By Moon Of Alanbama
January 18, 2020 "Information
Clearing House" - In early
2017, just as Trump was inaugurated, we wrote how an
old power center theory that seemed to explain how
Trump won the elections:
Seen from the perspective of power centers
Clinton once had all the support she needed. But
she then lost a decisive group due to her
uncompromising neo-conned foreign policy.
Here is an interesting take based on a
theory from the 1950s:
[T]he power elite can be best described as a
“triangle of power,” linking the
corporate, executive government, and
military factions: “There is a
political economy numerously linked with
military order and decision. This triangle
of power is now a structural fact, and it is
the key to any understanding of the higher
circles in America today.”
The 2016 US election, like all other US
elections, featured a gallery of
pre-selected candidates that represented the
three factions and their interests within
the power elite. The 2016 US election,
however, was vastly different from previous
elections. As the election dragged on the
power elite became bitterly divided, with
the majority supporting Hilary Clinton, the
candidate pre-selected by the political and
corporate factions, while the military
faction rallied around their choice of
Donald Trump.
...
The decisive political point in this election
round was the fight between
neo-conservatives/liberal-interventionists and
foreign policy realists. One side is represented
as exemplary by the CIA with the U.S. military
on the other:
A schism developed between the Defense
Department and the highly politicized CIA.
This schism, which can be attributed to the
corporate-deep-state’s covert foreign
policy, traces back to the CIA orchestrated
“color revolutions” that had swept the
Middle East and North Africa.
The CIA created bloodthirsty future enemies
the military will later have to defeat. ...
That explanation has held up well. At the
beginning of his regime Trump stuffed the White
House with the military faction while the executive
government -the deep state- waged a war against him.
The corporate side of triangle of power was quite
happy with his tax policies.
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The Lies And
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But Trump soon discovered that the military
faction did not concur with his 'America first'
isolationist tendencies. The 'grown ups' and
generals wanted to explain to Trump why they believe
that the U.S. needs many allies and bases and why
the many long wars the U.S. fights are sensible
policy.
According to a new book, partly adapted in a
Washington Post piece, that
effort did not end well:
Trump organized his unorthodox worldview under
the simplistic banner of “America First,” but
[Secretary of Defense Jim] Mattis, [Secretary of
State Rex] Tillerson, and [Director of the
National Economic Council Gary] Cohn feared his
proposals were rash, barely considered, and a
danger to America’s superpower standing. They
also felt that many of Trump’s impulsive ideas
stemmed from his lack of familiarity with U.S.
history and, even, where countries were located.
To have a useful discussion with him, the trio
agreed, they had to create a basic knowledge, a
shared language.
So on July 20, 2017, Mattis invited Trump to
the Tank for what he, Tillerson, and Cohn had
carefully organized as a tailored tutorial.
The meeting in the Tank, a secure conference room
in the Pentagon, were part of an effort to subdue
Trump's insurgency against the top military's
world view. and the presentation by top generals
came off as a lecture which Trump immediately
disliked:
An opening line flashed on the screen, setting
the tone: “The post-war international
rules-based order is the greatest gift of the
greatest generation.” Mattis then gave a
20-minute briefing on the power of the NATO
alliance to stabilize Europe and keep the United
States safe. Bannon thought to himself, “Not
good. Trump is not going to like that one bit.”
The internationalist language Mattis was using
was a trigger for Trump.
“Oh, baby, this is going to be f---ing wild,”
[White House chief strategist Stephen K.] Bannon
thought. “If you stood up and threatened to
shoot [Trump], he couldn’t say ‘postwar
rules-based international order.’ It’s just not
the way he thinks.”
Bannon was right. Verbal scuffles about NATO,
South Korea and U.S. bases followed. Then Trump took
on the generals:
“We are owed money you haven’t been collecting!”
Trump told them. “You would totally go bankrupt
if you had to run your own business.”
The discussion turned to the war on Afghanistan:
Trump erupted to revive another frequent
complaint: the war in Afghanistan, which was now
America’s longest war. He demanded an
explanation for why the United States hadn’t won
in Afghanistan yet, now 16 years after the
nation began fighting there in the wake of the
9/11 terrorist attacks. Trump unleashed his
disdain, calling Afghanistan a “loser war.” That
phrase hung in the air and disgusted not only
the military leaders at the table but also the
men and women in uniform sitting along the back
wall behind their principals. They all were
sworn to obey their commander in chief’s
commands, and here he was calling the war they
had been fighting a loser war.
“You’re all losers,” Trump said. “You don’t know
how to win anymore.”
When one reads the recent
Congress testimony of the Special Inspector General
for Afghanistan one can see that
Trump has a point. The war is long lost and the
military is lying about it:
“There’s an odor of mendacity throughout the
Afghanistan issue . . . mendacity and hubris,”
John F. Sopko said in testimony before the House
Foreign Affairs Committee. “The problem is there
is a disincentive, really, to tell the truth. We
have created an incentive to almost require
people to lie.”
...
“When we talk about mendacity, when we talk
about lying, it’s not just lying about a
particular program. It’s lying by omissions,” he
said. “It turns out that everything that is bad
news has been classified for the last few
years.”
Trump's rant during the meeting with the generals
continued:
Trump mused about removing General John
Nicholson, the U.S. commander in charge of
troops in Afghanistan. “I don’t think he knows
how to win,” the president said, impugning
Nicholson, who was not present at the meeting.
...
“I want to win,” he said. “We don’t win any wars
anymore . . . We spend $7 trillion, everybody
else got the oil and we’re not winning anymore.”
...
“I wouldn’t go to war with you people,” Trump
told the assembled brass.
Addressing the room, the commander in chief
barked, “You’re a bunch of dopes and babies.”
A drill sergeant act performed on recruits with
four stars on their shoulders. I find that quite
impressive. Those
perfumed princes must have fumed.
While some will certainly say that Trump
disgraced the military with his rant most of the
soldiers in the field will likely agree with his
opinion about their generals.
Most of the 'dopes and babies' who were in that
room have since been fired or retired. Their
replacements are yes-men more to Trump's liking.
They did not even protest about Trump's latest
blunder. He rented out scarce air defense units to
Saudi Arabia and went on to murder Qassem Soleimani
in Iraq while the U.S. bases there no longer had air
defenses to protect them against the inevitable
retaliation.
The anti-Trump leaders of the executive side of
the triangle have likewise been removed and replaced
with people who are unlikely to put up a fight
against Trump.
The third side of the triangle, the corporate
faction, is happy that Trump pressed the Fed to
douse the markets with free money. Unless the
inevitable stock market crash comes before the
election, which is unlikely, they will stick to
Trump's side.
With all three sides of the triangle of power
inclined to favor him or neutralized Trump seems to
have a good chance to win the next election.
That is unless he continues to follow the
advice of neocons
with a bad record and, by sheer stupidity,
starts a war against Iran.
This article was
originally published by "Moon
Of Alanbama" -
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