When Will The Actual Shooting Begin In America’s Second Civil War?

 By Timothy D. Naegele[1]

The title of this article is a “loaded question,” which we hope and pray never happens.  However, the Democrats have launched impeachment against our President, which moves us one step closer to a bloody internal war.[2]  And yes, Trump supporters—including law enforcement and our military—are armed to the teeth, like they were when Abraham Lincoln was the president and our last Civil War began.

Acts of sedition have been underway since before our national elections in 2016.  Barack Obama and his fellow treasonous co-conspirators embarked on a concerted effort to destroy the candidacy and then the presidency of Donald Trump, which continues to this day.  When will they be held accountable, and imprisoned at the very least?  Until this happens, no American should believe in our system of justice, because it does not exist.  It is a fable and a fantasy, and a tragedy of epic proportions.[3]

On two other occasions in my lifetime, similar events have happened, when our great nation was torn asunder.  One involved the Vietnam War and the hatred leveled at former President Lyndon Johnson.  There were bumper stickers on cars in the District of Columbia that asked: “Where is Lee Harvey Oswald now that we really need him?—referring to John F. Kennedy’s assassin, and suggesting that Johnson should be killed too.  The second event involved Richard Nixon and Watergate, where the hatred of him reached a fever pitch.

Today, the country is polarized in a manner approaching that of our last Civil War, when America was torn apart and barely survived.  If Abraham Lincoln had not been our president, it likely that the United States would not exist as a nation today, but might be two or more countries, occupying North America.  Lincoln and his generals, Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman[4], turned the tide and won the war, at an enormous cost in human lives.  For decades after that. America’s South functioned as a defeated nation within the United States, much like East Germany—or the DDR—existed in a united Germany after the fall of the Soviet Union.

From the moment that Donald Trump began his presidential campaign, he has been attacked by the Left and despicable RINOs like Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan on the right[5], and by the Left-leaning American media.  The attacks have been relentless, without ceasing.  In a very real sense, Trump is America’s first truly Independent president, who is beholden to neither political party, and attacked by elements in both.  His very presence has been and continues to be a threat to Washington’s “establishment” and power structure, and to the goals of globalists in the United States and abroad.  As I have written, the Democrats are “evil” but smart, while the Republicans are “Neanderthals” and dumb.  This was my conclusion when I left the U.S. Senate, and it has never changed and continues to this day.

I began as a Democrat in a devoutly-Republican household, where my parents “idolized” Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon.  However, working on and with Capitol Hill for most of my adult life led me to the conclusion that I did not want to be a member of either political party.  I have been an Independent ever since.  Lots of Americans in our great nation’s “Flyover States” have felt disenfranchised; and Donald Trump has captured their beliefs and been their leader since his presidential campaign began.  Is the man perfect?  No one is, but he embodies the hopes and dreams of vast numbers of Americans who elected him in 2016 and may reelect him in 2020.  Will his enemies, domestic and foreign, accept that result; or will his presidency be besieged until it runs its course?

The latest attacks on the President have been discussed by Pat Buchanan—an adviser to Presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford, and a former GOP presidential aspirant himself—in an article entitled “Will ‘Ukraine-Gate’ Imperil Biden’s Bid?”:

With the revelation by an intel community “whistleblower” that President Donald Trump, in a congratulatory call to the new president of Ukraine, pushed him repeatedly to investigate the Joe Biden family connection to Ukrainian corruption, the cry “Impeach!” is being heard anew in the land.

But revisiting how this latest scandal came about, and how it has begun to unfold, it is a good bet that the principal casualty could be the former vice president. Consider:

In May 2016, Joe Biden, as Barack Obama’s designated point man on Ukraine, flew to Kiev to inform President Petro Poroshenko that a billion-dollar U.S. loan guarantee had been approved to enable Kiev to continue to service its mammoth debt.

But, said Biden, the aid was conditional. There was a quid pro quo.

If Poroshenko’s regime did not fire its chief prosecutor in six hours, Biden would fly home and Ukraine would get no loan guarantee. Ukraine capitulated instantly, said Joe, reveling in his pro-consul role.

Yet, left out of Biden’s drama about how he dropped the hammer on a corrupt Ukrainian prosecutor was this detail.

The prosecutor had been investigating Burisma Holdings, the biggest gas company in Ukraine. And right after the U.S.-backed coup that ousted the pro-Russian government in Kiev, and after Joe Biden had been given the lead on foreign aid for Ukraine, Burisma had installed on its board, at $50,000 a month, Hunter Biden, the son of the vice president.

Joe Biden claims that, though he was point man in the battle on corruption in Ukraine, he was unaware his son was raking in hundreds of thousands from one of the companies being investigated.

Said Joe on Saturday, “I have never spoken to my son about his various business dealings.”

Trump and Rudy Giuliani suspect not, and in that July 25 phone call, Trump urged President Volodymyr Zelensky to reopen the investigation of Hunter Biden and Burisma.

The media insist there is no story here and the real scandal is that Trump pressed Zelensky to reopen the investigation to target his strongest 2020 rival. Worse, say Trump’s accusers, would be if the president conditioned the transfer of $250 million in approved military aid to Kiev on the new regime’s acceding to his demands.

The questions raised are several:

Is it wrong to make military aid to a friendly nation conditional on that nation’s compliance with legitimate requests or demands of the United States? Is it illegitimate to ask a friendly government to look into what may be corrupt conduct by the son of a U.S. vice president?

Joe Biden has an even bigger problem: This issue has begun to dominate the news at an especially vulnerable moment for his campaign.

Biden’s stumbles and gaffes have already raised alarms among his followers and been seized upon by rivals such as Cory Booker, who has publicly suggested that the 76-year-old former vice president is losing it.

Biden’s lead in the polls also appears shakier with each month. Sen. Elizabeth Warren has just taken a narrow lead in a Des Moines Register poll and crusading against Beltway corruption is central to her campaign.

“Too many politicians in both parties have convinced themselves that playing the money-for-influence game is the only way to get things done,” Warren told her massive rally in New York City: “No more business as usual. Let’s attack the corruption head on.”

Soon, it will not only be Trump and Giuliani asking Biden questions ab[o]ut Ukraine, Burisma and Hunter, but Democrats, too. Calls are rising for Biden’s son to be called to testify before congressional committees.

With Trump airing new charges daily, Biden will be asked to respond by his traveling press. The charges and the countercharges will become what the presidential campaign is all about. Bad news for Joe Biden.

Can he afford to spend weeks, perhaps months, answering for his son’s past schemes to enrich himself through connections to foreign regimes that seem less related to Hunter’s talents than his being the son of a former vice president and possible future president?

“Ukraine-gate” is the latest battle in the death struggle between the “deep state” and a president empowered by Middle America to go to Washington and break that deep state’s grip on the national destiny.

Another issue is raised here — the matter of whistleblowers listening in to or receiving readouts of presidential conversations with foreign leaders and having the power to decide for themselves whether the president is violating his oath and needs to be reported to Congress.

Eisenhower discussed coups in Iran and Guatemala and the use of nuclear weapons in Korea and the Taiwan Strait. JFK, through brother Bobby, cut a secret deal with Khrushchev to move U.S. missiles out of Turkey six months after the Soviets removed their missiles from Cuba.

