In October 2016 my 15- year-old daughter was dying. That was also the month that Trump was campaigning hard in his bid to win against Clinton. My daughter wasn’t into in politics, but she watched the news and debates with us that month with a modicum of interest. At the time, we thought America was on the cusp of having its first female president.
At one point we were watching news coverage of a Trump rally in Nevada and my breath caught in my throat when Trump urged terminally ill people to vote for him.
Trump said, “ I don’t care how sick you are. I don’t care if you just came back from the doctor and he gave you the worst possible prognosis, meaning it’s over. Doesn’t matter. Hang out till November 8. Get out and vote.”
I don’t care how sick you are. The words made my heart hurt. Did he know that real dying people — even children — might hear those words? Was it some kind of joke to him?

— Read on medium.com/@jacquelinedooley/what-the-the-era-of-trump-is-teaching-me-about-evil-e6fe25dd426d

“We need to stitch this movement together, bit by bit, stitch by stitch… That’s how we’re going to win it all.”
— Read on www.commondreams.org/news/2019/11/09/ocasio-cortez-and-sanders-draw-largest-iowa-crowd-democratic-primary-so-far-call

Trump is leading us down a path to war with Iran. We cannot sit idly by. On January 2, 2020, under orders from Donald Trump, the Pentagon carried out the airstrike assassination of Maj. Gen. Qassem…

Participating Organizations:
American Friends Service Committee
Beyond the Bomb
Corporate Accountability
Daily Kos
Demand Progress
Friends of the Earth Action
Justice for Muslims Collective
National Priorities Project
NIAC Action
Peace Action
Peace Alliance
Progress America
RootsAction.org
World Beyond War
— Read on actionnetwork.org/letters/sign-the-petition-congress-must-not-allow-the-us-to-enter-into-a-war-with-iran

Late last week, President Trump authorized the radical escalation of America’s 40-year-long conflict with Iran. The January 3 drone attack at Baghdad International Airport was not aimed at deterring an “imminent” attack on Americans, as claimed. It was the preplanned exploitation of a pretext.

Haaretz has reported that Israel, but not the United States Congress, was briefed on the proposed drone strike days before it took place. Its purpose was to eliminate a senior foreign official the Trump administration had designated as an enemy. The killing of the commander of an Iraqi militia hostile to the United States was a bonus. The assassinations were an act of war that will inevitably evoke reprisal. Iran has already promised that it will exact “savage” retribution for the murder of a senior official of its government by the United States.

Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani was the equivalent of the US national security adviser or the commanders of CENTCOM, SOCOM, and SOCCENT. All are now potential Iranian targets. In Iraq itself, the followers of Kataeb Hezbollah’s commander, Abu Mahdi (whose sobriquet was “al Muhandis” or “the Engineer”), will seek their own revenge. The fact that they are part of the Iraqi national security establishment and armed forces is not irrelevant. Kataeb Hezbollah is likely to be joined in its campaign against US forces and officials in Iraq by other patriotic militias, including some historically hostile to both it and Iran.

The Iranian government seldom makes decisions in haste. It is the heir to one of the world’s longest and greatest traditions of politico-military statecraft. It will make considered judgments as it calculates and plans asymmetric responses that hurt Americans without provoking a large-scale conventional war with the United States. If Tehran miscalculates, which is a very real possibility, the now open but low-intensity warfare between the United States and Iran will escalate. Those, like Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and former US national security adviser John Bolton, who have long sought a war with Iran will get one. So will everyone else.

— Read on www.thenation.com/article/suleimani-assassination-escalation/

A properly functioning National Security Council would never have let it happen, for good reason.

Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama had considered taking out General Suleimani but rejected it — not for lack of nerve, but for fear of undue escalation and an unnecessary war with Iran. The fundamental facts on the ground have not changed, and in the kind of robust interagency, national security decision-making process that the National Security Council staff is supposed to supervise, such concerns would have been systematically raised, dissected and discussed, and a consensus reached to inform presidential action. No such process seems to have occurred here.

The Pentagon has claimed, facilely, that General Suleimani was hit because the Revolutionary Guard was planning attacks on American targets in the region. But in a proper interagency review, the intelligence community could have pointed out that “decapitation” is a patently unreliable means of pre-emption — particularly when the organization in question is the Revolutionary Guard, an integral part of a well-honed security state with considerable depth of command talent.
— Read on www.nytimes.com/2020/01/04/opinion/trump-soleimani-strike.html