Thursday, October 31, 2019

THE "I KNOW YOU ARE BUT WHAT AM I?" DEFENSE

The Plan: The Trump administration will "claim that anyone who did not directly witness Trump committing any crimes will be dismissed as repeating “hearsay” and those who did witness it will be banned from testifying using executive privilege."
______________________
______________________

So, in essence, they're going with "I know you are, but what am I?" defense.

Just a few steps from the "Neener, Neener" defense.

Sigh ...

- Mark


Wednesday, October 30, 2019

SIGN OF THE TIMES (UNFORTUNATELY)

Image may contain: one or more people and text
- Mark

GOP LOYALTIES ARE WITH A DRAFT DODGER, AND NOT WITH THE U.S. MILITARY

Image may contain: one or more people
__________________

Unfortunately, smearing military combat veterans is old hat for the GOP ...
__________________

__________________

- Mark

I AGREE

Image may contain: 1 person, smiling, text

- Mark

WHY THE U.S. SHOULD FEAR A FALTERING CHINA ... FOREIGN AFFAIRS

This is why I continue to subscribe to the journal Foreign Affairs. One of the better articles I've read in some time; "The United States Should Fear a Faltering China" ...
_______________


The United States Should Fear a Faltering China

Beijing’s Assertiveness Betrays Its Desperation

Xi Jinping during the celebrations for the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China in Beijing, October 2019
Yan Yan Xinhua / eyevine / Redux
The defining geopolitical story of our time is the slow death of U.S. hegemony in favor of a rising China. Harbingers of Beijing’s ascent are everywhere. China’s overseas investments span the globe. The Chinese navy patrols major sea lanes, while the country colonizes the South China Sea in slow motion. And the government cracks down on dissent at home while administering a hefty dose of nationalist propaganda.
Beijing’s newfound assertiveness looks at first glance like the mark of growing power and ambition. But in fact it is nothing of the sort. China’s actions reflect profound unease among the country’s leaders, as they contend with their country’s first sustained economic slowdown in a generation and can discern no end in sight. China’s economic conditions have steadily worsened since the 2008 financial crisis. The country’s growth rate has fallen by half and is likely to plunge further in the years ahead, as debt, foreign protectionism, resource depletion, and rapid aging take their toll. 
China’s economic woes will make it a less competitive rival in the long term but a greater threat to the United States today. When rising powers have suffered such slowdowns in the past, they became more repressive at home and more aggressive abroad. China seems to be headed down just such a path. 

RED FLAGS

In March 2007, at the height of a years-long economic boom, then Premier Wen Jiabao gave an uncharacteristically gloomy press conference. China’s growth model, Wen warned, had become “unsteady, unbalanced, uncoordinated, and unsustainable.” The warning was prescient: in the years since, China’s official gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate has dropped from 15 percent to six percent—the slowest rate in 30 years. The country’s economy is now experiencing its longest deceleration of the post-Mao era. 
A growth rate of six percent could still be considered spectacular. By way of contrast, consider that the U.S. economy has been stuck at a rate of around two percent. But many economists believe that China’s true rate is roughly half the official figure. Moreover, GDP growth does not necessarily translate into greater wealth. If a country spends billions of dollars on infrastructure projects, its GDP will rise. But if those projects consist of bridges to nowhere, the country’s stock of wealth will remain unchanged or even decline. To accumulate wealth, a country needs to increase its productivity—a measure that has actually dropped in China over the last decade. Practically all of China’s GDP growth has resulted from the government’s pumping capital into the economy. Subtract government stimulus spending, some economists argue, and China’s economy may not be growing at all.
Subtract stimulus spending and China’s economy may not be growing at all. 
The signs of unproductive growth are easy to spot. China has built more than 50 ghost cities—sprawling metropolises of empty offices, apartments, malls, and airports. Nationwide, more than 20 percent of homes are vacant. Excess capacity in major industries tops 30 percent: factories sit idle and goods rot in warehouses. Total losses from all this waste are difficult to calculate, but China’s government estimates that it blew at least $6 trillion on “ineffective investment” between 2009 and 2014 alone. China’s debt has quadrupled in absolute size over the last ten years and currently exceeds 300 percent of its GDP. No major country has ever racked up so much debt so fast in peacetime. 
Worse still, assets that once propelled China’s economic ascent are fast turning into liabilities. In the 1990s and early 2000s, the country enjoyed expanding access to foreign markets and technology. China was nearly self-sufficient in food, water, and energy resources, and it had the greatest demographic dividend in history, with eight working-age adults for every citizen aged 65 or older. Now China is losing access to foreign markets and technology. Water has become scarce, and the country is importing more food and energy than any other nation, having decimated its own natural endowments. Thanks to the one-child policy, China is about to experience the worst aging crisis in history, because it will lose 200 million workers and young consumers and gain 300 million seniors in the course of three decades. Any country that has accumulated debt, lost productivity, or aged at anything close to China’s current clip has lost at least one decade to near-zero economic growth. How will China handle the coming slump? 