Who deputized bureaucratic whistleblowers to pass judgment on such conversations and tattle to Congress if they were offended?[6]

Next, award-winning investigative journalist John Solomon has written an article for The Hill, which is entitled “Let’s get real: Democrats were first to enlist Ukraine in US elections”:

Earlier this month, during a bipartisan meeting in Kiev, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) delivered a pointed message to Ukraine’s new president, Volodymyr Zelensky.

While choosing his words carefully, Murphy made clear — by his own account — that Ukraine currently enjoyed bipartisan support for its U.S. aid but that could be jeopardized if the new president acquiesced to requests by President Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani to investigate past corruption allegations involving Americans, including former Vice President Joe Biden’s family.

Murphy boasted after the meeting that he told the new Ukrainian leader that U.S. aid was his country’s “most important asset” and it would be viewed as election meddling and “disastrous for long-term U.S.-Ukraine relations” to bend to the wishes of Trump and Giuliani.

“I told Zelensky that he should not insert himself or his government into American politics. I cautioned him that complying with the demands of the President’s campaign representatives to investigate a political rival of the President would gravely damage the U.S.-Ukraine relationship. There are few things that Republicans and Democrats agree on in Washington these days, and support for Ukraine is one of them,” Murphy told me today, confirming what he told Ukraine’s leader.

The implied message did not require an interpreter for Zelensky to understand: Investigate the Ukraine dealings of Joe Biden and his son Hunter, and you jeopardize Democrats’ support for future U.S. aid to Kiev.

The Murphy anecdote is a powerful reminder that, since at least 2016, Democrats repeatedly have exerted pressure on Ukraine, a key U.S. ally for buffering Russia, to meddle in U.S. politics and elections.

And that activity long preceded Giuliani’s discussions with Ukrainian officials and Trump’s phone call to Zelensky in July, seeking to have Ukraine formally investigate whether then-Vice President Joe Biden used a threat of canceling foreign aid to shut down an investigation into $3 million routed to the U.S. firm run by Biden’s son.

As I have reported, the pressure began at least as early as January 2016, when the Obama White House unexpectedly invited Ukraine’s top prosecutors to Washington to discuss fighting corruption in the country.

The meeting, promised as training, turned out to be more of a pretext for the Obama administration to pressure Ukraine’s prosecutors to drop an investigation into the Burisma Holdings gas company that employed Hunter Biden and to look for new evidence in a then-dormant criminal case against eventual Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, a GOP lobbyist.

U.S. officials “kept talking about how important it was that all of our anti-corruption efforts be united,” said Andrii Telizhenko, the former political officer in the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington who organized and attended the meetings.

Nazar Kholodnytsky, Ukraine’s chief anti-corruption prosecutor, told me that, soon after he returned from the Washington meeting, he saw evidence in Ukraine of political meddling in the U.S. election. That’s when two top Ukrainian officials released secret evidence to the American media, smearing Manafort.

The release of the evidence forced Manafort to step down as Trump’s top campaign adviser. A Ukrainian court concluded last December that the release of the evidence amounted to an unlawful intervention in the U.S. election by Kiev’s government, although that ruling has since been overturned on a technicality.

Shortly after the Ukrainian prosecutors returned from their Washington meeting, a new round of Democratic pressure was exerted on Ukraine — this time via its embassy in Washington.

Valeriy Chaly, the Ukrainian ambassador to the United States at the time, confirmed to me in a statement issued by his office that, in March 2016, a contractor for the Democratic National Committee (DNC) pressed his embassy to try to find any Russian dirt on Trump and Manafort that might reside in Ukraine’s intelligence files.

The DNC contractor also asked Chaly’s team to try to persuade Ukraine’s president at the time, Petro Poroshenko, to make a statement disparaging Manafort when the Ukrainian leader visited the United States during the 2016 election.

Chaly said his embassy rebuffed both requests because it recognized they were improper efforts to get a foreign government to try to influence the election against Trump and for Hillary Clinton.

The political pressure continued. Biden threatened to withhold $1 billion in crucial U.S. aid to Kiev if Poroshenko did not fire the country’s chief prosecutor. Ukraine would have been bankrupted without the aid, so Poroshenko obliged on March 29, 2016, and fired Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin.

At the time, Biden was aware that Shokin’s office was investigating Burisma, the firm employing Hunter Biden, after a December 2015 New York Times article.

What wasn’t known at the time, Shokin told me recently, was that Ukrainian prosecutors were preparing a request to interview Hunter Biden about his activities and the monies he was receiving from Ukraine. If such an interview became public during the middle of the 2016 election, it could have had enormous negative implications for Democrats.

Democrats continued to tap Ukraine for Trump dirt throughout the 2016 election, my reporting shows.

Nellie Ohr, the wife of senior U.S. Justice Department official Bruce Ohr, worked in 2016 as a contractor for Fusion GPS, the same Hillary Clinton–funded opposition research firm that hired Christopher Steele, the British spy who wrote the now-debunked dossier linking Trump to Russia collusion.

Nellie Ohr testified to Congress that some of the dirt she found on Trump during her 2016 election opposition research came from a Ukrainian parliament member. She also said that she eventually took the information to the FBI through her husband — another way Ukraine got inserted into the 2016 election.

Politics. Pressure. Opposition research. All were part of the Democrats’ playbook on Ukraine long before Trump ever called Zelensky this summer. And as Sen. Murphy’s foray earlier this month shows, it hasn’t stopped.

The evidence is so expansive as to strain the credulity of the Democrats’ current outrage at Trump’s behavior with Ukraine.

Which raises a question: Could it be the Ukraine tale currently being weaved by Democrats and their allies in the media is nothing more than a smoke screen designed to distract us from the forthcoming Justice Department inspector general report into abuses during the Democratic-inspired Russia collusion probe?

It’s a question worth asking.[7]

“Ukraine-gate” and impeachment are simply the latest attempts by America’s Left to divert attention from their presidential candidates, who consist of misfits, freaks, racists and anti-Semites.

As these attacks on President Trump continue unabated and get even worse before next year’s elections, the country may be ripped apart and become more polarized than ever.  When will the actual shooting begin, and open warfare commence like our last Civl War?  Is it merely a matter of time?  Can our great nation heal and survive from such trauma?  If the past is any indicator of the future, the answer is “yes,” a resounding “yes,” but it will take time, perhaps lots of it—and there may be bloodshed aplenty.

And what are America’s enemies abroad thinking and doing?  Like our last Civil War, they would be wise not to get involved, or to take any actions that would be adverse to those of the United States.  This is true of China and North Korea; and it is especially true of Russia’s brutal dictator-for-life Vladimir Putin’s designs for all of Ukraine: “a key U.S. ally for buffering Russia,” to quote John Solomon.[8]

 

 

© 2019, Timothy D. Naegele

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[1]  Timothy D. Naegele was counsel to the United States Senate’s Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, and chief of staff to Presidential Medal of Freedom and Congressional Gold Medal recipient and former U.S. Senator Edward W. Brooke (R-Mass). He and his firm, Timothy D. Naegele & Associates, specialize in Banking and Financial Institutions Law, Internet Law, Litigation and other matters (see www.naegele.com and Timothy D. Naegele Resume-19-4-29). He has an undergraduate degree in economics from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), as well as two law degrees from the School of Law (Boalt Hall), University of California, Berkeley, and from Georgetown University. He served as a Captain in the U.S. Army, assigned to the Defense Intelligence Agency at the Pentagon, where he received the Joint Service Commendation Medal (see, e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commendation_Medal#Joint_Service). Mr. Naegele is an Independent politically; and he is listed in Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who in American Law, and Who’s Who in Finance and Business. He has written extensively over the years (see, e.g., www.naegele.com/whats_new.html#articles), and can be contacted directly at tdnaegele.associates@gmail.com

