By Michael Drohan

In a recent interview with the online magazine Truthout, Noam Chomsky was interviewed by C.J.. Polychroniou. In this interview, Chomsky said that in his personal view Donald Trump “is the most dangerous criminal in human history”. 

Outlining the reason for his conviction in this regard, Chomsky continues “Hitler had been perhaps the leading candidate for this honor. His goal was to rid the German-run world of Jews, Roma, homosexuals and other ‘deviants’, along with tens of millions of Slav ‘Untermenschen’. But Hitler was not dedicated with fervor to destroying the prospects of organized human life on Earth in the not-distant future (along with millions of other species).” 

Chomsky goes on to describe the details of the climate catastrophe which is endangering all kinds of life on planet earth, not just human, while President Trump tries to eliminate all regulations and efforts to alleviate the pending disaster and untold suffering for most of the inhabitants of the earth. His withdrawal of the US from the very modest effort of the Paris Accords to mitigate the effects of the burning of fossil fuels on the global environment was but one of his acts to ruin the planet. 

The second most dangerous behavior that demonstrates Trump’s criminal agenda are attempts to remove all constraints on the build-up of weapons of mass destruction, aka nuclear weapons. On January 23, 2020, The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists reset the Doomsday Clock to 100 seconds to midnight, the nearest it has been to midnight since 1947, at the height of the Cold War. 

Nearly all of the reasons for advancing the Doomsday Clock are attributable to Trump. Just last year, on August 2, 2019, he withdrew the US from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF). This Treaty had been in force since 1987 when it was signed by Mikael Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan. Mike Pompeo, Secretary of State, alleged that Russia was in non-compliance, ostensibly citing this as the reason for US withdrawal. No evidence was provided. 

Shortly after this development, the Trump administration announced that it was weaponizing the Trident submarines with nuclear warheads. Then on December 20, 2019, Trump announced the formation of a 6th branch of the US army, “Space Force.” Despite the fact that weaponizing space is outlawed by international law, the Trump administration is brushing the law aside and has allocated several billion dollars for its development in the 2021 budget proposal. It is hard to exaggerate the danger that all these developments present to human survival and even the survival of life in any form on the earth. 

Maintaining his course in full disregard of US and International law, President Trump ordered and executed the assassination of General Qassim Suleimani at the Baghdad Airport in Iraq on January 3, 2020. Suleimani was the head of the Quds Military Force in Iran and reputedly the second highest in command in that country. To put this in perspective, his assassination would be equivalent to assassinating the Chief of Staff of the US Joint Forces by an enemy power. This brazen and barbarous act has been compared to the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914, an act that initiated World War I. This act puts Presidential actions back to pre-1215 and the Magna Carta. This act by the lords of Great Britain outlawed sovereigns from acting as judge, jury and, executioner and gave every citizen the right to be judged by a jury of their peers. 

The crimes of the Trump administration described above are only the tip of the iceberg of crimes committed by this regime against humanity. The crimes committed against poor immigrants are beyond number, what with the separation of children from their mothers and their widespread incarceration. There is no recognition that this flow of the poor of the world towards US borders is the result of US intervention in many countries of the planet, overthrowing democracies and instituting brutal dictatorships. On the home front, the assaults on assistance programs to poor people are almost daily. The latest budget proposal institutes further cuts while beefing up the already bloated military budget. 

In the recent impeachment trial of President Trump, the allegations were that he had illegally withheld funds from Ukraine until they would provide dirt on his presumed presidential opponent and that he had obstructed Congress. One could well argue that compared with the crimes listed above, these are mere peccadilloes. In addition, the impeachment trial was marred by an obsession of the Democrats with “Russian aggression” and the Russian threat. 

It seems that the Democrats are still stuck in the Cold War mentality, not recognizing that the Russian Federation is a much weaker entity than the Soviet Empire and that it is a full-blown capitalist state. In conclusion, the impression is given that the other branches of government, Congress and the Courts, have not as yet acknowledged the state of lawlessness and criminality that the Executive branch has espoused. 

Michael Drohan is a member of the Editorial Collective and of the Merton Center .

NewPeople Newspaper VOL. 50 No. 2. March, 2020. All rights reserved.