Trump's "Beautiful Babies" and the Profiteering Geopolitics of Death

"Beautiful little babies," he said.

It might be tempting to think that confronted with the carnage left of children's bodies by al Assad in Syria, President Trump has somehow grown into an adult, or emerged from his endless campaigning a decent human being capable of caring for some entity other than himself.

But this would be a grave mistake, and I fervently encourage my readers to resist this invitation to amnesia.

Indeed, we forget just what kind of self-absorbed reprobate Trump is at the cost of our own claim to moral agency.

And we need to remember that he is directly responsible for at least 261 deaths in  Yemin. 

Did the U.S. have a moral duty to respond to the likely chemical warfare attack?

Yes.

Should it have been through bombing an airfield?

Absolutely not.

This is so for at least three reasons:

1. This action will escalate the violence in Syria. al Assad will respond. It will be with violence. People will die. And we all know it.

2. The choice of action--cratering an air base near the scene of al Assad's act of atrocity--was a political calculation. And while this does not mean necessarily that it cannot have been an act of righteous retribution, the fact that there were and are far better alternative responses (see below) makes plain that this bombing was a calculated message to Putin--but far far more important to Xi Jinping of China  whose armies are far larger, and whose influence is far greater.

Indeed, were I vulnerable to conspiracy theories (and I'm not), I'd wonder about the incredibly fortuitous timing of the Chinese Premier's visit and the opportunity to flex this military muscle. To be clear--this isn't to suggest that Trump knew about al Assad's plans, but it is to suggest that the decision to engage in military action of any kind was surely even more attractive with Xi Jinping at the swanky Mar-a-Lago dinner table. 

That any of then could eat should give us pause.

But we'll set this aside.

3. Here's the alternative: 

Provide countries like Jordan the financial capacity and expertise to accommodate more refugees. Pursue this humanitarian objective aggressively and very publicly.

Announce immediately that the United States is prepared to take at least 100,000 Syrian refugees--particularly, but not exclusively, from the war torn regions of that benighted country.

Announce immediately that the Muslim travel ban has been rescinded.

 Establish a humanitarian aid arm of the president's cabinet devoted to helping refugees resettle in whatever country they have chosen.

Announce a new U.S. policy that the United States no longer bombs civilian populations--especially in Yemin, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Syria.

Announce the abandonment of drone strikes.

Announce a re-invigorated U.S. commitment to the reduction of greenhouse gases in light of the indisputable fact that one of the major factors in the Syrian Civil War was climate change accelerated drought.

It's an easy--easy--thing to clench our fists and denounce the killing of "beautiful babies." It's another to actually stand for decency, compassion, and justice. 

The courageous thing to do is to refuse to participate in perpetuating the very geopolitical violence that always demands an equally violent response.

The courageous thing to see is the global economic system and its multinational corporate kleptocrats that thrive on war.

But we're not going to open our eyes that wide. Why?

Because behind all the hand-wringing about "little babies" are the oligarchs, the nationalists, the white supremacists, and the kleptocrats--including Trump--who are poised like the vampires they really are to convert the bodies of the dead into the blood-money upon which they feed.

"Beautiful babies"?

Don't be fooled. Trump's response is no more about compassion--much less justice--than the response of his analogues in Syria and Russia.

What it is about is that collective psychosis of masculinity for whom torturous death offers the great aphrodesiac. 

What it's about are multinational money interests--weapons manufacture, fossil fuel extraction and transport, surveillance firms, communication technologies, the privatizing of clean water, the control of food security, the engineering of subjugation. These are the vampires surely salivating at their own Mar-a-Lagos over the capital conquest only geopolitical implosions of violence can offer.

"Beautiful babies"?

Hardly. Beautiful power. Beautiful profits. 
Beautiful perpetual war.

Wendy Lynne Lee

Capitalism, Human Welfare, and the Healthcare Debate: Death--American Style

10.17.09

To the Editor,

Among the most disturbing features of our current political landscape, exemplified by the tea-baggers, the birthers, the secessionists, the H1N1 vaccine-as-mind-control conspiracy-mongers, and other “patriots,” is the extent to which craving short-term gain—Obama-out-of-office-at-any-cost—drives the willingness to adopt beliefs that are not merely wrong-headed, but profoundly self-defeating.

The healthcare debate could not illustrate this any more clearly: we’re not merely willing to sell out our un/underinsured fellows to disease and death, we’re apparently willing to take the risk that we could end up among them just for the sake of opposing a public option.

The same “patriots” who condemn Obama for “cutting” their Medicare would apparently let their neighbor’s children die for lack of access to the care these “patriots” take as entitled. This isn’t merely hypocrisy; it’s perversity. Cynically exploiting the rhetoric of “free choice,” the “health” insurance industry has so successfully suckered the tea-partiers that they can be counted on to attend fake grassroots events and rally against their own interests—even their interest in living. Every placard heralding “freedom” may as well be heralding suffering and death, every endorsement of the “free market” a pitch for rationing-healthcare-by-the-mega-profits-of-Cigna-and-company. Why? Because the defeat of the public option is a win for an industry whose profits have increased by 416% over the last decade by denying coverage, refusing to pay claims, and by dropping sick people from their roles—after raping them of their hard-earned dollars.

What the tea-partiers don’t get is that the same tactics they’ve so effectively deployed against those who’d resist their ideological swill is now—through ignorance-exploiting-stealth—being deployed to insure that they, many of whom are among the most economically vulnerable, stand on the side of the super-wealthy. Quite the coup. All the “health” insurance promotion arms had to do was use the magic words “socialism,” “communism,” or “government controlled,” through their Republican Party propaganda channel—FOX—and the paranoid “patriot”-sheeple fall in lock-step—behind their pied pipers, Beck, Hannity, Malkin, O’Reilly, right off the cliff. Death is apparently OK with them so long as we get rid of a black democratic president.

Unconvinced? Offended? Think the “free market” is on your side? Check out Rendell’s Republican budget. He cuts funding for the Department of Public Welfare, discards a possible severance tax on natural gas drilling, cuts the Department of Environmental Protection 27%, and opens state park land to drilling. Who benefits? The “health” insurance analogues in the energy industry, corporations like Cabot whose suspension for environmental violations has been lifted, and White Pines who has “the state’s go-ahead to accept radioactive sludge” from natural gas drilling.

However willfully blind we are to the connection between environmental destruction and human health, the writing’s on the wall: capitalist enterprise cares nothing whatever for human welfare. Indeed, the very corporations who exercise the most power over life and death—HEALTH insurance—actively work to deny the services PAID FOR by the people who hold their policies. This IS insurance—an insurance of death. Corporations like Cabot, Cigna, Aetna, Humana, White Pines, Exxon, AIG, Citibank, and on and on have so effectively exploited the fear of “socialism” and the racist hatred of Obama that we’re willing to sacrifice our health and the environment it depends on in order to realize what? The freedom to die from untreated disease? The freedom to watch others reap the profits of environmental obliteration?

So long as Obama’s not reelected, and we get to go down waving the flag, I guess so.

Wendy Lynne Lee
wlee@bloomu.edu
580 words.