[2]  See https://apnews.com/a9a0bed9f81343b7a725a9adcd84e01b (“Pelosi orders impeachment probe: ‘No one is above the law'”)

[3]  See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2019/08/24/americas-left-is-vile-and-evil/ (“America’s Left Is Vile And Evil”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2019/07/29/barack-obama-is-responsible-for-americas-tragic-racial-divide/ (“Barack Obama Is Responsible For America’s Tragic Racial Divide”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2019/07/10/will-the-trump-presidency-conclude-in-2025/ (“Will The Trump Presidency Conclude In 2025?”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2019/07/02/is-putin-right/ (“Is Putin Right?”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2019/04/29/the-democrats-are-evil-but-smart-while-the-republicans-are-neanderthals-and-dumb/ (“The Democrats Are Evil But Smart, While The Republicans Are Neanderthals And Dumb”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2019/04/18/the-mueller-report-a-monumental-travesty/ (“The Mueller Report: A Monumental Travesty”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2019/02/06/the-state-of-our-union-2019/ (“The State Of Our Union, 2019”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2018/07/29/it-is-time-for-trump-supporters-to-fight-back/ (“It Is Time For Trump Supporters To Fight Back”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2018/07/20/the-american-lefts-feeding-frenzy/ (“The American Left’s Feeding Frenzy”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2018/06/15/the-department-of-injustices-inspector-general-is-complicit-in-the-deep-state-cover-up/ (“The Department Of Injustice’s Inspector General Is Complicit In The Deep-State Cover-Up!”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2018/05/24/should-barack-obama-be-executed-for-treason/ (“Should Barack Obama Be Executed For Treason?”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2018/03/11/robert-mueller-should-be-executed-for-treason/ (“Robert Mueller Should Be Executed For Treason”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/10/20/the-real-russian-conspiracy-barack-obama-the-clintons-and-the-sale-of-americas-uranium-to-russias-killer-putin/ (“The Real Russian Conspiracy: Barack Obama, The Clintons, And The Sale Of America’s Uranium To Russia’s Killer Putin”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/05/16/americas-newest-civil-war-2017-and-beyond/ (“America’s Newest Civil War: 2017 And Beyond”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2013/07/15/justice-and-the-law-do-not-mix/ (“Justice And The Law Do Not Mix”) (see also the extensive comments beneath each of these articles)

[4]  See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/03/21/ulysses-s-grant-an-american-hero/ (“Ulysses S. Grant: An American Hero”)

[5]  See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republican_In_Name_Only (“Republican In Name Only”).  Lots of us are ashamed of the fact that we voted for Romney and Ryan in the past.

[6]  See https://buchanan.org/blog/will-ukraine-gate-imperil-bidens-bid-137533 (“Will ‘Ukraine-Gate’ Imperil Biden’s Bid?”); see also https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7492969/The-story-Bidens-son-Ukraine-Trumps-claims.html (“Hunter Biden got millions from overseas biz while his father was VP. Did Joe intervene to save him?”) and https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/sep/23/donald-trump-flips-ukraine-furor-joe-biden-son-hun/ (“Trump flips Ukraine furor on Biden, son”) and https://pagesix.com/2019/07/01/hunter-biden-started-dating-brothers-widow-right-after-crack-binge/ (“Hunter Biden started dating brother’s widow right after crack binge”) and https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2019/06/12/hunter-biden-married-los-angeles-woman-after-split-with-his-brothers-widow/ (“Hunter Biden’s messy personal life is back in the news. Will it cause political headaches for his dad?”)

[7]  See https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/462658-lets-get-real-democrats-were-first-to-enlist-ukraine-in-us-elections (“Let’s get real: Democrats were first to enlist Ukraine in US elections”)

[8]  See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2015/11/29/the-death-of-putin-and-russia-the-final-chapter-of-the-cold-war/ (“The Death Of Putin And Russia: The Final Chapter Of The Cold War”) (see also the extensive comments beneath the article)

The Middle East Is Not America’s Fight

 By Timothy D. Naegele[1]

In an article entitled “The Iran War: Danger Lurks In Inaction,” Conrad Black—the Canadian-born, British former newspaper publisher, author and life peer—has written in The New York Sun:

Last weekend’s drone raid on the Saudi oil fields, along with the Israeli elections, opens a new chapter in Middle Eastern relations. Whether the attack on Saudi oil production, which has temporarily stopped more than half of it, was launched by Iranian-sponsored Yemeni Houthis or by the Iranians themselves is beside the point, as the Houthis had no independent ability whatever to acquire and use such weapons.

The Iranians are behind the incident. There is room for legitimate debate about the merits of the conflicting sides in the Yemen war, but there can be no doubt that by any standards, the direct attack on Saudi Arabia was an act of war, and as it was entirely dependent on Iranian weapons procurement and instruction, it is an escalation of the war-by-proxy between Iran and Saudi Arabia in Yemen with an outright act of war by Iran against Saudi Arabia.

There is no reason to believe, or even to recommend, that Saudi Arabia should turn the other cheek and engage in reactive pacifism. Because the Trump administration has ignored the efforts of American political factions, including recalcitrant Republicans, to ditch the Saudis, Washington retains great influence on the Saudi response to what is a severe provocation. This can be seen as a great opportunity, as it furnishes a justification for administering a heavy blow against the most troublesome regime in the world.

The United States would do well to take the trouble to line up allies. The Western alliance will be even more skittish than usual, given that the aggrieved party is the not entirely presentable Saudi regime. Saudi Arabia has been a joint venture between the House of Saud, an old nomadic desert family favored by Britain and France on the collapse of the Ottoman (Turkish) Empire at the end of World War I, and the Wahhabi Islamic leadership. The feudal and absolute monarchy paid extensive Danegeld to the Wahhabis as they spread militant Islam throughout the Eurasian landmass and in Australasia and North Africa, in exchange for a free pass for the Saudi royal family.

The Saudi regime has gradually, under steady American influence, modernized the structure of the state, spread the petro-money around the population, and withdrawn from the Faustian bargain with fundamentalist Islam. It has followed the Arab version of the Chinese model: economic and (to some extent) social reform and general distribution of prosperity, without relaxing the authority or capacity of self-assertion of the state. The Saudis avoided the catastrophe of Russia and, briefly, Egypt, of trying to introduce democracy without elevating public standards of prosperity and education.

Saudi Arabia is, in any case, a much more reputable regime than the terrorism-promoting, bigoted theocracy of Iran — an almost friendless nation apart from a few other militant Islamic entities and as a nuisance of convenience that China and Russia and even Turkey encourage to irritate the United States and its Middle Eastern allies and protégés, especially Egypt, the Emirates, the Saudis, and Israel.

The struggle that is now escalating is among theocratic and secular Muslim countries, militant Islam, and Middle Eastern minorities — the Jewish state and Arab Christians — and the fairly arcane but often fiercely contested distinction between Shiite and Sunni Muslims, as well as a contest between petroleum-exporting countries, a field where Saudi Arabia has generally been preeminent. These waters have been muddied considerably by the effective elimination by the United States of overseas energy imports as its own production has been sharply boosted from shale-fracking and increased offshore exploration.

