By Patrick J. Buchanan Asked what he did during the French Revolution, Abbe Sieyes replied, “I survived.” Donald Trump can make the same boast. No other political figure has so dominated our discourse. And none, not Joe McCarthy in his heyday in the early ’50s, nor Richard Nixon in Watergate, received such intensive and intemperate coverage and commentary as has our 45th president. Whatever one may think of Trump, he is a leader and a fighter, not a quitter. How many politicians could have sustained the beatings Trump has taken, and remained as cocky and confident? And looking back on what may fairly be called The Year of Trump, his achievements have surprised even some of his enemies. With the U.S. military given a freer hand by Trump, a U.S.-led coalition helped expel ISIS from its twin capitals of Raqqa in Syria and Mosul in Iraq, driving it back into a desert enclave on the Iraq-Syria border. The caliphate is dead, and the caliph nowhere to be found. The economy, with the boot of Barack Obama off its neck, has been growing at 3 percent. The stock market has soared to record highs. Unemployment is down to 4 percent. And Trump and Congress just passed the largest tax cut since Ronald Reagan. With deregulation, which conservative Republicans preached to deaf ears in the Bush I and Bush II eras, Trump and those he has put into positions of power have exceeded expectations. Pipelines Obama blocked have been approved. Alaska’s National Wildlife Refuge has been opened to exploratory drilling. We have exited a Paris climate accord that favored China over the U.S. Though Beijing’s trade surplus with us is returning to record highs, a spirit of “America First” economic nationalism is pervasive among U.S. trade negotiators, The one justice named to the Supreme Court, Neil Gorsuch, appears in the Antonin Scalia tradition. And under Chairman Chuck Grassley, the Senate judiciary committee is moving conservatives and strict constructionists onto U.S. appellate and district courts. Politically, however, the year brought bad news, with portents of worse to come. In November, the Republican Party was thrashed in Virginia, losing all state offices, and then lost a Senate seat in Alabama. Given polls showing Trump under water and the GOP running 10 points behind the Democratic Party in favorability, there is a possibility the GOP could lose the House in 2018. And though Democrats have three times as many seats at risk in 2018, the GOP losing the Senate is not beyond the realm of possibility. Should that happen, the conservative dream of a recapture of the U.S. Supreme Court could swiftly vanish. Recall: Democratic Senates turned down two Nixon nominees and Reagan’s nomination of Robert Bork, forcing both presidents to name justices who evolved into moderates and liberals on the high court. But it is in the realm of foreign policy where the real perils seem to lie. President Trump has been persuaded by his national security team to send Javelin anti-tank missiles to Ukraine, for use against the tanks and armor of pro-Russian rebels in Donetsk and Luhansk. Should Petro Poroshenko’s Kiev regime reignite the war in his breakaway provinces bordering Russia, Vladimir Putin is less likely to let him crush the rebels than to intervene with superior forces and rout the Ukrainian army. Trump’s choice then? Accept defeat and humiliation for our “ally” — or escalate and widen the conflict with Russia. Putin’s interest in the Donbass, a part of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union for centuries, is obvious. What, exactly, is ours — to justify a showdown with Moscow? In this city there is also a powerful propaganda push to have this country tear up the nuclear deal John Kerry negotiated with Iran, and confront the Iranians in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and the Persian Gulf. But how much backing would Trump have for another U.S. war in that blood-soaked region, after Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria? Who would stand with us, and for how long? When Trump declared Jerusalem to be the capital of Israel and pledged to move our embassy there, we had to veto a unanimous U.N. Security Council resolution condemning us. Then the General Assembly denounced the U.S. in a resolution supported by all our key NATO allies, Russia and China, and every Arab and Muslim nation. A day later, Trump complained on Twitter that we have “foolishly spent $7 trillion in the Middle East.” What then would justify a new $1 or $2 trillion war with the largest nation on the Persian Gulf, which could send oil to $200 a barrel and sink the global economy? Cui bono? For whose benefit all these wars? The Korean War finished Truman. Vietnam finished LBJ. Reagan said putting Marines into Lebanon was his worst mistake. Iraq cost Bush II both houses of Congress and his party the presidency in 2008. Should Trump become a war president, he’ll likely become a one-term president. http://buchanan.org/blog/will-war-cancel-trumps-triumphs-128383
The question above is a reasonable one. Our central European allies, like Poland, Hungary, and Ukraine are fearful of Russia, but the American people are sick of war and the recent ascendancy of Trump and his conservative allies would wither with the event of another conflict. Such a move would sink Trump in 2020 and the popularity of Pence would not offset the anti-war backlash. However, for Russia to invade Europe, the USA must somehow be neutralized. Safe in the Refuge of the Immaculate Heart!