WE’VE SEEN THIS BEFORE

When fast-growing great powers run out of economic steam, they typically do not mellow out. Rather, they become prickly and aggressive. Rapid growth has fueled their ambitions, raised their citizens’ expectations, and unnerved their rivals. Suddenly, stagnation dashes those ambitions and expectations and gives enemies a chance to pounce. Fearful of unrest, leaders crack down on domestic dissent. They search feverishly for ways to restore steady growth and keep internal opposition and foreign predation at bay. Expansion presents one such opportunity—a chance to seek new sources of wealth, rally the nation around the ruling regime, and ward off rival powers. 
The historical precedents are plentiful. Over the past 150 years, nearly a dozen great powers experienced rapid economic growth followed by long slowdowns. None accepted the new normal quietly. U.S. growth plummeted in the late nineteenth century, and Washington reacted by violently suppressing labor strikes at home while pumping investment and exports into Latin America and East Asia, annexing territory there and building a gigantic navy to protect its far-flung assets. Russia, too, had a late-nineteenth-century slowdown. The tsar responded by consolidating his authority, building the Trans-Siberian Railway, and occupying parts of Korea and Manchuria. Japan and Germany suffered economic crises during the interwar years: both countries turned to authoritarianism and went on rampages to seize resources and smash foreign rivals. France had a postwar boom that fizzled in the 1970s: the French government then tried to reconstitute its economic sphere of influence in Africa, deploying 14,000 troops in its former colonies and embarking on a dozen military interventions there over the next two decades. As recently as 2009, world oil prices collapsed, which led a stagnating Russia to pressure its neighbors to join a regional trade bloc. A few years later, that campaign of coercion spurred Ukraine’s Maidan revolution and Russia’s annexation of Crimea. 
When fast-growing great powers run out of economic steam, they become prickly and aggressive.
The question, then, is not whether a struggling rising power will expand abroad but what form that expansion will take. The answer depends in part on the structure of the global economy. How open are foreign markets? How safe are international trade routes? If circumstances allow it, a slowing great power might be able to rejuvenate its economy through peaceful trade and investment, as Japan tried to do after its postwar economic miracle came to an end in the 1970s. If that path is closed, however, then the country in question may have to push its way into foreign markets or secure critical resources by force—as Japan did in the 1930s. The global economy is more open today than in previous eras, but a global rise in protectionism and the trade war with the United States increasingly threaten China’s access to foreign markets and resources. China’s leaders fear, with good reason, that the era of hyperglobalization that enabled their country’s rise is over. 
The structure of a country’s home economy will further shape its response to a slowdown. The Chinese government owns many of the country’s major firms, and those firms substantially influence the state. For this reason, the government will go to great lengths to shield companies from foreign competition and help them conquer overseas markets when profits dry up at home. A state-led economy like China’s is unlikely to liberalize during a slowdown. Doing so would require eliminating subsidies and protections for state-favored firms, reforms that risk instigating a surge in bankruptcies, unemployment, and popular resentment. Liberalization also could disrupt the crony capitalist networks that the regime depends on for survival. Instead, regimes like China’s usually resort to mercantilist expansion, using money and muscle to carve out exclusive economic zones abroad and divert popular anger toward foreign enemies. The most aggressive expanders of all tend to be authoritarian capitalist states, of which China is clearly a prime example.