An incidental but useful clarification from this event has been the revelation of the absurdity and irrelevance of the extreme Green nonsense. The President was correct in announcing that he would release oil as necessary from the United States national petroleum reserves to stabilize world supply. Even 50 years from now, no part of the solution to such a problem as this will have anything to do with nostrums about windmills and solar panels.

Apart from the removal of the United States as the world’s chief petroleum importer, the Middle Eastern correlation of forces has also been altered by the disintegration of two prominent Arab countries, Iraq and Syria (formerly two of Israel’s most militant enemies), and the encroachment upon Arab affairs of the ancient foes of the Arabs, the Turks and the Persians (Iran).

The European rejection of Turkey has helped persuade that country’s strongman, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to imagine that Turkey has a role to play in Arab affairs, and the general clerical and nationalist belligerency of the Islamic Republic in Iran has assisted the Arabs in focusing on self-protection and shelving their diversionary preoccupation with Israel.

The fixation on Israel was always just an invented distraction of the Arab masses from the misgovernment their leaders inflicted on them, but now, and with Turkey and Iran meddling in Syria and Iraq, the Palestinians, who were generally regarded in the Arab world as sharpers like the Jews and Lebanese, are redundant to the pan-Arab interest, and Israel is a vital ally.

Now is the time for the imposition of a solution: The Palestinians can have a modest state, but that’s all they get, and it must be conditioned on formal recognition of Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state with internationally agreed frontiers. The Israeli election will almost certainly produce a grand coalition between the two main parties that could facilitate an agreement by producing a slightly more flexible government in Jerusalem, i.e. a somewhat more flexible Benjamin Netanyahu (though not one seriously contemplating retirement; the charges against him are nonsense and just part of hardball Israeli politics). Israel would benefit from a government independent of the Arabs, the religious parties, or the far left.

The United States must lead an effective coalition response to the Iranian aggression against Saudi Arabia. The NATO states that import oil, especially from Saudi Arabia, should be forcefully invited to join in augmented sanctions, and the United States should require those countries that trade profitably with the U.S. to join an embargo of Iran until it genuinely renounces its sponsorship of terrorist enterprises, including Hezbollah, Hamas, and, as long as the Yemeni civil war is bilaterally deescalated, the Houthi.

A serious coalition, including all the countries whose ships ply the Persian Gulf, should, under American leadership, accomplish the internationalization of the Strait of Hormuz, and discourage by force any Iranian attempt to restrict those waters. And the U.S. must (at the expense of the beneficiary countries) install serious air security over Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Kuwait, and northern Iraq. Foreign drones should never have got anywhere near the Saudi oil refineries and collection points and would not be especially hard to intercept.

This attack was planned as meticulously as the 9/11 attacks and, like them, attempted to evade any particular national responsibility. The fact that there was no suicide element may be taken as slight progress for the world’s counterterrorists.

An air assault on Iranian oil facilities and nuclear military sites would be entirely justified, and this measure should be prepared as the next step, with the prior approval of a reasonable range of supportive countries, as the instant response to any further provocations. It would not be a great risk for the United States to lead a punitive air mission that would flatten Iran’s nuclear military program and crush it economically, and such a step would arouse no objections from any civilized country.

If the Saudis want to move to this more ambitious phase of retribution now, as long as the administration takes the time necessary to stiffen the backbone of the vocal but often almost invertebrate allies, and as long as it is planned carefully, there is no moral or practical reason to hesitate. Iran is an outlaw regime in chronic need of punishment, and the danger lies not in overreaction but in insufficient retaliation.[2]

Black is correct: “[T]he direct attack on Saudi Arabia was an act of war,” but it was not an act of war against the United States or the American people.  We were pushed into the Iraq War by Israel and its neocon shills; and that war alone cost more than 5,000 American lives with many more maimed, and trillions of dollars wasted, for nothing. Never again, even if Israel’s existence is at stake.

The United States is the largest energy producer in the world once again, and as I have written previously:

[W]e do not need the Middle East—or Israel—for anything anymore. Also, an overwhelming number of Americans elected Donald Trump to keep us out of foreign wars, not to embark on new ones.[3]

Pat Buchanan—an adviser to Presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford, and a former GOP presidential aspirant himself—was correct when he stated:

To [former White House aide and Israeli shill, John] Bolton, Trump’s trashing of Barack Obama’s Iran nuclear deal was the first step toward a confrontation and clash to smash the Tehran regime. To Trump, it was a first step to a Trump-negotiated better bargain with Iran.[4]

Black is mistaken when he writes:

The Palestinians can have a modest state, but that’s all they get, and it must be conditioned on formal recognition of Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state with internationally agreed frontiers.

Giving “crumbs” to the Palestinians, and abandoning any notions of a viable two-state solution, smacks of colonialism and apartheid, which are abhorrent in America and the West today.

Black is mistaken too when he writes:

The United States must lead an effective coalition response to the Iranian aggression against Saudi Arabia. The NATO states that import oil, especially from Saudi Arabia, should be forcefully invited to join in augmented sanctions. . . .

It is in America’s best interests to open our energy “spigots” wide, and supply Europe with its energy needs, and do the same with respect to China.  Among other things, this would boost the U.S. economy immeasurably; it would undermine the Russian dictator-for-life Vladimir Putin’s brutal regime; and it would enhance American jobs and our trading relationship with China, which desperately needs energy products to keep its flagging economy afloat and on an even keel.

Next, Black has written:

An air assault on Iranian oil facilities and nuclear military sites would be entirely justified, and this measure should be prepared as the next step, with the prior approval of a reasonable range of supportive countries, as the instant response to any further provocations. It would not be a great risk for the United States to lead a punitive air mission that would flatten Iran’s nuclear military program and crush it economically, and such a step would arouse no objections from any civilized country.

If the Saudis want to move to this more ambitious phase of retribution now, as long as the administration takes the time necessary to stiffen the backbone of the vocal but often almost invertebrate allies, and as long as it is planned carefully, there is no moral or practical reason to hesitate. Iran is an outlaw regime in chronic need of punishment, and the danger lies not in overreaction but in insufficient retaliation.

Wow!  This smacks of the warmongering by those who brought us the Vietnam War and the Iraq War; and it must be rejected categorically by the American people.  They do not want war; and thankfully Black does not occupy any policy role in the West vis-à-vis the Middle East.

© 2019, Timothy D. Naegele

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[1]  Timothy D. Naegele was counsel to the United States Senate’s Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, and chief of staff to Presidential Medal of Freedom and Congressional Gold Medal recipient and former U.S. Senator Edward W. Brooke (R-Mass). He and his firm, Timothy D. Naegele & Associates, specialize in Banking and Financial Institutions Law, Internet Law, Litigation and other matters (see www.naegele.com and Timothy D. Naegele Resume-19-4-29). He has an undergraduate degree in economics from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), as well as two law degrees from the School of Law (Boalt Hall), University of California, Berkeley, and from Georgetown University. He served as a Captain in the U.S. Army, assigned to the Defense Intelligence Agency at the Pentagon, where he received the Joint Service Commendation Medal (see, e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commendation_Medal#Joint_Service). Mr. Naegele is an Independent politically; and he is listed in Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who in American Law, and Who’s Who in Finance and Business. He has written extensively over the years (see, e.g., www.naegele.com/whats_new.html#articles), and can be contacted directly at tdnaegele.associates@gmail.com

[2]  See https://www.nysun.com/national/latest-ploy-against-trump-is-to-conjure/90804/

[3]  See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2019/02/06/the-state-of-our-union-2019/#comment-17209 (“Warmonger: Enemy Of The American People”)

[4]  See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2019/02/06/the-state-of-our-union-2019/#comment-19656 (“Echoes Of The Despicable John Bolton”)

America’s Left Is Vile And Evil

 By Timothy D. Naegele[1]

And yes, lots of us began as Democrats, but will never vote for one again.

