I’m not a fan of Robert Gates and I could write a pretty savage piece on his record going back to the Reagan administration. But, when he was nominated to replace Donald Rumsfeld, I stuck up for him against that kind of criticism because he was about the best we were going to get from the Bush administration. And he did a pretty decent job of cleaning up Rumsfeld’s mess, to the degree that it could be cleaned up. The truth is, invading and occupying Iraq with no reality-based plan was so irresponsible (evil, basically) that no human can fix the problems it created.
Gates agreed to stay on for a while in the Obama administration. I didn’t much like the fact that he was invited to do so, but I also saw the benefits for a new president in having some bipartisan cover for his decision to pull us out of Iraq and make other about-faces in foreign and military policy.
Gates was a major skeptic about our decision to get involved in Libya, and I’m grateful to him for doing what he could to help us avoid that quagmire.
He’s also said things since he left the Defense Department that incensed me, but I never expected him to be the kind of person I could actually admire. He’s a smart, competent, soldier in the Realist mold of American imperial foreign policy. Most of what you’d be justified in criticizing him for is really a critique of the entire bipartisan class of foreign policy/intelligence bigwigs in this country. In other words, 95% of the problem with Robert Gates is also the problem with Leon Panetta and Ashton Carter.
But, as I’ve been saying, the record of our foreign policy elites is so bad that people don’t make a distinction between the Panettas and Scowcrofts and the Cheneys and Wolfowitzes. None of them are much trusted at the moment, which is why Trump can attack Gates with impunity and get the better of the argument.
I understood this when Trump attacked McCain, but it’s taking people who live within the power structure of Washington a long time to realize that they have lost their credibility and that this is the precise reason why Trump has rolled over them for over a year now.
I understand the appeal of “we’re not winning any more” and the attendant criticism of persons involved in our foreign policy (left and right). But I really want someone to ask Trump what “winning” looks like — in Afghanistan, in Syria, in Iraq … anywhere in the world. Yes, we can “win” in Grenada, but we cut and ran in Lebanon. So what’s the vision of winning? The world has changed since WWII and we have solutions to end conflict (like Koren) and not surrenders.
This doesn’t compute, for right wingers. It never has — it’s a legitimate, profound mental block, like (the obvious, frequently made comparison) degenerate gamblers who can’t walk away from the tables at Vegas casinos and just get deeper in the hole.
People use fancy terms like “cognitive dissonance” but the Trump phenomenon is stripping away some of that politesse so we can just say it’s what it actually is: profound stupidness. But we saw it after Vietnam; during Grenada; during the first Gulf War, etc. etc.
They just can’t get their heads around the fact that the American military cannot just “go in there” and arbitrarily change whatever geopolitical element we don’t like. They don’t get it and never will — they keep thinking we were internally sabotaged or hobbled somehow in each instance and that it would have worked except for “the left” preventing it.
It’s deeply pathological, yes, but mostly it’s just stupid. They will not learn the David and Goliath/”schoolyard bully” lesson. They won’t understand how we create the terrorists. They won’t get any of it. When they said we’d be “welcomed” into Iraq (and Bush said there “wouldn’t be any casualties”) they really believe it.
Yep. It’s all about bluster and beating up on liberals. That’s my personal experience anyway.
Even I’d like to see a little less concern about collateral damage. I think it’s gotten to the point that it’s actually undermining the success of operations. We’re so careful things the uncertainty lasts longer making people angrier than they might be if there were more damage but for a shorter duration. I’m not saying glass the desert, but I think somewhat of a rebalance is in order for best results. This also isn’t intended as a magic bullet.
If you withdraw the US from all multinational and bilateral defense pacts, renounce militarism, reduce the armed forces to, say, 100,000 total personnel, station all of them inside the continental US, then ‘collateral damage’ ceases to be a problem at all.
They’re foreigners, after all.
Yes this makes sense because the only alternative to intervening in Iraq and Libya is withdrawing everywhere.
Not.
Anything less is half-measures, and just setting up the next imperialist disaster.
Um, recalibrate your snark detector. Notice who you’re replying to.
That said, we would probably be better off if we did withdraw everywhere. Power corrupts, as they say, and it corrupts the US. Net, our foreign intervention have been a negative since the Korean War. Bosnia and Libya don’t make up for Vietnam, Cambodia, and Iraq. As long as we have a globe-spanning military, it seems inevitable it will be used to produce real horrors. Given the dysfunction in our internal politics, I don’t think we’re able to restrain ourselves from the catastrophic interventions.
Well, there are so many operations in play at any given time that it’s impossible to determine what effect concern about collateral damage has on mission success. I doubt there’s any data on this.
