Some of my more fearful right-wing neighbors have made at least a parlor game, if not a cottage industry, out of forging wild conspiracy theories about collaboration between Islamic Sharia peddlers and radical leftist, globalist Marxists.
Such absurd conspiracy-theorizing has no place in government. Fortunately, National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster may agree with me. On July 21, he fired Rich Higgins, a Trumpist member of the National Security Council’s strategic planning office, for writing a memo along those nutty lines:
“Globalists and Islamists recognize that for their visions to succeed, America, both as an ideal and as a national and political identity, must be destroyed,” the memo warns. It argues that this has led “Islamists [to] ally with cultural Marxists,” but that in the long run, “Islamists will co-opt the movement in its entirety.”
Higgins wrote the memo in late May, and at some point afterwards it began circulating among people outside the White House associated with the Trump campaign to whom Higgins had given it.
Higgins, according to another source with direct knowledge of the incident, was called into the White House Counsel’s office the week before last and asked about the memo. On July 21, the Friday of that week, he was informed by McMaster’s deputy Ricky Waddell that he was losing his job [Rosie Gray, “An NSC Staffer Is Forced out over a Controversial Memo,” The Atlantic, 2017.08.02].
McMaster, who has annoyed the Trumpist Islamophobes since he replaced their pal Michael Flynn in February, has been trying to pull Trump back from his crazy Novstrup/Branstner/Lopez-stoking anti-Muslim rhetoric. McMaster was a tank commander in the first Gulf War and helped design the 2007-2008 surge that kept Iraq from falling apart again. He’s now at war with ideological nuttiness in the White House.
The Trump/Bannon alt-rightists are predictably trying to paint McMaster as part of their great Muslim-Marxist conspiracy, which National Review’s Ian Tuttle says is incorrect:
…McMaster is not flawless. But he has devoted his life to America’s defense, on the front lines and in the strategy room; he has thought seriously about the threats we face and how to address them; and, unlike his predecessor, he is not the type to do anything rashly.
Those who want to see the Trump administration succeed ought to work with the national-security adviser, not against him. H. R. McMaster is not the enemy [Ian Tuttle, “H.R. McMaster Is Not the Enemy,” National Review, 2017.08.03].
Trump’s alt-right will say anything and turn on anyone, even a war hero and level-headed veteran, to cling to the fantasy that they are heroes saving America from Marxist jihad.
It’s time to invest in popcorn.
The Bannon folk in the administration are out to get McMaster. They have been doing a fire McMaster hash tag on Twitter since last night.
They also are doing a “he’s anti-Israel” attack. https://www.conservativereview.com/articles/official-mcmaster-calls-israel-illegitimate-occupying-power#undefined.uxfs
You’re being a bit loose with the term hero when referring to a tank commander in the first gulf war. I know this because my nimrod U.S. Rep was one, also. During his re-election I did some research on the tanks of the war. Not much resistance, mostly chasing Sadaam’s boys across the desert and posing for battle rattle photos . My Rep, Mike Coffman was also a designer of war stuff during the surge. What that means is he was a green zone desk jockey in a safe zone with nearly zero danger.
https://www.tanks.net/tank-history/tanks-during-the-first-gulf-war.html
thinking aloud, sarge, jump on if yah want….
Yet another Trump special commission [SIG?] like cheneys secret energy commission?
Trump pointedly ignored McMaster’s advice and denounced “radical Islamic terrorism” in his address to the Congress, much to the satisfaction of deputy national security adviser Sebastian Gorka. A lightly credentialed acolyte of Bannon, Gorka seems to have more influence with Trump than McMaster, a decorated lieutenant general. Bannon’s SIG, is marketing the message of the chauvinist European right.
Last week, Gorka signaled the ascendant ideology by endorsing a white nationalist opus by Georgetown University professor Joshua Mitchell in the debut issue of a policy journal called American Affairs.
For globalists, Mitchell writes, “political justice involved material growth made possible by global management and the identity debt-points that global elites dispensed to this or that oppressed ‘identity’ group as a consequence of past infractions or of the irredeemable fault of others—typically (the imaginary category of) White People.”
Through SIG, Bannon seeks to midwife a more nationalist and Christian Europe, as a prelude to escalating a “clash of civilizations” war against Islam. In this geopolitical gambit, Bannon and company are setting the course, while McMaster and the “adults” of the Washington policy elite look increasingly irrelevant.
Democrats Better Focus on the Races That Matter in ’18 or We Will Have Another Decade of Right-Wing Extremists in Charge http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/bannons-ideologues-axis-adults-strategic-initiatives-group
Sebastian Gorka, trump’s puppet, is perhaps as stupid as Trump. He think’s the Minnesota attack was faked by dems. geez http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/sebastian-gorka-trump-minnesota-mosque-attack_us_5989f898e4b0d793738a9e70?ncid=inblnkushpmg00000009
You rock, Leslie.
Gorka? That’s not even a real name, he made that up, Ms. Leslie