Tag Archives: Donald Trump

military news

MOAB does what it’s supposed to do

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It’s called the MOAB.

The acronym actually stands for Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb. Its colloquial meaning is Mother of All Bombs.

The military dropped one of these devices on an Islamic State operation in Afghanistan. And, sure, there’s debate on why the military chose to use the device.

I support its use. Donald J. Trump promised during the campaign that he would “bomb the s*** out of ISIS.” Well, there you go. The MOAB does do that.

It’s the largest conventional explosive device in the U.S. arsenal. It weighs about 25,000 pounds. It does significant damage.

ISIS has earned this kind of response

Let’s not get too namby-pamby about this device. The Islamic State has performed some heinous actions against innocent victims. It has performed hideous acts with regard to prisoners it has taken — and executed.

I get that the debate about the MOAB is important in one respect: The bomb is so powerful that the military must be certain to avoid civilian casualties, given that the United States as a matter of military policy doesn’t kill civilians knowingly.

Trump — who used to criticize the military as feckless and weak — now proclaims great faith in its ability to carry out missions such as the one involving the MOAB. His criticism while campaigning for the presidency was misplaced; the president’s endorsement of the U.S. military’s extraordinary capability now is quite appropriate.

Thus, the MOAB has been introduced into this fight.

My own view is that the military should use this devastating weapon whenever feasible against a ghastly enemy that has earned the civilized world’s rage.

national news, political news

‘My military’? No, Mr. POTUS, it’s ‘ours’

Some commentators and analysts on MSNBC are getting a bit worked up tonight over Donald J. Trump’s use of the first-person singular pronoun.

Trump was speaking today of the use of the so-called “mother of all bombs” on Islamic State targets in Afghanistan. He referred to “my military” taking charge of the mission and executing it with precision.

My military? Umm, no sir. It’s our military, the people’s military, the nation’s military.

Now, to be fair …

Other presidents have done the same thing, taking direct ownership of the office they occupy. Barack Obama was fond of referring to “my national security team,” or “my vice president,” or “my economic team,” or “my presidency.”

I once challenged the former president’s generous use of that pronoun, trying to remind him that none of it belongs to him personally. I also sought to remind him that every single government employee — and they number in the millions — belong to the taxpayers who pay the bill.

That includes the president of the United States of America.

The message I imparted then still applies to the current president.

“My military”? No, Mr. President. The men and women who defend our nation do not belong to you.

They belong to us. For that matter, Mr. President, so do you.

https://highplainsblogger.com/2014/07/take-ownership-not-possession/

 

International news

Worst ever U.S.-Russia relations? Hardly

History lessons sometimes need to be delivered on the fly.

Donald John Trump said recently that U.S.-Russia relations are at their “worst” in the history of the two nations. Tensions are rising over the Russian involvement in the Syrian civil war. The president wants relations to improve. Indeed, he still cannot bring himself to say out loud that the Russians are complicit in Syria’s use of chemical weapons against Syrian civilians.

Are bilateral relations the worst ever?

Ohhh, no. Not even close.

Let’s flash back about, let’s see, nearly 55 years.

Russia was known as the Soviet Union back then. The communists ran the government. Vladimir Putin would become head of the commies’ spy agency, the KGB.

What did the communists do to bring U.S.-Soviet relations to their nadir? They began installing offensive missiles in Cuba, capable of hitting targets throughout the Western Hemisphere with nuclear weapons.

Thus, the Cuban Missile Crisis was born.

President Kennedy got word of the intelligence. He summoned his National Security Council to the White House. He heard suggestions from his national security brass ranging from invading Cuba, bombing the missile sites, leveling economic sanctions, none of the above, all of the above.

The president settled on a naval blockade and an ultimatum: He told Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev to remove the missiles or else. He went on national TV and told the nation — and the world — that any attack from Cuba against any target in this hemisphere would be seen as an attack on the United States and would produce a “full retaliatory response” from this country against the Soviets.

The commies blinked. They took down the missiles in exchange for our taking down of missiles in Turkey.

Crisis averted — along with a nuclear holocaust.

That qualifies as the worst, Mr. Trump.

International news, military news

Mr. President, we already are in Syria

Donald J. Trump said the other day that the missile strike on a Syrian air force airfield doesn’t mean we are “going into Syria.”

Hold on, Mr. President!

We already are in Syria, sir. President Barack Obama ordered several hundred special forces troops onto that battlefield to assist and train and coordinate attacks launched by “free Syrian” rebels fighting the Russian-backed government of dictator Bashar al Assad.

I also would add that the missiles launched from ships off the Syrian coast suggest that a more serious involvement by the United States in that conflict.

Times and circumstances do change, Mr. President, as you now are learning. Someone will need to remind the president that he used to believe that we should leave the fighting to the rebels. He also used to suggest that Assad’s forces — along with the Russians — could be capable of taking out the Islamic State terrorists.

