The U.S. government may pretend to respect a “rules-based” global order, but the only rule Washington seems to follow is “might makes right” — and the CIA has long served as a chief instigator and enforcer, writes Nicolas J.S. Davies.

As the recent PBS documentary on the American War in Vietnam acknowledged, few American officials ever believed that the United States could win the war, neither those advising Johnson as he committed hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops, nor those advising Nixon as he escalated a brutal aerial bombardment that had already killed millions of people.

Donald Trump brags, stating in his inauguration speech: “We assembled here today are issuing a new decree to be heard in every city, in every foreign capital and in every hall of power. From this day forward, a new vision will govern our land. From this day forward, it's going to be only America first - America first.” He says he will "fill up" Guantánamo with "bad guys" and may direct the military to openly torture. He promises HUGE increases in military spending, and expansion of the military. Since Trump has been Commander in Chief civilian casualties have spiked. And now, Trump is threatening North Korea, and the entire planet, with nuclear war. How should we respond and resist?

I would like to open a discussion of what we and others might do collectively to try to stop the extensive air war slaughter by the U.S. led coalition.  Here is a link to the most recent report on this.

April 2017 was another month of mass slaughter and unimaginable terror for the people of Mosul in Iraq and the areas around Raqqa and Tabqa in Syria, as the heaviest, most sustained U.S.-led bombing campaign since the American War in Vietnam entered its 33rd month.

"If you care at all about children starving to death and selling billions of dollars worth of deadly weapons to one of the most brutal and repressive regimes on earth," notes journalist Danielle Ryan, "the only message Trump's visit to Riyadh will send is that barbaric contempt for basic human rights is tolerable so long as you serve Washington's financial and military interests. . . Trump hates radical Islam, except when you can make money from it."

Today the US military, at Trump's order, dropped an 11-ton bomb on Nangarhar province in eastern Afghanistan. It is being called the "mother" of all bombs - the largest bomb dropped in any war since the United States nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki. No to wars for empire and no to the "mother" of all bombers, the Trump/Pence Regime. We are still learning the effect of this explosion, but it is an escalation only one step away from full-scale nuclear war on a nation onwhich our government has been waging war for 16 years.

For those who truly care about the children of Syria and the expanding battlegrounds within the Trump/Pence Regime’s crosshairs, the past week has made starkly clear that there are no saviors. It’s up to us to end U.S. aggression.

All it took was Trump firing off 59 cruise missiles against Syria for most leading Democrats, who had been posing as staunch Trump opponents, to start singing his praises.

Senator Chuck Schumer said it was "the right thing to do." The "militant" Senator Elizabeth Warren said the "Syrian regime must be held accountable." The "radical" Bernie Sanders condemned Assad as a "war criminal" while mildly criticizing the war criminal Trump for not consulting Congress first.

In the dusty highlands of Yemen sits the tiny village of al Ghayil. On January 29, with a fleet of drones and helicopters swarming above, about 30 U.S. Navy SEALs descended from the sky to attack two houses in al Ghayil. People were used to the sound of U.S. drones circling above, a constant menace in Yemen. But the approach of helicopters set off alarms. People grabbed their weapons and rushed to defend the village from unknown attackers.

"Rightist governments in Hungary and Poland are already cheering Trump's anti-Muslim rhetoric" warns Washington Post editor Jackson Diehl; "the more moderate of the two leading candidates to become France's next president, François Fillon, authored a book titled Conquering Islamic Totalitarianism. Even Germany's Angela Merkel, the most prominent remaining defender of liberal democratic values, felt obliged to strike an anti-Islamic pose last week, proposing a crackdown on the minuscule number of German women who wear a burqa."'

From the tributes paid to Trump's nominee for Secretary of Defense you'd expect retired Marine Corps General "Mad Dog" Mattis to be some kind of 'warrior poet'. Dig a little deeper. His quips about warfare are neither amusing nor benign.

The "most revered Marine in a generation" advised his troops that fighting is "a hell of a hoot. It's fun to shoot some people. I'll be right up there with you. I like brawling."