Reminder: Our online conference “The National Security State and the Kennedy Assassination” continues today, Wednesday, March 10, at 7 pm Eastern time. We now have 650 registrations. This week’s speaker is Michael Swanson, author of the book The War State: The Cold War Origins Of The Military-Industrial Complex And The Power Elite, 1945-1963 and his newly released book Why the Vietnam War?
When it comes to Chinese business executive Meng Wanzhou, President Biden needs to do the right thing immediately. He needs to instruct the Justice Department to drop all criminal charges against her. She is just one more victim of President Trump’s and the U.S. government’s vicious foreign policy against both Iran and China.
Meng is under house arrest in Canada. On December 1, 2018, on the request of U.S. officials, she was detained at a Canadian airport en route from Hong Kong to Mexico. U.S. officials are seeking her extradition to stand trial for violating U.S. sanctions on Iran as part of her duties as CFO of Huawei, the Chinese telecom giant.
What should anyone from Canada have to comply with U.S. sanctions on Iran? Exactly. The whole thing is ludicrous.
For one thing, the U.S. sanctions against Iran are vicious and illegitimate. They are rooted in the imperial foreign policy of the United States, a foreign policy that treats countries like Iran as colonies of the United States.
The problem that U.S. officials have with Iran is that in 1979 the Iranian people had the audacity to remove a brutal U.S.-installed dictator, the Shah, and replace him with a regime that was independent of U.S. control.
U.S. officials have never forgiven the Iranian people for that grave transgression. That’s the point of the sanctions — to inflict as much death and economic suffering on the Iranian people that they will finally cry uncle and initiate a new revolution, one that will install another brutal dictator who will follow the orders of the Pentagon, the CIA, and other U.S. officials.
Unfortunately, during his time as president Trump did not settle for inflicting death and suffering on the Iranian people. He also went after the Chinese people by initiating a highly destructive trade war against them. He figured that if he could cause enough economic suffering among the Chinese populace, the Chinese government would surrender to his demands for a favorable trade deal.
It didn’t work. The Chinese government refused to kowtow to Trump. The result was not only massive economic damage among the Chinese but also among American producers, especially farmers, some of whom went broke from lost sales.
Hoping to squeeze the Chinese into submission even more, Trump’s Justice Department targeted Meng as part of their trade-war strategy. The idea was that if they could get Meng prosecuted and incarcerated, Chinese officials would more willing to surrender and agree to Trump’s demands.
The worst thing that Biden could do is to continue these immoral, destructive, and deadly policies of Donald Trump. Biden has an opportunity to right all these wrongs in the following three ways:
- Immediately order the dismissal of all charges against Meng Wanzhou. No foreign citizen should have be required to comply with U.S. sanctions against another country.
- Immediately lift all economic sanctions against Iran with no preconditions. It is morally wrong for any nation, and especially the world’s most powerful nation, to be targeting the populace of another country, and especially in an impoverished country, with death and economic privation as a way to coerce obedience from their government.
- Immediately end Trump’s trade war against China by unilaterally lifting all tariffs, import restrictions, and other restraints on the freedom of Americans to trade with China.
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