Or the US..... could just roll over to the communists all over the world like we did during the 8 years of Obama and give the communists in North Korea billions more like Clinton did in 1994 to appease them and we "got their word" they would not build nukes . This moment in history was bound to come to a head, whether we bought their lies of appeasement or whether the world goes to war to try and stop the satanic forces. After all it was 100 years ago that our Lady of Fatima foretold of this moment when Russia would annihilate whole countries and they now, along with China, have that power.
Russia has neither the intention nor the capability to invade Europe. But the USA, under the leadership of Freemasons (another name for “communists”), seems hellbent on encircling Russia and provoking other nuclear armed nations like North Korea and China into confrontation. This is not rational behavior. But, then again, Satan doesn’t operate according to human reason. Donald Trump was not elected to continue and escalate the Freemason, Neocon foreign policy agenda. But that appears to be exactly what he is doing. Had I known he was a Freemason - which is becoming more and more probable - I would never have voted for him, no matter how much he waved the flag and shouted patriotic slogans.
He may have no choice. It's not his fault China is provoking. It's not his fault Russia backs Iran. He is not a Freemason. The hate he gets worldwide, especially with the media, tells me he is his own man.
It was his choice to bomb Assad, on a pack of lies. It was his choice to sail the Fleet off the Korean Peninsula. It was his decision to send anti-tank missiles to the neo-Nazi, genocidal Junta currently occupying Kiev. In each instance, he has followed the advice of his Neocon, globalist foreign policy advisors and has so put foreign, globalist interests ahead of the vital national security interests of the United States. In the Middle East, he is putting Israeli and Saudi interests ahead of American national security interests: that’s what the whole Iran “conflict” comes down to and why we ally ourselves with the butchers in Saudi Arabia whilst waging covert war on the Christian-defending leader of Syria. You can’t support the real tyrants in Saudi Arabia and at the same time condemn Iran and Hezbollah. That’s a level of duplicity that only a Freemason would be capable of. On the Korean Peninsula and in Ukraine, he has once again put the warmongering interests of the Neocons ahead of America’s national security. Before Trump listented to Kushner, McMasters, Haley and the other Neocon warmongers he seems so infatuated with, North Korea couldn’t get their missiles off the launch pad. A few months after Trump sailed the Fleet to Kim’s backyard, North Korea was sending advanced ICBMs into orbit. Until you realize that North Korea is a China proxy, you won’t understand why this siutation has become so dangerous so quickly. China is telling us to back-off and butt-out of their sphere of influence and has already publicly decalared that they will wage war on us if we preemptively attack North Korea. The same dynamic is at play in Ukraine: that’s Russia’s backyard, not ours, and the coup Obama engineered there and Trump is committed to maintain there is straight out of the Freemason playbook. There isn’t a single, vital national security interest worth the life of a single U.S. Marine in either the Middle East, Ukraine or on the Korean Peninsula. Trump should take his own campaign advice and “go to the Beach.” Even better, he could hire a genuine America-First advisor like Pat Buchanan and fire Kushner, McMasters, Haley and the rest of the Neocon warmongers that seem to currently have his ear.
You are right in being fearful. And if we had not had all these foolish Democrats, including Bush (the fake conservative), governing and feeding China State secrets, etc., we would not have been in this dilemna. Neo cons believe they are winning - but they are not. They have put us all in danger. They have united China with Russia. Trump has no choice in giving Russia an alternative. Either play with us, or say goodbye to Crimea. It's his only choice. Buchanan had good points, but he's irrelevant now. Iran is a force that must NOT unite with Saudi Arabia. Capiche? Better to have the Saudis playing nice to the Israelis. The mistake of the neo-cons was ousting the Shah of Iran. The Iranian radicals must be destroyed. Buchanan is wrong about this. His philosophy of having them all eat cake is not moral or intelligent. The radicals have united with our liberals here in the U.S. and Europe. Wake up man, this is a war against the antichrist of atheism and Islam. We finished with Hitler, then came the Soviet Union, now it's the break up of Islamic radicalism. If the Iranian Mullahs start to look crazy to the world, then Islam suffers, and so do the liberals. Miss Christianne Amanpour will be losing her voice.