In an article entitled “New Anti-Trump Ploy Is Conjuring A Recession,” Conrad Black—the Canadian-born, British former newspaper publisher, author and life peer—has written in The New York Sun:

The latest ploy of the anti-Trump press phalanx, and their weekly echo chamber of assorted Democratic candidates and legislators, is to try to move the voter-approval needle by insisting an economic recession is about to occur. The problem is, it isn’t.

As weeks pass without a recession or even increasing objective statistical hints of a recession, the continued trumpeting of a recession becomes self-stifling. Not even the economically illiterate mouthpieces of CNN and MSNBC can keep a straight face for long predicting recession when there are no signs it is happening.

It is possible to convince those who want to be convinced that something happening completely in the dark, such as trade negotiations with China, is going badly. (They aren’t.) But it is impossible to maintain a levitation of economic alarm when confidence remains high, employers are hiring rather than laying off workers, and economic growth, unemployment, and inflation numbers remain positive.

Understandably, it has been difficult for both sides on the political see-saw as we approach the 2020 election year. President Trump’s enemies, clinging as they have been since the beginning to buoyant flotsam, are like people who have been cast into the sea and can’t swim.

The idea of a Trump presidency was so unthinkable there could not be a honeymoon because it could not be real; it could not have been a legitimate election. For more than two years we were waiting for the confirmation that Mr. Trump had worked with the Russian government to rig the election.

We now know that from the start the investigators knew that there had been no such collusion and almost two whole years were spent trying to provoke Mr. Trump into counter-attacking Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s operation so he could be accused of obstructing justice. Since the president cooperated with the inquiry even as he rightly denounced it as a hoax and a fraud, the best that could be done was an invitation to the House of Representatives to continue investigations so Democrats might keep the impeachment cloud over the president’s head.

Doubtless when legislators return from their summer recess, like two spavined old fire-horses, judiciary and intelligence committee chairmen Jerry Nadler and Adam Schiff will storm out of the gate again, issuing subpoenas which will be ignored by the administration, and relying on the same desperately inadequate choir of nasty press sorcerers (down to and including Watergate catacomb mythmakers Carl Bernstein and John Dean), to stoke it up one more time.

It won’t fly. No one believes any of it. Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz will soon produce his report on many aspects of the spurious Trump-Russia investigation, and Senator [Lindsey] Graham and his judiciary committee will take it from there, shouldering Messrs. Nadler and Schiff out of the frame.

Inexorably, as special prosecutor John Durham’s indictments come down, the Democrats’ “insurance policy” against Mr. Trump (the Russian collusion canard as described by former FBI senior agent Peter Strzok) will become the Democrats’ suicide weapon.

Russia was hastily followed by racism, topped out with attempts to hold Mr. Trump in some way responsible for the tragic shootings in El Paso and Dayton. Since Mr. Trump isn’t a racist, and neither of the two shooters professed any Trump role in forming their psychopathic opinions, that wheeze has died in the summer heat. It is to be hoped that it doesn’t take down prudent bipartisan reforms of the gun regime with it.

The sudden and mysterious silence that has enshrouded the southern border, including the wailings of Representative Elijah Cummings, is the surest indicator that the fence is being built, Mexico is cooperating (as it receives more manufacturing investment from companies fleeing China over tariffs), and the detention and adjudication system with hundreds of new judges, is working.

The number of apprehensions of those attempting to enter illegally is declining and it is becoming difficult to represent crowded but adequately sanitary and well-stocked detention centers as the replications of Nazi death camps that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and others were conjuring.

Now we are on to a recession. This claim contains no more substance than the chimeras that preceded it.

The straws in the wind that have been cited as the green shoots of economic calamity are far from dispositive, and carry much less weight than continuing solid performances in economic growth, inflation, absolute and per capita GDP growth, manufacturing jobs growth, shrinkage of minority unemployment, and purchasing power for working and lower middle class families. All of these numbers are coming in supportively for the administration.

The fact that the election approaches and the importance of the economy in electoral results is proverbial, and the serial evaporation of the false issues that have been pinned on Trump in his inexorable elephantine march through his first term, now combine to attempt the incitement of hysteria on this subject.

It is true that the deficit tops $1 trillion and that is not sustainable indefinitely, but that is 35% less than the Obama average (admittedly coming after a debacle bequeathed by George W. Bush); and the GDP is about 25% above the latter Obama years. So despite a large tax reduction and a strong defense build-up, the deficit as a percentage of GDP has shrunk in about five years from 8.5% to less than 5%, unacceptable, but progress.

The most important single measurement, especially for insertion into political predictions, is GDP per capita growth, which declined dangerously from 4.5% in the Reagan years to 3.9% in the Clinton terms, to 2% under George W. Bush to 1% with Obama. This trend had to be reversed to prevent extreme economic and political stress.

Economics, essentially, is half psychology and half third-grade arithmetic. President Trump has won the arithmetic and there are no serious signs of incipient recession: neither rising interest rates presaging inflation, which could require recessive measures to cool, nor serious slackening of demand.

Under the circumstances, it will be hard for Democratic officials and press fear-mongering to win the psychological battle over the direct personal experience and observations of the voters.

The only signs of economic weakness are from other important countries. The European Union appears to be about to suffer the grievous self-inflicted wound of failing to reach a reasonable compromise with the UK, and the loss of its second-largest national economy and most prestigious member. This would be a benefit to the United States as a free trade agreement with the world’s fifth-largest economy would be eminently negotiable.

China, despite its huffing and puffing and the solicitude for its “face” [that] it has stirred up in the weak-kneed precincts of the over-populated anti-Trump world, is sputtering and losing jobs to Vietnam, India, and Mexico. Those who have been so prostrated in their hostility to the president that they have subscribed to Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s “Belt and Road” hegemonic plan will suffer the disconcertion of seeing China adopt a sharp course correction.

The comparative weakness of China’s rivals will assist the prolongation of the American boom, which only seems so protracted because there never really was a full recovery under President Obama, little more than stabilization with a 125% increase in accumulated national debt in eight years. The workforce shrank, welfare dependency rose, and a flat-lined “new normal” that the country could not live with was proclaimed.

The Democrats and their press are trying to delay the sober and balanced assessment of the merits of the candidates coming up to the 2020 election. To repurpose a beloved Democratic expression, the inconvenient truth is that Mr. Trump has been a good president who has kept his promises.[2]

As I have written:

Our adversaries have only seen a small portion of America’s vast economic might. For example, by denying use of the SWIFT payments system to Russia, we can bring the pygmy economy (smaller than Italy or Brazil) to its knees. Also, as the United States regains its dominant position in the world’s energy markets, Russia loses. And China’s economy is not in great shape today either.

Like Abraham Lincoln before him, Donald Trump is asserting America’s preeminence and dominance, unapologetically. And yes, the United States is at war, albeit it is not a shooting war at this time.[3]

Economic cycles are a way of life, which have occurred with consistency over hundreds if not thousands of years.  And I added:

One can look at Life negatively (e.g., ALL of us are going to die), optimistically, or “realistically.”