TROUBLE AHEAD

China’s recent behavior is a textbook response to economic insecurity. Back in the 1990s and the early years of this century, when the country’s economy was booming, China loosened political controls and announced to the world its “peaceful rise,” to be pursued through economic integration and friendly diplomatic relations. Compare the situation today: labor protests are on the rise, elites have been moving their money and children out of the country en masse, and the government has outlawed the reporting of negative economic news. President Xi Jinping has given multiple internal speeches warning party members of the potential for a Soviet-style collapse. The government has doubled internal security spending over the past decade, creating the most advanced propaganda, censorship, and surveillance systems in history. It has detained one million Uighurs in internment camps and concentrated power in the hands of a dictator for life. State propaganda blames setbacks, such as the 2015 stock market collapse and the 2019 Hong Kong protests, on Western meddling. These are not the actions of a confident superpower. 
China has projected its power abroad throughout this turbulent period—tripling foreign direct investment and quintupling overseas lending in an ambitious attempt to secure markets and resources for Chinese firms. Beijing also has gone out militarily, launching more warships over the past decade than the whole British navy holds and flooded major sea lanes in Asia with hundreds of government vessels and aircraft. It has built military outposts across the South China Sea and frequently resorts to sanctions, ship-ramming, and aerial intercepts in territorial disputes with its neighbors.
If China’s growth slows further in the coming years, as is likely, the Chinese government will probably double down on the repression and aggression of the past decade. When the country’s leaders cannot rely on rapid growth to bolster their domestic legitimacy and international clout, they will be all the more eager to squelch dissent, burnish their nationalist credentials, and boost the economy by any means necessary. Moreover, powerful interest groups—most notably, state-owned enterprises and the military and security services—have developed a vested interest in maintaining China’s current strategy, which funnels money into their coffers. As a result, the government would struggle to extricate itself from foreign entanglements even if it wanted to. 

WASHINGTON’S BALANCING ACT

The danger to the United States and its allies is clear. Rampant espionage, protectionism, a splintered Internet, naval clashes in the East and South China Seas, and a war over Taiwan are only the more obvious risks that a desperate and flailing China will pose. U.S. statecraft will need to contain these risks without causing China to lash out in the process. To that end, Washington will have to deter Chinese aggression, assuage China’s insecurities, and insulate the United States from blowback should deterrence and reassurance fail. The inherent tension among these objectives will make the task a very difficult one. 

Chinese power will gradually mellow. Now, however, is a moment of maximum danger.

Some initiatives could help strike the proper balance. Instead of deterring Chinese expansionism by sailing provocative but vulnerable naval armadas past China’s coastline, for instance, Washington could deploy mobile antiship and surface-to-air missile launchers on allied shores. If the United States joined the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership—and invited China to join, too—Beijing would have the motive and means to reduce its trade-distorting practices without fighting a 1930s-style trade war. China might spurn the offer, but then the treaty would at least strengthen the commitment of its signatories to the free flow of goods, money, and data. In so doing, it would limit the spread of China’s mercantilist and digital authoritarian policies. The United States could supplement this stance by investing more in scientific research and investigations into specific Chinese companies and investors, so that it can maintain technological superiority without banning Chinese investment and immigration into the United States. These moves would not eliminate the root causes of U.S.-Chinese rivalry, but they would protect U.S. interests while avoiding a slide into a cold or hot war. 

