It's a shame that Trump mugshot wasn't taken because of his war crimes

Trump always seems wrapped up in a tornado of scandals, none of which ever seem to revolve around his aggressive foreign policy

The Donald Trump presidency kicked off with a murder.

In late January 2017, one of his first acts in office was authorizing a US commando raid in Yemen which ended with several civilian deaths, including eight year old Nora al-Awlaki, who was shot in the neck. Her 16 year old brother, Abdulrahman, was also brutally killed several years prior during a 2011 Obama-era drone strike.

From this point, among other things, Trump:

— outpaced Obama on civilian casualties from drone strikes

— changed rules for reporting on civilian casualties from drone strikes

— bombed Syria and threatened to “keep” their oil

— amped up drone strikes in Somalia which routinely killed civilians

— continued to maintain the US torture facility at Guantanamo Bay

— attempted a coup in oil-rich Venezuela

— openly murdered an Iranian general

— dropped America’s largest non thermonuclear bomb on Afghanistan

It would be disingenuous to say there was no outrage over these things. Trump was met with a fair amount of backlash for his comments over “keeping” Syria’s oil, and the fallout from his failed coup attempt in Venezuela has persisted well into the Biden years. But none of it caused Trump real problems, let alone actual legal trouble.

So when I scrolled upon a photo of a pasty Trump mugshot for his alleged role in trying to overturn the 2020 election, my first thought was: What about his role in trying to overturn the democratic process in Venezuela? Does that not count?

Granted, it’s not every day that we wake up to a US president getting his photo taken at a county jail, but wouldn’t it have been ten times more exciting if he was posing for that mugshot as the first in a long line of US presidents finally being held accountable for decades of post-9/11 imperialism?

Unfortunately, Trump can’t be attacked for his murderous foreign policy because US war crimes are a house of cards. Pull one card and all of the cards go down with it. If the Trump card is pulled, the Biden card, Obama card, and Bush card will follow.

Yes, Trump tried to overthrow the Venezuelan government, but Obama successfully overthrew the Libyan government, and Bush launched a regime change operation against Iraq costing at least one hundred thousand needless deaths.

Yes, Trump spent four years obliterating innocent civilians in places like Yemen and Afghanistan, and he also pledged to steal Syria’s oil, a war crime. But Obama spent eight years bombing seven countries, and Bush spent eight years (mostly) focused on occupying and bombing Afghanistan and Iraq.

Trump could be held accountable for killing civilians, overthrowing governments, and stealing resources, but that means Biden, Obama, and Bush would also have to be held accountable for their respective atrocities. That means our occupations and ongoing wars would be stopped, or at least drastically reduced. That means no more civilians — or US troops — maimed or killed for oil pipelines and weapons contracts.

Too good to be true, right?

While Trump’s hostile foreign policy legacy may be a non-issue in Washington, a tacit admission is nonetheless being made: American presidents have a blank check to occupy, kill, steal, and torture with near total impunity. They’re even allowed to meddle in elections and overturn democracies — just not here in the United States.

Back in December 2022, the US Senate allocated more than $800 billion in “defense” spending by a vote of 83-11. Since then, billions upon billions more have been pumped into the neocon US proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, all while Americans struggle with an increasingly unlivable economy.

Our politicians and their corporate donors have a serious war addiction. We can vote Republican, we can vote Democrat: they’ll both continue to waste billions on endless conflicts, as election after election has clearly demonstrated. This issue cannot be resolved at the ballot box, but it can be resolved by holding presidents accountable.

We should have started with Bush, who gave us two wars and set the groundwork for Obama, who added five more to the list while expanding many of his predecessor’s worst policies. Obama, in turn, gave us Trump, who continued to expand many Bush/Obama-era policies. Trump, in turn, gave us Biden.

Every election cycle we are hit with a new set of warmongers to choose from, and as it so happens, one of those warmongers was recently fingerprinted and photographed for a mugshot at the Fulton County Jail in Georgia. This could have been an amazing opportunity to throw the world a curveball, charge him for his war crimes, and let the military-industrial complex’s house of presidential cards collapse in on itself.

Oh well, maybe next time.