Tag: war
Narcissist Trump Disdained The Wounded And Admired The War Criminal

Narcissist Trump Disdained The Wounded And Admired The War Criminal

We’ve long known who Donald Trump is: narcissistic, impressed with authoritarian displays, contemptuous of anyone he sees as low status, a man for whom the highest principle is his own self-interest. It’s still shocking to read new accounts of the moments where he’s most willing to come out and show all that, to not even pretend to be anything but what he is—and holy crap, does The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg have the goods in his new profile of outgoing Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Mark Milley, which focuses on Milley’s efforts to protect the military as a nonpartisan institution under Trump.

Two moments stand out for Trump’s casual cruelty. In one, a severely wounded Army captain had sung “God Bless America” at the welcome ceremony for Milley as the new Joint Chiefs of Staff chair:

After Avila’s performance, Trump walked over to congratulate him, but then said to Milley, within earshot of several witnesses, “Why do you bring people like that here? No one wants to see that, the wounded.” Never let Avila appear in public again, Trump told Milley.

It’s a moment that echoed Trump mocking a disabled reporter, or reportedly refusing to visit a cemetery for World War II dead in France, saying “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers” and calling dead Marines “suckers.” That cruelty was not how Trump’s reaction to Capt. Mark Avila was reported at the time.

It’s too much to hope that the media will learn its lesson here, of course.

While Trump sees members of the military who are injured or killed as “losers,” “suckers,” and people “no one wants to see,” he is a big fan of those who commit war crimes in a macho way. Goldberg also recounts Milley’s efforts to keep Trump from returning a Navy SEAL pin to Eddie Gallagher, a SEAL found guilty of posing with the corpse of a prisoner who, witnesses testified, Gallagher had stabbed in the neck. Milley argued to Trump that it was up to the SEALs to decide whether Gallagher would keep his pin.

Trump called Gallagher a hero and said he didn’t understand why he was being punished.“Because he slit the throat of a wounded prisoner,” Milley said.

“The guy was going to die anyway,” Trump said.

Milley answered, “Mr. President, we have military ethics and laws about what happens in battle. We can’t do that kind of thing. It’s a war crime.” Trump answered that he didn’t understand “the big deal.” He went on, “You guys”—meaning combat soldiers—“are all just killers. What’s the difference?”

“You guys are all just killers” is a statement breathtaking in its simultaneous characterization of what service members are supposed to do and its dismissal of “war crime” as a meaningful category.

Soldiers are supposed to kill indiscriminately, as far as Trump is concerned. That’s what he wants to see from them. Goldberg also describes how Trump elevated both Milley and former Defense Secretary James Mattis because they fit his mental model of a general. “Trump picked [Milley] as chief because he looks like what Trump thinks a general should look like,” Sen. Angus King told Goldberg. Trump wanted burly old white men who seemed like they’d killed a lot of people and would be happy to do it again, in part because he thought they’d be more likely to go along with whatever he wanted to do.

“The president couldn’t fathom people who served their nation honorably,” John Kelly, a retired Marine general who served as Trump’s White House chief of staff told Goldberg of Milley, but it applies to Trump’s blank response to the concept of a war crime, as well. And, Goldberg reports, Milley more than once had to steer Trump away from committing his own war crimes.

The anecdotes as reported by Goldberg are stunning in their embrace of military violence and disdain for anyone who has been left disabled by it. The picture that emerges of Trump—a picture consistent with everything we’ve seen from him—is of a child playing with toy soldiers, an unquestionable dictator over his little inanimate figures, whose every decision is righteous and who throws the broken soldiers away, angered by their very existence. The problem, of course, is that here we are talking about actual people, and very real war crimes.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Is The End Coming For Putin? Analysts Says He's in Trouble

Is The End Coming For Putin? Analysts Says He's in Trouble

A new analysis is explaining how this time period may suggest the end is near for Russian President Vladamir Putin.

According to Newsweek's William M. Arkin, the authoritarian president may be running out of options as he fights to maintain his grasp on the country.

To support his arguments, Arkin included assessments from army and intelligence officials familiar with all of the events transpiring in Russia.

"Putin's options for the future are bleak, particularly as he increasingly feels the heat of domestic opposition," the first intelligence official said. Per Arkin, the official also noted "the impact of 60,000-plus Russian casualties and as well as the bite of sanctions and the controls on travel as challenges to Putin."

Another official also weighed in with what they are witnessing.

"We're seeing more and more blaming of Western weapons," says the second official, "as if it is an excuse for why Russia is losing. It's ironic, given that Putin-and-company normally argues that it can defeat NATO. Now it's, 'we couldn't have won because of Western intervention' that is seeking to deflect responsibility from Moscow."

So, how is Putin maintaining? Former World Champion chess player Garry Kasparov recently weighed in with an assessment of Putin's leadership and how he may be holding his position.