Let the Russians deal with ISIS, he said. Sure thing, Mr. President. That will work out just fine.

My point, though, is that we already are engaged in Syria. Our special forces put their lives on the line every moment of every day they are deployed there.

The bigger, more important, question is whether we’re going to commit thousands of troops to fight ISIS head to head.

I’m now concerned that the president hasn’t given that option the careful, thoughtful and prayerful consideration it deserves.

International news

Eat chocolate cake; bomb Syria?

I’ll give a prize to anyone who can figure out what Donald John “Smart Person” Trump meant to suggest while talking about his decision to unleash the Tomahawk missiles on Syrian targets.

He told Fox News business correspondent Maria Bartiromo that he made the decision while visiting with the president of China at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.

He said he decided to reveal his decision to the Chinese president to bomb the Syrians while eating a delicious piece of chocolate cake.

OK. Now, what in the name of culinary pleasure does one have to do with the other?

The president calls himself the king of the deal, the king of debt. For all I know perhaps he considers himself to be king of the world.

I believe he is, without a doubt, the king of the non sequitur.

International news, military news

NATO never has been ‘obsolete,’ Mr. President

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization once was “obsolete.”

Now it’s relevant.

That’s the former and current view of the president of the United States. What changed? What did NATO do to regain its status as a dependable and valuable defense treaty?

Donald John Trump met today with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. The two men had a cordial and constructive meeting at the White House.

So here we are. The president who campaigned for office in 2016 while griping repeatedly about NATO’s obsolescence now says the organization is a partner in the fight against terrorism.

Will we learn from the president what changed his mind on this matter? Hardly. My guess is that even he doesn’t know, except that the secretary general told him that NATO matters.

Well, it does. It matters a lot.

The NATO alliance sits just west of its big and fearsome neighbor. I refer to Russia, which is governed by Vladimir Putin who — until just recently — seemed to be bound at the hip to Donald Trump. The bromance is fading quickly as the Trump administration starts turning the screws on Russia over its complicity in the Syrian civil war; oh, and Congress is starting to fire up the jets under Putin over his government’s role in seeking to “rig” the 2016 presidential election in Trump’s favor.

NATO matters

Yes, NATO came into being after World War II to deter potential aggression by the former Soviet Union. But in 1991, the Evil Empire disappeared, only to be replaced by another sinister governmental being. Russia has shown its aggressive self already, threatening Ukraine, retaking Crimea and blustering about re-conquering the Baltic States of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.

NATO now comprises 28 nations. Its relevance is quite vital to the stability of Europe, which remains crucial to the national security interests of the United States of America.

If only we could get the president to stop yammering about how NATO must pay its “fair share” or else. It’s the “or else” that some of us find most troubling.

My curiosity persists, though. What did NATO do to regain its status as a partner in the struggle to maintain international equilibrium?

media news, national news, political news

Spicer earns dubious place in flackery annals

As if we needed proof of the seemingly obvious …

Sean Spicer’s performance this week has confirmed what many Americans have long suspected, which is that he’ll go down in history as one of the most inept White House press flacks in the history of the office.

My goodness. How does one calculate the impact of this man’s performance as he sought to clarify, re-clarify, and then re-re-clarify a statement he made about the Syrian government’s use of chemical weapons on civilians?

However, at another level, I feel a bit badly for Spicer. He is merely representative of the most incompetent presidential administration I’ve ever witnessed. Hey, I’m now 67 years of age. I’ve been watching these transitions with some interest now for quite some time. I’ve witnessed presidents assemble governments quickly in the wake of intense national tragedy and national scandal. None of them compares with the bungling boobery  we’ve witnessed with the Donald John Trump administration.

Spicer this week demonstrated precisely the muddled messaging that occurs with startling regularity.

During his daily press briefing, Spicer said — during the week of Passover, for crying out loud! — that Adolf Hitler didn’t use “chemical weapons” on millions of Holocaust victims. Huh?

He implied that Syrian dictator Bashar al Assad’s gassing of civilians somehow was worse than what Hitler did to European Jews prior to and during World War II.

OK, then he backed off of that … more or less. He said he meant to acknowledge that Hitler gassed millions of people, but was comparing it to Assad’s use of aircraft to drop chemical weapons on “innocent victims.” OK. Then, did he mean that the Holocaust victims weren’t, uh, innocent?

No, that’s not what he meant … he said.

Throughout all this stumbling and bumbling, he dropped in the term “Holocaust center” to refer to the Nazi death camps erected throughout eastern and central Europe during World War II.

Social media exploded.

Finally, Spicer spoke to NBC News and offered a fulsome apology for the mistakes he made. I give him great credit for refusing to say, “If I offended anyone … “, which I consider to be the phoniest form of apology one can offer. He took ownership of his inarticulateness.