Perhaps in a few decades, Chinese power will gradually mellow. Now, however, is a moment of maximum danger, because China is too weak to feel secure or satisfied with its place in the world order but strong enough to destroy it. As China’s economic miracle comes to an end, and Xi’s much-touted Chinese Dream slips away, the United States must contain China’s outbursts with a careful blend of deterrence, reassurance, and damage limitation. Compared to gearing up for a whole-of-society throwdown against a rising superpower, this mission may seem uninspiring. But it would be smarter—and ultimately more effective. 
___________________

- Mark

HOW A STATESMAN SPEAKS, HOW AN ADOLESCENT SPEAKS

Jimmy Kimmel does a mash up of Obama and Trump's speeches after taking out two terrorists. It's the difference between a functioning adult and a narcissistic adolescent.


- Mark

Wednesday, October 23, 2019

THE REPUBLICANS BEER HALL PUTSCH ... WHY IT SHOULD BE PUNISHED

House Republicans engaged in a publicity stunt today and stormed a secure area of the Capitol where a top Pentagon official on Ukraine was testifying. It's worth noting that dozens of Republicans already sit on the panels investigating Ukraine, so their demand to be part of the process was moot (and illegal) to begin with. 

Did I mention that it was publicity stunt? 
_________________
No photo description available.

So, yeah, this was "made for TV" political tantrum that had the same immediate effect as the Beer Hall Putsch orchestrated by Adolf Hitler in 1923. It was more embarrassing than it was effective.

Still, there are two lessons that we should be learned here.

First, these people are as stupid as they are serious.

Second, because of the above, history tells us they will be back.

These idiots need to be punished.

- Mark

THE THE "DEEP STATE" MINDSIGHT DRAWS FROM THE SHALLOW END OF THE POOL

No photo description available.

If you want to read why "deep state" paranoia is hooey, and why we should be concerned about the "shallow state", click here.

- Mark

Tuesday, October 22, 2019

JUST SAYING ...

Image may contain: 6 people, people smiling, text

- Mark

BREAK OUT THE MAPS BECAUSE TRUMP'S A NEO-IMPERIALIST KNAVE

____________________

Donald Trump is a neo-imperialist knave and a geostrategic moron. From MSNBC's article, "Graham and Fox News Expert Showed Trump a Map to Change his Mind About Syria Withdrawal": 

"In the first two years of the administration, current and former officials said Trump so frequently threatened to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq and even the Korean Peninsula that some of his advisers developed a system for talking him down from taking such steps. The effort included showing him visual materials like maps to walk through the reasons why an abrupt withdrawal would be detrimental to U.S. interests ...  
For Syria, the exercises focused on the oil and how it would fall into Iran's hands if the U.S. withdrew ... On Afghanistan, the presentation ... included a map of the country's rare earth minerals, largely used in electronic devices ... 
The goal was to frame the argument in economic terms that Trump was more likely to respond than a purely military strategy ..."

Sigh ... 

- Mark

AND PUTIN SMILES

_____________

This is what Trump's "cut and run" policy brings ...
_____________

- Mark

"NOT OUR PRESIDENT" ... HERE'S WHY

Image may contain: 5 people, people smiling

- Mark

Monday, October 21, 2019

WHAT THE MOM'S OF THE WORLD SAW


- Mark

WHAT THE WORLD SAW


- Mark

THE MOST IMPORTANT DOCUMENT MOST PEOPLE WILL NEVER READ

The "Report of the Select Committee on Intelligence United States Senate on Russian Active Measures Campaigns and Interference in the 2016 U.S. Election, Vol 2: Russia's Use of Social Media"  may be the most important document you ever read, or ignore.



