S. occupation and change their evil imperil ways.
Afghanistan is an ancient collection of tribes. It’s a Muslim people, too, meaning like most of Islam elsewhere, Afghani tribes have yet to emerge from the Dark Ages – if, in fact, they even made it that far historically. Nation building there is a futile, wasteful, conceited venture. The U.S. military has ways of suppressing terrorist threats to the U.S. homeland emanating from Afghanistan without open-ended boots-on-the-ground.
Oh, and let’s add that NATO is long overdue for a minimization of U.S. involvement. NATO made perfect sense in the aftermath of World War II and with the rise of the Soviet threat. Western Europe was devastated by the war and needed time to get back on its feet.
The Soviets were intent on European conquest and dominating the U.S. But the U.S.S.R. collapsed in the very early 1990s. The Cold War ended. Long ago, Western Europe became wealthy. But the U.S. is still on the hook to pay most of the freight for NATO? And why do our troops continue to serve as a tripwire in the event of a very improbable Russian invasion of Western Europe? Our over-commitment to NATO is ludicrous but something the neocons defend as if its 1960 all over again.
Yet don’t expect Liz Chaney to acknowledge any of this. She’s a glib neocon parrot and faithful to a fault to daddy’s errant and dangerous worldview. She’s also a petty, vindictive woman, which fits a DC lifer to the T. Trump showed up Dick, and, so, now, Liz’s impeachment vote is payback.
But Donald J. Trump may well have the last laugh and the final revenge (which is best served cold). Wyoming patriots gave President Trump 70% of their votes in November. The Wyoming GOP has been deluged with an untold number of calls and emails condemning Liz’s show of pique. The Wyoming party went so far as to condemn Chaney’s stunt. Liz might want to enjoy the next 24 months in the U.S. House, because they may be her last.
Oh, and Donald J. Trump? Making a martyr out of Trump only strengthens him and raises him up higher. He can and should wear a second impeachment like a badge of honor. The MAGA movement is outraged as is, and is emboldened with each passing affront and attack on the president.
Trump may just make history by not only being the first president to be – baselessly – impeached twice, but only the second president to serve two nonconsecutive terms. And we can promise Liz and her neocons this: A second Trump term will nothing like Grover Cleveland’s.