by Emil Guillermo
July is the month of open questions. It should be for the celebration of American freedom.
Instead, it may be for the very negative freeing of health care benefits from the poorest in our country.
At least 8 million people could suffer from the passage of Trump’s BUB (Big Ugly Bill) this month.
All because Trump wants to pay for his raising the national debt by giving tax breaks to the wealthy.
It would all be in keeping with what we’ve seen of the Trump administration’s treatment of the world.
By cutting USAID, millions of people in Africa, specifically, aren’t getting the food and relief America has provided in the past. And there’s the pullback on funds that had the potential to end HIV.
Trump is mean and about the suffering. America First, right?
But not all the time. The bombing of nuclear sites in Iran on June 22 is clearly not an America First move.
But they did serve as a distraction as MAGA Republicans are desperately trying to shove Trump’s BUB through the congressional doors.
Which bombs do you care more about? Trump’s bombs in Iran, or the bombs he’s setting off in America’s social and health care infrastructure.
Trump didn’t ask us. But maybe he should have.
Barbara Lee’s Courage
Oakland, California Mayor Barbara Lee knows that “No means No” when it comes to the authorization of military force by the U.S.
We already know Donald Trump has no idea about any of that. He just does what he wants.
Trump could take a lesson from Lee.
In 2001, just days after 9/11, then Congresswoman Lee made world headlines as the only member of Congress to stand up to the Bush administration’s use of force against Afghanistan and/or any country harboring terrorists.
Lee wasn’t called the voice of reason. She was called a traitor.
Now, more than 20 years later, after a war that claimed countless lives and cost the U.S. more than a trillion dollars, we should remember Lee’s bravery as remarkable.
In June, no one was brave enough to speak out against the bombings by Donald Trump.
They didn’t get a chance. Some members of Congress were warned about the actions, but not all.
Certainly not all Democrats. There was no vote in Congress to authorize the attacks, which means, we the people, were shut out.
Who decided to drop bombs on Iran?
The non-king king. According to reports, it was Trump who decided on his own when and where the bombs would target Iran.
And what happened?
Trump sucker-punched us all.
Targets were struck in Iran, but did it end what Israel convinced Trump was an existential threat to the Jewish nation and the world?
As I write, we still don’t know. Did it set it back just months? Or years? We just know there’s no end to forever hate. And that is still intact.
It was Trump’s gamble. If the goal was to eliminate Iran’s nuclear capability, we don’t exactly have evidence of Trump’s favorite word to date, total “obliteration.”
All we know is that Donald Trump doesn’t necessarily want a lasting, perhaps impossible peace between Israel and Iran so much as he wants a Nobel Peace Prize—for the suckerpunching of Iran.
Trump’s F Bomb
Donald Trump wants the Nobel Peace Prize so badly that he dropped the F bomb.
That’s what made headlines. Some networks didn’t bleep him. He was so mad he was cussified.
That’s how frustrated Trump was after his “plan” failed. That plan was to bomb Iran, essentially bullying them to come to the table and accept the U.S. and Israel’s demands.
Iran, of course, rejected that and sent bombs into Israel and Qatar. Despite that, Trump announced a ceasefire at the start of the next week.
But no one listens to he who has a military but no credibility. So the bombings continued, with Israel unloading on Iran, and Iran striking back.
Donald Trump did all he could do and went blunt and cussy, saying “We basically have two countries that have been fighting for so long and so hard that they don’t know what the (eff) they’re doing.”
Swearing doesn’t make the president human or tough. But it does expose the frustration of his naivete-thinking he could do anything significant in just a few days to change the dangerous situation in the Middle East that has lasted for centuries.
By being the first to strike three nuclear facilities in Iran recently, Trump showed the impatience of a loser, not a peacemaker.
He had said he’d give it two weeks before acting, then he authorized an attack in two days. Smart? Not if he really wanted to give peace a chance.
Trump essentially started a war. But where was Congress? National intelligence head Tulsi Gabbard had testified Iran wasn’t making a bomb.
But Trump chose to believe Israel and its intelligence.
Instead of calmly pursuing peace, Trump went for the Nobel and suckerpunched Iran, only to be disappointed like a frustrated parent separating warring siblings.
Midweek, Trump headed to NATO with a tattered cease-fire that might last. But like everything else he does, Trump got us here in a clumsy, incompetent way.
And let’s not forget why we’re in this situation. In 2018, with a negotiated Iran nuclear agreement in place, Trump pulled out. It was Obama’s plan, and he didn’t like it.
Now he’d be happy to have that deal back. Only with a Trump brand.
But that won’t get him the Nobel for fixing a screwup of his own making.
We Are At War
Trump says the country’s not at war. But VP JD Vance and Trump contradict each other. Trump says the attacks are a one-off. Vance said immediately after the bombing, we aren’t in war with Iran, we’re at war with its nuclear policy.
So we are fighting sheets of paper, and not people?
They say it’s not about regime change because that would be unseemly for a democracy to impinge on Iran, a sovereign nation.
That’s something worthy of Russia, the invader of a sovereign Ukraine.
Or are we liberating Iran from itself and not just its nukes to please our Israeli allies?
Trump never thinks these things through, and now Iran’s Ayatollah is in a bunker, just playing out the clock.
And Trump is at war, without the backing of Congress, and based on new polling, the people.
Being president doesn’t have to be this hard. But it is when Trump’s ego is more important than the country.
Before he became Trump the mad bomber, Trump should have remembered the wisdom of Barbara Lee.
One Final Note
I write this column with a former editor and colleague in mind, the newsman and columnist Jerry Burris of the Honolulu Advertiser.
When I worked there 20 years ago on the editorial board of the ‘Tiser, Burris was just 61 and at the height of his powers.
Burris knew about everything and everybody in Hawaii. That meant for a newbie Honolulu resident like me, Jerry was an invaluable first source who would help me get to the truth.
We shared a common birthplace, San Francisco, but Jerry was all-Hawaii. In the office, he wore blue Oxford button-down shirts, and I wore used Reyn Spooners from the thrift store. But I was the pretender.
I valued all the help he offered me, and the friendship we shared working at that big building on Kapiolani.
EMIL GUILLERMO is a journalist and commentator. See his micro-talk show at www.YouTube.com/@emilamok1
About Author
+ There are no comments
Add yours