Category Archives: GOP

Russian ultranationalist Aleksandr Dugin: ‘Vote for Trump’

At the Russian site, Katehon.com, the ultranationalist ideologue, Aleksandr Dugin, writes:

[Donald Trump] is an extremely successful ordinary American. He is crude America, without gloss and the globalist elite. He is sometimes disgusting and violent, but he is what he is. It is true America.

Most likely, Donald Trump is another designed product, a virtual figure. However, it is him who makes people feel fresh and hopeful. He is trustworthy: the black peacekeeper promised to change everything, but was unable to change anything, nothing at all, and Hilary Clinton, with a quickly aging poker face, doesn’t promise to change anything, maybe Trump will be able to get America’s natural borders back.

Maybe, that redhead rude Yankee from the saloon will get back to the problems inside the country and will leave humanity alone, which is tired of American hegemony and its destructive policy of chaos, bloody rivers and color revolutions?

Trump is a leader. Most likely, he is fake, but even if he is not fake, he has no chance of winning, as the globalist elites and financial oligarchy control practically everything in the USA.

But we want to put trust in Donald Trump.

Vote for Trump, and see what will happen.

Max Fisher adds:

[I]n spring 2015, when I traveled to Moscow, I found the once-triumphant Duginists and ultranationalists no longer saw Putin as an ally, and even considered him a traitor to the cause. Some had been pressured by security services, which they took as a sign that their views were no longer tolerated. Meanwhile, Putin had largely dropped his grand Eurasianist rhetoric.

In retrospect, it seems likely that Putin’s short-lived embrace of Duginism was opportunistic and superficial. In other words, Putin decided to invade Ukraine for narrow political reasons, then reached for Eurasianism and neo-imperialism in order to justify his actions and to whip up public support.

But when Putin’s Novorossiya project floundered — his actions in eastern Ukraine succeeded in destabilizing the country but not in dominating it outright — he shifted strategies, seeking to maintain a low-level conflict rather than to escalate. The neo-imperialist ideological justifications no longer fit the strategy. And far-right movements, newly empowered, were pushing Putin to go further than he wanted to. So Putin turned on them.

It turned out that Dugin’s apparent importance to the Kremlin’s ideology had been overstated. This is not to criticize those who considered Dugin important — it was a reasonable conclusion to draw at the time — but rather just to say that we now know Dugin’s ideas were never all that important, and that today he is at the nadir of his influence.

Therefore, we should probably not conclude that Dugin’s Trump endorsement tells us anything useful about the Kremlin’s view of the US presidential race. It’s true that Trump has praised Putin and that Putin has returned the favor, but Trump likely appeals to these two Russians on different grounds and for different reasons.

Facebooktwittermail

Donald Trump embodies how great republics meet their end

destruction9

Martin Wolf writes: In creating the American republic, the founding fathers were aware of the example of Rome. Alexander Hamilton argued in the Federalist Papers that the new republic would need an “energetic executive”. He noted that Rome itself, with its careful duplication of magistracies, depended in its hours of need on the grant of absolute, albeit temporary, power to one man, called a “dictator”.

The US would have no such office. Instead, it would have a unitary executive: the president as elected monarch. The president has limited, but great, authority. For Hamilton, the danger of overweening power would be contained by “first, a due dependence on the people, secondly, a due responsibility”.

During the first century BC, the wealth of empire destabilised the Roman republic. In the end, Augustus, heir of the popular party, terminated the republic and installed himself as emperor. He did so by preserving all the forms of the republic, while he dispensed with their meaning.

It is rash to assume constitutional constraints would survive the presidency of someone elected because he neither understands nor believes in them. Rounding up and deporting 11m people is an immense coercive enterprise. Would a president elected to achieve this be prevented and, if so, by whom? What are we to make of Mr Trump’s enthusiasm for the barbarities of torture? Would he find people willing to carry out his desires or not?

It is not difficult for a determined leader to do the previously unthinkable by appealing to conditions of emergency. Both Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Delano Roosevelt did some extraordinary things in wartime. But these men knew limits. Would Mr Trump also know limits? Hamilton’s “energetic” executive is dangerous. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

The white supremacists fully emboldened and energized by Trump

Shaun King reports: On Monday, 30 black students attending a Donald Trump rally at Valdosta State University in rural Georgia were forcefully ejected — simply for being black.