We do need to accept that there will always be collateral damage when we engage in these kinds of wars with constraints on the intelligence available. The concern raised, however, puts pressure on the military to at least check the boxes so they avoid bombing a wedding party, hospital, or troops from a country you aren’t, technically, fighting.
And, even so, mistakes will happen.
If I were to just reply to your headline, I would say that it’s a statement only true in the primaries, not in the general election. When we’re specifically talking about Washington insider types that he attacks, I agree.
But Trump has no filter and no ability to differentiate between those types and others. He doesn’t attack Washington insiders because he has some sophisticated foreign policy critique. He attacks because that’s his personality.
And that’s why your headline is wrong in the general: he loses the pissing matches when he pisses on the Khans, Curiel, the pastor just a few days ago, etc. He can’t help himself.
You write:
Yeah, but…
If there was a pissing match rating system…a win or loss equals a certain amount of points up or down…the ones he loses are low point matches and the ones he wins are high point matches. He’s on top of the league right now. Way on top. And…bet on it…if he gets his hooks into Hillary Clinton it’s not going to be pretty.
I believe that he can indeed “help himself.” In point of fact…look at his climb…he is “helping himself” with just about every jab and jibe. It’s an act, barath, not stupidity or lack of self-control. He knows exactly what he is doing. His opponents’ repeated mistake of mistaking his game for simple, uncontrolled anger fueled by narcissistic stupidity is the single most important reason why he has had the unbelievably successful run that he has experienced so far.
Watch him. He is far more dangerous than you believe.
AG
AG, I often don’t know what you’re talking about. But this time I do. Trump is a con. He has conned the press, the American people, his supporters, and the people who run against him.
It’s all about “the show.” It’s legerdemain. He shows you this sparkly over here while he picks your pocket. There is nothing he cares about more than conning people.
Look at Friday’s show in DC. He conned TV to cover his big statement about birth certificate bullshit, and then instead trotted out a batch of retired military folks to give him some cred and to publicize his new, huge, successful hotel… and then took 26 seconds to make his “announcement.” And left the press so dumbstruck about the con that they could even address is when they saw it. Instead they kept talking about birtherism rather than how they got so hookwinked — yet again!
Yup.
AG
Happy birthday, BooMan. Thanks for what you do.
Libya is a quagmire? For who?
I confess that I did not pay very much attention to Libya between the Lockerbie bombing and the Ghaddafi ouster so I do not know how things were in Libya then. And I confess that I pay scant attention to what is going on there now. Aside from the politics of BENGHAZI nobody in the United States gives two shits about Libya.
I need someone to explain the quagmire or even how the Libyan intervention has worked out so terribly.
http://www.meforum.org/5686/libya-descent-into-chaos
I still don’t see any quagmire for the United States.
Gates (and Biden) opposed intervention in Libya because there were no American interests at stake (Gates) and because there were political risks for no political gain (Biden). Clinton argued for intervention because the British and French had interests at stake and they needed American help. Obama made the call.
It doesn’t matter to the Americans whether Ghaddafi had stomped all over his revolution or whether Libya slid into anarchy. It didn’t matter when Gates opposed intervention and it does not matter today.
I still don’t see any quagmire for the United States.
Gates (and Biden) opposed intervention in Libya because there were no American interests at stake (Gates) and because there were political risks for no political gain (Biden). Clinton argued for intervention because the British and French had interests at stake and they needed American help. Obama made the call.
It doesn’t matter to the Americans whether Ghaddafi had stomped all over his revolution or whether Libya slid into anarchy. It didn’t matter when Gates opposed intervention and it does not matter today.
There have been problems with Libya, where we intervened, but they’re small in comparison with the problems in Syria or Yemen, where we didn’t. Libya has political divisions, but no civil war, while both Syria and Yemen have nasty ongoing civil wars. Also, avowedly terrorist groups (Daesh and Al Qaeda) control large sections of Syria and Yemen, but only a couple neighborhoods in one city in Libya.
There are tens of thousands of US troops there to this day. Just like Iraq.
Because as long as the oil is still there, they’re still there.
American imperialism never changes.
“Tens of thousands,” really? Libya may not have been the best decision, but the truth is being extended a bit further than it needs to be here.
Look, foreigners don’t have agency. Imperialists want you to think otherwise… but they don’t.
If something bad happens, it was started by the US, at the behest of the oil companies, and the intelligence communities. Sometimes the Mossad, too, but evil in this world generally comes out of a basement in Langley and/or a corner office in lower Manhattan.
Is the oil still there there? Then the troops are still there. There have to be US troops there. I don’t have to prove it, it’s axiomatic.