I think the danger of an islamisation of western societys is real. Especially in Europe. This mostly has to do with the loss of faith and sprirtuality of big parts of the society. Our children are educated in school, by the media and politicans in being atheists. But without faith and trust in God, people are missing something. Even they don´t know. I think this gap could be filled by islam. In contrast to our Catholic bishops, spirit of time will not bend muslims. But I don´t know if this scenario will get real. And I think this fight can not be won with bombs. Pray the rosary is probably the only help. The other things are the politics. And fear of physical suffering by war or civil wars. Politics of chancellor Merkel have lead to the situation that since 2015 over 1.9 million muslims came to Europe. A lot of them unregistered. And about 80% of them are young men. And this already caused tensions in different regions of Europe. Our MSM try to report as little as possible about that. But for example one can find reports of violence in France, rapes and murderes in Germany and rapes in Sweden. Of course only some of the migrants are criminal, but statistics say the number is rising. An obvious reason for that is that most of the migrants are young men and hardly can be integrated in labour market because they do not have the required education. What I want to say is that civil wars in different regions of Europe are prophesied. And I think in some regions it will be reasoned by the clash of cultures and religions. Foreign policy always is correlated to geopolitical interests and interests on resources like oil. I can´t see how a regime change in Iran would make the Middle East more safe. Also there is no danger of a cooperation of Saudi Arabia and Iran. They are archenemies. It´s very unlikely to get Sunnis and Shiites together. The most important reason why Iran will be attacked is the same reason why Assad should be overthrown. Because on the one hand they are geopolitical partners of Russia. And that implies cooperation in relation to oil and petroleum gas. For exampel Syria refused the installation of the ”Qatar-Turkey Pipeline“. Of course in the Middle East there are colliding so many different interests. But please don´t say Iran is the one evil side. It´s so difficult to point out who is the good one and who is the bad one. Also the interactions of us, the Western nations, can´t be described as the good ones. How we act in the Middle East and everywhere else is not reasoned by Christian or human intensions, rather by our own advantages. By the way for me the biggest (islamic) threat is the prime minister of Turkey. I have the feeling he is waiting for the right moment to become the next sultan or calif of the Islamic world.
Steve79, You have made several good points in this post, especially the point to Pray the Rosary! Also, "It's so difficult to point out who is the good one and who is the bad one." I think that Pat Buchanan is pointing out what we already know, that President Trump is in a very tough situation.
I know very little about Mr Buchanan out of Wikipedia I also can not rate President Trump from far away, but I appreciate him for the reduction of financial support of abortion institutions. Time will tell which influences his foreign policy is exposed to and what results it will have.
I’m starting to get the impression he is, just from watching his foreign policy. He is certainly willing to put foreign interests (Israeli and Saudi) ahead of vital American national security interests and the advice of the founders. He’s willing to cozy-up and give millions in military aid to the tyrants in Saudi Arabia while at the same time repeating the Neocon mantra against Assad. Sad!! He’s doing Israel’s bidding on Iran and doesn’t seem to remember that it was Netanyahu who went before Congress and pushed for the war against Iraq, all on a pack of lies. Netanyahu wants American boys and girls to once again fight an Israeli war in the Middle East, and Trump seems poised to deliver. Sad!! Trump also seems ignorant to the West’s own hand in creating the mess in Iran. He thinks more Western intervention is the answer. Lawrence Wittner explains the true genesis of the present conflict in Iran: The offshore oil drilling catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico brought to us by BP has overshadowed its central role over the past century in fostering some other disastrous events. BP originated in 1908 as the Anglo-Persian Oil Company—a British corporation whose name was changed to the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company two decades later. With exclusive rights to extract, refine, export, and sell Iran’s rich oil resources, the company reaped enormous profits. Meanwhile, it shared only a tiny fraction of the proceeds with the Iranian government. Similarly, although the company’s British personnel lived in great luxury, its Iranian laborers endured lives of squalor and privation. In 1947, as Iranian resentment grew at the giant oil company’s practices, the Iranian parliament called upon the Shah, Iran’s feudal potentate, to renegotiate the agreement with Anglo-Iranian. Four years later, Mohammed Mossadeq, riding a tide of nationalism, became the nation’s prime minister. As an enthusiastic advocate of taking control of Iran’s oil resources and using the profits from them to develop his deeply impoverished nation, Mossadeq signed legislation, passed unanimously by the country’s parliament, to nationalize the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. The British government was horrified. Eager to assist the embattled corporation, it imposed an economic embargo on Iran and required its technicians to leave the country, thus effectively blocking the Iranian government from exporting its oil. When this failed to bring the Iranians to heel, the British government sought to arrange for the overthrow of Mossadeq—first through its own efforts and, later (when Britain’s diplomatic mission was expelled from Iran for its subversive activities), through the efforts of the U.S. government. But President Truman refused to commit the CIA to this venture. To the delight of Anglo-Iranian, it received a much friendlier reception from the new Eisenhower administration. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles had worked much of his life as a lawyer for multinational corporations, and viewed the Iranian challenge to corporate holdings as a very dangerous example to the world. Consequently, the CIA was placed in charge of an operation, including fomenting riots and other destabilizing activities, to overthrow Mossadeq and advance oil company interests in Iran. Organized by CIA operative Kermit Roosevelt in the summer of 1953, the coup was quite successful. Mossadeq was placed under house arrest for the rest of his life, the power of the pro-Western shah was dramatically enhanced, and the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company was once again granted access to Iran’s vast oil resources. To be sure, thanks to the key role played in the coup by the U.S. government, the British oil company—renamed British Petroleum—henceforth had to share the lucrative oil extraction business in Iran with U.S. corporations. Even so, in the following decades, with the Iranian public kept in line by the Shah’s dictatorship and by his dreaded secret police, the SAVAK, it was a very profitable arrangement—although not for most Iranians. But, of course, actions can have unforeseen consequences. In Iran, public anger grew at the Shah’s increasingly autocratic rule, culminating in the 1979 revolution and the establishment of a regime led by Islamic fanatics. Not surprisingly, the new rulers—and much of the population—blamed the United States for the coup against Mossadeq and its coziness with the Shah. This, in turn, led to the ensuing hostage crisis and to the onset of a very hostile relationship between the Iranian and U.S. governments. And there was worse to come. Terrified by the rise of Islamic fundamentalism on their southern border, Soviet leaders became obsessed with fundamentalist revolt in Afghanistan and began pouring troops into that strife-torn land. This was the signal for the U.S. government to back an anti-Soviet, fundamentalist jihad in Afghanistan, thus facilitating the growth of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, who eventually turned their weapons on the United States. Furthermore, as part of its anti-Iran strategy, the U.S. government grew increasingly chummy with Iran’s arch foe, Iraq. As Saddam Hussein seemed a particularly useful ally, Washington provided him with military intelligence and the helicopters that he used to spray poison gas on Iranian troops during the Iran-Iraq War. Might not such a friendship, cemented with a handshake by Donald Rumsfeld, have emboldened Saddam Hussein to act more freely in the region in subsequent years? It certainly didn’t improve U.S. relations with Iran, which today is headed by a deplorable government that—consumed by fear and loathing of the United States—might be developing nuclear weapons. At this point, we might well wonder if it was such a good idea to overthrow a democratic, secular nationalist like Mossadeq to preserve the profits of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (now renamed BP). Indeed, given the sordid record of BP and other giant oil companies, we might wonder why we tolerate them at all. https://www.counterpunch.org/2010/06/22/iran-bp-and-the-cia/
Richard, what a refreshing and informative piece of writing that is. Too often we forget the root causes of many international problems have been created by the greed of western powers, and the historical exploitation of populations of peoples by western governments. We, the ordinary people don’t hear of these historical events because investigative journalism has been quashed by our leaders who are led not by our God, but by powers and principalities. We, the good and ordinary decent people of the western countries are not given a chance to make amends - because that might cause peace. And these powers and principalities do not want peace. How easily we are stirred to malice. How readily we send our young off to fight and be killed in the rich mans evil wars.
It is all true what you write. But I'm sorry Richard, please forgive me, I back the British hands down. The Brits came in and taught them how to drill oil, gave them jobs that they would not have had otherwise. Iranians became wealthy and were free. The same can be said of countries like Venezuela. So much for the secular nationalist they voted for after Exxon was kicked out. Give me the Anglo's every time. Long Live The Queen! And I'm an American.
You would never hear a high level Freemason celebrating and wishing all a "very Merry Christmas" and talk about the Lord and Savior being born as President Trump did. The very essence of Freemasonry is antichrist.
In General I share the critical view on foreign policy of western nations which Richard mentioned. Interventions and actions are mostly reasoned by interests of rich men and freemasons working in the background. The interests of satan´s army. In my opinion it seems that President Trump is not one of them. But the forces he has to fight against are strong and he will not always be able to prevail against them.
...the British gave them jobs?! Showed them how to drill for their own oil? Byron, have a good think to yourself about those statements. Seriously, do you think oil companies have a conscience? They plunder wherever they can. And they leave destruction behind them. You really should re-read Richards post. To plunder another country’s resources is one thing. To make excuses for it is something else entirely. May God excuse your naivety. I come from Ireland. And as much as I am saddened by my country’s modern day position and it’s loss of faith; the fact remains that the British plundered and murdered the innocents of my country by the bucketload. This is past history. And I have forgiven. But to suggest that the British gave us jobs - as gravediggers for example, does not justify their historical crimes against the Irish people. Similarly, the idea that they gave a few jobs to the Iraqis or Iranians while plundering their country’s resources is absolutely absurd. Absurd!
For me Steve, the jury’s still out on Trump. I suppose time will tell us what and who he is. I want so dearly to believe he is a righteous man. His stance on abortion gives us hope. And for me anything would be better than ‘Clinton the butcher’. I think however, just like my own country - and probably like many other countries for that matter too; the choice that we have about who leads us, is the real travesty. Trump or Clinton and that’s it. Nothing else. No one else. It wasn’t really an inspiring choice. I adore America. It deserves better. That said, I pray Trump is genuine. The fact that the media seem to detest him, gives me hope!