On Tuesday, in Louisville, Kentucky, what happened to young black protestors at another Trump rally wasn’t just racist — it appears to be outright criminal.

While we have already widely reported that white supremacists are openly proclaiming that they are fully emboldened and energized by Trump, the natural progression of their romance with Trump is now on full display.

A man wearing a make America great again hat — thought to be Matthew Heimbach, a leader of the Traditionalist Worker Party — can be seen next to a protestor at the Trump rally in Louisville.
While Trump was giving his typical campaign speech about making America great again, several different predominantly black groups of protestors, who were simply there to hold up signs, began having those signs snatched and getting cursed by the white Trump supporters surrounding them.

We now know that those Trump supporters are open bigots, Neo-Nazi’s, and white supremacists belonging to many different groups including the Traditionalist Worker Party — a well-documented hate group. Their social media profiles are full of Nazi photos, KKK and white supremacist references, and some of the most insulting, despicable hate speech you’ll ever see. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

As Europe falls apart, America clowns around

Fred Hiatt writes from Adasevci, Serbia: It is hard to watch the desperate, dignified families huddling around the phone-charging stations in the government shelter in this Balkan village as the clownish spectacle of a presidential campaign unfolds at home.

Foot soldiers of misery, they tumble out of buses and their first request is not for water, food or diapers. They have been on the move for weeks, in some cases months, and they need to connect — with relatives they’ve left behind and may never see again, with comrades who can relay rumors on the dangers of the road ahead.

They are escaping the wreckage of entire countries. A million have washed into Europe in the past year, and another million are on the threshold. The continent’s leaders see the mass migration as their starkest test since World War II. Far-right xenophobic parties are on the rise. Longtime commitments to free speech, tolerance and open borders are eroding. Many of the leaders despair at the absence of U.S. leadership and the rise of Russian meddling.

Whatever your politics, you cannot fail to grasp that the problems are deadly serious, and any remedies complex and elusive. Meanwhile, the Republican presidential debates unfold like some grotesque game of playground taunting, with real problems, to the extent they are discussed at all, presented as amenable to easy solution. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Donald Trump’s strongman strategy

trump

To the mild frustration of reporters and commentators, Donald Trump has thus far run a presidential campaign that is virtually content-free when it comes to policy substance.

The main thing he promises to deliver if he becomes president is Donald Trump. He isn’t asking voters to support what he stands for; he wants Americans to support him.

And as for why anyone should support him, his reason is plain: I’m the man. I’m stronger than anyone who tries to challenge me. I can make America great because I am great.

Each time Trump casually generates outrage, he demonstrates his growing power. He parades his ability to act without constraint and baits the media which promptly and obediently declares, “this time Trump’s gone too far.”

Yet as both he and they know, on the contrary, he’s just shown that none of his rivals or critics have the power to rein him in. Like a boxing champion, he continues waiving his fist in the air to the delight of his admirers.

When Trump refused to disavow the Ku Klux Klan this weekend, did this have anything to do with his views about the KKK? I very much doubt it. Instead, it much more likely revealed what he thinks of Jake Tapper and CNN. Trump wasn’t about to jump through a disavowal hoop on the command of a journalist.

Trump has made it abundantly clear how he views the media, not only through his countless verbal expressions of contempt, but also through demeaning the press at campaign rallies by forcing them into pens, like farmyard animals — a humiliation that news organizations accept because of their own greed.

Since Trump is running as a strongman for America, all he has to do is pick fights and win them. It doesn’t matter what the fight is about — just that he’s the one who comes out on top.

When the pope seemed to be picking a fight with him, Trump backed down — that was a fight that offered no reward.

When Trump runs as the Republican candidate in the general election, he won’t need to be the most popular candidate in order to win — he’ll just need to get the most votes. In other words, it probably won’t matter who he is running against if he is successful in generating a higher turnout from his supporters than that of his opponent.

In this regard, Trump’s trump card is the fact that he mostly appeals to Americans who are loyal to strong leaders and obedient to their commands.

Last month, Max Ehrenfreund wrote:

One of the reasons that Donald Trump has flummoxed pollsters and political analysts is that his supporters seem to have nothing in common. He appeals to evangelical and secular voters, conservative and moderate Republicans, independents and even some Democrats. Many of his supporters are white and don’t have a college degree, but he also does well with some highly educated voters, too.