I sympathize with snarkily calling out a certain reflexive “if things are fucked up, the US did it” attitude that surfaces on this blog. However, with Libya, you are barking up the wrong tree. The place actually is in chaos such as did not exist in the Khaddafi era (not to say Khaddafi was a good guy).
The Khaddafi era ended before the US intervened. The country was engaged in a bloody civil war. This is what Davis is talking about with “foreigners don’t have agency”.
A lot of the criticism of the Libyan intervention assumes the status quo ante of the Khaddafi era but that situation was no longer on the table. Doesn’t mean the intervention was a good idea but Libya was in bad shape regardless.
The correct progressive line, when Qaddafi’s ungrateful people were incited to turn on him, was to support the man who had stood up to Western petro-Zionist imperialism for decades, spending blood and treasure from the Western Sahara to occupied Palestine on stopping US-led aggression.
Our forbears had the courage to go and fight for the Republic in Spain. Why was there no new Lincoln Brigage in Tripoli?
“petro-Zionist”
Lincoln Brigade fight for Qaddafi
It’s actually sort of clever snark.
Your candidate won the nomination; why are you still here? Working off the clock?
Gates is an intrinsic and trusted part of the military-industrial complex. That op-ed wasn’t about influencing the Moron-Americans who are planning to vote for Trump. It was about signaling to the press corpse to cut the shit and stop with the pro-Trump bias. I’m sure that wasn’t the only such signal sent on Friday, but it was the most prominent one.
And the compliant press corpse has dutifully returned to calling out Trumps lies and craziness in the last two days. Funny how that works.
Gates is an intrinsic and trusted part of the military-industrial complex. That op-ed wasn’t about influencing the Moron-Americans who are planning to vote for Trump. It was about signaling to the press corpse to cut the shit and stop with the pro-Trump bias. I’m sure that wasn’t the only such signal sent on Friday, but it was the most prominent one.
And the compliant press corpse has dutifully returned to calling out Trumps lies and craziness in the last two days. Funny how that works.
I hope your use of corpse is intentional. Kinda clever.
It was pretty commonly used during the first Bush term. As usual, they suddenly remembered how to ask probing questions when a Democrat took over.
“I understood this when Trump attacked McCain, but it’s taking people who live within the power structure of Washington a long time to realize that they have lost their credibility and that this is the precise reason why Trump has rolled over them for over a year now.”
Absolutely. 100% right. But it is worse than this.
In a way the steady hand argument Clinton is making is also creating an establishment versus outsider contrast.
That contrast isn’t a good one for Clinton on the Middle East. The more she trots out generals and establishment figures, the more she associates herself with failure.
And the Clinton people just don’t understand this.
I talked to Jake Sullivan about this last November at length. And Sullivan is one of the good guys. But good Christ he had no explanation for Clinton’s no fly zone, and he REALLY didn’t understand the suspicion people have with establishment Washington.
So Trump can argue – simultaneously – that Clinton was wrong to support the Iraq War – AND that she is weak.
Hopefully he makes a bunch of stupid Benghazi arguments. Because he can win the FP argument.
If generals and establishment figures were certain to undermine the public’s support for a POTUS candidate, Trump would not be pursuing and campaigning on the support and endorsements he has gained from his own set of generals and other military leaders.
Trump could only win the FP argument if the public is not confronted with the fact that Trump wants to jack up Defense spending huuuugely, and if the public is not confronted with the fact that the only way Trump could execute his policies and philosophies about Muslims, torture, anti-terrorist strategies, confiscations of Middle Eastern oil fields, etc., he would have to entangle us much more deeply in even more counterproductive military misadventures.
One, most of these figures are retired so the impression is “these guys from when things WORKED say things DON’T WORK now” and two a number of the high profile guys subscribe to Clash of Civilizations which is a very different approach than the current and can say they were forced out because of it. Brave truth tellers shown the door the by fools.
But that’s all bullshit.
So why would you want to forward Trump’s bullshit without calling it bullshit?
:/ forwarding it?
If you dont understand how its supposed to play you’re going to blindsided and caught flat footed. I dont see how I forwarded a damn thing. Not taking his attacks seriously is what got us into this mess in the first place.
I disagree with the suggestion that we and the Clinton campaign have failed to take Trump’s campaign seriously.
Hillary’s got a pretty damn good campaign rapid response team, and the candidate herself has been forthright in offering direct statements, but they are often buried in the onslaught of Trump-following media which often control the news cycle and who forward narratives which are destructive to Clinton’s campaign.
I would say what got us in this place is a failure to understand the suspicion people have about the foreign policy establishment as Booman rightly points out.
They really don’t get it as you suggest.
It’s why the steady hand argument is so limited. Of how much value is that if the result is Iraq, Libya and a desire to get more involved in Syria?
