Be Very Afraid: Trump on the Middle East

The late (2008), great George Carlin once quipped: "When you're born you get a ticket to the freak show. When you're born in America, you get a front-row seat." Could there be a more apt description of the coming Trump administration than 'freak show'?

What would Carlin, who famously remarked that so many people were either stupid, or full of shit, or fucking nuts, and that one-time presidential wannabe Dan Quayle was all three, have said about Donald Trump?

OK, so brace yourselves. Here, from The Trump interviews: what he said about Brexit, Putin, Israel, Syria... & Twitter (Kate Connolly, theguardian.com, 16/1/17) is Trump on the Middle East. (Note the highlighted words.):

Iran:

"The Times: Trump said he would not reveal the details of his policy - 'I just don't want to play the cards' - but reiterated his attack on Barack Obama's landmark deal with Iran on nuclear weapons. 'I'm not happy with the Iran deal, I think it's one of the worst deals ever made, I think it's one of the dumbest deals I've ever seen... Where you give... $150bn back to a country, where you give $1.7bn in cash. Did you ever see $100m in hundred dollar bills? It's a lot. $1.7bn in cash. Plane loads'."

Just read that over and over again...

Syria:

"The Times: Trump was critical of Obama for failing to restrain Syrian president Bashar al-Assad and Putin in their war on rebel forces in the country. The US could have made them stick to 'a line in the sand' but now it was 'too late' and the lack of western intervention had helped to create a humanitarian crisis. 'Aleppo was nasty. I mean when you see them shooting old ladies walking out of town - they can't even walk and they're shooting 'em - it almost looks like they're shooting 'em for sport - ah no, that's... a terrible situation.'

"Bild: Trump said he thought security zones should have been set up in Syria. 'That would have been considerably cheaper. And the Gulf states should have had to pay for them. After all, they have money like hardly anyone else has. The whole thing would have been considerably cheaper than the trauma that Germany is now going through. I would have said: create security zones in Syria'."

What the hell Trump was watching here is anyone's guess. As for the Gulf states, they are, of course, among those US clients directly responsible for the refugee-generating murder and mayhem in Syria.

Iraq:

"The Times: The invasion of Iraq in 2003, he said, was 'possibly the worst decision' ever made in American history. 'It's like throwing rocks into a beehive'."

I'd like to think Trump will hold this thought long enough to prevent a repeat performance elsewhere in the Middle East but I seriously doubt his attention span is up to it.

Middle East & Jared Kushner:

"Bild: Trump said that he would appoint Jared Kushner, his son-in-law, to broker a Middle East peace deal. Asked what role Kushner would play, Trump said: 'You know what? Jared is such a good lad, he will secure a good deal which no one else has managed to get. You know, he's a natural talent, he is the top, he is a natural talent. He has an innate ability to make deals, everyone likes him.' Kushner's wife, Trump's daughter Ivanka, would not have any role in government, he said. She currently 'has the kids' and was busy buying a house in Washington.

"He said the Obama administration's decision to abstain in the UN Security Council vote on Israeli settlements in December 'was terrible' and said that Britain should have vetoed the resolution instead of voting in favour. He said he was hopeful that Britain would veto an upcoming resolution on Israel that could be presented this week. 'I would hope for a British veto, because I am not sure the US would do so - extraordinarily enough. They won't do it, right? Do you believe the US will place a veto? I have Jewish friends who organised a donor event for Obama. I say to them: 'What on earth are you doing? Okay - what are you doing?'

"He refused to be drawn on whether he would move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. 'I'm not going to comment on that. But we'll see'."

As George Carlin also said: "In America, anyone can become president. That's the problem."

Transformative Experience, Anyone?

"A group of non-Jewish student leaders had a transformative experience during a recent visit to Israel as part of the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council's (AIJAC) Rambam Fellowship Program. The 3 Young Labor members and 3 Young Liberals spent a week travelling through the country and the West Bank, meeting with prominent Israeli commentators, as well as representatives from the Palestinian Authority."

Hm... I bet these bright young things, aflame with a longing for Truth, Justice and the LibLab Way, were put right by those PA "representatives."

Er... maybe not:

"Mikaela Wangmann, national women's officer of the National Union of Students, said, 'The experience has made me a lifetime defender of the State of Israel - not in the knee-jerk, geopolitical sense but in the way you would defend any people who are just trying to build for themselves a better world' [while] Australian Liberal Students' Federation president Christian Street said that he feels 'far more able to talk to people about Israel with confidence now that I have some practical experience of the issues at play, the trip was worth it for that alone'."

And the point is?

"AIJAC executive director Dr Colin Rubenstein said the program helped foster 'an informed and constructive awareness of Israeli/Palestinian issues among some of Australia's future leaders'." (Future in their hands, The Australian Jewish News, 27/9/13)

Well, he would say that, wouldn't he?

