From Presidency of the World to Mental Case
By: Reza Bahar
For years people around the world glued every four years to their televisions sets, (nowadays of course to their more advanced electronic devices) to follow all the news about the presidential elections in the US. As if the Americans were in the process of electing not solely a new occupant for the Oval Office in the White House, but a world leader!
Many of the audience in different parts of the globe, for instance, under the influence of Western mainstream media, tended to be mesmerized by all the pageantry surrounding Barack Obama's inauguration on January 20, 2009; an African-American had become the US president to ensure a victory for African-Americans while the event itself was a symbol, so to speak, representing a 'change' in US oppressive approaches at least towards Black Americans something soon sank into collective unconscious of the global audience that there is a real change in the policies of the so-called 'nation of nations'.
But in reality and away from the positive and pleasant aura surrounding Obama's election, both in the 'letter and spirit', the world saw no significant change in the overall polices of the United States, both domestically and internationally. The evidence: Obama administration's deafening silence on many world issues, including the terrorism mainly sponsored by US allies in the region, and of course the killing of hundreds of people in US 'overseas' drone operations.
Now, one year after replacing Obama, Donald Trump is in the office; a controversial businessman whose election astound many, both in the US and outside.
But, unlike Obama, Trump's rhetoric and pledges both on the campaign trail and after inaugurating on January 20, 2017 as the 45th President of the United States have created a negative aura based on a quite different letter and spirit; something still lingering over both the US and the world.
The indecent literature Trump has been using in his Twitter posts in the first year of his presidency to react to global events and announcing new policies, have raised many eyebrows, even prompting some to repeat claims similar to those made soon after he launched his campaign, that the new president of the so-called nation of nations, was mentally sick.
The promises and attempts made by the US president in the first year of his presidency have been increasingly encouraging the idea that he has some sort of mental problem.
Trump's pledge to rip up the July 2015 Iran nuclear deal is an example. He and his administration during the past year have been trying to decertify the Iran Deal, also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), despite all the efforts by the international community to address the issue of the country's peaceful nuclear activities and ward off a crisis that many believed had it started, it could have spilled over into all the whole region.
He and his administration so far has not been able to sink the Iran Deal, though, mostly as result of other parties involved in the deal who want the landmark accord to be maintained.
But Trump has gone on with his plan to decertify the JCPOA by referring the case to the Congress, and threatening to unilaterally withdraw from the deal.
'In the event we are not able to reach a solution working with Congress and our allies, then the agreement will be terminated,' Trump said, adding that American participation 'can be canceled by me, as president, at any time'.
'I can do that instantaneously,' he said.
One wonders what kind of logic is behind Trump's decision to sink the Iran Deal, better to say, to undermine a peaceful process.
The US decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement on climate change is another example.
While the countries are working together to stop global warming and save our planet Earth, the United States which is among industrial nations responsible for producing much of the greenhouse gases, suddenly decided to renege on a lifesaving global pact initially agreed to by all 195 countries present at the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference in December of that year.
'The Paris accord will undermine (the US) economy,' and 'puts (the US) at a permanent disadvantage,' Trump said, failing to take into account that the US is the biggest emitter of carbon dioxide, of course along with China, a country with a population about four times that of the US.
Too, in case of terrorism, the new US president has repeatedly behaved inappropriately and illogically, especially when we consider his trip to Saudi Arabia.
Two weeks after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the US soil, the Federal Bureau of Investigation connected the hijackers to al-Qaeda, a terrorist organization founded in 1988 by Osama bin Laden who was a wealthy man from a Saudi family.
Washington never published the findings of the Joint Congressional Inquiry into the 9/11 attacks which killed 3,000 people and injured more than 6,000 others. This is while, there are claims suggesting attempts by Riyadh to keep hidden their alleged role in the terrorist attacks.
But to the surprise of all the anti-terror activists and countries in the frontline of fighting terrorism, Trump chose Saudi Arabia his first foreign visit and joyfully participated in a sword dance with Saudi rulers.
Again the million-dollar question is that why he traveled to Saudi Arabia, a country whose hidden hand was, and still is, instrumental in propping up terrorist organizations in the region.
Trump also raised hackles in London in September 2017, commenting on the terrorist attack on the British capital, when said in a tweet that the terrorists were in the sights of the police in the country.
'Another attack in London by a loser terrorist. These are sick and demented people who were in the sights of Scotland Yard. Must be proactive!' he tweeted.
Nick Timothy, who was British Prime Minister Theresa May’s chief of staff until the June general election and worked for her as a senior adviser when she was home secretary, was quick to answer, denouncing the US president for his 'unhelpful' statements.
'True or not - and I'm sure he [President Trump] doesn't know - this is so unhelpful from leader of our ally and intelligence partner,' Timothy wrote in his Twitter post.
The US president also bewildered the people in the country when he described the white supremacist protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, as “very fine people'.
The far-right neo-Nazi groups who gathered in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August met with anti-fascist counter-protesters who clashed with the racists. One woman was killed after a member of a white nationalist group, plowed his car into a crowd of anti-racist demonstrators.
It is no surprise, now, that Michael Wolff, an American, author, essayist and reporter puts Trump under the spotlight in his new book titled 'Fire and Fury' trying to disclose the inner layers of a president who he describes as having childlike behaviors.
'I will tell you the one description that everyone gave — everyone has in common — they all say he is like a child,' Wolff told NBC's 'TODAY'.
'And what they mean by that is he has a need for immediate gratification. It is all about him,' the writer said.
Wolff said that Trump has 'less credibility' than perhaps anyone who has walked on Earth.
His book features explosive quotes from former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon deriding Trump's children, as well as numerous claims of top advisors and friends calling the president terms like 'idiot' and 'dumb as s--t.'
Trump, in response, characterized himself as 'smart', 'genius' and 'very stable genius', in a Twitter message posted on January 6, 2018, a day after the public release of the book by Wolff.
The so-called nation of nations, this time has opted to choose a president interested in 'early-morning tweetstorms, febrile conspiracy theories, grandiosity and impulsiveness and serial counter-factualism' as put by the Time.
According to the Time, Trump 'appears unstable to a great many observers' and the world seems to be wary of the nuclear threats lobbed between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un across the Pacific.
The US president once taunted North Korea’s leader about the size of his nuclear arsenal, saying “nuclear button” in Washington is “much bigger and more powerful” than Kim’s – “and my button works!”
'North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un just stated that the “Nuclear Button is on his desk at all times,” Trump tweeted.
'… please inform him that I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!' he wrote.
Such threats have caused concern among observers, with Ron Rosenbaum, who authored a book on nuclear war entitled How the End Begins, warning about the potential rise of nuclear irrationality.
“All the previous worries about the potential of a deranged president to use a nuclear button irrationally have been multiplied,” Rosenbaum said.
“He [President Trump] has no sense of history, of nuclear deterrence, etc., etc. Only his own impulsiveness separates us from nuclear war,” he stressed.
The American presidential orchestra, led this time by Trump, apart from all the comments, lacks the necessary letter and spirit to lure the global audience into believing that he is acting and speaking from the position of a so-called global leader.
Trump's presidency has proved that there are other players on the world scene; that, electing a president in the United States does not mean electing a president for the entire world; that the world unlike claims in the West is not a unipolar one with the US crowning it.
Finally, election of Donald Trump exposed the real 'letter and spirit' of a system whose ultimate goal is devouring the world.
Source: IRNA