Will Donald Trump's bizarre betrayal
of the Kurds and our country's security interests wake anyone up?
Imagine for a moment that Barack
Obama, against repeated advice by military and defense experts and
his own aides, suddenly went wacky on a call with the Turkish
President and said, “Yeah, I know you want to get the Kurds, so
we'll get out of there.”
Suppose that when grownups from both
parties screamed, Obama gave no coherent explanation, but said the
Kurds had “nothing to do with us” and weren't necessarily nice
people. When reporters noted that his former security advisor,
General Mattis, thought the move unwise, Obama said Mattis was a
lousy general, and that he, Obama, had beaten ISIS in a month. Yeah,
sounds kind of like a playground spat outside an elementary school.
Suppose that when Republicans in
Congress criticized him, he called them names; and when his own party
called his mistake dangerous, Obama's lame excuse was that we needed
to extricate ourselves from endless wars. (But we're talking just
1,000 troops here; and they aren't coming home, but being reassigned
in neighboring Iraq.)
I use Obama's name rather than
Trump's to highlight the absurdity here. No one can imagine Clinton,
either Bush, Obama, or Eisenhower behaving this way – or responding
to criticism with schoolyard insults, not reason. Trump brags he
conquered ISIS. That's a laugh line. However, when the military
captured Osama bin Laden, Obama actually kept apprised of the plans,
in detail, throughout; and he even made a practical suggestion that
turned out to be critical to the mission's success.
Whether Kurds are nice or not isn't
the point. They fought alongside us, playing a crucial role against
ISIS. In the future, anyone calculating whether to help a Green
Beret on the run in enemy territory sure won't factor in any hope the
U.S. is capable of stability, let alone loyalty. Our president
kisses Putin's ass and thinks Kim is a dear fellow but demeans allies
at every opportunity.
Adding insult to injury, Trump and
Pence have “negotiated a cease-fire” under which Turkey will give
the Kurds five days to evacuate their homeland. That's not a
cease-fire, that's a surrender, or an invitation to one. If Russia
were menacing Sitka, Alaska, would Trump ask for five days to
evacuate and call that a victory?
Meanwhile, Trump's off-script request
that Ukraine re-open its investigation of Joe Biden remains
problematic. Trump claims he never said “quid pro quo”; but in
gangster films, when Capone says you have a nice candy store and it'd
be a shame if some disappointed customer fire-bombed the place, and
offers protection money, the store-owner gets the idea. Or else.
Trump claims he was upset about corruption; but he runs the most
corrupt administration since Warren Harding. Further, he asked
Ukraine to deal with corruption by re-appointing a prosecutor
generally believed to be extraordinarily corrupt.
Fortunately, Trump's effort to
stonewall Congressional oversight by discouraging witnesses from
testifying is failing. Seasoned diplomatic experts have called
Trump's extortion effort “crazy,” and even John Bolton – a
professional, despite his fatuous politics – quickly had an aide
tell the DOJ Bolton wasn't involved in “this drug deal.”
Trump's destroying our State
Department – and junking credibility and alliances that U.S.
actions and reliability built over time.
This guy ain't a leader, but the
bull-in-a-china-shop some disaffected voters wanted; but it's our
china shop, and some broken stuff is irreplaceable.
-30-
[The above column appeared this morning, Sunday, 20 October 2019, in the Las Cruces Sun-News, as well as on the newspaper's website ("What Will our Betrayer-in-Chief" Break Next? ) and KRWG's website. A spoken version will soon be available on KRWG's website and will air during the week on both KRWG and KTAL (101.5FM - www.lccommunityradio.org) Comments -- particularly criticism or questions -- are encouraged, here or on the newspaper's and KRWG's websites!]
[By the way, if Mattis is "the most overrated general" we have, what does that say of Trump's judgment of character in hiring Mattis and retaining him for rather awhile?]
[Trump responded to the impeachment inquiry like a frightened six-year-old, crossing his arms and screaming "No more witnesses for a totally compromised kangaroo court."
But witnesses are coming to testify; and they are career diplomats and administration officials. Wednesday a top aide to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo testified concerning a demoralized State Department in which Trump's clique has sidelined career diplomats and pressing others to abuse their positions to advance dome3stic political objectives." The witness said he quit his job as Pompeo's senior advisor out of frustration over Trump's treatment of diplomats and failure to support them.
Next Tuesday the House committees will hear from William B. Taylor, Jr., a top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine, whose text messages show he was deeply uneasy over the apparent attempt by Trump's aides to use a security-related $391 million package of aid as leverage to force Ukraine to do them a political favor. Taylor termed the effort "crazy."]
[By the way, one of Trump's dumber efforts to vilify Biden -- which folks on the Internet keep repeating as if it were gospel -- was claiming that Biden bragged about sidelining a prosecutor to keep him from going after Hunter Biden. Truth -- always inconvenient but rarely noticed by Trumpists -- is inconvenient. Biden did tell Ukraine to get rid of a prosecutor as part of qualifying for certain aid. He did so based on a bipartisan letter to that effect from Republicans and Democrats in Congress, because the prosecutor was generally believed to be so corrupt. Further, that prosecutor had apparently closed his investigation into the company employing Hunter Biden, prior to the effort to get the prosecutor fired. So on at least two counts, this particular fiction fails to persuade.
Trumpists also evade facts about Trump by pointing to actual or imaginary bad acts by Hillary and Joe. For the record, although Hunter Biden apparently broke no laws, I'm uncomfortable with Hunter getting foreign employment at what looks like an outlandishly high salary while his father holds high office. I was uncomfortable with it when George H.V. Bush's son, George, was in a similar position -- getting his failing oil company bailed out by friends of the family like Bahrain. Can't say any laws were broken, but looked bad. Same with Hunter. Same with Trump's kids getting favors from China. So, yeah. Sorry, guys, but just because I think Biden would be a much better president than Trump doesn't require me to twist myself into knots trying to justify everything he or his family might do. I agree that politics is a dirty business, and undermines the character of anyone who gets deeply involved in it. I never claimed Hillary or Bill was pure as the driven snow; but Trump is in a whole different category none of those folks even approach.
Maybe Republican unity behind Trump is cracking now. Certainly Republicans were at least as appalled by the betrayal of the Kurds as Democrats; and a few are beginning to acknowledge that although they do not currently favor impeachment, they don't yet know what more may be coming in the way of disgusting facts about Trump's conduct.]
[Regarding Syria, conservative Nicholas Kristof notes that just five years ago Obama (although generally Syria was likely his worst foreign-policy failure) acted very differently toward a crisis on Syria's border. As many Christians might remember, ISIS started genocide against the Yazidi sect, killing men and raping women and girls. Obama responded with airstrikes and a rescue operation -- and KURDISH FIGHTERS, in what Kristof calls "a heroic intervention" saved tens of thousands of Yasidi lives. But the Kurds mean nothing to us, and aren't nice. Kristof also quotes a former U.N. official who emailed Kristof, comparing Trump's conduct to the Munich appeasement of Hitler in 1938.]
[When I went to put a link to this on Facebook, I saw Donald Gagner's reposting of a story about the Navy Seal who headed the Ossama Bin Laden raid says the U.S. is under attack from its own President. (https://www.businessinsider.com/william-mcraven-navy-seal-us-is-under-attack-from-trump-2019-10?utm_content=bufferdfa53&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer-bi&fbclid=IwAR08HS04mzeZ-QJQ60FX9ThvMnzgtjg9LIrUIRy2BZcvM5L27EoEkOqJaMI).
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