So this lot are Australia's future leaders, eh?

OK, then, maybe we should know a little more about them:

1) According to Tharunka (1/59 2013), our NUS women's officer, Mikaela Wangmann (Adelaide Uni), belongs to the "hard-line Christian social conservative faction of the ALP, the Shop, Distributive & Allied Employees Association (SDA)." 

Now whether that means you get a Bible with every purchase I'm not quite sure, but whatever it means, it sounds as if young Mikaela's going places, and soon. Just think, with Israel as the wind beneath her wings, young Mikaela could turn out to be the next Julia Gillard! 

In the event, I thought it might be useful to draw your attention to the following paragraph from a recent thought bubble of hers, which not only casts light on the workings of her mind, but the felicities of her prose style as well :

"Of the forty people who have been featured on Australian money only 10 have been women, while I acknowledge that it is better than I though it would be its still bullshit! Money which is one of the things we value most in our society, and having your face brandished across it is one of the greatest honors that can be bestowed features thirty men and ten women. TEN." (10 out of 40, 'aint bad? Wait., nuswomens.wordpress.com, 5/6/13)

2) Todd Pinkerton, NUS General Secretary, apparently belongs to the Labor faction 'Student Unity'. Now I couldn't find much on this bloke, but, hey, isn't this retweet interesting?

"IDF ?@IDFSpokesperson 22 Jul NEWS: The truth is spreading. Today, the EU joined the US, UK and others to label Hezbollah as a terrorist organization Retweeted by Todd Pinkerton."

(Parenthetically, I can't for the life of me understand why, but this rant of George Carlin's has suddenly popped into my head and I can't get the damn thing out - short of putting it down here that is. So here goes: "And I'm getting really sick of guys named Todd. You know? Yeah, it's just a goofy... it's a goofy fucking name, OK? Hi, what's your name? 'Todd! I'm Todd. And this is Blake and Blair and Blaine and Brent.' Where are all these goofy fucking boys' names coming from? Taylor, Tyler, Jordan, Flynn. These are not real names! You want to hear a real name? Eddie. Eddie is a real name. Whatever happened to Eddie? He was here a minute ago. Joey and Jackie and Bobby and Phil. Bobby and Tommy and Danny and Bill. What happened? *Todd* And Cody, and Dylan, and Cameron, and Tucker. 'Hi, Tucker. I'm Todd.' 'Hi, Todd! I'm Tucker' Fuck Tucker; Tucker sucks. And fuck Tucker's friend, Kyle. You know? Yeah. There's another soft name for a boy. Kyle. Soft names make soft people. I'll bet you anything that ten times out of ten, Nicky, Vinny and Tony will beat the shit out of Todd, Kyle and Tucker." Such a relief getting that off my chest, I can tell you.)

3) "The liberal hard right at UNSW is run by Nik Kaurin, formerly a staffer to NSW MLC David Clarke and now working for senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells." (Honi Soit, 2/10/12)

Scary!

4) Phoebe Drake, Labor, is President of Sydney Uni's SRC. There's not much to report here, folks, except to note that over at her twitter account Phoebe describes herself as a "Lover of chocolate, coffee... and a good book."

I'm thinking, shouldn't that now be amended to 'Lover of chocolate and coffee - Max Brenner, of course! - and a good book... by Leon Uris'?

5) Christian Street, Liberal from Melbourne Uni. Not much on this bloke out there in cyberspace, but in case any of you out there in realspace ever find yourselves buttonholed by a young man confidently banging on about Israel somewhere within cooee of Melbourne U, and he terminates the convo with an  abrupt 'Anyways, I was there, so there!', it'll probably be Christian, OK?

6) On Jessica Wilson, the third Lib, I drew a complete blank, but as serendipity would have it, I did come across a certain Jess Wilson, an American currently living in Beersheva, Israel. Curious, I began trawling  through her tweets when, lo and behold, I struck gold, or, more accurately, fool's gold.  Now I've read some pretty mind-blowing takes on Palestine/Israel before, but this particular tweeted take... takes the cake:

"Israel is like STOP TOUCHING ME and Palestine is like YOU'RE TOUCHING ME and Hillary is like I WILL PULL THIS CAR OVER."

Like, I haven't read anything quite as, like, memorably moronic since, like, rambammed NSW MLC Peter Phelps tweeted from, like, Sderot on his last rambam: "Just peered into Gaza - now I know how Frodo felt when he first gazed upon Mordor."

One for Jason

The late American comedian George Carlin once asked, "Why do they call Palestinian commandos terrorists, and Israeli terrorists commandos?"

Maybe Fairfax's Middle East correspondent Jason Koutsoukis - who described the Israeli terrorists who shot dead 9 unarmed aid workers on the Mavi Marmara as "commandos"* and the Palestinian commandos who shot dead 4 illegal (and presumably armed) Jewish settlers near Hebron as "terrorists"** - needs to ask himself this question.

