The Banter Brief: Trump Starts WWIII

Welcome to 2020...

Hello everyone and welcome to the first 2020 edition of The Banter Brief! We wish we were starting the New Year on a more positive note, but Donald Trump is the president of the United States and we’ve come to expect disaster and chaos at any given moment…

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1. Most Important Story Of The Week

Trump starts WWIII

In what was no doubt a bid to distract the public from the impeachment trial and to get himself re-elected, Donald Trump has massively escalated tensions in the Middle East by ordering the assassination the powerful Iranian general, Qassem Suleimani. Reported the Guardian:

The 62-year-old general [Suleimani] died when his car was targeted by a drone in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, as local allies from the Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF) were driving him from the airport. The de facto leader of the PMF, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, a close Suleimani associate, was also killed in the attack.

As is always the case with the Trump administration, completely different rationales for the assassination were given in a matter of hours. The Pentagon initially claimed it was aimed as a deterrence in order to prevent future attacks from Iran, but then Secretary of State Mike Pompeo then claimed CNN there was an “imminent threat” from Iran and the US took Suleimani out to stop it. Suleimani was, as Pompeo stated, “actively plotting in the region to take actions – a big action, as he described it – that would have put dozens if not hundreds of American lives at risk.”

It is worth noting that Congress was not informed about the attack and no evidence has emerged of any specific Iranian plot, so all we have to go on is the words of a deeply dishonest White House that has lied on so many occasions fact checkers literally can’t keep up with them.

Given the humiliation, we know that without a shadow of a doubt that Iran will respond with force. The attack caused outrage in Iran and throughout the Middle East and puts US and allied troops every in the Middle East at serious risk. Furthermore, Trump has now committed more troops to a conflict, as the NYTimes describes it, “whose dimensions are unknowable”. In other words, Trump has just plunged the United States back into an already deadly conflict with no strategy to get out. And lest you think Trump’s motives were not political, here was Trump back in 2011:

JM Rieger @RiegerReport

Trump on Nov. 16, 2011: “Our president will start a war with Iran because he has absolutely no ability to negotiate. He's weak and he's ineffective. So the only way he figures that he's going to get reelected — and as sure as you're sitting there — is to start a war with Iran.”

If you are wondering what all this means, Vox’s Ezra Klein’s blunt analysis sums it up:

I keep coming back to this. The focus on Suleimani obscures what's really happened here: We've gone to war with Iran. There's been no congressional debate. No effort to secure allies, public support, or UN or NATO-backing. No discussion of trade-offs.

Not the best way to start the new decade.

Runner up: Australia is on fire due to the effects of the climate crisis. Sorry to pile on here…

(image via The Guardian)

2. Poll Analysis

Trump: The president’s popularity nationwide remains in the low 40’s (a 42.5% average). Not great news for Trump as he enters an election year.

Democrats: Joe Biden is still the frontrunner by a significant margin. Trump should worry about this given Biden (and no other Democrat) is favored to beat him in key swing states like Virginia and Florida.

Impeachment: Five Thirty Eight’s new poll shows that the majority of Americans think the evidence supports Trump’s removal.

3. Quote Of The Week

“Presidents traditionally benefit from a presumption of competence, or at least moral legitimacy, from their opposition. Trump has forfeited his. He will not have Democratic leaders standing shoulder to shoulder with him, and his practice of disregarding and smearing government intelligence should likewise dispel any benefit of the doubt attached to claims he makes about the necessity of his actions. Trump has made it plain that he views American war-fighting as nothing but the extension of domestic politics. We should believe him.”

- Jonathan Chait on Trump’s decision to start a war with Iran.

4. What to Watch

In the spirit of all things war, Netflix’s “Greatest Events of World War II in Color” is definitely worth watching. The British series is a top notch historical documentary that takes viewers through the different stages of humanity’s greatest conflict. From the German shocking ‘Blitzkrieg’ into France to the fraught Battle of Britain, the analysis and insight from a host of world-renowned historians is absolutely riveting.

The most powerful aspect of the series though is the colorization of the unseen archive footage footage. The effect is extremely powerful and unnerving. Grainy black and white footage has the effect of allowing us to distance ourselves from the awesome destructiveness of the war and the appalling human consequences. In detailed color however, the conflict become more real, more vivid, and more painful to watch. As Spanish philosopher George Santayana famously said, “those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.”

The Great War started almost eight decades ago, but now we can see and learn from it in color, it remains as present as ever.

5. Good News

While the news this week has not been great, there is still much to be hopeful for as we enter the new decade. The first is the huge wave of climate activism that has spread across the globe. As much of Australia burns, climate activists are waging a serious war against the climate crisis deniers in their government. There have been mass protests around the world that politicians and polluting businesses are being forced to acknowledge (particularly given the climate crisis is set to adversely affect corporate profits). As Trump wages his own war on reality and now the Middle East, his popularity is waning and more Americans want him impeached and removed than do not. Trump might be banking on a war to make him more popular, but his disastrous leadership and inability to plan for anything makes him uniquely vulnerable in the coming months.

Yes, the planet is burning, and the Middle East looks set to explode into chaos once again, but sane forces around the world are gathering. 2020 is an opportunity to douse the fires and set humanity on a course we can all be hopeful about.

See you next week!

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