What’s bringing all these different people together, new research shows, is a shared type of personality — a personality that in many ways has nothing to do with politics. Indeed, it turns out that your views on raising children better predict whether you support Trump than just about anything else about you.

Matthew MacWilliams, a doctoral candidate at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, conducted a poll in which Republicans were asked four questions about child-rearing. With each question, respondents were asked which of two traits were more important in children:

  • independence or respect for their elders;
  • curiosity or good manners;
  • self-reliance or obedience;
  • being considerate or being well-behaved.

Psychologists use these questions to identify people who are disposed to favor hierarchy, loyalty and strong leadership — those who picked the second trait in each set — what experts call “authoritarianism.” That many of Trump’s supporters share this trait helps explain the success of his unconventional candidacy and suggests that his rivals will have a hard time winning over his adherents.

When it comes to politics, authoritarians tend to prefer clarity and unity to ambiguity and difference. They’re amenable to restricting the rights of foreigners, members of a political party in the minority and anyone whose culture or lifestyle deviates from their own community’s.

“For authoritarians, things are black and white,” MacWilliams said. “Authoritarians obey.”

When Donald Trump calls out his troops on November 8, they will obey.

Facebooktwittermail

Andrew Bacevich: Donald Trump and the remaking of America

As a child of the 1980s, certain touchstones, figures, and moments are seared into my brain: Pac-Man and Michael Jackson, the personal computer, Yuppies, crack hysteria, AIDs, the Challenger disaster, and in the waning days of the decade, the fall of the Berlin Wall. Two newsmakers also stand out in my mind. From my local area, there was Mafioso John Gotti, the “Teflon Don,” who always seemed to be mugging for the camera and beating the rap. On the national front, there was Ronald Reagan, the “Teflon president,” who slipped and slid (and maybe slept) through one scandal after another: the Iran-Contra Affair, influence-peddling at the Department of Housing and Urban Development , the Ill Wind Pentagon fraud scandal, Sewergate at the Environmental Protection Agency, the Inslaw Affair, and so on.

Something else stands out from those years, a commercial that always seemed to be playing on TV, perhaps even between stories about the two Teflon newsmakers. It began with a team of horses charging through the night pulling a carriage. As the coach comes to a stop, a clone of Henry VIII steps forth, his eyes wide, his mouth open, awed by the utter 1980s opulence arrayed before him. “You’re the king, you’re the king of the castle,” sings a woman with a cruise-ship-quality voice. “Trump Castle, hotel and casino, and baby, baby, do we know how to treat a king!” What follows is a barrage of a montage: a tux-clad maître d’, Vegas-style showgirls, a cork popping from a bottle of champagne. And then Henry’s back. “Now this is a castle!” he booms, his arms lifted to the sky as the camera pans to take in the gaudy “elegance” of Donald Trump’s Atlantic City pleasure palace.

For decades, that commercial, or at least the horrible jingle sung by Trump’s sequin-clad chanteuse, never quite left my brain. Still, who could have imagined that the man who sired that ad would emerge as a “serious” presidential candidate of the party of the Teflon president and prove to be, at least to this moment, more resilient, more Teflonesque, no matter what he says or does, than Dutch Reagan and John Gotti combined? What started as a joke has become a disaster-in-the-making and the wink offered by a tiara-wearing cocktail waitress at that ad’s end has taken on a new resonance for me.

Trump’s Castle was rebranded out of existence in the 1990s and The Donald’s Atlantic City empire — the Trump Taj Mahal (now owned by activist investor Carl Icahn), Trump Plaza, and the Trump Marina (the old Castle) — crumbled. But Trump himself has somehow emerged stronger than ever. The man who sought to lure all aspiring monarchs to A.C. (“welcome to a kingdom where everybody’s treated like a king”) has whipped up a heady mix of xenophobia, political bromides, and so-light-it-floats policy proposals into a movement. Call it Trumpism, or maybe even Trumpismo. And should he ride this populist wave of fear and loathing to the Republican nomination for president, the American political system will never be the same — so says TomDispatch regular Andrew Bacevich whose monumental new book, America’s War for the Greater Middle East, is due out this April. If the Teflon doesn’t wear thin soon, you might want to start preparing yourself for this once-improbable candidate to become, as Bacevich suggests, America’s very own Juan Perón, though he might prefer to be called the king of the castle. Nick Turse

Don’t cry for me, America
What Trumpism means for democracy
By Andrew J. Bacevich

Whether or not Donald Trump ultimately succeeds in winning the White House, historians are likely to rank him as the most consequential presidential candidate of at least the past half-century. He has already transformed the tone and temper of American political life. If he becomes the Republican nominee, he will demolish its structural underpinnings as well. Should he prevail in November, his election will alter its very fabric in ways likely to prove irreversible. Whether Trump ever delivers on his promise to “Make America Great Again,” he is already transforming American democratic practice.