He came to the White House after serving as press secretary for the Republican National Committee. I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt when Trump selected him. Then, during his first press confrontation, he excoriated the media for reporting that Trump’s inaugural crowd was far smaller than the one that welcome Barack Obama in January 2009.

Actually, young man, the crowd was much smaller. There was no need to scold anyone in the media for reporting the truth. Thus, we heard the term “alternative facts” presented for the first time by another White House adviser, the inimitable Kellyanne Conway.

The president keeps telling us that things are going swimmingly at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., when in fact they are not. The president cannot fill key staff jobs; critical political appointments haven’t been made. So, Mr. President, stop insulting our intelligence by repeating such outright falsehoods about your “fine-tuned machine.”

Now we hear that the annual White House Easter Egg Roll — set for Monday — is in trouble because the administration lacks the staff to assemble an event that has become a staple of first families’ occupancy of the White House.

Speaking of first families, where is the first lady, Melania Trump? Isn’t it her responsibility to put this event together?

I’m actually beginning to pity Sean Spicer. He delivered a clunker of a performance this week. It’s tough being the face and the voice of a presidential administration that doesn’t have a clue.

national news, political news

Nunes surveillance claim shot down in flames

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Here it is, yet again.

Members of Congress appear to have disproved Rep. Devin Nunes’s contention that someone spied on Donald Trump’s campaign. At the very least they have cast serious doubt on the things Nunes said about in response to Trump’s ridiculous/slanderous assertion that Barack Obama “ordered” the wire tap on Trump’s campaign.

Nunes has removed himself as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, which is supposed to investigate whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russian government officials to influence the 2016 presidential election.

That’s the good news, in my humble view.

The bad news is that the controversy surrounding so-called surveillance will continue to swirl around the Trump administration. It will swirl until we know with absolute certainty whether there was collusion between Trump’s campaign and Russian government hackers.

The president can bring this controversy to a close as well by disclosing what he knew about his campaign’s activity and when he knew it.

This story will not go away

There’s also the angle about Susan Rice, President Obama’s national security adviser. Trump suggested Rice might have broken the law by revealing the names of individuals who might have been tracked by U.S. intelligence agencies. The lawmakers who have slammed the lid on Nunes’s assertion about the surveillance also seem to have debunked any notion that Rice did anything wrong.

The murkiness of this story only is worsening.

We need clarity. Now.

national news, political news

Trump keeps teeing it up

I am not going to join the critics’ chorus that is yapping about Donald J. Trump’s penchant for golf.

I defended Barack Obama’s golf outings even as Trump was criticizing him. Why? The president is never off the clock. He should be allowed to play golf on occasion, which Obama did.

Now … fast-forward to the present day.

The current president spent a lot of time campaigning for the office that he wouldn’t have time for golf. He’d be “too busy working for you.” He wouldn’t take a lot of time to hit the links. He would stay on the job, in the White House, in the Oval Office, in the Situation Room. He would spend his time “making great deals.”

That’s what the president said while campaigning for the office he now occupies.

Has he delivered on that key campaign promise? Umm. No. He hasn’t.

He has spent 17 of his 81 days as president at Mar-a-Lago, the ritzy resort Trump owns. He’s been playing golf. A lot of golf.

My beef isn’t that he’s playing golf, per se, mind you. My concern is that Donald Trump is breaking his word. He promised Americans he’d keep his shoulder to the wheel of running the government. He’d be diligent in luring all those jobs that have been pilfered to overseas markets.

I know this is a surprise, but I believe the president lied to us. He made a campaign promise he had no intention of honoring.

International news

Trump-Putin ‘bromance’ on the rocks

It took a good while — too long, in fact — but it appears the Donald Trump-Vladimir Putin bromance might be on the verge of ending.

The White House has issued a stern statement accusing Russia of covering up the Syrian chemical weapons attack that killed several dozen civilians, including children. The gassing of Syrian civilians prompted the U.S. air strike that wiped out several Russian-made Syrian jet fighters at the base from where the gas attack was launched.

White House talks tough to Russia — finally

The strongly worded statement demands international condemnation of Syria for using the chemical weapons and accuses Russia of “shielding” its Syrian allies.

As the New York Times reported: “It marks a striking shift by President Trump, who entered office praising President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and seeking common ground with him — and now appears to be moving swiftly to isolate him. The charges came as Rex W. Tillerson, the secretary of state, was preparing for meetings in Moscow on Wednesday, and as Congress and the F.B.I. are investigating potential ties between Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign and Russia.”

Has the president finally gotten the message that Vladimir Putin is no friend of the United States and shouldn’t be a friend of the man who now governs this country?

As for the investigation that’s under way regarding the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia, let it continue full throttle.

The here and now, though, presents a whole new and different set of challenges that must require an end to the strange buddy relationship between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.