Eric Zuesse<\/p>\n
According to both the Washington Post<\/i> and Politico<\/span><\/a>, U.S. President Donald Trump is now in the thrall of the U.S. military-industrial complex, because he was trained at a military high school (the New York Military Academy<\/span><\/a>) during his formative early years, and his being in their thrall might salvage his Presidency, by replacing its former chaos with order. <\/span><\/p>\n The Washington Post<\/i> headlined on August 22nd, “Military leaders consolidate power in Trump administration\u201d<\/span><\/a> and reported:<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThis is the only time in modern presidential history when we\u2019ve had a small number of people from the uniformed world hold this much influence over the chief executive,\u201d said John E. McLaughlin, a former acting director of the CIA who served in seven administrations. \u201cThey are right now playing an extraordinary role.\u201d …<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n President Trump has surrounded himself with generals. …<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n Trump has revered military brass since his youth, when he attended a New York military academy. He holds up generals as exemplars of American leadership and views them as kindred spirits \u2014 fellow political outsiders.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n \u201cTo some degree, Trump is playing president, and I think the whole idea of being able to command a group of warriors is deeply satisfying to him,\u201d McLaughlin said.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n Robert M. Hathaway, a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center, said: \u201cIt should not surprise us. Candidate Trump suggested he would defer to the people he called \u2018my generals\u2019 on a whole host of issues, and they are doing just that.\u201d<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n Trump idolizes swaggering commanders, such as the cinematic portrayal of George S. Patton Jr., the World War II general. \u2026<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n Together with other allies in the administration, Kelly, Mattis and McMaster see their roles not merely as executing Trump\u2019s directives but also as guiding him away from moves that they fear could have catastrophic consequences, according to officials familiar with the dynamic. …<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n William S. Cohen, who served as defense secretary under President Bill Clinton, said that Trump \u201ccame in with virtually no experience in governance, and there\u2019s no coherent strategic philosophy that he holds. There has been a war within the administration, and that has yet to be resolved. .\u2009.\u2009. The military has tried to impose some coherency and discipline.\u201d \u2026<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n At the core of Trump\u2019s circle is a seasoned trio of generals with experience as battlefield commanders: White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and national security adviser H.R. McMaster. The three men have carefully cultivated personal relationships with the president and gained his trust.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n Critics of the president welcome their ascendancy, seeing them as a calming force amid the daily chaos of the White House.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThey are standouts of dependability in the face of rash and impulsive conduct,\u201d said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.). \u201cThere certainly has been a feeling among many of my colleagues that they are a steadying hand on the rudder and provide a sense of consistency and rationality in an otherwise zigzagging White House.\u201d<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n That\u2019s bipartisan support (\u201cCritics of the president welcome their ascendancy”) for this militarized White House, sources who were selected by the Washington Post<\/i> to quote \u2014 support is quoted not only from Republicans, but also from Democrats, such as William S. Cohen and Richard Blumenthal, welcoming a \u201csteadying hand on the rudder.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n Critics also are quoted against the military\u2019s takeover of the White House, but only from well-recognized far-right Republicans, such as \u201cCommentator and Trump ally Ann Coulter tweeted Monday, \u2018The military-industrial complex wins.