The
Revolution Betrayed
Now
it’s Trump vs. Bannon
by
Justin Raimondo
21
August, 2017
The
exit of Steve Bannon, the President’s political strategist, from
the White House and his return to Breitbart.com marks the defeat, if
not quite the end, of the “isolationist” America First faction
within the Trump administration. It is a victory for what I call the
Junta – the coterie of generals who now surround President Trump,
and appear to have captured the conduct of American foreign policy.
It is a victory, in particular, for Gen. H. R. McMaster, who took
over the National Security Agency after Michael Flynn’s ouster, and
who is the architect of the “new” Afghanistan strategy – the
one that is merely a reiteration of the old strategy.
Bannon
has been a particular target of the liberal media, which is
responsible for labeling him as an advocate of the so-called
“alt-right.” Yet there is exactly zero evidence of this
allegiance in his public pronouncements, and his
most recent interview –
with the liberal journal,The
America Prospect –
has him characterizing them as a sad “collection of clowns.” Not
that this will deter Bannon’s critics, who uniformly fail to
mention what really set him apart from your run-of-the-mill
Republican operative, and that is his foreign policy views.
The
day before his ouster, the New
York Times reported on
Bannon’s “dovish” views:
“From
Afghanistan and North Korea to Syria and Venezuela, Mr. Bannon, the
president’s chief strategist, has argued against making military
threats or deploying American troops into foreign conflicts.
“His
views, delivered in a characteristically bomb-throwing style, have
antagonized people across the administration, leaving Mr. Bannon
isolated and in
danger of losing his job.
But they are thoroughly in keeping with his nationalist credo, and
they have occasionally resonated with the person who matters most:
President Trump.”
Bannon’s
views on the Korea “crisis” are reported on with a particularly
dramatic display of eyebrow-raising: why, he even proposed
withdrawing US troops from the Korean peninsula in exchange for North
Korea’s denuclearization! (A proposal advanced in this space on
more than one occasion.)
It’s
delightful to hear that Bannon describes General McMaster is the
leader of the “globalist empire project” – a project, one might
add, that many of us hoped might be dismantled during a Trump
presidency.
Yet
it was not to be: instead, the McMaster faction’s success in
displacing Bannon, marks the virtual end of the “isolationists”
as a coherent force in the White House. While it’s true that both
Stephen Miller and Attorney General Jeff Sessions are both skeptics
of foreign adventurism, the former is primarily a speechwriter and
the latter is a) on the outs with Trump and b) peripheral when it
comes to foreign affairs.
Politico reports that
the hawks in both parties are jubilant at Bannon’s departure: an
Atlantic Council apparatchik tells us “Our European allies are
happy,” and neocon grand dame Danielle
Pletka hails
the victory of the “internationalists” over the “isolationists.”
The reason for the celebratory air, says Politico,
is that the purge of Bannon “will remove an internal brake on U.S.
military action abroad” – and this is an indicator of what we
might expect in the not-so-distant future. Not only Afghanistan, but
also Syria, Iran, and even Ukraine – all these are potential
battlefields where US troops or our proxies will fight on behalf of
the “globalist empire project.”
What
we are seeing with Bannon’s return to the world of publishing is
the separation of Trump from his base, the definitive if not quite
final splitting away of Trumpism from Trump. In this sense, Bannon
may be more effective on the outside looking in, as a lobby for the
original Trumpism – the version that called out the Bush
administration for lying us into the Iraq war and that abjured regime
change.
As
I’ve said from
the beginning, the political significance of Trump’s rise was the
defeat of neoconservative foreign policy orthodoxy and the advent of
what the political class disdains as “isolationism.” Now it looks
as though the neocons have reversed that victory inside the corridors
of power: yet the hearts and minds of the 36 million voters who cast
their ballots for Trump are still up for grabs. Meanwhile the cadre
of a new conservatism, one that rejects internationalism and
perpetual war, are coalescing around the banner of Bannonism.
While
Bannon is going out vowing to defend the President against his
critics, the direction that the administration is taking almost
ensures that Trump’s former chief ideologue will join the ranks of
those critics. In the end, the greatest enemy of Trumpism may not be
the gaggle of losers, whiners, and special interests that make up the
so-called “Resistance,” but rather Trump himself.
NOTES
IN THE MARGIN
You
can check out my Twitter feed by going here.
But please note that my tweets are sometimes deliberately
provocative, often made in jest, and largely consist of me thinking
out loud.
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