I have believed that the “Great Recession [of 2008]” was papered over, and the proverbial “can” was simply kicked down the road.

. . .

However, the USSR is gone; Russia is a pygmy state; and China has lots of problems. We have survived because of optimism and realism, not pessimism.[4]

America’s Left and its captive so-called “Mainstream Media” are hoping for a recession (or worse), which they can blame on President Trump.  In essence, they are hoping that America fails, instead of succeeds and prospers.  This is not the Democratic Party of Franklin D. Roosevelt, who did his best to get us out of the Great Depression and rebuild America’s spirit and industrial might.

Instead, this is the party of un-American mental midgets like Jerry Nadler and Adam Schiff; outright racists like Maxine Waters and Elijah Cummings; and anti-Semites such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar and the other members of their so-called “Squad.”  It is also the party of Barack Obama and his fellow traitors who sought to destroy the candidacy and then the presidency of Donald Trump, and who should be in prison for the rest of their lives—at the very least.[5]

© 2019, Timothy D. Naegele

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[1]  Timothy D. Naegele was counsel to the United States Senate’s Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, and chief of staff to Presidential Medal of Freedom and Congressional Gold Medal recipient and former U.S. Senator Edward W. Brooke (R-Mass). He and his firm, Timothy D. Naegele & Associates, specialize in Banking and Financial Institutions Law, Internet Law, Litigation and other matters (see www.naegele.com and Timothy D. Naegele Resume-19-4-29). He has an undergraduate degree in economics from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), as well as two law degrees from the School of Law (Boalt Hall), University of California, Berkeley, and from Georgetown University. He served as a Captain in the U.S. Army, assigned to the Defense Intelligence Agency at the Pentagon, where he received the Joint Service Commendation Medal (see, e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commendation_Medal#Joint_Service). Mr. Naegele is an Independent politically; and he is listed in Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who in American Law, and Who’s Who in Finance and Business. He has written extensively over the years (see, e.g., www.naegele.com/whats_new.html#articles), and can be contacted directly at tdnaegele.associates@gmail.com

[2]  See https://www.nysun.com/national/latest-ploy-against-trump-is-to-conjure/90804/; see also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2019/08/13/china-is-americas-enemy-and-the-enemy-of-free-people-everywhere/ (“China Is America’s Enemy, And The Enemy Of Free People Everywhere”)

[3]  See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2019/02/06/the-state-of-our-union-2019/#comment-17585 (“America’s Global Might”)

[4]  See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2019/08/11/u-s-attorney-general-barr-is-appalled-give-americans-a-break/#comment-18748

[5]  See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2019/08/11/u-s-attorney-general-barr-is-appalled-give-americans-a-break/ (“U.S. Attorney General Barr Is Appalled: Give Americans A Break!”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2019/04/18/the-mueller-report-a-monumental-travesty/ (“The Mueller Report: A Monumental Travesty”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2019/03/24/the-mueller-witch-hunt-is-over/ (“The Mueller Witch Hunt Is Over”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2019/04/29/the-democrats-are-evil-but-smart-while-the-republicans-are-neanderthals-and-dumb/ (“The Democrats Are Evil But Smart, While The Republicans Are Neanderthals And Dumb”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2018/05/24/should-barack-obama-be-executed-for-treason/ (“Should Barack Obama Be Executed For Treason?”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2018/03/11/robert-mueller-should-be-executed-for-treason/ (“Robert Mueller Should Be Executed For Treason”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/10/20/the-real-russian-conspiracy-barack-obama-the-clintons-and-the-sale-of-americas-uranium-to-russias-killer-putin/ (“The Real Russian Conspiracy: Barack Obama, The Clintons, And The Sale Of America’s Uranium To Russia’s Killer Putin”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2013/07/15/justice-and-the-law-do-not-mix/ (“Justice And The Law Do Not Mix”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2012/03/21/the-united-states-department-of-injustice/ (“The United States Department of Injustice”); see also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2019/07/29/barack-obama-is-responsible-for-americas-tragic-racial-divide/ (“Barack Obama Is Responsible For America’s Tragic Racial Divide”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2009/12/05/is-barack-obama-a-racist/ (“Is Barack Obama A Racist?”) and https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7340581/Jerry-Nadler-says-formal-impeachment-proceedings-against-Donald-Trump-launched.html (“[Totally-despicable] Jerry Nadler says ‘formal impeachment proceedings’ against Donald Trump have been launched’)

China Is America’s Enemy, And The Enemy Of Free People Everywhere

 By Timothy D. Naegele[1]

Almost nine years ago, I wrote an article entitled “China Is America’s Enemy: Make No Mistake About That,” which was published here.[2]  The year before that, I had written another article entitled “The Silent Voices Of Stalin’s Soviet Holocaust And Mao’s Chinese Holocaust,” which addressed the killing by China’s Mao Tse-tung of an estimated 30-40 million between 1958 and 1960, as a result of what Mao’s regime hailed as the “Great Leap Forward.”[3]  Today, China is killing its babies, yet the world is turning a blind eye again.[4]

Pat Buchanan—an adviser to Presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford, and a former GOP presidential aspirant himself—has written a thoughtful and sobering article entitled “China, Not Russia, the Greater Threat,” which is worth reading and reflecting on:

Ten weeks of protests, some huge, a few violent, culminated Monday with a shutdown of the Hong Kong airport.

Ominously, Beijing described the violent weekend demonstrations as “deranged” acts that are “the first signs of terrorism,” and vowed a merciless crackdown on the perpetrators.

China is being pushed toward a decision it does not want to make: to use military force, as in Tiananmen Square 30 years ago, to crush the uprising. For that would reveal the character of President Xi Jinping’s Communist dictatorship, as well as Beijing’s long-term plans for this semi-autonomous city of almost 7.5 million.

Yet this is not the only internal or border concern of Xi’s regime.

Millions of Muslim Uighurs in China’s west are in concentration camps undergoing “re-education” to change their way of thinking on loyalty, secession and the creation of a new East Turkestan.

In June, a Chinese vessel rammed and sank a Philippine fishing boat, leaving its 22 crewmen to drown. The fishermen were rescued by a Vietnamese boat.

President Rodrigo Duterte’s reluctance to resist China’s fortification in the South China Sea of the rocks and reefs Manila claims are within its own territorial waters has turned Philippine nationalism anti-China.

China’s claim to Taiwan is being defied by Taipei, which just bought $2.2 billion in U.S. military equipment including Abrams tanks and Stinger missiles.

Any Taiwanese declaration of independence, China has warned, means war.

While Taiwan’s request to buy U.S. F-16s has not yet been approved, in a rare visit, Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen stopped over in the U.S. recently, before traveling on to Caribbean countries that retain diplomatic relations with Taipei. Beijing has expressed its outrage at the U.S. arms sales and Tsai’s unofficial visit.

The vaunted Chinese economy is growing, at best, at half the double-digit rate of a decade ago, not enough to create the jobs needed for hundreds of millions in the countryside seeking work.

And talks have been suspended in the U.S.-China trade dispute, at the heart of which, says White House aide Peter Navarro, are Beijing’s “seven deadly sins” in dealing with the United States:

China steals our intellectual property via cybertheft, forces U.S. companies in China to transfer technology, hacks our computers, dumps into our markets to put U.S. companies out of business, subsidizes state-owned enterprises to compete with U.S. firms, manipulates its currency, and, despite our protests, ships to the USA the fentanyl drug that has become a major killer of Americans.