\u2019\u201d In other words: critics of Trump\u2019s turn toward neoconservatism, are marginalized \u2014 not presented as being bipartisan \u2014 in this news-report. <\/span><\/p>\n The Washington Post<\/i> is owned by Jeff Bezos, whose Amazon corporation provides the cloud computing service that the Pentagon and CIA use. His newspaper is considered by some commentators to be a propaganda-sheet for the U.S. military-industrial complex, of which Amazon corporation is itself a prominent part. In fact, Amazon relies upon the U.S. Government (those government contracts) to provide Amazon’s profits, because Amazon\u2019s far more famous sales-operations to the general public haven’t yet been reliably profitable. So, his newspaper flatters the Pentagon and CIA, and it reports very favorably upon them, which also (and especially) means reporting with great hostility against the leaders of nations that the Pentagon and CIA (and the entire U.S. national \u2018defense\u2019 community, and the entire U.S. intelligence community) are institutionally hostile against and want to overthrow. <\/span><\/p>\n Consequently, the newspaper reports favorably upon Trump\u2019s being extremely reliant upon, and reflective of, the U.S. military-industrial complex, including Amazon corporation.<\/span><\/p>\n Two days later, on August 24th, Politico bannered \u201cKelly moves to control the information Trump sees\u201d<\/span><\/a> and reported that:<\/span><\/p>\n Kelly initiated a new policymaking process in which just he and one other aide \u2014 White House staff secretary Rob Porter, a little-known but highly regarded Rhodes scholar who overlapped with Jared Kushner as an undergraduate at Harvard \u2014 will review all documents that cross the Resolute desk. \u2026 Porter, a Harvard Law graduate, has assumed a pivotal behind-the-scenes role in the administration, working even before Kelly\u2019s arrival to create form from chaos and to serve as an honest broker between the competing factions that populate the Trump White House. He\u2019s no stranger to the GOP\u2019s vast ideological spectrum, having served as chief of staff to Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and before that as counsel to Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), an Ivy League blueblood and George H.W. Bush partisan, as well as to tea partier Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah).<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n Former President Barack Obama’s staff secretary prepared briefing books for the president that he took home each evening, making sure to incorporate competing viewpoints. \u201cWe really worked hard to limit the extent to which he would see anything outside of that channel,\u201d said Doug Kramer, Obama’s staff secretary. \u201cPeople are constantly trying to circumvent the process because they want to get to the president.”<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n Again \u2014 here at Politico \u2014 this military takeover of U.S. foreign policies is presented as being a good thing, which will produce better policies than Trump had been promising in his election-campaign. And, again, the commitment to a militaristic thrust is presented in a bipartisan light, and \u201cGOP\u2019s vast ideological spectrum\u201d is represented by that \u201cHarvard Law graduate,\u201d so it obviously has even Ivy-League appeal. And the idea of shutting out the opinions of outsiders has even the imprimatur of Trump\u2019s Democratic predecessor: \u201cFormer President Barack Obama’s staff secretary prepared briefing books for the president that he took home each evening, making sure to incorporate competing viewpoints. \u2018We really worked hard to limit the extent to which he would see anything outside of that channel,\u2019 said Doug Kramer, Obama’s staff secretary.\u201d That\u2019s clearly bipartisan support, coming even from Obama\u2019s former White House. <\/span><\/p>\n The day prior to that, on August 23rd, Politico\u2019s magazine headlined a lengthy article, \u201cHere\u2019s What Russia\u2019s Propaganda Network Wants You to Read\u201d<\/span><\/a>, and the writer was J.M. Berger, who was identified only as \u201ca fellow with the Alliance for Securing Democracy<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u201d. That link there was uninformative, but Wikipedia\u2019s article \u201cAlliance for Securing Democracy\u201d<\/span><\/a> is informative, and opens by saying:<\/span><\/p>\n The <\/i>Alliance for Securing Democracy<\/i><\/b> is a <\/i>transatlantic<\/i><\/span><\/a> project that states its mission as countering what it describes as an “unprecedented attack” on United States democracy by Russia.<\/i>[1]<\/sup><\/i><\/span><\/a>[2]<\/sup><\/i><\/span><\/a> The alliance is chaired and run primarily by former senior <\/i>United States intelligence<\/i><\/span><\/a> and <\/i>State Department<\/i><\/span><\/a> officials.<\/i>[2]<\/sup><\/i><\/span><\/a> Its daily operations are led by Laura Rosenberger, a former senior State Department official in the Obama administration, and Jamie Fly, former national security counselor to Sen. <\/i>Marco Rubio<\/i><\/span><\/a> (R-Fla.).