Three votes took place at the U.S. Congress over the past week. Two of them were against "Turkey", and the third targeted President Donald Trump. In the first two votes against our country, the Republicans and Democrats were united with a few outliers. In the third vote, which outlines the procedures for the inquiry into the impeachment of Trump, the deputies of the two parties were completely divided.
In the House of Representatives, 15 Republicans voted against the bill, which officially recognizes the allegations of the so-called Armenian “Genocide,” while Ilhan Omar, a Democrat congresswoman of Somali origin, abstained from voting. Fifteen Republicans and Democrat lawmaker Ilhan Omar voted against the sanctions bill meant to halt Operation Peace Spring carried out by the Turkish Armed Forces. The support of Democrat lawmaker of Palestinian origin Rashida Tlaib for the bill against Turkey, frankly, was nothing short of astonishing.
The bill is obviously political. Is there any other explanation for the fact that this issue, which is on the agenda in April every year, was put up for a vote after Operation Peace Spring? The aforementioned 16 lawmakers excluded, lobbyists were pleased with their proxies wishing to corner our country with their votes. The lobbies, which wanted to build a "corridor" on our country's border with Syria, used all their influence to prevent Trump from withdrawing troops.
The Trumpists call the impeachment inquiry a "civil war". Trump, on the other hand, declared it the greatest witch hunt in American history. The Democrats expect the investigation to be finalized by the end of the year. The impeachment inquiry, which seems unlikely to be approved by the Republican majority Senate, will be one of the main topics of the 2020 elections. The impeachment inquiry will be carried out by the two parties almost as a “battlefront war.”
Nancy Pelosi, Democratic majority leader of the House of Representatives, did not initially favor an impeachment. Pelosi could no longer resist the pressure from Democratic lawmakers, the majority at the lower chamber. The last straw for Pelosi was Trump's request from the President of Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden, one of the Democratic presidential candidates.
Describing the vote as a coup attempt against Trump, Louie Gohmert, a Republican representative, accused the Democrats of launching a civil war. Now both parties will establish war chambers and lead this front war. Steve Bannon, Trump’s former White House advisor, is trying to get back on track. Independent from the White House, Bannon announced that they would establish an external war room to defend Trump, and has already begun work to bring together the former team that ran Trump's election campaign in 2016.
For the extreme right-wing Bannon, who wanted to get back onto the stage of politics and return to his former job at the White House, the impeachment inquiry was an opportunity. However, Trump needs the mainstream team of Senate Republican leader to lead the inquiry to a dead-end in order to avoid making things worse. In the first months of Trump's presidency, Bannon fought this team.
Trump improved his ties with the mainstream leadership by accepting tax reforms, which benefit large corporations, and then fired Bannon from the White House. That's why Trump doesn't want to even be seen in the same room as Bannon.
Bannon believes that the Trump circle's discourse of fighting the Deep State is not true, and that the war will be won by intense propaganda attacks against the Democrats. Bannon argues that this war should be waged through mainstream media channels. According to Bannon, Republicans should defend Trump on the screens of CNN rather than right leaning Fox News and on the New York Times instead of rightist Breitbart News. The issue of impeachment has been like the rifle on the wall since Trump won the presidency. It was clear that this rifle would eventually be fired. With the the rifle's first shot, the ‘civil war’ has officially began.
