Tag: war

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Who Knew It Could Get So Dangerous?

On the (months ago) heels of a 40 watt light bulb going off in the president’s head about how complicated health care could be, comes another revelation – unstated, about how dangerous the world could be.

Perhaps Donald Trump believed that throwing 59 missiles at Syria would startle Presidents Assad and Putin to the point that they would give up the fight and flee. Or maybe Trump giving his generals the green light to MOAB the Afghani desert would cause ISIS to run a white flag up a flagpole like the Vietcong did (not) when Richard Nixon decided we had too many leftover bombs in our arsenal and thought that Christmas would be a fabulous time to send a message of peace war.

In any case, this is now getting dangerous.

Never mind that North Korea’s attempts to rattle us ended in a failure that can be traced back to President Obama’s program to disrupt Kim Jong-un’s military through cyber-warfare. President Trump (shudder) will try to take credit for waking up in the morning and thinking that his actions will solve any and all real world problems. This is the kind of diplomacy we’ve seen before from politicians who believe that sending a military message without any diplomatic follow-up will yield meaningful fruit. It will not. Add the yeasty smell of a candidate who questioned the validity of NATO, and you have the makings of a loaf of something that makes matzah seem like a 7 layer cake.

For three months we saw Donald Trump’s attempts at domestic policy and the utter failure that resulted from his ineptitude. Foreign policy is much trickier and, as we’ve seen, can kill far more people than repealing the ACA. Rex Tillerson has his work cut out for him.

Gee, wouldn’t it be nice to have a president with some foreign policy and diplomatic experience? Like…

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Russia and Iran Warns of War if America Attacks Syria Again

Are you ready for World War III?

A statement released by “the joint command operation center of Syrian allies,” a group that includes Russia and Iran, warned the U.S. against further military actions in the war-torn country, following a missile strike on a Syrian air base last week.

Referring to its defense of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad‘s regime, the group warned that they would support Syria and its people “with all means that we have.”

“The United States crossed red lines by attacking Syria, from now on we will respond to anyone, including America if it attacks Syria and crosses the red lines,” the statement read. “America knows very well our ability and capabilities to respond well to them, [and] we will respond without taking into consideration any reaction and consequences.”

The statement did not include critical details like what kind of military operation would cross such a red line, or what kind of response would be made on the part of Syria and its allies, but noted that they would work to “liberate” Syria from occupation.

“Rest assured that we will liberate Syria from all kinds of occupying forces, it does not matter from where they came to the occupied part of Syria,” the statement warned. “Russia and Iran will not allow the United States to be the only superpower in world.”

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Trump Has a Good Week: The World and Country Suffer

Some in the media are hailing this past week as Trump’s best as president, so let’s take a look at the highlights:

  1. The chair of the House committee looking into the Russia scandal had to recuse himself.
  2. The Republicans had to alter Senate rules to get their Supreme Court nominee into a seat that was wrongfully denied to President Obama.
  3. The number of new jobs dipped substantially in what could be considered the first real Labor Department report of the Trump Administration.
  4. The president and House negotiators tried to revive their failed health care bill by adding provisions for states to deny people insurance who have pre-existing conditions and raising rates for the elderly.
  5. The president threw some missiles into Syria after a dastardly and cowardly attack by President Assad. The endgame? Like much of Trump policy, it depends on what’s on FOX News tonight.
Compared to the utter helplessness of the first few weeks of the Trump presidency, last week was fairly orderly. And yet…
To be fair, I thought that President Obama should have backed up his red line comment with a military response in 2013, because that’s when it could have had more of an impact on the Syrian Civil War, and Trump was justified in responding last week. The issue is what will happen now? Will it take more attacks on children for Trump to respond? If only adults are hit, will we stay silent? And what about the Russians, who I believe are responding disingenuously to something they should have seen coming.
Is Donald Trump having his George W. “No Nation-Building” Bush moment?

As for the other events of the best week of Trump’s presidency, it’s really par for the overused course. Representative Devon Nunes used information given to him by executive branch sources and then ran and told the president rather than sharing said information with his House colleagues. So now we are in the unique position where only the Senate has the moral authority to investigate the Russia allegations.

On the Supreme Court, Neil Gorsuch’s confirmation won’t mean too much for the balance of the court as it replaces one conservative with another, but that seat should have belonged to President Obama’s nominee. Changing the filibuster rules will eventually favor Democrats, but by that time the real damage could be more conservatives replacing more liberal voices on the Court. Somehow I think the republic will survive, but Congress will need to step in and pass laws to mitigate some of the legal damage.

And the health care bill? Right now it’s pretty dead, but you know how much the GOP loves science. They will try to revive it and make it worse, even though the data suggests that the ACA is healthy enough to keep the insurance companies in green for the foreseeable future. The simple fact is that the GOP needs the money from a health care repeal to pay for their tax cuts, otherwise, it won’t have the splash they’re looking for, but it’s looking more and more like they won’t get it. I guess they’ll have to soak the middle class even worse than they thought they might.

The Trump presidency is fast approaching its 100th day, the usual, if outdated, benchmark of presidential accomplishment, and it hasn’t done much in the way of legislation. Most of the action has been done via formerly-hated-by-conservatives executive orders, and there don’t seem to be any grand laws in the sausage grinder at the moment. The believable media has made a great deal about Trump’s unpredictability and his penchant for reacting when personally affronted or moved, as evidenced by the Syria gambit. It’s really only a matter of time before this manifests itself in something far more dangerous, and darker.

If you can fathom it.

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