And this is, again, a reminder that the whole "Donald the Dove" thing is utter bullshit. The guy is a blowhard and a bully, and like all such, loves the idea of you and him fighting, so long as HE doesn't have to get his implants mussed. Trump will send GIs into harm's way whenever he sees some sort of transactional benefit for himself, whether it's emotional (waxing some of the darkies he hates) or financial (selling mercs to the Saudis) or political (getting his MAGAts swwoning over his manly manliness).
Nothing will come of this, of course, but only because the Mexican government isn't as stupid as he is and won't take him up on it.
FDC: "a reminder that the whole "Donald the Dove" thing is utter bullshit."
ReplyDeleteI have to strongly disagree with you on this, FDC. If Trump sends in the troops, he'll lose media coverage to the troops and events south of the border and he NEVER WANTS THAT! Every single reporter who isn't breathlessly reporting his every tweet is an unacceptable loss to the man.
Pluto -
DeleteI hope you are right. But then he has sent non-SOF troops to the Syrian oilfields: elements of 4th Bn/118th Infantry North Carolina National Guard to one field, and a sub-unit of 2nd Bn/7th Marines to a different field.
But for Mexico, I believe that the Mexican government would never allow in a US troop contingent. Some sub-rosa logistic and intel support maybe. But no troops. So the question is moot. And Trump can bloviate all he wants without having to commit.
He luuuurves prancing around like Conan the Conqueror, though - witness his fucking sack dance over Baghdadi's corpse. He'll do it so long as it makes him look "tough". In his mind, that rules everything.
Delete'South' Carolina I meant to say, NOT 'North' Carolina. Although there are some Tarheel boys among them.
DeleteI see Pat Lang is reposting his Send-Delta-Force-to-Mexico-to-take-out-cartel-leadership article. Kinda like we did with al-Baghdada and bin-Laden.
ReplyDeleteI'm worried that Trump is just crazy enough to do it. He's pissed because he never got a peseta from the Palacio National to build his wall. And because the brown people are now hack-sawing holes in it.
Sigh. I'm old enough (shit, I'm older than dirt, so, there's that...) to remember when Lang was one of the few sane voices talking Middle Eastern politics and military/intelligence topics on the Intertoobs. Remember his "Grand Concert of the Middle East", the notion that geopolitical troubles needed geopolitical solutions and that killing people and breaking shit was the LEAST likely way to solve political, economic, and social dysfunctions that dated back to Ottoman times or before.
DeleteGee, Pat...y'think that a bunch of Killer Gringos shooting up some Mexicans might not actually, y'know...solve the problem of Mexicans shooting up other people? That these criminal gangs aren't snakes and you can't kill them by "cutting the head off"? That, in fact, by killing the strongmen currently bossing the outfits that you open up a bunch of management positions for the most ruthless, bloodyhanded sonsofbitches who will immediately start killing everything around them - including, as like as not, a bunch of poor damned gringos who blunder across the killing field - to get rich or die tryin'?
The irony is that Trump rules LIKE a mob boss. He loves it when he can look all badass and punk everyone he sees as his "enemy". He loves the idea that he has the hard men that he can send out to kill at his whim. If he'd have been born to a bunch of poor farmers in Sinaloa I'll betcha he'd have turned out to be the weaselly cartel soldier who boasts in private and toadies in public and works to stab the other narcotraficantes in the back.
A few years back I read Pat Lang fairly regularly for his opinion on the doings in the ME. It seems to me that his contributions have gone downhill in a remarkable way over the past couple of years. His commenters pretty much slaver over him or repeat right wing crazy conspiracy stuff and I just finally had to quit. In my own curmudgeonly opinion, Lang now just sounds hysterical (in the old sense of that word - nothing to do with humor).
DeleteJoan - Your opinion of Pat Lang and many of his whacko commenters match my own. I doubt though that you have a 'coeur mechant' or evil heart as some claim the word curmudgeon is derived from. That is more the characteristic of Lang' more rabid commenters.
Deletehttps://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1192145957149958144
ReplyDeleteBy his reasoning, other countries appear to have the right to invade the U.S. because their citizens are not safe from all that gun crime in the U.S..
Sven -
DeleteCotton is a superstar within the so-called conservative wing of the GOP. Pray for us when he decides to run for the Presidency.