Such practices have enabled China to run up annual trade surpluses of $300 billion to $400 billion at our expense, and, says Navarro, have caused the loss of 70,000 factories and 5 million manufacturing jobs in the U.S.

Moreover, China has used the accumulated wealth of its huge trade surpluses to finance its drive for hegemony in Asia and beyond.

With President Donald Trump threatening 10% tariffs on $300 billion more in Chinese exports to the U.S., Xi must decide if he is willing to end his trade-war tactics against the U.S., which have gone on during the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations. If he refuses, will he accept the de-coupling of our two economies?

Only Trump has taken on the Middle Kingdom.

If the American people and Congress are willing to play hardball and accept sacrifices, we can win this face-off. The U.S. buys five times as much from China as we sell to China. The big loser in this confrontation, if we stay the course, will not be the USA.

For three years, the U.S. establishment has not ceased to howl about Russia’s theft of emails of the DNC and Hillary Clinton campaign.

Yet the greatest cybercrime of the century was Beijing’s theft in 2014 of the personnel files of 22 million applicants and employees of the U.S. government, many of them holding top-secret clearances.

Compromised by this theft, said then FBI Director James Comey, was a “treasure trove of information about everybody who has worked for, tried to work for, or works for the United States government.”

“A very big deal from a national security … and counterintelligence perspective,” said Comey. And Xi’s China, not Putin’s Russia, committed the crime. Yet America’s elites appear to have forgotten this far graver act of cyberaggresion.

Undeniably, Russia is a rival. But Putin’s economy is the size of Italy’s while China’s economy challenges our own. And China’s population is 10 times that of Russia, and four times that of the USA.

Manifestly, China is the greater menace.

Are Americans willing to make the necessary sacrifices to force China to abide by the rules of reciprocal trade?

Or will Trump be forced by political realities to accept the long-term and ruinous relationship we have followed since granting China permanent MFN status in 2001?

This issue is likely to decide the destiny of our relations and the future of Asia, if not the world.[5]

As I have written many times, Russia is a pygmy state economically—and “Putinism” dies with the demise of Russia’s brutal dictator-for-life Vladimir Putin.[6]  While China’s economy is not in good shape, it is wielding power in Hong Kong and elsewhere around the globe, which might be ominous.[7]  Protestors in Hong Kong have waved the American flag, and sung our national anthem.[8]  The thirst for freedom is everywhere; and China’s thirst for totalitarian global domination must end, or be ended.[9]

[A pro-democracy protester waves an American flag in Tsim Sha Tsui district, an urban area in southern Kowloon, Hong Kong]

© 2019, Timothy D. Naegele

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[1]  Timothy D. Naegele was counsel to the United States Senate’s Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, and chief of staff to Presidential Medal of Freedom and Congressional Gold Medal recipient and former U.S. Senator Edward W. Brooke (R-Mass). He and his firm, Timothy D. Naegele & Associates, specialize in Banking and Financial Institutions Law, Internet Law, Litigation and other matters (see www.naegele.com and Timothy D. Naegele Resume-19-4-29). He has an undergraduate degree in economics from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), as well as two law degrees from the School of Law (Boalt Hall), University of California, Berkeley, and from Georgetown University. He served as a Captain in the U.S. Army, assigned to the Defense Intelligence Agency at the Pentagon, where he received the Joint Service Commendation Medal (see, e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commendation_Medal#Joint_Service). Mr. Naegele is an Independent politically; and he is listed in Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who in American Law, and Who’s Who in Finance and Business. He has written extensively over the years (see, e.g., www.naegele.com/whats_new.html#articles), and can be contacted directly at tdnaegele.associates@gmail.com

[2]  See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2011/01/13/china-is-americas-enemy-make-no-mistake-about-that/ (“China Is America’s Enemy: Make No Mistake About That”) (see also the extensive comments beneath the article)

[3]  See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/06/the-silent-voices-of-stalin%E2%80%99s-soviet-holocaust-and-mao%E2%80%99s-chinese-holocaust/ (“The Silent Voices Of Stalin’s Soviet Holocaust And Mao’s Chinese Holocaust”) (see also the extensive comments beneath the article)

[4]  See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/04/15/problems-with-foreign-adoptions/#comment-18488 (“China Is Killing Again, This Time Babies”)

[5]  See https://buchanan.org/blog/china-not-russia-the-greater-threat-137403 (“China, Not Russia, the Greater Threat”)

[6]  See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2015/11/29/the-death-of-putin-and-russia-the-final-chapter-of-the-cold-war/ (“The Death Of Putin And Russia: The Final Chapter Of The Cold War”)

[7]  See, e.g., http://www.dickmorris.com/china-tries-to-jam-huawei-down-the-worlds-throat-lunch-alert/ (“China Tries To Jam Huawei Down The World’s Throat“)

[8]  See, e.g., https://www.theweek.in/news/world/2019/08/13/hong-kong-protesters-wave-american-flag-sing-national-anthem.html (“Hong Kong protesters wave American flag, sing national anthem”)

[9]  See, e.g., https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/james-carafano-what-hong-kong-unrest-tells-us-about-chinas-plans-for-the-rest-of-the-world (“What Hong Kong unrest tells us about China’s plans for the rest of the world”—”[T]he plight of that territory’s more than 7 million souls can teach us an important lesson about what China has in mind for the rest of the world.  It is not good.  . . .  [M]any observers fear that Beijing will step in and crackdown on the demonstrators.  After all, they note, the USSR’s demise didn’t stop the People’s Army from rolling tanks into Tiananmen Square.  . . . Hong Kong just doesn’t mean near as much to the Chinese economy as it did 20 years ago. Besides, the Chinese would rather see investment flow to mainland cities like Guangzhou and Shanghai that are more firmly under the regime’s control. As for the welfare and future of the people of Hong Kong, that is the last thing Beijing cares about”) and http://www.dickmorris.com/how-trump-can-squeeze-china-harder-lunch-alert/ (“How Trump Can Squeeze China Harder”)

China Is America’s Enemy: Make No Mistake About That

By Timothy D. Naegele[1]

While it would certainly be nice to think of China as a benign, friendly, democratic nation, if not an ally of the United States—which makes the computers and cellphones that Americans use, and provides most of the products sold in Walmart stores—the fact is that China is our enemy, now and in the future.  A failure to recognize this fact has serious national security implications for our great nation.  Those who cavalierly dismiss this and similar assessments, as nothing more than the rantings of “Cold Warriors,” may be condemned to repeat and relive the world wars of the past.

Does this mean that we will be in a shooting war with China any time soon, or that we should gird for war in the future?  No, but it means that we must maintain and strengthen our military might, and do nothing to diminish it.  We face deadly challenges elsewhere in the world too: for example, from North Korea, Iran, Russia and terrorists.  However, we must never underestimate the threat from China, America’s rising Asian rival globally.  Among other things, there is a “disconnect” between China’s civilian and military leaderships, which may grow dramatically—and it does not bode well for the future.

As the Wall Street Journal reported:

China conducted the first test flight of its stealth fighter just hours before U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates sat down with President Hu Jintao here to mend frayed relations, undermining the meeting and prompting questions over whether China’s civilian leadership is fully in control of the increasingly powerful armed forces.[2]

In early 2001, at the beginning of George W. Bush’s presidency, China’s military tested his metal by forcing down one of our spy planes near the island of Hainan. There were serious questions raised then—as they are being raised now—about whether China’s civilian leadership was fully in control of the country’s military.

