Trump’s Illegal Is Also Very Stupid
All very predictable
Trump started an illegal war with Iran last weekend. This was easily predictable if you understood that Trump is insane. He even warned us this was coming back in January when he sent a deranged message to Norway’s Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre.
“Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS,” Trump wrote, “I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America.”
So, apparently, if Trump can’t bully himself a prize for peace, he’ll dedicate himself to war. Here’s where I politely suggest that Maureen Dowd was wrong when she suggested that Trump was a “dove” and Hillary Clinton a “hawk.” Though, in fairness, maybe Trump is a “dove” but just one with severe mental illness. In that scenario, you’re better off with the “hawk” who’s sane.
Dowd wrote in April 2016 that Trump “can sound belligerent, of course, saying that he would bomb the expletive-deleted out of ISIS and that he would think up new and imaginative ways to torture terrorists and kill their families. But he says that in most cases he would rather do the art of the deal than shock and awe.”
“Unlike other candidates for the presidency, war and aggression will not be my first instinct,” he said in his maiden foreign policy speech in Washington last week, adding, “A superpower understands that caution and restraint are really truly signs of strength.”
These Kumbaya lines had the neocons leaping into Hillary’s muscular embrace.
Maybe Trump’s supposed “America first” isolationism appealed to people who’d grown sour over U.S. foreign intervention, particularly post 9/11. Iraq was a disaster, and Americans were still dying in Afghanistan. However, lumping Hillary Clinton in with neoconservative pratfallers such as George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld was unfair and unsupported by facts.
When he first ran for president, Barack Obama set himself apart from his potential rivals — specifically Hillary Clinton — with his opposition to the Iraq War. (Watch below.)
“There is a choice that has emerged in this campaign, one that the American people need to understand. They should ask themselves: who got the single most important foreign policy decision since the end of the Cold War right, and who got it wrong,” Obama said in October 2007. “This is not just a matter of debating the past. It’s about who has the best judgment to make the critical decisions of the future.”
However, Obama made it clear that he was not reflexively anti-war, like some long-haired hippie. He said, “I don’t oppose all wars. What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war ... A war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics.”
Yes, Clinton had supported an affirmatively dumb war, but she trusted the intelligence reports that claimed Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. In retrospect, it was a mistake to believe anything the Bush administration said about Iraq, but at least Colin Powell bothered to put on pants and make his case to Congress.
Hillary Clinton might’ve ended her presidential ambitions when she voted to authorize the Iraq War, but she did so on better grounds than John Fetterman, who enthusiastically embraced Trump’s “rah-rah, Hulk smash!” approach to war.
Trump’s current war is an insult to dumbness. It’s all passion and politics without a shred of principle. He has destabilized the Middle East without any consideration beyond his own ego. Trump foolishly shredded the deal Obama made that would’ve prevented Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, and now he insists that this deal would’ve somehow resulted in Iran acquiring nuclear weapons, as if it were negotiated in the Bizarro World. Obama actually understood the art of the deal. Trump was likely too stupid to read his own ghostwritten book.
Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed in joint strikes by the U.S. and Israel, but they also knocked off anyone who might replace him. The problem with regime-change wars is that you end up swapping out one psychopath for another, who’s just a little taller.
“Most of the people we had in mind are dead,” Trump said Tuesday. “We had some in mind from that group that is dead. And now we have another group. They may be dead also. Pretty soon we’re not gonna know anybody.” These words will likely be featured in the Big Book Of Dumb Wars.
Tuesday, Trump ranted about European allies not leaping at the opportunity to help America, which has become an unreliable, if not outright hostile, power.
“Spain has been terrible,” Trump whined. “In fact, I told Scott to cut off all dealings with Spain. Spain actually said that we can’t use their bases. And that’s all right. We could use their base if we want. We could just fly in and use it. Nobody’s going to tell us not to use it.”
Trump as the master deal maker compared to Clinton the “hawk” was always absurd. Clinton had developed a strong relationship with our allies as Secretary of State. She’s an accomplished diplomat, who was capable of keeping the nation out of needless wars. Trump can only hop around like Yosemite Sam. Yet, the “Hillary loves her some war” lies endured. Trump’s Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard — who’s currently missing in action — called Clinton “the queen of warmongers” in 2019 when Clinton suggested she was a Russian nesting agent. Oscar winning actor and second-best Janet Weiss Susan Sarandon insisted that a Clinton presidency would’ve guaranteed a bloody war somewhere. The proof for such a claim is lacking.
Trump’s foreign policy position wasn’t simple “isolationism.” Trump governs like a mob boss, which is not a surprise considering that he ran his businesses like a gangster. The Art Of The Deal was entirely fiction. Trump was willing to abandon our NATO allies unless they paid him protection money. That’s not the same as fiercely protecting American blood and treasure.
Six Americans so far have died as a result of Trump’s senseless attack on Iran, and he seemingly cares more about his big, beautiful ballroom. Secretary of State Marco Rubio went full Orwell when he argued that the U.S. attacked Iran in self-defense because Iran was bound to retaliate when Israel attacked them. Trump and his evil parrot henchman JD Vance have long blamed Ukraine for letting Russia invade it. They have accused Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of dragging the U.S. into a situation that could result in another world war. (Hyperbole is a thing with them.) However, Ukraine has bravely fended off Russia’s illegal invasion for four years, and no American lives were lost. Sending Russia packing would only cost America some treasure but no blood. However, the current American government apparently takes its lead from Israel’s corrupt, right-wing leader Bibi Netanyahu. The result is a disaster.
President Hillary Clinton would’ve set Netanyahu straight if he dared take action that would lead to war with Iran, especially if he dragged America into his mess. The irony is that nuclear weapons are supposed to serve as a deterrent to war on the ground. Of course, they are only an effective deterrent if world leaders are too sane to ever use them. That’s not something we can safely say about Iran or the current American leadership.
I get it now. Because Obama said, "What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war ... A war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics," trump decided the only thing he could do was the opposite—start a dumb, rash war based on passion (hurt fee-fees) and politics.
It all makes sense.
I'm sorry, but if Hillary Clinton had the sense of mouse, or displayed any of that famed nose for bullshit, she would have recognized the "intelligence" for what it was (a lot of people did at the time) and opposed the Iraq War. She probably would have had the 2008 Dem nomination if she had. But she *was* a hawk in the Lindsay Graham mold and Bush was doing what she wanted done, evidence be damned. That it came back to bite her is no one's fault but her own.