And, also, a complete and utter fathead who-never-met-a-war-he-didn't-like crypto-militarist (superstar within the conservative wing of the GOP but I repeat myself)...
DeleteFWIW, most "conservative" Republicans still hold to the Ledeen Doctrine; so far as they are concerned there is no actual principle of national sovereignty outside the borders of the U.S. They work on the five-year-old-property-"logic" or "what's mine is mine and what's yours is also mine".
DeleteThere was once a coterie of "right to protect" Democratic pols - the Clinton and Clinton/DLC faction had/has a bunch of them - who were at the very least "war works"-curious, the sorts of people who insisted that the Rwandan genocide was a missed opportunity to use might for right.
I think that the result of the collective overseas tomfoolery of the Bush, Obama, and now Trump Administrations has pretty much knocked the stuffing out of these "RTP" lefties.
Here's my problem, though; unfortunately nothing has replaced it. There is no coherent lefty foreign policy thought. The gamut runs from "Ummm...I haven't really thought about it...maybe don't invade shit?" to "The US is the Root of All Evil!" (Well, you do have weird outliers like Gabbard, but she's basically a Republican who had to run blue because Hawaii...)
It'd be nice if the American "left" (i.e. what would be "Christian Democrats" pretty much everywhere else in the world...) would do some genuine thinking about what an intelligent foreign policy might be. But - given the historical record - I'm no holding my breath.
RTP with military force ain't dead yet by far. None of the leading Democratic presidential candidates have spoken out against it. Gabbard has, but she is running at two to three percent and has been branded as a Russian tool. Meanwhile Samantha Power an RTPer on steroids is waiting in the wings hoping for a shot as Sec State or a high position in that department, or as an advisor in the WH.
ReplyDeleteGabbard is anti-gun, with an 'F' rating from the NRA. She is anti-Trump and anti-War. She has non-Republican positions such as pro-Medicare-for-All, pro-Green-New-Deal, pro-Immigration, pro-Investment-in-Education, pro-Racial-Justice, & pro-LGBT. She has spoken out against the DNC & Hillary, but so have millions of other Democrats. That does not make her a Republican. She has some Republicans and Indies interested because of her Foreign Policy position of "Prosperity-through-Peace". And also because she occasionally goes on Faux as well as CNN & MSNBC. That just means she is reaching out beyond the base. A good thing IMO, although not smart politically to do it early on. But you can bet the farm that whoever wins the primary will be reaching out to those exact same Republicans and Indies prior to the general election. And even though she called Putin a danger to the world, his dezhinformatsiya cardsharps are promoting her both here and in Russia in order to stir up dissension within the Democrats so Cadet Bone-Spurs will win again.
I'll vote for her in our WA state primary. Good that we have ditched the caucus and resorted to ballot, else I would be hissed at by DNC activists for even mentioning Tulsi by name. She has no chance at the nomination, but she'd make a good choice to be on the team of whoever does get it. Unfortunately they'll probably choose an RTPer like Samantha instead. WASF! But I'll still vote blue no matter who. The worst one among them is a million times better that Don the Con, or his poodle the Stepford Veep.
Gabbard is a very strange "Democrat". Her voting record is well to the right of a representative from a fairly left constituency. Better than Case, but, still...
DeleteShe has these oddball affectations that seem to stem not so much from an actual policy position but just from her life - she is all-in on the War on Terror (providing the "terrorists" are Muslims. She DOES have a lot of what-should-be-bog-standard liberal positions, but those are mixed with some really odd stuff like propping Assad because...well, I dunno. Reasons, maybe.
And the point of going on Hannity or Carlson from the Left is to smack those nincompoops and their wingnut conspiracy theories down...NOT to fluff conspiracy theories and repeat wingnut talking points.
She's better than anything the GOP has on offer. But that's a pretty damn low bar.
She has introduced progressive bills in Congress and co-sponsored many more. You should check her voting record instead of depending on the claims of others. There is nothing wrong with being a Blue Dog. Too many people forget our entire system was built on compromise, otherwise you get deadlock and zero governance. To demand lockstep is the business of the wingnut thugs of the far right. We should be trying to attract voters with different points of view.
ReplyDeleteBut ideological purists should have no fear, she will not win the nomination. If she rises in the polls, they will smack her down again with more slander of being a Russian troll, or a Trump pawn, or an Assad apologist.
It is probably just as well that she does not get the nomination. She is not politically astute. Much too outspoken. Many primadonnas on the left would stay home and not vote. And the Indies and Republicans who showed early interest in her policies will abandon her when they finally understand just how liberal she really is.
WASF
"You should check her voting record instead of depending on the claims of others."
DeleteThat's why I said what I said. I DID, and Gabbard's voting record is extremely mixed. As you say, she has both sponsored, and voted for, some progressive legislation and resolutions. She's also been consistent on the issues I mentioned; the "GWOT", refusing to put brakes on Israel through BDS, and refusing to condemn Trump. She's missed numerous votes; 7%, which is about three times the 2% mean for Representatives - and that seems to be part of her thing; she misses votes rather than voting no. That's fine in itself...but that makes her voting record a lot less of a case for her than a question mark
As for "compromise"...I'm fine with differences of opinion. I'm not fine with "compromise" with things like plutocracy or autocracy. The U.S. Right has made it clear that the only acceptable "compromise" is capitulation, and Gabbard has flirted way too closely with that capitulation for my liking. She's been WAY too cozy with the Trumpkins, both after the election and now in her talk about a third-party run.
Like I said; she's better by a thousand fold than any Republican. She's better than Biden.
But we can do better than that, and her.
She has condemned Trump. Publicly! She has NOT talked about a third party run. She disavowed it.
DeleteStrange that you should title this blog post "#newendlesswars!"' and yet trash the one candidate on the left that wants to end them.
She broke with Trump after it became obvious that Trumpism is pure poison to anyone to the left of Joe Goebbels. Prior to her attempt to win the nomination she was close enough that Trump actually interviewed her for a position, and Bannon gave her a bunch of public love.
DeleteIs it satisfactory that she disavowed the Tangerine Tiberius? Sure. Is it laudable? Hell, no. Any sentient human should do that (which explains the GOP).
And you keep saying that Gabbard wants to "end wars", but I don't think that she wants to "end wars". She's an America Firster, like Trump, only for her it's not about making money but about not getting GIs killed. She has never really recanted her anti-Obama "Say the words! Say "radical Islamic terrorism! SAY IT!!!" tour back in 2015. She's said that she's a "hawk" on "terrorism". She wants to keep the country out of "regime-change" wars, but that's pretty much a bog-standard start for any D at this point. My question is really whether she'd be better than Warren or Sanders on the overall "GWOT", and I don't think so. She refused to co-sponsor Lee's H.R. 1274 that would have forced repeal of the AUMF (I'm proud to say that all four of my Oregon reps did...).
The chances that a Gabbard Administration would actually shut down the expeditionary force missions and drone wars seems pretty close to zero, given that.
Again - she's 100% better than anyone on the Right. And she's 89% better than the DLC Dems like Biden. But if you want to sell her, you can't really sell her as "Tulsi the Dove". She's not.
Tulsi turned Trump down flat on any cabinet positions in his administration on the day she met him. And just a day or so ago she again said she would turn down any third party offers.
ReplyDeleteYour claim that she would continue drone wars and expeditionary force missions is pure speculation on your part. Maybe she would and maybe she wouldn't, but it does not deserve any wild ass guesses. She sponsored HR411, which requires prior congressional approval for US kinetic action. She sponsored HR462 Stop Arming Terrorists Act, which not only bans arming terrorists (like Obama got sucked into in Syria by the Saudis and Turks), but also bans funds to any country that has provided assistance to such terrorist groups or individuals. She sponsored HR1249 the INF Treaty Compliance Act. She co-sponsored HR921 for no-first-use of nuclear weapons. She wants to end the New Cold War. I guess some people think that makers he a tool of Putin. But IMHO it is crazy to continue it. If we do continue it, then what? Are your children and my great grandchildren going to have to revert to the Duck-&-Cover-under-the-desk nuclear school drills that my peers and I experienced? Is a new Arm Race going to force those kids to forego good education and good medical care because the federal budget is bloated with new age hypervelocity ICBMs?
She knows she has no chance on winning the nomination because of the hate emanating from some quarters in the party. But I hope her message gets through and some of the other candidates take it up. We need to rid the Party of chicken hawks or any kind of war hawks to include those who would use the miltary force in Responsibility to Protect adventurism.