John Chuckman
EXPANSION OF COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN RUSSIA INSIDER
“Trump Will Not Accomplish Anything Unless the Republican Party Is Destroyed
“Trumpism is not the problem, establishment conservatism is”
"Trump Will Not Accomplish Anything..."
For an accurate headline, you should have stopped right there.
Looking for excuses, such as the old-line Republican Party standing in Trump’s way, suggests that the author simply has not studied his subject.
Trump has proved himself a loudmouth who gets little done, loud and uncouth, uncouth because he calls everyone names, setting shabby standards for diplomacy and politics and ordinary civility.
And it’s his cowardice that has put the foreign policy of the United States into the hands of truly vicious men. He was so frightened of losing his office - in fact, something that was always an extremely remote possibility, for, as we saw in the Clinton case, impeachment is an arduous, resource-eating matter, and it is undertaken only with great reluctance - that he horse-traded for some security, and part of the price he paid was appointing vicious men unfit to hold their posts - Bolton, Pompeo, and Abrams.
He is genuinely ignorant about many important matters, but what else would you expect from someone who never, literally never, reads anything? Or ever listens to anyone, even the best experts?
He has started a major trade war with China, and he hasn't the least idea what he is doing. He's an illiterate in economics.
Only the other day, his public words ignored basic economic truth. He does not understand that it is the citizens of the country imposing tariffs who mainly end up paying them in the increased cost of goods.
Everything in Walmart and Costco and in every general store is going to cost more, hitting his political base hard in their pocketbooks.
And earlier, when he talked about winning trade wars and how trade wars were good things, he resembled Groucho Marx giving a lecture in economics.
His economic "policy” is to "beggar his neighbor," and that just doesn't work in the end. Trade is not, as they say, a zero-sum game where everything one party loses, the other party gains, and vice-versa, but Trump sure thinks that is how it works. It’s the untutored thinking of a 14-year old.
And it’s no different in anything else he’s done. Everything he touches becomes blighted.
International affairs? He’s pretty much made a fool of himself on North Korea, blunder after blunder, and in the end, the North is never going to give up all its nuclear weapons, and if they were to give up any, they’d need to receive something handsome in return. Trump offers squat and barks orders, or rather he lets Bolton and Pompeo bark the orders while he takes another stroll in the garden with Kim.
The North Koreans see their nuclear weapons as a matter of survival, and they very much are. That’s a far truer claim for North Korea than it is for Israel, which enjoys support from America’s arsenal, rather than being threatened by it. After all, the United States, during the Korean War, conducted a brutal campaign of three years of carpet-bombing which snuffed-out one-fifth of the country’s entire population, and that’s a Pentagon estimate.
America keeps a sizable, well-equipped army on the North’s border, it runs regular, large-scale, intimidating war games with the South, and it has nuclear weapons within reach at Okinawa, Japan and at Guam. Yet not the least meaningful concession was offered to North Korea in exchange for harshly demanded disarmament. Talk about arrogance and having no idea of what negotiation is?
Withdrawal from Syria? One phone call from Tel Aviv, and the idea was never heard again. And just the fact that Trump so abruptly brought the matter up, without having consulted before opening his mouth, says a great deal about him.
A coup in Venezuela, a place that is none of his business? He set a Keystone Cops example of how to do it. It would be hilarious, if it weren’t for all the Venezuelans he’s making miserable with extreme sanctions and dirty tricks like turning off their electricity.
The Wall, his red-meat offering to his political base? He hasn’t achieved anything. And Mexico was going to pay for it? The man makes very lame jokes.
Tear-up a perfectly good international treaty with Iran, a country every expert and major leader said was scrupulously following the terms? Impose harsh new sanctions on Iran for having done absolutely nothing?
And, by the way, just as in the case of Venezuela, sanctions hurt ordinary people, never leaders and elites. That’s just the way they work, always, but Trump doesn’t understand how they work any more than he understands how tariffs work.
Send in the Navy and Air Force to threaten Iran still further with war?
None of it makes an ounce of sense. He’s only doing these things because Netanyahu wants them done. So, America carries on before the entire world like an asylum full of madmen because one shabby Israeli politician, who just happens regularly to kill and steal, says it should?
There is absolutely not one genuine American national interest involved in this entire dumb show. But there sure are Trump interests, as in his building a huge war chest for the 2020 election, money from various extremely wealthy American partisans of Israel and from America’s numerous Israel Lobbies. Self before country, that’s Trump. Ego before thinking or ethics.
He doggedly served the same special interest again when he gave away what was not his to give, in Syria and in Jerusalem. In doing so, he had America breaking international laws and protocols and treaties.
Oh, he has used a lot of pretty foul language about migrants and refugees and Muslims, setting such a fine example. He likely views his ugly words as some kind of compensation offered to his political base after having failed to get anywhere with their beloved wall.
The man is close to a total failure. And from past tax returns recently obtained and analyzed by The New York Times, failure has long been a major activity for Trump. Years of being deeply in debt.
Just like lying, something he does constantly, right down to petty matters like his score when he plays golf, something recently reported by several sources who should know.