Via Roll Call, we get these observations on the report:
Russians masqueraded as Americans, and used targeted advertising to falsify news articles. The goal was create doubt, not certainty. At the direction of the Kremlin, the goal was to harm Hillary Clinton and to bolster Donald Trump's chances of winning the presidency in 2016.
The committee made clear that Americans themselves need to both wake up and smarten up. Only by being more sophisticated and intelligent social media users will voters truly protect themselves and our elections in the years to come.
The committee reported that a single computer in Russia pushed out hundreds of both pro- and anti-Colin Kaepernick posts virtually simultaneously ... Why rile up Americans on both sides of an emotional racial controversy? It’s “like arming both sides of a civil war” before you have to deal with it yourself, a witness told Senate investigators.  
Using techniques the KGB tried on Soviet citizens during the Cold War, the committee described the hallmarks of the Russian disinformation campaign in 2016, including:  
* Messages to erode Americans’ trust in investigative and political journalists; 
* An emphasis on speed to win the first impression of readers, which is always the most resilient; 
* Topics designed to exploit racial divisions; and 
* A volume so enormous that overwhelmed audiences can no longer discern what’s real from what’s not. 

What makes it all worse is that almost all of the information was in bulk and deceptive, or as one committee witness called it, a “firehose of falsehood.” The goal, again, was to make sure Russia got what it wanted: Donald Trump in the White House.


None of this is new to anyone paying attention. Unfortunately, the people who are not paying attention are the ones being sucked in by Russia's cyber war misinformation campaigns. 

They also won't be reading the report, or this blog. 

- Mark

THE FOX EFFECT*

OK, not all parents or grandparents can be included here, but the message is spot on when it comes to most of Fox's viewers (which includes some of the younger generation too) ...


- Mark

* With apologies to David Brock and Ari Rabin-Havi, who wrote The Fox Effect.

Friday, October 18, 2019

MY RUSSIAN FB FRIENDS HAVE RETURNED ... WELCOME BACK, AND За здоровье!

My Russian friends are back.
______________

A few years ago - specifically, during the 2016 election season - the number of hits that I received on my blog started to surge. I went from an average of 10,000 hits a month to a solid 15,000, then 20,000 and even managed to surpass 40,000 hits one month.

A quick check showed that the new audience was driven by clicks from Russia. Whether the clicks were driven by bots (most likely; I'm not that vain) or by the fact that I was writing a good deal about Russia - specifically, I was writing about Russian intrigue in Crimea, the Trump-Putin connection, or the developments surrounding the Russian Oligarchs - was unimportant. I'm not even interested in total clicks for financial reasons because I don't advertise anything (and ignore all requests to post ads).

As a political scientist my interest in the click surge was watching what was happening in real time as we were also learning how sophisticated the Russian social media and cyberwar game had become.
______________________
______________________

In very simple terms, I was impressed with what the Russians had put in place, and how effective their cyber intrusions had become (I was/am also a little disappointed in how clueless our electorate has become, and how spineless the GOP has become when it comes to Trump and Russia, but those are stories for another day).

Then the Russians virtually disappeared about a year and half ago. To be sure, I stopped posting as much as I normally did, but the disappearance was noticeable in my overall number of hits.

Today, I'm not so much writing about Russia's foreign policies (Putin's getting what he wants), the Russian oligarchs (they're happy-ish) or the Trump-Putin connection (Putin's abusing him like a government mule) as I am writing about Trump's political free fall. And, it would appear, my Russian FB friends are back to monitor the collapse.

At least that's my take on their return.

In any event, I say welcome back. And while I'm not happy watching our great nation being torn apart by our compromised bumbling buffoon of a president, and his Republican sycophants, speaking as a political scientist, За здоровье!


- Mark

ON OUR TWISTED "FREE MARKET" PRINCIPLES

Image may contain: text
- Mark

Wednesday, October 16, 2019

SPEAKER PELOSI CHASTISES TRUMP WHILE HIS SYCOPHANTS COWER NEXT TO HIM

This is good to see. The fact that lawmakers and social media praised Speaker Nancy Pelosi for standing up to yet another one of Trump's tantrums is a good sign too.


