New Year starts with a bang

Well the Moron has just put over 5000 US troops and 7000 US contractors in the firing line.  Wag the Dog strategy.  War for partisan internal politics.  Popmpom and the neocons now apparently have control of the Idiot's brain.

Not only Suleiman, but also Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, deputy commander of Hashd al-Shaabi, and a member of the Iraqi National Council, who was said to be in line for Iraqi Minister of Defense.  Several other high ranking Hasd al-Shaabi leaders killed.  The attack was reportedly done by attack rotary wing on a convoy traveling on the Baghdad Airport road.

Mr. Thucydides on Line 1... An addendum from FDChief

Mike has given us the bare facts, but I want to add a note on just how geopolitically moronic this is.

Leaving aside the purely moral questions of murder-by-drone (and I suspect that a drone is more likely to have been the Angel of Death here rather than an Army aircraft...) any politico-military act by a Great Power can and should be judged by the cost versus the benefit of the action. So, let's look at those here; first, what are the benefits?

1. Taking a powerful Iranian piece off the board.

Fred Kaplan has a pretty good summary of the larger view of this action here (he also calls it an "act of war" eliding, I think, the reality that the U.S. and Iran have been in a cold war since Trump's abrogation of the JCPOA). Bottom line is that the Dead Guy was effectively the combined Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the CINC of Special Operations for Iran. This was a decapitation strike and, as such, a successful one.

2. Reminding everyone, especially everyone in the Middle East, and especially everyone in Iran, that the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.

Not that anyone really needed that reminder. But this is an in-your-face example of the Ledeen Doctrine. As such it raises as many questions as it answers, and we'll discuss that below. But there's no question that this is a sort of "you're not safe anywhere" gesture to anyone thinking about giving Uncle Sammy the side-eye.

3. Aaaaand...that kinda runs me out of "benefits".

Seriously. I'm not sure what else this does, other than ratchets up the US-Iran cold war.

OK, so...what are the (direct) costs?

1. Rachets up the US-Iran cold war.

Which in itself isn't a good thing, but my real concern is that it could lead to a US-Iran hot war, and there's simply no "good" result of that.

Look, the United States at this phase of it's existence is a "status quo" Power. Stability and regularity are its friends, chaos and uncertainty its foes. Like any status-quo Great Power, it benefits when it can work with smaller regional powers to exert its influence. When it's forced to respond to troubles thrown out by regional instability it risks - as it has found - getting mired in endless sapping brushfire wars and profitless imperial adventures. Status-quo Powers are not usually good at "responding", they're not designed to be nimble or flexible. They do best when they can surround themselves with buffers of client and proxy states that can be bribed, wheedled, intimidated, or some combination of all three, into doing the Power's dirty work for them.

What We the People should have learned from the last 19 years is that "regime change" in politically un- or under-developed polities is unlikely to produce more stability. The Clintonistas tried to "save" Somalia and just knocked it further into the tules. The Bushies knocked the Saddam cork off the Iraq bottle and produced the unholy clusterfuck that this move is part of. The Obamites went along with defenestrating Ghaddafi in Libya and produced an even-more-failed-state.

Removing the mullahs from Iran won't produce a "better" Iran (from a US policy standpoint). Whoever follows is going to be 1) Persian, and, as such, convinced of Iran's place as the regional middleweight power, and 2) reminded that the US has not been a good thing for Iran since back in the 1950s - he, she, or they will remember Mossadegh and the Shah and the Gulf War and, now, this.

2. Replaces the Dead Bad Guys with...some other bad guys we don't know.

The Trumpkins make much of how the Dead Guy was a Bad Guy, but...c'mon. Seriously? This was fucking Napoleon? How "irreplaceable" a military-political genius was this joker? It's not like the IRGC is some sort of modern-day Alexander's Companions. They've made trouble in the Middle East and...what? Like it's that difficult to make trouble in the Middle East? Like it takes some sort of 12-dimension-chess-master? The cemeteries are full of irreplaceable men.

And - as we found with Ghaddafi and Saddam - sometimes the people who replace the guys you kill are madder, badder, and more dangerous to know.

I said this succeeded as a decapitation strike. But who knows? It may turn out to be a "Yamamoto shootdown"; a little revenge drama that has no impact on the military organization it's targeting. Only this one wasn't in the middle of buttrump nowhere Southwest Pacific but at the freaking Baghdad Airport, which brings us to...

3. Punks the Baghdad government and every Iraqi regardless of political affiliation.

Imagine how you would feel if your neighbor kicked your door down, walked into your kitchen, and shot dead the guest your cousin had invited in.

