All posts by Thomas L. Knapp

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Sorry, Non-Interventionists: Donald Trump is a War President

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Rescue and clean-up crews search for casualtie...
Rescue and clean-up crews search for casualties following the barracks bombing in Beirut on October 23, 1983. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

During the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump claimed to have opposed the Iraq war, wanted better relations with Russia, and even briefly put his hand on the hot stove of the Arab-Israeli conflict, calling himself “neutral” on Palestine.

On the other hand, he called for “rebuilding” the US armed forces, which hardly need it (they’re already the most expensive and bloated war machine on the planet). And he yanked his hand off the stove when he got his fingers burnt, turning 180 degrees to announce that he’d be “the most pro-Israel president ever,” when he decided that’s what it took to win the election.

Clearly candidate Trump was a mixed bag on foreign policy, but he was marginally better than most of his opponents. Some antiwar activists took heart at the possibility that he might, as president, cut back on US military adventurism.

No such luck.

The first major post-inauguration evidence that Trump is just a typical political con man came in February with a raid in Yemen resulting in the murder of an 8-year-old American girl and dozens of other civilians by US Navy Seals (one of whom also died). The raid was planned under and approved by then-president Barack Obama prior to Trump’s inauguration, but instead of condemning the action he defended it. He invited the widow of the fallen SEAL, but not the surviving members of young Nawar Anwar al-Awlaki’s family, to attend his speech before Congress.

Now he’s  deployed 400 artillery and infantry troops from the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit and 100 US Army Rangers to Syria, effectively doubling the number of US military boots on the ground there.

Mainstream American media outlets seem to consider it novel, perhaps even controversial, that Syrian president Bashar al-Assad refers to the US troops as “invaders.” I’m not sure why. Sending troops into a country against the will of its government is, by definition, an invasion.

Apart from a few bitter-enders still trying and failing to get the words “I was wrong” out of their mouths like Fonzie in Happy Days,  antiwar Trump supporters seem to understand that they got played.

Perhaps Trump will change course yet again and start pulling American troops out of the Middle East when (not if) things blow up in his face, as Ronald Reagan did after the 1983 Beirut Marine barracks bombing. But I wouldn’t bet on it. His temperament and, so far, his actions scream “war president.”

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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The First Step Toward Fiscal Discipline: Cut Up The Credit Card

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In 2015, Congress temporarily did away with the US government’s fictional “debt limit.” I call that limit fictional because it’s not really a limit. Every time the government gets close to it, Congress raises it. It’s as if signs on the highway changed to display a number five miles higher every time you got within a mile of the existing “speed limit.” So anyway, Congress decided to stop pretending the limit actually exists, through March 15 of this year.

After that? The Congressional Budget Office forecasts that the government can continue to operate until this fall without busting the new debt limit, but US Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin is already asking Congress to raise it ASAP.

I’ve got a better idea: This time, Congress should refuse to increase the debt limit, and in fact should provide for that limit to automatically decrease as the existing debt (now closing in on $20 trillion) is paid down.

As of 2014, government spending came to more than 40% of the country’s Gross Domestic Product annually. Yes, you read that right: American politicians spend 40 cents from every dollar of wealth created in our economy.

About 25% of that looting is overt taxation. The other 15% is borrowed. Borrowing is just deferred taxation. Those who loan American politicians money are told — and believe — that for every dollar it borrows, the US government will find a way to take a dollar, plus interest, out of your hide at some point in the future.

The politicians are spending all of the money they directly pick out of our pockets. Then they’re borrowing more and pretending we’re their co-signers.

If a regular person ends up in deep debt, he knows that the very first step to getting out of the hole is to cut up the credit cards and stop borrowing money.

Supporters of continuously growing government debt try to make the matter seem more complicated for Congress than it is for you or me. In reality, it is exactly as simple.  The first step is to stop the borrowing.

And after the borrowing stops? Well, there’s always bankruptcy — repudiation of the debt in its entirety — or, as president Donald Trump suggested during his campaign,  at least negotiating with creditors to settle for less than the government owes.

Sooner or later, the borrowing IS going to end. It can end with fiscal discipline or it can end with political and economic disaster. Your call, Congress.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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Vault 7: What it Means for You

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The -foot ( m) diameter granite CIA seal in th...
CIA seal in the lobby of the original headquarters building. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

On March 7, the transparency/disclosure activists at Wikileaks began releasing a series of documents titled “Vault 7.” According to the New York Times, Vault 7 consists of “thousands of pages describing sophisticated software tools and techniques used by the [US Central Intelligence Agency] to break into smartphones, computers and even Internet-connected televisions.”

If the documents are authentic — and WikiLeaks has a sterling reputation when it comes to document authenticity — every paranoid thriller you’ve ever watched or read was too timid in describing a hypothetical surveillance state. Even the telescreens and random audio bugs of George Orwell’s 1984 don’t come close to the reality of the CIA’s surveillance operations.

In theory, the CIA doesn’t spy on Americans in America. In fact, digital traffic pays no heed to national borders, and the tools and tactics described have almost certainly been made available to, or independently developed by, other US surveillance agencies, not to mention foreign governments and non-government actors.

Bottom line: You should accept the possibility that for the last several years anything you’ve done on, or in the presence of, a device that can connect to the Internet was observed, monitored, and archived as accessible data.

Paranoid? Yes. But the paranoia is justified.

Even if “they”  — the CIA, the NSA, the FBI, some random group of credit card thieves or voyeurs or whatever — aren’t out to get you in particular, they consider your personal privacy a technical obstacle to overcome, not a value to respect.

If you’ve got nothing to hide you’ve got nothing to fear? Everyone has something to hide. Somewhere, some time, you’ve said or done something you regret or wouldn’t want the world to know. And you probably said or did it within a few feet of your smartphone, your laptop, or your Internet-connected television. Maybe nobody was listening or watching. Or maybe someone was. The only plausible conclusion from the Vault 7 disclosures is that you should assume the latter.

Vault 7 confirms that as a state entity, the CIA answers to philosopher Anthony de Jasay’s description of the state as such. Just as a firm acts to maximize profits, the state and its arms act to maximize their own discretionary power. Even if it doesn’t do some particular thing, it requires the option, the ability to do that thing. It seeks omnipotence.

The abuses of our privacy implied by the WikiLeaks dump aren’t an aberration. They’re the norm. They’re what government does.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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