[*Fury follows deadly attack, SMH, 1/6/10; ** As Hamas gloats, Israel vows revenge for settler murders, SMH, 2/9/10]

Remembrance Day

George Carlin RIP

I'd like to talk a little about that 'war' we had in the Persian Gulf. Remember that? The big war in the Persian Gulf. Lemme tell you what was goin' on.

Naturally, you can forget all that entertaining fiction about having to defend the model democracy those lucky Kuwaitis get to live under. And for the moment you can also put aside the very real, periodic need Americans have for testing their new weapons on human flesh. And also, just for the fun of it, let's ignore George Bush Sr's obligation to protect the oil interests of his family and friends. There was another, much more important consideration at work. Here's what really happened.

The simple fact is that America was long overdue to drop high explosives on helpless civilians; people who have no argument with us whatsoever. After all, it had been a while, and the hunger gnaws. Remember that's our specialty: picking on countries that have marginally effective air forces.

Let me tell you what I liked about that Gulf War. It was the first war that appeared on every television channel, including cable. And even though the TV show consisted largely of Pentagon war criminals displaying maps and charts, it got very good ratings. And that makes sense, because we like war. We're a warlike people. We can't stand not to be fucking with someone. We couldn't wait for the Cold War to end so we could climb into the big Arab sandbox and play with our nice new toys. We enjoy war.

And one reason we enjoy it is that we're good at it. You know why we're good at it? Because we get a lot of practise. This country is only 200 years old, and already we've had 10 major wars. We average a major war every 20 years. So we're good at it!

And it's just as well we are, because we're not very good at anything else. Can't build a decent car anymore. Can't make a TV set, a cell phone, or a VCR. Got no steel industry left. No textiles. Can't educate our young people. Can't get health care to our old people. But we can bomb the shit outta your country, all right. We can bomb the shit outta your country!

Especially if your country is full of brown people. Oh, we like that, don't we? That's our hobby now. But it's also our new job in the world: bombing brown people. Iraq, Panama, Grenada, Libya. You got some brown people in your country? Tell 'em to watch the fuck out, or we'll goddam bomb them! If you're brown, you're goin' down.

Well, who were the last white people you can remember that we bombed? In fact, can you remember any white people we ever bombed? The Germans! That's it! Those are the only ones. And that was only because they were tryin' to cut in on our action. They wanted to dominate the world. Bullshit! That's our job. That's our fuckin' job.

But the Germans are ancient history. These days we only bomb brown people. And not because they're cutting in on our action; we do it because they're brown. Even those Serbs we bombed in Yugoslavia aren't really white, are they? Naaah! They're sort of down near the swarthy end of the white spectrum. Just brown enough to bomb. I'm still waiting for the day we bomb the English. People who really deserve it.

Savages

The late (1937 - 2008) great American comedian George Carlin surely had the likes of the Sydney Morning Herald in mind when he asked, "Why do they call Palestinian commandos terrorists, and Israeli terrorists commandos?" To quote from the most recent of the Herald's clueless editorials on Palestine/Israel: "Israel has dropped its refusal to negotiate with a terrorist organisation..." (The art of compromise, 23/6/08)

But it gets better: "For Israel, the social and economic costs of endless war are high."

For Israel! How perfectly understanding! Scraping together the wherewithal to put the jackboot into malnourished Gazans must be sooo painful. Just as well the Americans are a soft touch for a few quid.

And spare a thought for Israel's poor, put-upon 'commandos'. Why, only last month these heroes knocked on the front door of one of those scruffy Gazan houses with their jackboots, scuffing them in the process. Understandably impatient at the tardiness with which the woman inside was preparing to open the door (after all, they only wanted to say hi), they had rigged an explosive device which went off just as she was opening it. Palestinians, of course, have a dreadful habit of blowing up whenever Israelis are around, and this one was no exception. In fact, her head was torn from her body. Thank G-d our heroes escaped unscathed! Typically too, she had no control over her feral offspring who unfortunately witnessed their mother's unedifying loss of self control. In a civilized society they would have been neither seen nor heard. Then - can you believe this? - she just lay there rudely ignoring her guests while the latter were forced to do some unpaid babysitting for the next five hours as they kept watch for the Palestinian terrorists who infest the Strip. The nerve of the woman! Wisely, our Israeli heroes shut the brats, aged 2 to 13, in a bedroom for the duration of their stay. But not before teaching them enough discipline to deter them from venturing forth some two hours after they'd left. It is to be hoped that these children will benefit from such a lesson. I am confident the Herald's editorialist would agree.

[*Blast kills Gaza teacher in front of her children, The Independent, 12/5/08]