- Mark

TRUMP'S LETTER TO TURKEY'S ERDOGAN IS LITERARY VOMIT

I'm not sure what grade level this represents, but Trump's letter to Turkish President Recp Tayyip Erdogan reflects a one-dimensional mind that is both shallow and superficial. This is embarrassing.

______________________

- Mark

TRUMP: KURDS ARE 'NO ANGELS' AND THERE'S LOTS OF SAND OVER THERE

This is turning into a very bad Monty Python skit. From The Hill:
______________
______________

When told that dozens of Kurds had been slaughtered Trump responded with a line that could have been lifted straight out of a Monty Python skit: "They've got a lot of sand over there ... There's a lot of sand that they can play with ..."  



Sigh ...


- Mark

AFTER TRUMP "CUTS AND RUNS" FROM SYRIA THE FALLOUT IS IMMEDIATE ... AND EMBARRASSING

Get ready to do a couple of these ... 

Image result for smh meme gif

The headlines below say it all. The United States has become a laughingstock under Trump ... 
__________________


Read about ISIS gloating by clicking here.

__________________

Read about Russia openly "taunting" the U.S. by clicking here

__________________

Read about Russians "moving in" by clicking here.

__________________

Read about Turkish-backed forces freeing ISIS prisoners by clicking here

- Mark

HOW TO RESPOND TO FB TROLLS WHO DON'T UNDERSTAND THE MESS IN SYRIA

Thinking that this was a smart thing to do, one of my FB friends posted this "not ready for prime time" commentary from conservative radio troll and washed out CIA "analyst" Buck Sexton ... 
_____________________
Image may contain: 1 person, text
_____________________

The ignorance and lack of historical perspective here says as much about my FB friend (who doesn't know squat about the Middle East) as it does about Sexton, so I posted the following ... 
_____________________

FFS, ***, the Syrian civil war is multi-sided civil war fought between Ba'athist groups led by President Assad, along with domestic and foreign allies (i.e. Russia), versus various domestic and foreign forces opposing both the Syrian government and each other in a number of confused combinations.

The roots of the Syrian war run even deeper, though.

There was a drought in Syria from 2006 through 2011 which resulted in mass crop failures, which pushed people into the cities. This made an already bad situation in Syria much worse because 1.5 million refugees from the Iraq War (which was such a brilliant and strategic success for the Bush administration, right?) were already creating socio-economic challenges which the west wanted to turn its back on (we created the Iraq refugee mess, so why not walk away, right?).

What's happening in Syria can also be traced to a wider wave of Arab Spring protests (2011), which was going to take advantage of discontent with the Syrian government, but unfortunately turned into armed conflicts after protests calling for Assad to be removed were violently suppressed.

IGOs have accused virtually all sides involved - the Ba'athist Syrian government, ISIL, opposition rebel groups, Russia, and the U.S.-led coalition - of severe human rights violations and massacres.

Here's the point, ***. You shouldn't be quoting a washed out "security" analyst like Sexton (from the Bush era; tough CV time there for an ideologue) who doesn't speak another language (kind of hard to understand the ME if you don't know another language). The guy is now shilling for conservative talk radio, trying to cover for Trump's stupidity with the Kurds in Syria. The issue is more complicated than simply trying to blame Obama for a mess that Bush's Iraq blunder made worse and - apparently - Trump is going to turn into a complete clusterf**k.

Try again.


_____________________

Message of the day: Push back against Trump's supporters. 

Yes, the ignorance is never ending, but the world was confronted with the same condition in the Dark Ages. The Renaissance, the Reformation and the Enlightenment followed soon after. 

Trust me. It's worth the effort.

- Mark

Tuesday, October 15, 2019

"FOR DICTATORS, TRUMP IS A GIFT THAT KEEPS ON GIVING ..."

"By using his public office for personal gain, Trump has affirmed Putin’s long-held conviction—shared by autocrats the world over—that Americans are just as venal and self-absorbed as they are, just more hypocritical about it."  