Speaking to the Kyiv Post, Kasparov said, "Putin has never dealt with situations like this one." He also noted that Putin has "been lucky that he has always been able to escape.

"Continuing the war is the only way for Putin to stay in power," Kasparov said in the interview. "

He wants to create extra chaos in the free world hoping that a new window will open for him. It's really just a protracted agony. It is cynical and stupid, but Putin is willing to put thousands of civilians into graves in the months to come before the whole of Ukraine is liberated, if that will allow him to maintain power."

An army officer also shared his prediction of what's to come as he also pondered the limited long-term options Putin has.

"I'm not so sure I agree with the 'long war' predictions," the Army officer said as he suggested that Putin is running out of options for a viable conversion. "Everyone's talking about Putin's hold over Europe with his control of gas, that this is his ace in the hole. But if the heat intensifies back home, Putin may have to shift his attention to a winter disaster of his own making."

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Putin’s War On Ukraine

Russian Soldiers Reported To Sabotage Putin’s War On Ukraine

Members of the Russian's armed forces have reportedly been mulling over ideas to deliberately sabotage their own military operations in an effort to impede Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war efforts to continue his invasion of Ukraine.

According to The Daily Beast, the latest developments reportedly stem from "recordings of alleged Russian troops’ phone calls that the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) intercepted."

During one conversation, an alleged Russian soldier claimed they'd been funneling sand into their tankers' fuel systems to create clogging issues.

“I don't follow stupid orders, I simply refuse,” one fighter was reportedly heard telling a fellow comrade-in-arms. “The motherf*cker sent me to tanks, motherf*cking piece of shit. I f*cked it up and that's it.”

Another Russian soldier also admitted that he and multiple of his fellow comrades had intentionally "damaged their tank—the last one left in their regiment—to interfere with an attack plan," per another document shared by the SBU. “We have one tank left in the regiment,” he said. “In short, we broke our tank ourselves in the morning so as not to go.”


However, the Beast reports that these aren't the only efforts being made to obstruct Putin's war. Per the news outlet: "The Russian war effort isn’t only being hampered from the inside. Inspired by the Russians’ intercepted phone calls, Ukraine’s government encouraged other Russian troops to disobey orders and refuse to attack, echoing earlier calls to surrender and abandon the war path."

In a statement released on Friday, May 6, 2022, the SBU said it "welcomes this practice. But even it can be improved—just ‘give up’ and leave the war in Ukraine!”

Pentagon press secretary John Kirby also released a statement addressing the latest intel. While Kirby admitted that he is aware of the intelligence-sharing effort, he confirmed the United States has no involvement in it.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Russian State Media Proposes Inflicting Famine On Ukraine

Russian State Media Proposes Inflicting Famine On Ukraine (Again)

From 1932 to 1933, millions of Ukrainians died of starvation and disease in a Great Famine engineered by then-Soviet Union dictator Joseph Stalin. The Holodomor – named by combining the Ukrainian words for hunger (holod) and extermination (mor) – was only one example of the unholy atrocities that were inflicted upon the Soviet people by Stalin over his 31-year reign of terror.

The Holodomor was officially recognized as genocide by Ukraine and more than a dozen other nations in 2006.

Today, Ukraine is known as "the breadbasket of Europe," and its agricultural exports account for a significant portion of all of the calories consumed around the world. But Russian President Vladimir Putin's barbaric invasion of Ukraine and his military's indiscriminate slaughter of civilians is stoking fears that hunger could once again be used as a weapon of mass destruction.

Over the weekend, propagandists on Russian state television mused about cutting off Ukraine from its crops and exporting them to China.

"Ukraine's deal with the Chinese and the corn didn't come through," political scientist Dmitry Evstafiev said on Russia 1."If they need it, we'll supply them with Ukraine's corn," host Vladimir Solovyov interjected.

"Certainly, certainly, especially since we have every opportunity to do it," Evstafiev concurred. "Cutting off the former Soviet Republic of Ukraine from the Black Sea, from the croplands, from the breadbasket granary, this is the most dangerous thing, and the corn too."

The Kremlin's goons also fantasized about targeting farms in the United States as a means of strong-arming the Americans into capitulating to Putin's demands.

"And one more thing that is still ahead for us," Evstafiev continued, "we need to find the effective spots of vulnerability for Americans. We need to think, and not discuss it publicly, but we need to identify them and apply pressure to make that the last drop that will force the American elites to recognize that they need to negotiate with us. And that they need to negotiate with us on our terms and not on their terms."


Watch the translated version below courtesy of The Daily Beast's Russia expert and Russian Media Monitor founder Julia Davis:

Davis' followers immediately recognized what Russia is proposing.










One person noted that Putin's playbook eerily mirrors the plot of the television show that catapulted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's rise to power.

Others, meanwhile, pointed out that Moscow is running out of options to sustain its disastrous operation in Ukraine.




Printed with permission from Alternet.