Trump takes obvious delight in thumbing his nose at the political establishment and flouting its norms. Yet to classify him as an anti-establishment figure is to miss his true significance. He is to American politics what Martin Shkreli is to Big Pharma. Each represents in exaggerated form the distilled essence of a much larger and more disturbing reality. Each embodies the smirking cynicism that has become one of the defining characteristics of our age. Each in his own way is a sign of the times.

Continue reading →

Facebooktwittermail

If you want a revolution, you have to vote for it

Derek Thompson writes: Because Generation Y is the largest generation in American history, it’s a big deal if it remains one of the most liberal generations ever. But there’s a huge, inescapable problem with the viability of Millennial politics today: Young people just don’t vote. Between 1964 and 2012, youth voter turnout in presidential elections has fallen below 50 percent, and Baby Boomers now outvote their children’s generation by a stunning 30 percentage points. Millennials might make a lot of noise between presidential elections, but in November, politicians remember what young people are: All throat and no vote.

The liberal revolution would require more than quadrennial thrills. It would require a sustained focus on filling congressional and Senate seats with liberals so that a left-leaning president can sign bills approved by left-leaning majorities. Instead, this generation hasn’t shown that it can sustain interest in politics through non-presidential elections. Voting among people under 30 in non-presidential elections is hovering around its lowest rate in the last half-century.

A lasting revolution would require even more than that. At a time when the federal government is dragging its feet on every issue, the most significant policy decisions often come at the local and state level. But Republicans control more than half of state legislatures and governor’s mansions, in part because Millennials simply don’t show up to vote. One study found that the median age of voters in mayoral elections is 60.You cannot create a national movement around critical local policies, like higher minimum wages, if city hall is elected exclusively by voters born before Dwight Eisenhower’s reelection. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Jean-Marie Le Pen endorses Trump days after ex-KKK leader urges support

The Guardian reports: Donald Trump received a vote of confidence on Saturday from Jean-Marie Le Pen, the former leader of France’s Front National who in the past has said the Nazi occupation was not “particularly inhumane” and suggested Ebola could solve Europe’s “immigration problem”.

“If I were American, I would vote Donald Trump,” Le Pen tweeted on Saturday about the Republican frontrunner for president. “But may God protect him!”

Trump’s ascendance in American politics began with his promises to build a “big, beautiful wall” along the US-Mexican border, derogatory comments about Mexicans, and a promise to deport 11 million undocumented people.

Le Pen founded Front National, a far-right party that campaigns mostly on anti-immigration policies. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Donald Trump declines to disavow David Duke

The New York Times reports: Donald J. Trump declined on Sunday to disavow the support of David Duke, the white nationalist and ex-Ku Klux Klansman, who has called Mr. Trump “by far the best candidate.”

Mr. Duke, a former member of Congress who once ran for president, is famous for his white supremacist views and is generally considered a pariah in politics. In an interview with CNN, Mr. Trump pleaded ignorance about him.

“Well, just so you understand, I don’t know anything about David Duke,” Mr. Trump said. “I don’t know anything about what you’re even talking about with white supremacy or white supremacists.” [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Donald Trump’s grandfather was an illegal migrant and ‘Trojan horse’

By Stefan Manz, Aston University

During New Year celebrations in Cologne, there were more than 500 reported attacks against women, including robbery and sexual assault. Most of the suspects are of North African origin, and some are thought to have entered the country illegally or as asylum seekers.

The news was welcome campaign fodder for US presidential hopeful Donald Trump. Referring to German chancellor Angela Merkel’s open door policy on refugees from Syria, he commented in his usual rhetoric: “I don’t know what the hell she is thinking”.

