Day: December 7, 2017

Closing Thought–07Dec17

Do Americans Remember World War One?

The quick answer would be…NO!

We are in the middle of the 100 year remembrance of that war….the Great War….The War To End All Wars….and very little mention of the war is ever uttered here in the US…..a few far between documentaries on the war but for the most part few remember the war at all.

But that may change a bit.

There is is in the process a monument to commemorate the war to be complete in 2018……

There are no World War I veterans left alive in the US, but a century after the conflict that reshaped the world, ground has broken on a new monument in Washington, DC, to the 4.5 million Americans who served.

The US entered the war in 1917 – almost three years after European powers had been bludgeoning themselves to near destruction. Some 53,000 US soldiers were killed in combat, according to the defence department, while 64,000 died off the battlefield, including deaths from the influenza epidemic. Another 200,000 were wounded.

At the time, few Americans wanted to join a conflict largely thought to be pointless and irrelevant. Despite its profound impact on what became the “American Century”, World War I remains a marginal war for many in the US.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42160971

Me?  I try to keep it on the minds of my readers for I am fascinated with the war itself……how the same tactics were used over and ovber and the loss of so many lives is just staggering to me.

I am glad to see that there is someone that remembers that war and the devastating toll it took on human life…..

I must go down for the evening..,..hope all will have a good and restful night and will see everyone tomorrow on this very page…..Peace and good night…..chuq

An Alternative Strategy

From time to time I offer up a “what if”….a historic look at events that might have changed the world if a different course had been charted…..this is a fine piece written about the 9/11 attacks and the aftermath…..it makes a bunch of excellent points to consider…..

It is a lengthy article but well worth the time to read…….

You’ve heard the platitude that hindsight is 20/20. It’s true enough and, though I’ve been a regular skeptic about what policymakers used to call the Global War on Terror, it’s always easier to poke holes in the past than to say what you would have done. My conservative father was the first to ask me what exactly I would have suggested on September 12, 2001, and he’s pressed me to write this article for years. The supposed rub is this: under the pressure of that attack and the burden of presidential responsibility, even “liberals” — like me, I guess — would have made much the same decisions as George W. Bush and company.

Many readers may cringe at the thought, but former National Security Adviser and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has to be taken seriously when she suggests that anyone in the White House on 9/11 would inevitably have seen the world through the lens of the Bush administration. I’ve long argued that just about every Bush-era policy that followed 9/11 was an unqualified disaster. Nevertheless, it remains important to ponder the weight piled upon a president in the wake of unprecedented terror attacks. What would you have done? What follows is my best crack at that thorny question, 16 years after the fact, and with the accumulated experiences of combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/42724-what-if-an-alternative-strategy-for-9-12-2001

I spend a lot of time second guessing our foreign policy establishment…..to me they have not made a good or an accurate decision in 25 years…..and a continuation of an unwinnable war is just what I am referring to……not a good decision in decades.

“A Day In Infamy”

Today is 07 December 2017……76 years ago the Japanese attack Pear Harbor and landed the US smack dab in the middle of World War Two.

Yes, Irene this is going to be a history lesson…like it or not……

It was whaling, sugar and pineapples that first brought Pearl Harbor to America’s attention.

At the whaling industry’s peak in 1846, nearly 800 whaling vessels made port calls in the Hawaiian Islands, mostly U.S.-flagged ships, according to Navy history and heritage command. The Navy was ordered to send regular patrols around the islands to protect the commercial whaling ships from pirates or rival nations.

The impact on Hawaii, an exotic land where natives farmed and fished for centuries, was dramatic. Ship repair facilities cropped up, and Honolulu and Lahaina became bustling towns catering to hungry, thirsty and sometimes rowdy sailors. Bakeries, laundries, carpenter shops, blacksmiths and boarding houses sprang up overnight, according to a Navy history command account of those years.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2016/12/03/pearl-harbor-history/94039096/

Take a few moments out of your day to remember all those that fought and died for this country……they will forever br “The Greatest Generation”.

How To Start Your Own Intel Agency

What should a president do….one like Fearless Fosdick……when he does not like the info that is given to him by his intel agencies?

Well if you are a moron and we have such a creature at the helm of government then you start your own intel agency….a private one that reports to the president only and skews the info to his world view…..