Also, the New York Times had a fine article recently, which stated in part:

Older Chinese officers remember a time, before the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989 set relations back, when American and Chinese forces made common cause against the Soviet Union.

The younger officers have known only an anti-American ideology, which casts the United States as bent on thwarting China’s rise.

. . .

Chinese military men, from the soldiers and platoon captains all the way up to the army commanders, were always taught that America would be their enemy.[3]

Viewed in its starkest terms, China has threatened a nation-ending EMP Attack against the United States already—which went largely unnoticed by most Americans, even though such an attack might kill all except 30 million of us.[4] In addition to its submarine forces that have been expanded greatly in the past decade, China’s military is deploying new ballistic missiles that can sink U.S. aircraft carriers, and are potentially game-changing, unprecedented threats to our supercarriers and their carrier battle groups.[5]

Also, China is preparing to build an aircraft carrier, which symbolizes the ambition to move far beyond its own shores[6].  Its growing anti-satellite capabilities and quite soon its fifth-generation fighter, not to mention its ongoing Cyberwarfare and economic warfare, are alarming to say the least.

Barack Obama manipulated the 2010 lame-duck session of Congress to ratify the “90 percent useless and 10 percent problematic” New START Treaty with Putin’s Russia—from which the next Republican administration should withdraw[7], just as George W. Bush withdrew from the ABM Treaty, which had expressly prevented major American advances in missile defense.  However, the United States’ focus must be on China, not on an essentially-Third World, backwater country like Russia.[8]

As one China military-affairs specialist put it:

Clearly, China’s communist leadership is not impressed by the [Obama] administration’s ending of F-22 production, its retirement of the Navy’s nuclear cruise missile, START Treaty reductions in U.S. missile warheads, and its refusal to consider U.S. space warfare capabilities. Such weakness is the surest way to invite military adventurism from China.[9]

On the positive side, China represents an enormous consumer market.  Yet, even on that front, caution is advised and prudence is required.  As the Wall Street Journal noted:

It’s tempting for U.S. companies to believe they can rely on access to hundreds of millions of new consumers in China and other emerging-market countries for the lion’s share of future profits. But they had better be prepared for a wide variety of unforeseen barriers.[10]

The United States has other issues and problems with China, including but not limited to Chinese adoption policies that foist “sick” children on unsuspecting, needy American adoptive parents, leading to tragic human suffering and other consequences[11]; China’s human rights abuses, including political prisoners who often serve their terms in an archipelago of labor camps scattered across the country called Laogai[12]; North and South Korea—and their respective international protectors, China and the U.S.—which might be heading for a showdown in the future[13]; and China’s expanding influence in the world, such as its willingness to bail out debt-ridden countries in the euro zone[14].

China has a violent history, which is of recent vintage.  Indeed, the Soviet Union’s Joseph Stalin and China’s Mao Tse-tung were the most ruthless killers of their own people in the 20th Century, and perhaps in the entire history of mankind.  Mao was directly responsible for an estimated 30-40 million deaths between 1958 and 1960, as a result of what his regime hailed as the “Great Leap Forward.”[15] Even though human rights activist Liu Xiaobo won the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize—after having been sentenced to prison for putting his name to the “Charter 08″ human-rights manifesto, which says that the Chinese people “see clearly that freedom, equality, and human rights are universal values”—he was denied the right to have a representative collect the prize for him.[16]

Perhaps the best hope for a democratic China at peace with the world rests with the expansion of human rights in the country, as well as consumerism and capitalism; and greater civilian control over the country’s potentially-renegade military.  Whether this hope comes to fruition, or ends up as a pipe dream, remains to be seen.  Will China’s bluster and swagger lead to war, or dissipate over time; and are the United States and China on a collision course in the Western Pacific and elsewhere?[17] Only time will tell.  However, one can never forget that China’s violent past was only a short time ago, and its human rights abuses continue to this day.

© 2011, Timothy D. Naegele

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[1] Timothy D. Naegele was counsel to the United States Senate’s Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, and chief of staff to Presidential Medal of Freedom and Congressional Gold Medal recipient and former U.S. Senator Edward W. Brooke (R-Mass).  He practices law in Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles with his firm, Timothy D. Naegele & Associates, which specializes in Banking and Financial Institutions Law, Internet Law, Litigation and other matters (see www.naegele.com and http://www.naegele.com/naegele_resume.html).  He has an undergraduate degree in economics from UCLA, as well as two law degrees from the School of Law (Boalt Hall), University of California, Berkeley, and from Georgetown University.  He is a member of the District of Columbia and California bars.  He served as a Captain in the U.S. Army, assigned to the Defense Intelligence Agency at the Pentagon, where he received the Joint Service Commendation Medal.  Mr. Naegele is an Independent politically; and he is listed in Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who in American Law, and Who’s Who in Finance and Business. He has written extensively over the years (see, e.g., www.naegele.com/whats_new.html#articles), and can be contacted directly at tdnaegele.associates@gmail.com

[2] See http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704428004576075042571461586.html?mod=WSJ_hp_MIDDLENexttoWhatsNewsTop

[3] See http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/12/world/asia/12beijing.html?_r=3&hp=&pagewanted=all

[4] See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/01/19/emp-attack-only-30-million-americans-survive/

[5] See, e.g., http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/dec/27/china-deploying-carrier-sinking-ballistic-missile/

[6] See, e.g., http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/fa7f5e6a-09cc-11e0-8b29-00144feabdc0.html#axzz18PUuKHZh

[7] See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/09/russias-putin-is-a-killer/#comment-1014: see also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/09/russias-putin-is-a-killer/#comment-1167 and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/09/russias-putin-is-a-killer/#comment-1245

[8] See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/09/russias-putin-is-a-killer/

[9] See http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/dec/27/china-deploying-carrier-sinking-ballistic-missile/

[10] See, e.g., http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704852004575258541875590852.html?mod=WSJ_hp_editorsPicks

[11] See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/04/15/problems-with-foreign-adoptions/; see also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/09/russias-putin-is-a-killer/#comment-348 and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/09/russias-putin-is-a-killer/#comment-434 (“[B]oth Russia and China have used the U.S. as dumping grounds for their ‘sick’ children”)

[12] See, e.g., http://www.naegele.com/documents/BretStephens-FromAthenstoBeijing.pdf (“How strong can China be if it is terrified of Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo?”); see also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/09/russias-putin-is-a-killer/#comment-824

[13] See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/12/22/the-next-major-war-korea-again/ and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/09/russias-putin-is-a-killer/#comment-1012

[14] See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/09/russias-putin-is-a-killer/#comment-1177

[15] As I have written:

Like Stalin, Mao’s crimes involved Chinese peasants, many of whom died of hunger from man-made famines under collectivist orders that stripped them of all private possessions.  The Communist Party forbade them even to cook food at home; private fires were outlawed; and their harvests were taken by the state.  Those who dared to question Mao’s agricultural policies—which sought to maximize food output by dispossessing the nation’s most productive farmers—were tortured, sent to labor camps, or executed.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/06/the-silent-voices-of-stalin%E2%80%99s-soviet-holocaust-and-mao%E2%80%99s-chinese-holocaust/

[16] See infra note 12; see also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liu_Xiaobo#Nobel_Peace_Prize

[17] See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/09/russias-putin-is-a-killer/#comment-1188