Trump went on to say that he did not want to have “people coming in from migration from Syria (sic)” as these were aggressive young men who “look like they should be on the wrestling team”. More dangerously still, Trump believed such people could act as terrorist “Trojan horses”.

Continue reading →

Facebooktwittermail

Trump’s remarks on pigs’ blood elicit challenge from sister of Chapel Hill victim

The New York Times reports: Suzanne Barakat, the sister of a Muslim student killed alongside his wife and sister-in-law last year in an attack in North Carolina, challenged Donald J. Trump to meet with her after a speech in which he spoke approvingly of killing Islamic terrorists with bullets dipped in the blood of pigs.

Ms. Barakat, 28, said the comments and other anti-Muslim rhetoric from Mr. Trump, including a proposal to ban Muslims from entering the country, have contributed to an atmosphere of intolerance that she fears could have deadly consequences.

“It allows for the Average Joe to see Muslims the way Craig Hicks saw my brother and his wife of six weeks and her sister,” she said, referring to the man who killed her relatives last February. “As ‘The Other,’ as subhuman, because of their faith.” [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Pope Francis and the Republican Party’s unchristian values

Religion should be kept out of politics — unless we’re talking about abortion, gay marriage, family values or any other issue where apparently it’s reasonable for religion to enter politics.

But for an Argentine pope to shove his nose into a U.S. presidential election, ranks in audacity close to Fidel Castro threatening America.

No doubt there are lots of Republicans who are convinced that Francis is really just a commie dressed in white — another Latino revolutionary out to stir up trouble.

In fact, the remarks the pope made yesterday that were reported as an attack on Trump were simply a rather basic enunciation of Christian values — as expressed in the Sermon on the Mount.

Maybe the Republicans would prefer the pope to refrain from preaching altogether. They might be happier if henceforth he simply be the Catholic church’s chief smiley face.

Michael Sean Winters writes: The difference could not be more stark. Pope Francis, in Ciudad Juarez yesterday, called for justice for migrants and an economic structure that serves people before profits and measures its health by the degree to which it includes everybody. Meanwhile, the Republican party’s presidential candidates are falling all over themselves to see who can be the toughest on immigration and the idea that profit is not the final arbiter of economic relations is viewed not just skeptically but as a kind of heresy.

The pope gave three talks in Ciudad Juarez, one to prisoners, one to workers, and a sermon at a Mass alongside the border with the United States. All three were a kind of rhetorical photographic negative of the attitudes we see championed by today’s Republican Party. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Trump: I’ll be ‘neutral’ on Israel and Palestine

The Hill reports: GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump on Wednesday refused to pick sides in the conflict between Israel and Palestine.

“You know, I don’t want to get into it,” he told hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski during a MSNBC town hall in Charleston, S.C.

“If I win, I don’t want to be in a position where I’m saying to you [my choice] and the other side now says, ‘We don’t want Trump involved,'” the real estyate mogul said of potentially winning the presidency and then brokering a lasting peace deal.
“Let me be sort of a neutral guy,” the billionaire added. “I have friends of mine that are tremendous businesspeople, that are really great negotiators, [and] they say it’s not doable.

“You understand a lot of people have gone down in flames trying to make that deal. So I don’t want to say whose fault it is — I don’t think that helps.” [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Trump campaign manager: Assad ‘keeping things in check’ in Syria

BuzzFeed reports: Donald Trump’s campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, said in an interview on Tuesday that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is “keeping things in check” in the war-torn country.

The conflict in Syria, which has been ongoing for four-and-a-half years, has resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Syrians, and created a refugee crisis in the region. Trump has said he wants to work with Russia on Syria to defeat ISIS and opposes overthrowing Assad.

Appearing on the John Fredericks Show, Lewandowski, defending Trump’s position, said, “He is very, very bad individual, but he is an individual who, in his country, is keeping things in check because he is such a bad guy they’re afraid of him.” [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

How Scalia’s death might help our planet

Eric Holthaus writes: Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s death at a remote Texas ranch has triggered a political earthquake and instantly changes the outlook for a host of high-profile issues the court is currently considering. But perhaps none of these are as consequential as the fate of the planet itself. As Climate Central’s John Upton wrote, “in dying, Scalia may have done more to support global climate action than most people will do in their lifetimes.”