"For dictators, Trump is the gift that keeps on giving, a non-stop advertisement for Western self-dealing." 

"Trump’s scorched-earth tactics, casual relationship with truth, and contempt for career public service bear more than a passing resemblance to the playbook that [Roy] Cohn wrote for [Joe] McCarthy [in the 1950s]."



In a few words, under Trump, America's foreign policy has come to resemble what one might expect from a Third World Banana Republic. Read about the precipitous decline of America's place in the foreign policy sun by clicking here.

- Mark

TRUMP'S SHEEP

No photo description available.
- Mark

Monday, October 14, 2019

DONALD TRUMP IS THE PERFECT EXAMPLE OF THE "RICHEST IDIOTS" RISING TO THE TOP

Elites in America can't lose, mostly because the game is rigged in their favor.


From the linked article ...

"Children born in 1940 had a 90% chance of earning more than their parents. For children born in 1984, the odds were 50-50 ... "

"... Students with average SAT results are nearly six times more likely to be admitted to top-tier universities if their parents are alumni."

" ... a Duke University study revealed that 43% of white Harvard students were not admitted on merit."

As if having the system of education rigged in your favor wasn't enough, read how the U.S. tax and income system is also officially rigged to help the super-rich.
___________________
_________________________

This means the super rich are no longer on top because they work harder or are any smarter than the rest of us (not that they ever were). They're increasingly on top because our educational and financial systems are rigged in their favor.

This explains how Donald Trump - who one Wharton professor called "the dumbest goddamn student I ever had" - made it into Wharton (with the help of a family friend) and was able to use our tax code and a team of attorneys to avoid perennial bankruptcy.

So, yeah, you would be on solid ground if you wanted to argue that we're governed by a mafia of mendacity mired in mediocrity, at best.

- Mark

FOX NEWS IN THE TIME OF JESUS


- Mark

SURE, LET'S TALK ABOUT BIDEN ...

Image may contain: 1 person, smiling
________________________
Image may contain: 6 people, people smiling, people standing

- Mark

Thursday, October 10, 2019

TRUMP'S PRESIDENTIAL PORTRAIT UNVEILED

From Chaser.com ...


- Mark

TRUMP'S "GREAT AND UNMATCHED WISDOM" IN SYRIA IS AS BIG A JOKE AS HE IS

No photo description available.

The Atlantic has a nice overview of how wrongheaded Donald Trump's [cough**cough ... Putin's] decision to pull U.S. forces out of Syria is for both the region and America's foreign policy down the road. Here's a snippet.

The abrupt policy decision to seemingly abandon our Kurdish partners could not come at a worse time. The decision was made without consulting U.S. allies or senior U.S. military leadership and threatens to affect future partnerships at precisely the time we need them most, given the war-weariness of the American public coupled with ever more sophisticated enemies determined to come after us.

As the article points out, we are abandoning the very people who were the "backbone" fighting ISIS in Syria but who - without them - Donald Trump could not have declared the complete defeat of ISIS."  How effective were the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) forces? Very.

Over four years, the SDF freed tens of thousands of square miles and millions of people from the grip of ISIS. Throughout the fight, it sustained nearly 11,000 casualties. By comparison, six U.S. service members, as well as two civilians, have been killed in the anti-ISIS campaign. 

In a few words, Trump's decision to leave Syria is a disaster of epoch proportions that will reverberate well beyond Trump's tenure in the White House.
____________________

____________________

Want to read more?

The Atlantic, "Top Military Officers Unload on Trump."

The Atlantic, "Trump's Sickening Betrayal."

Lawfare, "Will Abandoning the Kurds Result in the Mass Release of Islamic State Figher?"

Yahoo!, "Syria Update: Turkey is Blowing the Hell out of It and the Russians Are Cheering."

The Hill, "US soldier in Syria: 'I am ashamed for the first time in my career'."

- Mark