Pulse of the Peninsula: Peacemakers deserve parades, too

Karen Rubin

This Memorial Day, we properly honor the millions who have made the ultimate sacrifice in defense of our nation since the Revolutionary War, which established us as a free and independent nation founded upon “We the People” as its governing principle.

But where are the parades for the peacemakers who just as equally keep us free, independent, who are the shield for our values and our way of life?

Where is the parade for the diplomats, the professors and teachers, the scientists and researchers, the doctors and nurses and social workers?

Donald Trump, on his first overseas trip from the Oval Office, has expressly shown his values, as emblazoned in the $110 billion military deal he signed with Saudi Arabia, embracing Saudi Arabia as an ally in the fight against ISIS but ignoring Saudis’ role in 9/11 and in funding the schools that breed anti-Israel and jihadist ideology and terrororism.

And it is clear in Saudi Arabia and Israel, he fomented hostility against Iran even as the Iranians overwhelmingly re-elected President Rouhani, a moderate who has shifted even further away from the hard-liners in pursuing better alliances with the West, while once again blasting the historic nuclear agreement.

Trump doesn’t care because he needs an enemy to march against, to battle against. That is his unifying principle, he thinks, to gain position for Israel among the Sunni-majority nations, and resolve the Israel-Palestinian conflict – not with diplomacy but with militancy.

(How fitting that Trump was welcomed to Saudi Arabia with a tribal dance typically performed to celebrate victory in war.)

Trump’s budget just released by henchman, OMB Director Mike Mulvaney, shows his priorities and his values: 10 percent increase ($54 billion) to the military (to $603 billion), slashing an equal amount from domestic programs (to $462 billion). (We already spend more on defense than the next 7 countries combined, a list that includes Russia and China.)

It is not just the domestic programs that go toward everyday Americans that are cut, it is also dramatically slashing diplomacy in favor of war.

Trump’s budget calls for nearly 30 percent cut in allocations for the State Department (from $38.8 billion to $27.7 billion), which was already so pressed for funding, it had trouble paying for the level of security that might have prevented the Benghazi tragedy.

And, oh yes, dramatically cutting foreign aid, including cruelly expanding the Global Gag Rule from denying aid not just to family planning services that don’t explicitly censure abortion, but all global health assistance programs including HIV/AIDS, maternal and child health, malaria and global health security.

Trump (and the Republicans because this is really Paul Ryan’s budget) would cut programs for health, climate change and environment that counter famine, drought and flooding, foreign aid and diplomacy.

This would do nothing to address the underlying issues that lead to violent conflict, but rather add gasoline to the fire of seething discontent – abroad and at home.

Forget isolationism.

Trump craves to be a War President. He sees that War Presidents can enact martial law, erase personal liberties, suspend habeus corpus, promote torture as an instrument of national security. He can be the unquestioned, unchallenged, adored autocrat.

His intense interest in spending on costly military hardware is telling because, barring Trump instigating a new hot war, the next war will be fought in cyberspace, and the battlefield will be the electric grid, the financial networks and the utility plant. Nonetheless, Trump wants to explode the domestic budget to pay for military hardware, including nuclear weapons –because that’s where the money is.

For Trump, the dollar is Almighty. Spending money on clean energy and sustainability is an investment toward a better future; money for bombs has to be constantly replenished. (And how much will he profit personally? Certainly his donors will.)

The real worry is that he will use North Korea as his means to become a War President, just as Bush/Cheney used fictional WMD, conflated with 9/11, to invade Iraq.

Trump’s saber-rattling against Iran will only bolster North Korea’s resolve to pursue nuclear weapons because they see what happens when an autocrat gives them up or doesn’t have them: Libya. Ukraine. Iraq. Iran. If Trump were truly cared or was capable of diplomacy, he would realize that.

Trump is not interested in diplomacy or human rights or for that matter, American values.

“The glaring absence of human rights from Trump’s agenda will only embolden further violations in a region where governments flout the rights of their own people in the name of the fight against terror, and violate international humanitarian law in conflicts fueled on large part by US arms transfers,” said Amnesty International.

Trump’s reaction to the Saudi deal? “That was a tremendous day. Tremendous investments in the United States.  Hundreds of billions of dollars of investments into the United States and jobs, jobs, jobs”

And in remarks with the Emir of Qatar, Tamim bin Hamad al Thani, Trump said, “One of the things that we will discuss is the purchase of lots of beautiful military equipment because nobody makes it like the United States. And for us that means jobs and it also means frankly great security back here, which we want.”

Trump is the Arms-Dealer-In-Chief.

Trump brings the same transactional approach to negotiating new trade deals.

“Mr. Trump has dispensed with what he considers pointless moralizing and preachy naïveté. He has taken foreign policy to its most realpolitik moment in generations, playing down issues of human rights or democracy that animated his predecessors, including Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush and Barack Obama. His ‘America First’ approach focuses not on how other nations treat their people but on what they can do for the United States,” Peter Baker wrote in the New York Times (April 4, 2017).

More precisely, what it does for Trump. Trump’s only value is that “The dollar is Almighty, greenbacked by military might.”

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