Can anything get any worse for
the survival of the Trump administration? Former far-right “Freedom Caucus”
congressman and Donald Trump’s “acting” chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, just
steps right up to the mike and announces that “everybody” colludes with foreign
government to damage political opponents, so “get over it.” This all a part of
the playbook of what CNN commentator SE Cupp called the administration’s
“DNA”—“Deny, Normalize, Attack,” and after having first denied a “quid pro
quo,” Mulvaney’s press conference statement fits right in the “normalize” mode.
Well, this might surprise him, given the far-right’s frequent resort to
ridiculous conspiracy theories, but not “everybody” does it, just Trump and his
demon familiars. Everyone else knows (save for Trump’s deliberately uninformed
“base”) that it is against the law and the Constitution to seek foreign
assistance to aid in re-election campaigns; that is why two Russian-born Ukrainians
associated with Rudy Giuliani are in jail right now, as Giuliani should be as a
private citizen committing campaign-related crimes.
Even Gordon Sondland, Trump’s
hand-picked ambassador to the European Union, seems to realize that there is a difference
between right and wrong--or at least when it pertained to the actions of people other than himself. To explain his own actions, he claims he was used more by Giuliani
than by Trump. But,
regardless of what happens with the impeachment inquiry, Donald Trump and his
familiars continue to supply garbage load after garbage load of material for
future use in 2020 Democratic campaign ads to remind voters what is at stake,
unless he is removed from office first or feels so “unjustly” put-upon he decides
it is better to resign and pretend that he was the victim of a “deep state” and
“fake news” conspiracy.
Even what Trump calls “good” news
is anything but. We won’t know for now what exactly Trump told Turkish
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on that “fateful” telephone call—apparently he
learned a “lesson” of some sort when he released that “rough” transcript of his
call to the Ukrainian president—but we have learned that as usual Trump was
unprepared, uninformed and relied on his “gut,” which by the looks of things is
not good (what Trump looks like without a shirt on is already nauseating
enough).
One suspects that Erdogan
“interpreted” Trump’s call much as Saddam Hussein interpreted U.S. Ambassador
to Iraq April Glaspie’s discussion with him before he decided to invade Kuwait.
In an article in Foreign Policy Magazine,
Stephen Walt wrote that Saddam accused the U.S. of having “malign” designs
against Iraq, and accused Kuwait and other countries having the same. He
implied that he might have to take “action” if things did not change. Walt
writes that Galaspie’s
very first point in response is to thank him for the opportunity to
discuss these matters directly, and she then says that “President (George H.W.)
Bush, too, wants friendship.” Her next point is to tell Saddam that “the
President had instructed her to broaden and deepen our relations with Iraq,”
and she reminds Saddam that though “some circles” might oppose that policy,
“the U.S. administration is instructed by the President.” And then she adds
that “what is important is that the President has very recently reaffirmed his
desire for a better relationship” and he has shown that desire by opposing some
sanctions bills…addam is clearly aggrieved, and most of Glaspie’s responses are
attempts to mollify him. Nowhere in this cable is there evidence of a clear
deterrent warning, or an unambiguous statement of an American security
guarantee to Kuwait. She reminds Saddam
that we have concerns about his intentions — which was clearly not news to
Saddam — but there’s not even a hint from her of what Washington would do if he
seized Kuwait.
Even Glaspie’s statement that President Bush is deeply interested in
peace and stability in the Gulf can be read as something of a green light. If the president says he wants closer
relations with Iraq but doesn’t want war in the Gulf, might Saddam have seen
that as suggesting that the United States wasn’t about to fight to preserve
Kuwaiti sovereignty? Remember: Saddam wasn’t intending to fight a major war
against Kuwait; he was just planning a coup de main. Based on Glaspie’s remarks, he might easily
have concluded that Washignton would ultimately acquiesce-however reluctantly —
to his fait accompli.
In short, I think it is clear from the cable that the United States did
unwittingly give a green light to Saddam, and certainly no more than a barely
flickering yellow light. Glaspie
certainly didn’t make it clear to him what would happen if he used force
against Kuwait. This is a case of policy
failure but not deterrence failure, in short, because deterrence wasn’t tried
in this case…he Glaspie meeting reveals that U.S. leaders were concerned about
about Saddam’s intentions, and the U.S. government tried to reassure him that
we were friendly so that he won’t do something precipitous. What was needed,
however, was a clear and explicit statement that an attack on Kuwait would be
met with an American military response. Glaspie never uttered such a statement,
and we all know what happened next.
In much the same way as Bush
never instructed Glaspie to issue a threat of retaliation against Iraq if
Saddam invaded Kuwait, so to we can believe that what Erdogan heard from Trump
was that the latter “understood” his grievances and did not explicitly threaten
retaliation if Turkey attacked the Kurds, the erstwhile U.S. allies in the
fight against ISIS. But it may have been even worse. Bush was virtually alone
in his administration favoring “friendship” with Saddam Hussein, and this
“friendship” was no longer tenable when he invaded Kuwait. Trump, on the other
hand, apparently never saw any “upside” to supporting the Kurds, and we can
easily suspect that even a “rough” transcript of his phone call with his
Turkish counterpart would show that his understanding of cause and effect was
that of a naïve child. He likely said, “go ahead.” His juvenile responses to
Sen. Lindsey Graham and others who were horrified by what he did, and his
denigration of the Kurds, and the idiocy of his claim that he “defeated” ISIS
in “one day”—only to lose it all in just “one day”—shows that Trump failed to
think things out, as if he ever does.
As usual when confronted with
near universal condemnation of his lunatic actions, Trump is belatedly trying
to claim he didn’t say what we all know he very probably did say to Erdogan,
while still trying to “justify” it by denigrating our allies and defending our
enemies. Trump refuses to compromise on any domestic issue with Democrats, he
is willing to give away the store to our enemies, because he is congenitally
incapable of negotiating on any terms save his own; with foreign governments
who won’t buy into the “brand” he is selling, he just packs up his toys and
goes home, leaving behind a disaster zone for U.S. interests. Let’s face it:
Trump is an idiot; he can call himself “a very stable genius” every minute of
every day for the rest of his life, and all that would prove is that he is the
exact opposite. There is mental illness called Anosognosia, which is the
impairment of the ability to perceive one’s own mental problem, a “lack of
insight” or “lack of awareness” of what they say or do that appears abnormal to
others. The sufferer thinks there is nothing wrong with themselves or their
thinking when everyone else can clearly see that there is.
The so-called “adults” in the
“house”—Mike Pence, who willingly discredits his “Christian” beliefs by either
telling lies or avoiding telling the truth, and Mike Pompeo, who just lies for
his boss period—proved to be incapable of undoing the damage, holding an
emergency meeting with Erdogan in which he just laughed at them and agreed to a
five-day “ceasefire” which would allow him to set in stone what were his
intentions all along, which was to establish a 20-mile “security zone” on the
Turkish/Syrian border after nine days in which his armed forces killed as many
Kurds as possible and freed a few ISIS prisoners in the process.
If this is what Trump means by
keeping his “campaign promises,” then maybe this country would be better off if
he didn’t keep any of them—his “base” be damned for the phony,
make-America-stupid-again “patriots” that they are.
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