You might not like the guest, or your cousin all that much...but that? That's a punch in your face. That's utterly contemptuous of you and your home. The neighbor has, to put it bluntly, just shown that you are his bitch. If you don't respond with force, well...you are.

It's one thing to know that the strong do what they can. It's another thing to have your nose rubbed in it.

Seriously, I have no idea how the current government in Baghdad survives this if they don't make every American persona non grata and order the whole nutroll out of their country within 30 days. Hell, you'd think that they'd demand the extradition of the drone operator and everyone in their chain of command on murder charges. They won't...but why not? I mean, it kinda WAS premeditated murder.

3. Bogs the US even further in the Middle Eastern/Sunni-Shia War of Religion mire.

The one thing that everyone here has tried to make a Trump Positive is his supposed longing to #endendleswars. How the hell does this do anything to do that? I mean...you want to whack this dude? Fine. You can't find a way to get him to turn up in the Baghdad Marriot with a fatal heart attack, two labradoodles and a boy toy wearing a full wetsuit and stripper heels? Instead you choose the most ridiculously in-your-face fuck-you to every Masud and Amina between Gibraltar and the Celebes?

-----------

We've had discussions here that always seem to come back to the "Well, sure, Trump talks bugnuts shit, but that's just Trump..." thing. But I think this is a perfect example of WHY it's a problem. This doesn't strike me as something that was the result of some sort of deep foreign policy analysis. This feels like Trump gets pissed off at these pesky little Persians fucking with HIS embassy and making the news like he was a girly-man Jimmy Carter sorta wuss and calls down to his CIA Iran desk and says "Goddamn it, find me some Iranian sonofabitch to kill!" so he can look Strong and Commanding. This really is Foreign Policy by Tweet.

I'm not trying to say that he's somehow breaking U.S. Middle Eastern policy. That's been a shitshow since we stepped into the French and British colonial shoes after 1945.

But the feckless bastard has found ways to make it an even bigger shitshow, and after Bush I wasn't sure that was even possible.

What a fecking mess.

Update 1/4/20: Oh, for fuck's sake...

OK, so...the part where this whole idiocy is "Foreign Policy by Tweet"?

1) Fifty-two hostages? The 1979-1980 "Hostage Crisis"? Seriously?

2) "Iranian culture"? You're advertising that you're gonna war crime Iran by targeting cultural heritage sites? Why not bomb Coventry Cathedral, too, bubba, so you can bag the sweep. Jesus wept.

3) No more threats, hunh? I guess you're King of the Playground now, Spunky.

IF one of my troops had actied this stupid I'd have had the sonofabitch pulling extra duty until he ETSed. Since the POTUS is in the chain of command,...

Update 1/5/20: No, duh.

Like I said; this was fucking inevitable.

Anyone but a complete goddamn moron or goddamn Donnie Trump - but I repeat myself - could have seen this coming. KNEW this was coming the minute the warhead of the Reaper missile detonated. Does it mean that the GIs will have to do a Saigon-embassy-un-ass the joint? Maybe. The Baghdad government knows damn well that the GIs are the only militarily effective force in their country, and that if the GIs go it'll be a matter of time before the Sunni rebels re-rebel (the ridiculous Islamic State panic masked the reality that, in Iraq, anyway, the IS was more-or-less just the continuation of the Sunni resistance to the US occupation that began in 2003.

But the hell with tomorrow; today the Iraqi pols have only one choice, and that's between giving Uncle Sammy the finger, or being his tool. No Iraqi pol is stupid enough to think that being a Quisling is going to get him anywhere after this past week. Trump has made it cleat that his entire geopolitical approach to the Middle East is summed up in the sort of thing one of his goobers would wear on a T-shirt at one of his Nuremburg rallies; "Kick the ass. Take their gas."

IF I thought that Trump was serious about #endingendlesswars, that he'd simply tell the guys to grab a hat and not let the door hit them in the ass?

Fine.

But whacking Solemani and sending paratroops to Kuwait and not even feinting towards repealing the AUMFs?

Nope. He's not even trying. He's pulling your leg just like he pulled the poor bastards' legs who "invested" in his fake university. That's who he is. That's what he does.

WASSSSSSSSSSSSSF.

War Crime

Commander Bone-Spurs, not happy with just restoring the rank of Chief Petty Officer Gallagher, now demands that the Navy not kick Gallagher out of the Seals.

Undoubtedly Bone-Spurs, well known as a horn-dog, got his inspiration from the appearance on Fox News of Gallagher's wife Andrea.  And also from San Diego Congressman Duncan Hunter, another horn-dog who allegedly used campaign funds to help pay for his extramarital affairs.  And of course Breitbart had a lot to do with Bone-Spurs interference in the rocks and shoals of justice.