Scalia’s death comes just days after the Supreme Court issued an unprecedented stay that temporarily blocked the implementation of the Clean Power Plan, Obama’s centerpiece climate legislation. The Clean Power Plan isn’t perfect, but it was on pace to double the already accelerating rate of coal-fired power plant retirements by 2040. Last week’s surprising action by the Supreme Court — dubbed a “nightmare scenario” by the Hill — raised substantial fears among environmentalists that the court’s conservatives might eventually block the Clean Power Plan completely. At the very least, the stay buys some time for Republican hopefuls in this year’s presidential election; if one were to win, he could just cancel the executive order that launched the plan in the first place.

The stay is still in place, but the climate law experts I talked to say Scalia’s death greatly boosts the eventual survival chances of the Clean Power Plan. A 4-4 court would guarantee that the lower court ruling would stand—and the D.C. Circuit Court is expected to approve the plan. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Donald Trump’s history as a reckless gambler

trump-house

Michael Crowley writes: In January 1992, a Japanese one-time billionaire named Akio Kashiwagi was found dead in his palatial home near Mt. Fuji. The scene was gruesome. The house’s white paper screens were spattered with blood. The 54-year-old had been stabbed as many as 150 times. By some reports the weapon of choice was a samurai-style sword.

The crime was never solved, though it bore the hallmarks of a killing by Japan’s criminal yakuza. Ostensibly a real estate investor, Kashiwagi was a mysterious figure reputed to have underworld connections. He was also one of the world’s top five gamblers, a “whale” in casino parlance, willing to wager $10 million in a single gaming bender.

And that is how he crossed paths with Donald J. Trump, then a budding Atlantic City casino mogul. In 1990 the two men had an epic and remarkably personal showdown in which millions of dollars changed hands in a matter of days, before it all ended in a flurry of recriminations. One of the Japanese mogul’s last statements to the U.S. media, through an aide, involved his plans to burn a copy of Trump’s book, The Art of the Deal.

After his murder, the New York Times reported that he owed at least $9 million to casinos in Atlantic City and Las Vegas. One unnamed casino Atlantic City executive told the paper that Kashiwagi had owed the Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino $4 million.

Trump is obsessed with winning, a topic he usually brings up in the context of his merciless deal-making style. But a crucial question about any would-be president who may be confronted with questions of war and peace is his attitude toward risk. Some presidents — Barack Obama comes to mind — are highly averse to it. Others roll the dice, as George W. Bush did when he invaded Iraq.

The story of Akio Kashiwagi, drawn from Trump’s memoirs and news accounts from the day, offers a revealing window into Trump’s instincts. It shows that Trump isn’t just a one-time casino owner — he’s also a gambler, prone to impulsive, even reckless action. In The Art of the Comeback, published in 1997, Trump explains that until he met Kashiwagi, he saw himself as an investor who dealt only in facts and reason. But his duel with the great whale in action made him realize “that I had become a gambler, something I never thought I was.”

Perhaps just as important, when gambling failed him, Trump didn’t quit: He doubled down. But he did it shrewdly, summoning a RAND Corporation mathematician to devise a plan that would maximize his chance of fleecing his Japanese guest.

And it worked. Kind of. In Trump’s recollection, which he shared for this story, his showdown with Kashiwagi was another one of his many great wins. Just don’t look too hard at the ledger. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

From Iraq, general rebukes Ted Cruz’s plan to ‘carpet-bomb’ ISIS

The Washington Post reports: The top U.S. general in Iraq on Monday addressed recent political rhetoric in the presidential campaign that the United States should “carpet-bomb” the Islamic State, saying that the Pentagon is bound by the laws of armed conflict and does nt indiscriminately bomb civilian areas.

“We’re the United States of America, and we have a set of guiding principles and those affect the way we as professional soldiers, airmen, sailors, Marines, conduct ourselves on the battlefield,” MacFarland said. “So indiscriminate bombing, where we don’t care if we’re killing innocents or combatants, is just inconsistent with our values. And it’s what the Russians have been accused of doing in parts of northwest Syria. Right now we have the moral high ground, and I think that’s where we need to stay.”

The comments came in response to a question from CNN’s Barbara Starr during a Pentagon news conference. The general was asked why the military isn’t engaged in “so-called carpet-bombing,” a phrase that has been used often by presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz (R.-Tex.). [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail