Beyond Trump: a time to rethink American power

Résumé détaillé

Last Tuesday’s election was a stunning defeat for President Donald Trump. Democrats won both houses of Congress, including Senate races in states they haven’t won in generations.…

Last Tuesday’s election was a stunning defeat for President Donald Trump. Democrats won both houses of Congress, including Senate races in states they haven’t won in generations. Americans went to the polls angry about rising prices, government corruption, rising authoritarianism, and a war with Iran they never wanted.

Those frustrations are deeply connected. But this moment can, and should, be an opportunity to do more than move beyond President Trump and his movement. It’s an opportunity for people across the country to question how we got here, and what needs to change about American power.

Already, the administration responsible for the war are trying to distance themselves from it. Vice President JD Vance is blaming the Iran war for the Republican defeat. On Election Day, Trump himself went on Fox News to declare that he’s planning to end military aid to Israel, though he openly admitted that his motivation for making the announcement was to deny his opponents a “bad talking point.”

Republicans seem to be coalescing around a scapegoat in Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, in a move reminiscent of George W. Bush’s firing of Donald Rumsfeld after the midterm disaster of 2006. A vote for Hegseth’s impeachment may come as early as next week, if he isn’t forced out sooner.

This kind of double-talk is nothing new from this administration. Trump ran against disastrous wars of choice. Then he started a new one. It’s no surprise that now he’s talking about peace again. But this is about much more than Donald Trump’s hypocrisy.

If Trump disappeared tomorrow, the Office of the Presidency would still have the dangerous power to start wars without any legal authority to do so. American military power would still be deployed around the world, threatening other nations.

Paramilitary forces like Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Patrol would still be terrorizing American cities in violation of US law.

Nearly 60 years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

King had…

Début de l'article, extrait de Asia Times. Pour lire la suite, ouvrez l'article chez le média.