In Gallagher's court martial the Navy prosecution team was outlawyered by his high paid civilian law firm, expensive but paid for by donations solicited on Breitbart and Fox.

Charges against Gallagher were:

1. Attempted Murder;
2. Premeditated Murder;
3. Aggravated Assault with a Dangerous Weapon (two counts?) on non-combatant;
4. Discharging firearm willfully as to endanger non-combatants;
5. Obstructing Justice (three counts);
6. Wrongfully pose for an unofficial picture with a human casualty;
7. Wrongfully complete reenlistment ceremony next to a human casualty;
8. Wrongfully Operate a drone over a human casualty;
9. Wrongful Use of a Controlled Substance – Tramadol Hydrochloride;
10. Unlawful Possession of a Controlled Substance – Sustanon250

Only convicted of charge number six.  This was after a prosecution witness who had immunity changed his testimony on the stand.  And may have been due to the prosecution's ham-handed efforts to track the leaks of the Judge's gag order, which came to light during the trial.

The other fishy thing is the dropping of the charges regarding use of steroids and opioids.  That would seem to be easy to prove, but apparently it was not.  The steroid use coincides with the reports of his aggressive behavior - not only the alleged killing of the teenage POW, but his indiscriminate and reckless sniper shots, and randomly spraying neighborhoods with machine gun and rocket fire. "Other snipers said they witnessed Gallagher taking at least two militarily pointless shots, shooting and killing an unarmed old man in a white robe as well as a young girl walking with other girls."  And that he "boasted about the large number of people he had killed, claiming he averaged three kills a day over 80 days, including four women."

So he is free now with rank restored.  The American people will foot the bill for his pension.  The American military will have problems for years in the future for Bone-Spurs handling of this.  America's reputation is besmirched.  And some Americans, troops and civilians, will pay with blood because of it.

The Navy should never again let him serve in a Seal Team or in a training role.   IMHO they should assign him to be the senior corpsman in a VD ward of a naval hospital or clinic, preferably a remote one.  And monitor him with frequent drug tests.  But the Navy brass has Bone-Spurs looking over their shoulder on this.  They damn sure don't want to lose funding for a new carrier or some other high end item, as they know that Bone-Spurs has a vindictive streak.  So they'll toe the line.

If we are lucky Gallagher will retire, and stay off of Fox and Breitbart.  But I fear that ain't gonna happen.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddie_Gallagher_(Navy_SEAL)

It takes a thief...

This is totally made of awesome.

Syrian dictator and all-around genial thug Bashar Al-Assad gave an interview in which he characterized Donald J. Trump as "the best president".

“All the American presidents commit all the political sins and crimes and take home the Nobel prize, and they give every appearance of defending human rights and the ‘advanced’ and American or Western principles but they are in fact a gang of criminals who represent the interests of the American lobbies, i.e. the big arms and oil and other corporations. Trump speaks with complete transparency;'We want the oil.' This is the American political reality since at least the end of the Second World War: ‘We want to get rid of so-and-so. We want to provide a service in return for money.’ This is the American political reality. What do we want more than a transparent enemy?”

I guess it takes one dictatorial sonofabitch to know one, eh, Bashie?

Update 11/7: It's looking less and less like #endingendlesswars and more and more like #kicktheirasstaketheirgas in Northeastern Syria as several what appear to be conventional Army units, including cavalry or mechanized infantry, have been moved into the area around the Deir al-Zour oilfields.

Just a reminder that 1) Trump HAS no "foreign policy" any more than a street-corner punk as a "economic policy" outside of "what's mine is mine and what's yours is also mine", 2) U.S. Middle Eastern policy has been a complete shitshow for a long time and still is, Trump or no Trump, and 3) it's LONG past time to repeal the goddamn AUMF. It's not even a fig leaf anymore.

Sit Room

Interesting photo of the WH situation room.  Supposedly the pic is of Commander-in-Chief Bone-Spurs and his team watching the takedown of al-Baghdadi during real time via some type of classified VTC or other video system.  I have a few comments:

1]  Was it staged afterwards?  Trump was reported to be at a golf course at 3:30 when the raid happened.  Pete Souza, photographer for both Reagan and Obama, claims: "<i>The photo, as shown in the camera IPTC data, was taken at '17:05:24'.</i>"

2]  They all seem to have the exact expression.  As if the photgrapher said <i>"Look solemn."</i> instead of <i>"Say cheese."</i> 

3]  All except Robert O'Brien, Trumpy's latest National Security Adviser, who has the gift of looking both solemn and whimsical simultaneously. O'Brien is the guy who recently said he would never stifle Trump’s military ‘genius’.

4]  General Milley does look a bit disgusted at being in this dog and pony show.  And check out the huge saddlebags under his eyes.  Poor bastard hasn't had a good night's sleep since he took over as CJCS.

5]  If they are watching the action the photographer is in the way blocking their view.

6]  Trump's IT team needs a smack in the the head.  Did these guys use to work building bird's nests?  My 18-year-old grandson does a better job of dressing up cable clutter, and he has two desktops, four laptops, a big screen TV, several modems, and a dial-up telephone all interconnected in his basement.

Operation Decisive Strike

September 26^th marks four and a half years of the Saudi and Emirati war in Yemen.  With US support!  Below is a link to a piece from April 2015, a month after that intervention started.  Titled US generals: Saudi intervention in Yemen ‘a bad idea’.  Some flag officers at CENTCOM and at Special Ops argued strenuously against supporting the Saudi-led intervention because the "Houthi movement has been an effective counter to Al-Qaeda."  Those Special Ops guys were also clairvoyant in noting that Saudi/UAE intervention was doomed – even as the Saudis were saying it would take a few weeks.  Supposedly some in SOCOM still “favor the Houthis, as they have been successful in rolling back AQ and IS.”  
 

http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/4/17/us-generals-think-saudi-strikes-in-yemen-a-bad-idea.html

The Saudis labeled it 'Operation Decisive Strike', a criminal misnomer IMO.  There are 91,000+ dead Yemenis many of them civilians, hundreds of thousands devastated by cholera and malnutrition, three million displaced, 54 months of indiscriminate bombing of marketplaces & funerals & weddings et al, and billions of dollars down the toilet.  Just glad it is Saudi and Emirati dollars, except for the million or two US $$ for refueling flights.  But it looks like the T-Rump is going to increase that by an order of magnitude with this new force package he is sending to protect the House of Saud and their pinheaded prince.

https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2019/09/25/us-troops-to-saudi-arabia-stand-by/

And recently in Aden some Saudi supported factions and Emirati supported factions started killing each other.  Yemen is now looking worse than the goat-rope in Syria.  There are at least five different wars-within-war going on there:  

1] Saudi Arabia and the UAE and their minions against the Houthis and their tribal allies. The minions later included some help from Egypt, Sudan, Morocco, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, and Bahrain.  This is the main fight, and was meant to restore the propped up president, Abdrabbuh Manṣūr Hādī (who like an absentee landlord lives in luxury in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia)  -  and thrash the Houthis who they consider heretical and convert them to a creed more in line with Wahhabi thinking.  

2] Add in Iran support to the Houthis.  Although I don’t believe they were ever outright proxies of Tehran.  Reportedly Iran advised the Houthis NOT to take over the Yemen capitol of Sana’a back four and a half years ago.   But they did anyway.  And after the bombing campaign started Iran gave what support they could.  Undoubtedly there is funding and IRGC connivance in weapons supply.  And probably targeting intel within KSA via the Saudi Shia resistance, which is infiltrated by Iran.  But bin-Salman and bin-Zayed and our neocons seem to believe the entire Houthi movement started at the behest of the Ayatollahs.  I object, but those guys get paid much more than I. .

3] Another conflict is the battle for influence and control between the Saudis and Emiratis.  Both back factions opposed to one another.  Current shoot-em-ups are between the Saudi-supported Yemeni government in exile (Hadi) and southern separatists backed by the UAE (the STC or Southern Transitional Council).  The STC wants a two state Yemen like it was during the period from the early 1960s up until unification in 1990.

4] The fourth war pits al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and/or Ansar al-Sharia against everybody else.  With a few US drone strikes against known or supposed hi-value AQ targets.

5] This one is kinda like the fourth, but it is the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant – Yemen Province (ISIL-YP) instead of AQ.

As of July.  Houthis in green, Saudi backed govt in exile in pink, UAE backed STC in khaki, AQ in white, IS in gray

Numbers 3, 4, and 5 have been mostly underreported, if reported at all in the western media.   

Blockades Work Both Ways

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is now backing up President Rouhani’s statement that Iran will block all Gulf oil exports if Trump blocks Iranian exports.

Can they do it?   Perhaps partially?   If so, how?



But why would they?  Trump is not going to stop oil supplies to China and they are Iran’s biggest customer.   And Chinese oil tankers would love the concession to bring oil to India and other Asian customers.  Plus there is no way Trump can stop oil exports to Turkey without bombing pipelines.  Same for natural gas exports to Turkmenistan – and Trump's buddy in Moscow might object to that. 

In fact Trump is only trying to bully European buyers and perhaps South Korea and japan.  But he is giving waivers.  His deadline is November.


https://www.businesstimes.com.sg/energy-commodities/iran-leader-backs-blocking-gulf-oil-exports-if-own-sales-stopped

https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/Who-Was-Buying-Iranian-Oil-And-What-Happens-Next.html

The Baby-Snatcher in Britain

The Daily Mirror never ceases to amaze.   

They should buy up Trump's tabloid, the National Enquirer and install an editor that stops kissing right-wing butt.


Trump is no Winston. 

IMHO he is much more like Neville Chamberlain.  

Both born to rich families. 

Both failures in business until their fathers bailed them out.  

Both Conservatives and enemies of the working stiffs. 

And both Appeasers!

This is NOT normal

I'm sorry. It's just...not.

Here's an excerpt from the Thanksgiving oration that the 45th President of the United States gave to a group of servicepeople:

"But, I mean, we have equipment that -- nobody has the equipment that we have. And it's sad when we're selling our equipment to other countries but we're not buying it ourselves, okay? But now that's all changed. And the stuff I said -- the stuff that we have is always a little bit better too. You know, when we sell to other countries, even if they're allies -- you never know about an ally. An ally can turn. You understand. You're going to find that out. But I always say, make ours a little bit better. You know, give it that extra speed. A little bit -- keep a little bit -- keep about 10 percent in the bag, because what we have -- nobody has like what we have, and that's what we're doing."

So.

1. We were selling our "equipment" to other countries but not buying it ourselves...but now we are.

2. Our "allies" are treacherous bastards that will turn on us - "you're going to find that out".

3. So we ensure that whatever of this "stuff" we sell to our "allies" is 10 percent worse - slower, weaker, less accurate, something that's not "in the bag" - than what we kit ourselves out with because, well, treacherous bastards.

I know that we tend to lose track of the moron signal amid the blabbering noise from this joker, but...c'mon. Seriously?

Scene: Office of the Ministry of National Defense, Seoul, Republic of Korea, afternoon. A tall, severe looking man enters and crosses to his desk, staring intently at his phone. He presses a button on the intercom panel.

Voice (translated from Korean): "Yes, Minister Song?"
Song Young-moo: "Sang-mi, can you please ask Vice-Minister Lee to come in for a moment, please?"
Sang-mi: "Certainly, Minister."

The Minister of Defense leans back against his desk, staring at his phone with an irked expression. Several moments later the main door opens and a shorter, plumper man enters. The Minister looks up at him and holds out his phone.

Song: "Did you see what that fucking Yankee idiot said last week?"
Lee: "Which fuc..oh, Trump? I dunno. What particularly idiotic thing was it this time?"
Song: "The...he...oh, hell, just look at this."
He passes the phone over to his subordinate, who scrolls down quickly.
Lee: "Oh, c'mon, boss. That's just Trump. His mouth moves while his brain is in neutral. You know that. Don't mean nothing."
Song: "Nothing? Really?"
Lee: "Sure. You know Americans, they just talk and talk with their head up their ass, and this Trump, well, you met him. He's like the lights are on but nobody's home. He can't possibly mean that guff. If it was true he'd be killing every arms deal Lockheed and General Dynamics and Raytheon will ever make. Not even that spray-tan dope could be that fucking stupid."

There's a long pause. Both men look at each other with growing horror.

Lee: "No problem, chief. I'll call our people in California right away. One of my guys is bonking one of the QA/QC people at BAE Systems; he'll have an answer for us by morning. Oh, and I'll get the PVO to give me a quote for S-400s, and see if the Israelis are still interested in selling Arrow-3s. I've got some people in Johannesburg, too, I'll see what they're willing to move."
The Vice-Minister is already pulling out his phone as he heads for the door. Minister Song slumps back against his desk as the door closes behind his subordinate and punches the intercom button angrily.
Song: "Where did my wife tell you to hide the soju, Sang-mi?"
Sang-mi: "Minister...I..."
Song: "I'm in no mood for fucking around, Sang-mi. Dig up that bottle or I swear, Imma walk down to the bodega down the street and pay cash for the cheapest, nastiest booze I can find and you can explain that to my wife."
Sang-mi: "I've got it right here, Minister."
Song: "Good. Straight up, and call the Air Force Chief of Staff and tell him I want to talk to his zoomie ass most quick smart. Thanks."
He sighs, and stares out the window as he waits for his drink.

Not doing it.

I thought I'd revisit this post from a year ago, in which I noted that:

"...the GOP in it's present incarnation really offers only two policy "things":

1. Working for open oligarchy, and
2. Comfort for white nationalism, Christian theocracy, and fear of the "others" (whether those others are gay, or brown, or Muslim)

I know that sounds harsh, but...that's really it, isn't it? It's all tax cuts and privatize and deregulate and unshackle Wall Street and shove the homos back in the closet and no abortion and open carry everywhere. "Small government"? Sure...unless you count the DoD. Or the NSA.

There's no GOP vision of a future United States that doesn't really come down to a return to the Gilded Age, is there?"

For which I was castigated as "...unpersuasive and mean spirited."


Well.

Now that we've had a year of open corruption on a scale that would have made U.S. Grant pale with disbelief and Warren Harding green with envy, a year of fire and fury, blowhard tweets and idiotic name-calling, a year of selling off the national patrimony to crony capitalists, of trying to yank medical insurance away from poor people, a year that included a tax measure that prohibits you from deducting your home mortgage, medical expenses, state taxes, and what your kid's teacher spends on crayons but lets me deduct the cost of my private jet, a year dominated by a federal government run by people who seem to have carefully watched the vile doings of every cartoon villain ever scripted and then turned to Skeletor and announced "Here. Hold my beer."

Is there really anyone who still thinks I was "unpersuasive and meanspirited"?

Jesus wept. Yeah, in one sense I WAS unpersuasive. I honestly didn't think these people could be this appalling. Yep. I didn't see that coming. I didn't think that it was possible for a grown human with a functioning hindbrain to WANT to act like a fucking cartoon movie villain.

And here's the thing.

It's pretty damn easy to destroy a social contract. And that's what's going on right now.

For about fifty years we lived with the social contract hammered out by the New Deal. The wealthy would give up a little of their wealth, the middle class a little less, and in return we'd get labor and social peace. Since the old and sick didn't have to fear dying penniless they could stop fighting the ownership class' greed. So our country still had very few rich and many poor, it just wasn't quite so vicious about it. The sort of riots and strikes and radicalism that tore the country in the 1880s and 1890s and Teens and Twenties. The sort of thing that produced the Russian Revolution and then Italian fascism and then the Spanish Republicans.

And that's going away now, folks, if the people who run things in D.C. have any say about it.

You and I are going back to the future, to a New Gilded Age where the rich do what they can and the poor suffer what they must.

And you know what's so infuriating about that?

It's that that's not even good for the idiot plutocrats that are pushing it.

You think "regulations" are the problem? Try going back to the time before the Clean Air and Water Acts, when you could dump anything and everything into the air and water and not give a shit who it poisoned.

You think financial regulations are a problem? Try going back to financial "panics" every other decade, as used to slam the nation in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries.

I'm here to warn you. I'm here to be MORE unpersuasive and meanspirited. Dammit, people, this isn't just a political disagreement. The Trumpkins and their allies have turned out to be far worse than anyone every thought they could be. They are demolishing the very society built on the social contract of the New Deal. They're doing the goddamn best to return the U.S. to the social, economic, and political environment of 1890.

And if that happens, assuming that rising seas and violent storms don't do the job first, we're going back to a time that almost none of us can conceive and no living American remembers.

But for those of us not in the two-yacht family I can tell you - it was NOT a good time for us.

I wish I had faith that We the People would recognize this and band together to defeat and destroy it. But then I see that damn near two-fifths of my "fellow citizens" think that the Tangerine Toddler, Crock-o-bile Dumm-ee, is doing a heckuva job and I despair.

As we used to say about Dubya's Great Mess-o-Potamia:

Unless We the People, unless you and me and him and her get together and kick these damn Trumpkins dead square in the ass, we are all so, so, SO fucked.

Da Nang

Lots of news focus on the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in Viet-Nam.  Most of it seems to be on Trump/Putin talking and what will come of that. 

I am more interested on any one-on-one meeting between Trần Đại Quang and Xi Jinping.  Will they bury the hatchet on what the Viets call Biển Đông (East Sea) and the Chinese call their South Sea?  Same for any meets between Xi and President Duterte, Prime Minister Najib of Malaysia, and the Sultan of Brunei.  And what is Trump's position on the Spratly and Paracel Islands?  Did he use his 'art of the deal' when he was in Peking to offer Xi something he could not refuse?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APEC_Vietnam_2017#Attendees

But in any case I'm happy that Donnie finally made it to Viet-Nam.  I suppose his heel spurs have been cured.  Looks like they are staying here:

http://www.danang.intercontinental.com/

Better quarters than what we had 50 years ago at LZ Baldy or Charlie Ridge.

NORK Nukes II - Fire and Fury Boogaloo

So for some bizarre reason we're back to fiddling with these damn DPRK nukes again, largely, I suspect, because the Tweeter-in-Chief has got a whole lot of people clenched up to Pucker Factor 11 by promising "fire and fury" if His Porkulency Kim Jong Un cocks another nuclear snook at the Land of the Free and the Home of the B-52s (seeing as the current objet de furor seems to be principally the U.S. installations on Guam).

(And let me note in passing that...what the hell is it with U.S. politicians and chest-beating military rhetoric? Trump, in particular, seems pretty damn partial to bluster for a man who had a fistful of deferments from getting within sniffing distance of harm's way back in the day. Whenever I run across this stuff I'm forcefully reminded of yet another of the wonderful bits of writing from Robert Bolt's "A Man For All Seasons". In particular, where Thomas More, having been arrested for treason and under "examination" by the current Chancellor of England Thomas Cromwell, is reminded by the latter of the government's capacity for causing More physical pain.

"You threaten like a dockside bully." sniffs More.

"How should I threaten, then?" snarls Cromwell, angry at being chided by a man that he can have tortured or killed and who, therefore, should be fearful instead of caustic.

More looks Cromwell up and down (and, remember, More was Cromwell's predecessor as Chancellor) and observes dryly: "Like a Minister of State.")

Perhaps the MOST frustrating thing about this is that we know, His Porkulency knows, and Trump knows that there really are no good military options for dealing with the NORK nukes. Keep in mind I'm not saying there are no options - just that there aren't any really optimal military ones.

So the Tangerine Tweetmonger's bluster is really just that, unless he's actually stupid enough to consider the loss of life in our Korean ally outside of consideration. But whenever the custodian of one of the globe's biggest nuclear weapons stockpile is flapping his gums like a schoolyard bully that sort of bluster is hard to ignore, regardless of the uselessness of the blustering.

Or maybe it's just me. I came of age at a time when the "enemies" my country was supposed to confront were global powers armed, as we were, with ginormous armies and fleets and swarms of aircraft and glowing piles of nukes.

All this sound and fury over raggedy-assed jihadi wannabes and upstart Korean tinpot dictators seems immensely tiring.

Perhaps we should all just relax and have a nice sandwich.

Gassing On About Syria

Let me begin with this; I hate freaking chemical weapons like I hate crab lice, karaoke, and When Justin Met Kelly.

But I find myself thinking the same thing about the latest Syrian news that I kept thinking all the while my country and its allies were bombing hell out of a different Muslim country; where's the "good choice" here?

And for a guy who supposedly was our only hope of preventing a confrontation with Russia and becoming more deeply bogged in the civil wars and internal rebellions in the Middle East young Mister Trump appears to be perfectly with the idea of confronting Russia over its support of Assad and making more trouble and more rubble in Syria because of the latest possibly-a-Syrian-government-chemical-attack.

(Perhaps I should be reassured that the current Administration seems willing to come to cuffs with its Russian pals over this. At this point I'm taking my reassurances where I can get them...)

I'd be happy to hear anyone's suggestion of how a U.S. kinetic intervention in Syria to "punish" this gassy cloud ends well. I can't think of anything, and certainly I can't think of anything that involves using U.S.-made explosives or soldiers that will somehow make a silk purse out of this Syrian donkey's ear. I'd think that the America First President would kind of be thinking the same way I do...except, apparently not.

At this point I've kind of given up. There doesn't seem to be a global geopolitical problem that the sort of people who get elected to public office in the U.S. don't see as a nail to hammer down. You'd think that the Libyan example would serve as a cautionary tale for this Syrian mess, but, no.

Update 4/7: The Thursday cruise missile strike on the Syrian government airbase at Shayrat is such an utterly perfect summation of the U.S. "foreign policy" in the Middle East as to be like a tiny little explosive jewel-box portrait of derp that it just makes me want to walk around smiling all day in that grim, sickly, "isn't that fucking special" kind of smiley way.

Militarily useless? Check. Because, although he may be a grifter with the soul of a can of Chef Boy-ar-dee Spaghetti and Meatballs, the Tangerine Toddler isn't clinically insane his administration is reported to have warned the Russian government prior to the strike to ensure that we didn't send any random wingwipers of the Voyenno-Vozdushnye Sily Rossii home in a box. The Russians, unsuprisingly, passed the warning on to their Syrian clients. So it's extremely likely that what the strike did was flatten some empty hangars and scatter bits of the buildings across the runways.

Tomahawks, so far as I know, are not equipped with delay-fused runway cratering warheads, so this couldn't have acted as an airfield-denial strike.

Geopolitically worthless? Check. Even supposing that this DID attrit the Assad government's ability to fight the civil war. Late on Thursday both Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster made it clear that these strikes wouldn't have any major effect on the actual political situation in Syria.

And, of course - as we should have learned in Libya, the enemy of our enemy isn't just not our friend but is probably a bughouse crawling with vicious factional hatred and political dysfunction. A handful of damaged Flankers won't make the Syrian rebels any less rabid, the Islamic State any less gonzo, or the hatred between the first two and the Kurds any less toxic. The vicious civil war will roll on.

A fat paycheck for our defense contractors? Check. At about $1.5m a shot 59 Tomahawks set the Navy back about 88 million bucks. This, of course, isn't an actual loss-leader but a promissary note to Raytheon-McDonnell-Douglas for 59 new units.

Just a fiscal note: the 2017 budget request for the National Endowment for the Arts was about $149 million. It's kind of nifty that although the current Administration has publicly stated that it intends to zero out that budget that it's willing to throw down about 60% of the expense for an equally useless piece of political theater.

A big happy piece of domestic dick-waving? Check! The real value of this stunt appears to be that it has convinced the media outlets that His Fraudulency is "presidential", since nothing says "Chief Executive" like blowing dusky savages up, and has excited the sorts of voters whose fourth-grade "understanding" of the Syrian Civil War is limited to imagining the place as some sort of dytopian Agrabah populated by various species of "headchoppers".

What's really sad is how little this nonsense depends on the juvenile personality of the current President. From Obama's droney pursuit of Afridis where they run to Dubya's Mess-o-potamia to Clinton's Operation Desert Fox to what seems like every administration back to Eisenhower defenstrating Mossadegh and storming ashore in Lebanon...it just seems like this crap is what the U.S. does, and particularly in the Middle East.

Does it work? WHO CARES! The important point is that We Did SOMEthing! America, fuck yeah!

Sheesh.

(Oh, and this is also so perfect I just cant leave it out; "House Concurrent Resolution 40", from the 113th Congress back in 2013. Remember those days, back when Obummer was all dick-wavy about "red lines" in Syria and the serious foreign policy panjandrums of the Freeeeeeedom Caucus needed to remind the Kenyan Usurper that "...the President is prohibited under the Constitution from initiating war against Syria without express congressional authorization and the appropriation of funds for the express purpose of waging such a war." There was talk of...impeachment!

Now? Ummm...not so much.

Consistency is SUCH a hobgoblin of little minds.)

Update 2 4/7: And now reports are coming in that the Syrian Arab Air Force is operating out of Shayrat today.

Well! You'd think that Assad would at least tell the boys to take a break in place for a couple of days or so, y'know, like how soccer players limp around after getting tackled just to show how bad their owie is? But, nooooo. Guy won't stop the fun even to help out his pals Pootie and Trumpie for being all okay with not wanting him out and probably all Gaddafi'd or Ceaușescu'd after the rebels win.

What a buddyfucker! Honestly, you just can trust some homicidal autocrats!

Flynn- Flam

 Phillip Carter has a good article on retired LtGen Flynn’s quest for immunization.  Phil, a lawyer and former JAG Officer, is well known to many members of this blog.  He postulates (or maybe I am trying to read between the lines) that:

1]  Although the Flynn/Kislyak conversation was a felony, Flynn would never be prosecuted for that relationship.  (I agree.)

2]  Or maybe Flynn lied to the FBI, which is also a crime.  (my perception:  Isn’t this what would have sent Scooter Libby to prison before Junior Bush pardoned him?)

3]  Failure to file under the Foreign Agents Registration Act in a timely fashion could also be prosecuted.  (I do not believe anyone has been prosecuted for FARA violations for over 50 years.)

4]  The speaking fees Flynn got from the Russians in 2015 violate the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause, which applies to retired military officers.  (Aren’t ’speaking fees’ what Flynn and Bannon were going after HRC about during the campaign?)

5]  Flynn’s reported conversations with Turkish officials regarding whether Fethullah Gülen could somehow be kidnapped and sent to Turkey— may well be a conspiracy to commit federal crimes.

6]  Finally, Flynn may face legal risk if he failed to disclose these foreign contacts as part of his top-level security clearance applications.  (see Senator Tester’s letter below to DNI, OMB, and OPM on this issue.)

My own opinion is that the whole Flynn attempt at asking for immunity is just more cooked up flim-flam.  Perhaps to generate sympathy?  Why else make it a publicly announced offer instead of the usual 'behind-the-scenes' proffer?  Or perhaps to deflect attention from elsewhere.  Or perhaps to protect his son, who may be even more deeply involved as a lobbyist for foreign interests?  But regardless of what happens Trump will pardon him.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2017/03/why_is_trump_s_former_national_security_adviser_seeking_immunity.html

https://www.tester.senate.gov/files/Letters/2017-03-01%20Letter%20to%20OMB%20OPM%20ODNI%20re%20Security%20Clearances.pdf