<\/i>[2]<\/sup><\/i><\/span><\/a> The initiative is housed at <\/i>The German Marshall Fund of the United States<\/i><\/span><\/a>, in the United States and Europe.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n The Wiki article lists twelve \u201cAdvisory Council Members,\u201d all of whom are neoconservatives who focus especially against Russia.<\/span><\/p>\n Politico did not mention that the author of this feature-article, in their magazine, was written by someone who is in the pay of an anti-Russia-propaganda operation.<\/span><\/p>\n The Wikipedia article \u201cGerman Marshall Fund\u201d<\/span><\/a> indicates that the organization was founded in 1972, and lists their \u201cTrustees\u201d (and I make additions to it in [ brackets ]):<\/span><\/p>\n \u2022 <\/i>Michael J. Ahearn<\/i><\/span><\/a><\/span>, chairman & managing partner, <\/i>True North Venture Partners<\/i><\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n \u2022 <\/i>Bob Bennett<\/i><\/span><\/a><\/span>, former U.S. Senator from Utah.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n \u2022 <\/i>Margaret Carlson<\/i><\/span><\/a><\/span>, journalist and columnist for <\/i>Bloomberg News<\/i><\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n \u2022 <\/i>Greg Craig<\/i><\/span><\/a><\/span>, Former <\/i>White House Counsel<\/i><\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n \u2022 Guido Goldman [ <\/i>here<\/i><\/span><\/a> ], Founder and Chairman Emeritus<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n [ \u201csays Goldman, \u2018We wanted to make Americans aware that we belong in Europe.\u2019\u201d ]<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n \u2022 <\/i>Marc Grossman<\/i><\/span><\/a><\/span>, Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan (2011-2012).<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n \u2022 <\/i>John F. Harris<\/i><\/span><\/a><\/span>, Editor-in-Chief, <\/i>Politico<\/i><\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n When that organization, the German Marshall Fund, was founded during the Cold War as a PR agency for NATO, in order \u201cto make Americans aware that we belong in Europe,\u201d this meant excluding Russia from Europe; and the present Trustees all reflect that same objective, even after the end in 1991 of the USSR, and of communism, and of the Warsaw Pact military mirror-image against America\u2019s NATO \u2014 the end, in other words, of all the things against which the U.S. government had supposedly been waging its side of the Cold War. So, those Trustees can be considered to be the principals in whose pay Mr. Berger is \u2014 Berger is their agent. But he\u2019s also directly in the pay of one of them in particular, John F. Harris, because Harris is the Editor-in-Chief of the magazine in which Mr. Berger\u2019s article is published. Harris is also the author of books favorable to Bill and Hillary Clinton, but he is supposed to be bipartisan about President Trump, and he shows that impartiality here by propagandizing in favor of Donald Trump\u2019s now carrying out Hillary Clinton\u2019s foreign policies.<\/span><\/p>\n And, if one clicks onto another of the Trustees there, \u201cMark Grossman,\u201d one sees this:<\/span><\/p>\n Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan<\/i><\/b><\/span>[<\/i>edit<\/i><\/span><\/a>]<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n Grossman was lured out of retirement by <\/i>Secretary of State<\/i><\/span><\/a> <\/i>Hillary Clinton<\/i><\/span><\/a> to become the United States Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, an appointment he received following the death of the first Special Representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, <\/i>Richard Holbrooke<\/i><\/span><\/a>.<\/i>[1]<\/sup><\/i><\/span><\/a>[2]<\/sup><\/i><\/span><\/a>[8]<\/sup><\/i><\/span><\/a> He began his role on February 22, 2011 and concluded his tenure on December 14, 2012.<\/i>[9]<\/sup><\/i><\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n Private sector career<\/i><\/span>[<\/i>edit<\/i><\/span><\/a>]<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n In January 2005 Grossman resigned from his position and joined <\/i>The Cohen Group<\/i><\/span><\/a>. Grossman serves as Vice Chairman of the Cohen Group.<\/i>[10]<\/sup><\/i><\/span><\/a> The Cohen Group has close ties to the Turkish military and represents some of the US\u2019s largest weapons manufacturers, companies that stand to benefit from weapons sales: <\/i>Lockheed Martin<\/i><\/span><\/a>, <\/i>General Dynamics<\/i><\/span><\/a> and <\/i>Sikorsky Aircraft<\/i><\/span><\/a> among others, and their list of clients includes controversial companies such as <\/i>DynCorp International<\/i><\/span><\/a>, a major national security contractor with the US government, charging billions for overseas military and police training. Through their strategic partnership with <\/i>