Here he goes again. The phony “cease fire” is expiring Wednesday. So the Donald is back on the keyboard promising to obliterate what remains of Iran if the mullahs (or whoever) don’t raise the white flag of surrender forthwith.

Yet in the unhinged outpouring of crude bellicosity below we get the sum and substance of why the War Capital of the World on the Potomac has metastasized into a Trumpian clown show of bombast, misanthropy and farce.

We’re offering a very fair and reasonable DEAL, and I hope they take it because, if they don’t, the United States isgoing to knock out every single Power Plant, and every single Bridge, in Iran. NO MORE MR. NICE GUY!They’ll come down fast, they’ll come down easy and, if they don’t take the DEAL, it will be my Honor to do what has to be done, which should have been done to Iran, by other Presidents, for the last 47 years. IT’S TIME FOR THE IRAN KILLING MACHINE TO END!”

Self-evidently, the Donald is an incompetent teenage bully-boy who never grew up. And, yes, it’s possible – albeit remotely so – that such an unsuited aspirant as Donald J. Trump could be mistakenly elected President fair and square by American democracy – even twice.

But what such a freakishly accidental man-boy should not have is the unilateral, open-ended capacity to play video games with a $1 trillion War Machine; and one that is capable of inflicting monumental violence and death anywhere along the length and breadth of the planet upon the whim of the POTUS.

What we mean is this: A proper $300 billion DOD “defense” budget (as opposed to the current $1 trillion “war” budget and the even more absurd $1.5 trillion proposed Trump DOD budget)) would provide for an invincible nuclear deterrent and Fortress America shield of protection for America’s coast lines and airspace. But it would not endow the POTUS – neither a competent one like Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, and George Bush Sr. nor a narcissistic madman like Trump – with the capacity to rain missiles and bombs from the sky against the bridges, power plants, apartment buildings, hospitals and elementary schools of any foreign country that posed no threat to America’s Homeland Security.

That’s because, for example, he would have not have $85 billion per year worth of 11 carrier battle groups, whose only function is to wage unnecessary wars of invasion, occupation and kinetic intimidation. Nor would he have –

Nor would they have the remit to act upon such an utterly false narrative as the alleged “47-Year Iranian War On America”. The latter retains credibility and resilience in the halls of government only because the nation’s War Machine and related the institutions of Empire (e.g. USAID, Agency for Global Media, NED etc.) fund the the think tanks, consultants and research operations who’s budget depends upon the existence of alleged mortal enemies and conjured threats to national security. So they find these aplenty.

Stated differently, if the peaceful Republic that America was intended to be had but a $300 billion defense budget and a proper War Powers Act, the clown show that the Donald has conducted since February 28th would not have been remotely possible. Not even conceivable.

That is, a proper War Powers Act would give the President unilateral powers to launch military actions only to counter direct or tightly defined “imminent” attacks on theUS territory. Full stop.

Source: Antiwar.com