Thursday, October 17, 2019

The Trump administration just keeps piling on the garbage


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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