About now a well read visitor is asking what he Hell I am talking about…..szo let me enlighten the masses……

The Trump administration is considering a set of proposals developed by Blackwater founder Erik Prince and a retired CIA officer — with assistance from Oliver North, a key figure in the Iran-Contra scandal — to provide CIA Director Mike Pompeo and the White House with a global, private spy network that would circumvent official U.S. intelligence agencies, according to several current and former U.S. intelligence officials and others familiar with the proposals. The sources say the plans have been pitched to the White House as a means of countering “deep state” enemies in the intelligence community seeking to undermine Donald Trump’s presidency.

The creation of such a program raises the possibility that the effort would be used to create an intelligence apparatus to justify the Trump administration’s political agenda.

“Pompeo can’t trust the CIA bureaucracy, so we need to create this thing that reports just directly to him,” said a former senior U.S. intelligence official with firsthand knowledge of the proposals, in describing White House discussions. “It is a direct-action arm, totally off the books,” this person said, meaning the intelligence collected would not be shared with the rest of the CIA or the larger intelligence community. “The whole point is this is supposed to report to the president and Pompeo directly.”

https://theintercept.com/2017/12/04/trump-white-house-weighing-plans-for-private-spies-to-counter-deep-state-enemies/

Prince the founder of the mercenaries some call Blackwater….basically a thug employing thugs to go around the world killing and maiming…..

Prince is a butt buddy to Trump and will do whatever he takes to do whatever Trump wants him to do or say…..

A few other thoughts about this circumvention of law…..

https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/trumps-ominous-plans-private-cia

Is there something wrong with the intel agencies we have now that we need another that answers only to one person and not the rule of law?

But we have a president that thinks the rule of law does not apply to him anyway.

What Price Jerusalem?

Yesterday I asked the question….will the Palestine issue be solved?

I guess I got my answer.

Just when no one thought that Fearless Fosdick could get any stupider….he does what NO other president would do knowing the repercussions that it could cause throughout the Arab/Muslim world…..

Defying dire, worldwide warnings, President Trump on Wednesday broke with decades of US and international policy by recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Despite urgent appeals from Arab and European leaders and the risk of anti-American protests and violence, Trump declared that he was ending an approach that for decades has failed to advance the prospects for peace, per the AP. He also for the first time personally endorsed the concept of a “two-state solution” for Israel and the Palestinians, provided both sides agree to it. “I have determined that it is time to officially recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel,” he said in a White House address, calling it “overdue” and in the best interests of the United States.

He said recognition acknowledged the “obvious”—that Jerusalem is the seat of Israel’s government despite the disputed status that is one of the key elements in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “This is nothing more or less than the recognition of reality,” he said. Trump also directed the State Department to begin the process of moving the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem as required by US law. Officials said, however, that the move will take years to complete. Trump maintained that his decision would not compromise the city’s geographic and political borders, which will still be determined by Israel and the Palestinians.

Only a stupid slow witted moron would do this (BTW his followers that like this are even slower and more dim witted than their idol)……

What would possess an American president to do such a controversial thing?

In a politically motivated move the repercussions of which will incite anger throughout the world, Donald Trump the elected President of the United States has made a dangerous decision, so stupidly inept as to be unbelievable, that could ignite the entire Middle East, including Turkey, Africa and Europe.

In a quid pro quo for favours rendered, this amateur president has made a decision that marks him out as the weakest incumbent of the White House in American history. Some would describe him as moronic. Whatever the correct description, he has laid the fire for a conflagration that could impact millions.

The only ones to benefit, apart from the campaign donor, being the hard-Right Likud Party of Binyamin Netanyahu who is presently under investigation for corruption regarding, inter alia, alleged kickbacks on multimillion dollar purchases of submarines from German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

To have the world’s most powerful state under the control of an apparent misogynistic, moronic madman is the most frightening prospect for everyone in the international community from Europe through the Middle East to Africa, Asia and the Americas.

Any American president who is willing to betray both Christianity and Islam by selling Jerusalem, the Holy City, for ‘thirty pieces of silver’ in  order to swing an election, should not be trusted further in high office. He is too dangerous and should be removed by democratic process, in the interests not just of America but the world. 

This person deserves neither respect or support…he has set the world on fire to repay a campaign debt…..even Christians in Palestine think he is a murderous thug like his handlers to Israelis.

This will not bode well for American interests in the region.

But it should do what he wanted it to do…….divert the media from all the investigation stuff……how pathetic……screw an entire people because of your petty problems.

Will Trump Betray His Followers?

(Insert raucous laughter here)

He most certainly will if he signs this new tax bill….but none of the followers cares?

It amazes me that after all is said and done Trump has been lying to his supporters and they love it.   He continues to feed them crap and they eat it up and applaud his every word.

When will these followers and supporters realize they are being played like a cheap flute?

