I have reservations about the Democrats’ Elizabeth Warren being capable of taking on the brute bullishness of Donald Trump in the presidential elections this year. But in terms of political smarts, she is way ahead. She has reacted to Trump’s assassination of the Iranian general Qassem Sulemani (“We gat him!”) by pointing out why it happened: because right now, Trump is being impeached.
It’s a classic ploy and one that frequently is successful. Remember the Malvinas/Falklands War? And how Maggie Thatcher was so gung-ho for it she urged the British journalists to “Rejoice in that!” when they questioned her about the deaths of Argentinian sailors.
Just six months before the Malvinas manoeuvre, in Apri1982, Thatcher attended the Tory Party conference and faced criticism from every direction. Some politicians didn’t think she’d survive into the new year. The hated “wets” – that is, Tory politicians that weren’t as right-wing as Thatcher – were openly plotting her political demise. The Tory Party’s ratings in the opinion polls stank, and the new Social Democratic party was a serious external threat to Thatcher. Every way she looked, she faced hostility and open opposition. So what did she do? She said “Oh good heavens, look over there!” and everyone forgot about British domestic matters and rallied behind her as the leader against foreign “aggression”. The Malvinas war was the making of Thatcher.
Trump until recently was a very angry man, as the Democrats hurled charge after charge at him, with evidence that he had breached his code of office. The Republican-led Senate would, of course, avoid impeachment, but Trump would go towards November looking so bad that even those used to his appalling actions and speeches might well have had a belly-full. And so he decided that this was a dandy time to kill a foreign leader that he didn’t like.
The one difference between the Malvinas affair and the Middle-East assassination is that while Argentina didn’t have the military capability of striking back at Britain, the Iranians do. And will. Not only has Trump shown contempt for international law, he’s shown contempt for the intelligence of the rest of us. It must come as a shock to him that Elizabeth Warren saw clean through his distraction tactics and told the rest of us she had. More power to her voice – she couldn’t say it often enough.
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