The answer to that question is simple.

They will never call him out as long as he continues to feed their prejudices and fears…but more on this situation…..

Among the stranger features of the 2016 election campaign was the success of Donald Trump, a creature of globalization, as an America First savior of the white working class. A candidate who amassed billions of dollars by playing globalization for all it was worth — he manufactured clothes and accessories bearing his name in low-wage economies and invested in corporations eager to outsource — won over millions of voters by promising to keep jobs here in the US.

Admittedly, only a third of his voters earned less than $50,000 a year and cultural and racial resentment, not just economic grievances, drove many of them to Trump. Still, in an ever more economically unequal America, his populist economic message resonated. It helped him win the presidency by peeling off white working-class votes in key regions, particularly the industrial Midwest. Now he’s stuck with his populist narrative, and here’s the problem for him: it’s not likely to work — not given the economic realities of this planet, not for long anyway.

https://www.rawstory.com/2017/11/heres-how-trump-will-ultimately-betray-his-own-voters-and-hes-already-begun/

These are the same people that do not want a liberal judge but will support a conserv one…..they do not want a judge with political agenda but support one that they approve of…..in short a hypocritical stand on their part….but when asked they are not hypocrites…..funny how that works with American politics.

The hypocrites will stand by their man….to the bitter end….and make NO mistake it will be bitter in the end.

(I could not resist this cartoon that was in my Twitter feed)

Congress Asked For An Assessment

Congress recently masked for an assessment of AQ and other related terror groups…..and this is the report that CNA gave to the US Congress….makes for interesting reading…..

In 2015, the U.S. Congress decided it was time to take a public accounting of the U.S. government’s war against al-Qaeda. In that year’s National Defense Authorization Act, Congress mandated:

The Secretary of Defense, in coordination with the Secretary of State and the Director of National Intelligence, shall provide for the conduct of an independent assessment of the effectiveness of the United States’ efforts to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat Al-Qaeda … since September 11, 2001.

At CNA, we recently completed that independent assessment and concluded that the current U.S. strategy will not defeat al-Qaeda, and that a renewed approach is needed. After 16 years of war against this group, at a cost of over a trillion dollars and thousands of U.S. military members killed, how can this be?

https://warontherocks.com/2017/11/congress-asked-assessment-war-al-qaeda-heres-told/

The problem now is that Trump is ceding all control over the situation to Russia…..

Six months after President Donald Trump ordered an airstrike against a Syrian government airbase, an act his aides said would give the U.S. renewed leverage across the Middle East, he is increasingly a bystander as Russian President Vladimir Putin takes the lead in shaping postwar Syria.

On Wednesday, Putin will host the presidents of Iran and Turkey in the resort city of Sochi — one of several Russian-brokered meetings the U.S. will not attend as the Syrian conflict winds down.

https://www.politico.com/story/2017/11/21/trump-putin-russia-syria-257407

With the US froze out of these proceedings and Trump’s desire for an open ended approach to Syria can disaster be far behind?

The Trump administration is expanding its goals in Syria beyond routing the Islamic State to include a political settlement of the country’s civil war, a daunting and potentially open-ended commitment that could draw the United States into conflict with both Syria and Iran.

With forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad and his Russian and Iranian allies now bearing down on the last militant-controlled towns, the defeat of the Islamic State in Syria could be imminent — along with an end to the U.S. justification for being there.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-moves-toward-open-ended-presence-in-syria-after-islamic-state-is-routed/2017/11/22/1cd36c92-ce13-11e7-a1a3-0d1e45a6de3d_story.html

None of this will sit well with the US interests in the region…..(more to come on this situation)……absolutely NO one with any foreign policy chops thinks that Fearless Fosdick knows what he is doing……

Albert Einstein is almost certainly not to be credited with the cliched definition of insanity as “doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” But what the quote lacks in prestigious origin (not to mention medical precision), it makes up for in discouraging accuracy as a descriptor of Washington’s post-Cold War approach to foreign affairs, particularly post-9/11.

By this measure, American veterans and the public more broadly are far more sensible, as a new poll commissioned by RealClearPolitics (RCP) and the Charles Koch Institute (CKI) reveals. The survey finds significant agreement between these two groups in three key areas, which taken together show a cross-partisan movement toward realism and restraint that demands a hearing in the halls of power.

(the Charles Koch Institute not a reliable source IMO)

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2017/12/05/veterans_and_the_public_agree_us_foreign_policy_isnt_working_112727.html

Every day this person proves that he has NO grasp of international relations and how it effects this country….as if he really cares…..