Clinton’s embrace of a no fly zone in Syria was really a significant gaffe.
Yes, This. The same is true of “respected” domestic policy people as well. They screwed up so badly in recovering after the financial meltdown (austerity was absolutely loony as was the refusal to do progressive taxation to pull off inflationary pressures).
Gates did two very good things as Secretary of Defense. He made the bigoted generals know that Barack Obama was the legitimately elected commander-in-chief and that they would obey his orders. Period. If you did not understand that that was what the cashiering of Stanley McChrystal and the humiliation by demotion of David Petraeus was about, you missed one of the key moments of leadership in Obama’s entire Presidency. That was the first thing that Gates did for the country.
The second was to ensure that the end of don’t-ask-don’t-tell was properly socialized into the force structure of the armed forces. Some other Republican general could have gone all “Onward Christian Soldiers” on this issue.
Gates put country over party. These days you can say that about few Republicans. Even the ones backing Hillary’s Presidency are betting on their national security views lasting long enough until the Republican Party finishes its post-Trump reconstruction.
Quibble- Obamacare was a progressive-tax funded program of redistribution in addition to a program to expand health care access.
One has to go through a lot of offsetting details to get to that case.
One of the details was the “Cadillac health care tax” intended to tax back gold-plated CEO health care. But it in fact hit union health care plans that are not so gold-plated hard enough to be a political problem.
In fact, the whole austerity charade was the result of Democrats like Kent Conrad not wanting to raise taxes or eliminate tax subsidies for corporations (or fossil fuel interests).
When do you think austerity began as a political objective? From 2009-2010 or after the Republicans took over the House?
Of course, the Cadillac Tax has not been implemented to date and may never be. And despite the fact that it hits some union contracts it’s still largely targeting high earners to pay for services for lower earners.
In addition to Obamacare, Obama actually did make the tax code more progressive by raising taxes on the wealthy. He also cut Social Security taxes for the first 6 years, which also makes the tax code more progressive. So don’t complain he didn’t make the tax code more progressive, because he actually did.
Don’t forget that Bill Clinton also made the tax code more progressive, and Hillary has proposed more progressive taxes, and will do it if we elect her with a Democratic Congress.
Would be interesting to check the Pond archives from July 18, 2015 to July 25 to see how many here claimed that Trump’s McCain comment would do him in, hurt him, or not effect him. Don’t recall that many were in the “not effect him” group. (And comments after 7/25 don’t count because by then there were enough responses in the public domain to read which way it would go.)
Trump wins pissing matches because he takes imprudent risks. And this is where a double standard for him and most other politicians has come into existence. When his imprudent risky calls pan out to be wrong, he pays no price. IOW if he craps out, he doesn’t lose his stake. If his risky call is correct, he gets double the usual payoff on the bet.
OTOH, in actual governance, Trump has never been in a position to make calls of significance. And those that have and get it dreadfully wrong don’t seem to pay any personal price for that either even if they don’t have any high stakes calls that they got right to balance the equation. Sure wish the US electorate would reward more of those that get it right on the tough high stakes calls and punish their opposites. As it is, ordinary voters seem to be weighing how much worse an egocentric dimwit would do compared to all the bad ideas and bad decisions made by those in office during this century.
“egocentric dimwit”
Gosh, the Trump campaign is so very sincere about putting the birther issue behind their candidate:
https://mediamatters.org/video/2016/09/18/meet-press-trump-surrogate-says-there-otherness-president-
obama/213169
On Meet The Press, Trump Surrogate Says “There Is An Otherness” To President Obama
Alex Castellanos: The Real Question About Obama Is Not Where He Was Born But “Has He Considered Himself More Of A Globalist Than An American?”
Video MEDIA MATTERS STAFF
http://crooksandliars.com/2016/09/chris-christie-loses-it-after-jake-tapper
Chris Christie Doubles Down On Trump’s Birther Lies
By David
“…The New Jersey governor added the false suggestion that Hillary Clinton “also injected” the birtherism into her 2008 campaign “in a very quiet but direct way.”
“So, the birther issue is a done issue,” he insisted. “Donald Trump has said it’s a done issue now.”
“Just as a point of fact,” Tapper replied, “Donald Trump did not accept when Barack Obama released his birth certificate in 2011. He kept up this whole birther thing until Friday, that’s five years.”
“That’s just not true,” Christie shot back. “It’s just not true that he kept it up for five years.”
“Sure he did,” Tapper stated.
“It’s just not true,” Christie continued.
“It is true,” the CNN host said.
“No, Jake,” Christie opined. “It wasn’t like he was talking about it on a regular basis until then. And when the issue was raised, he made very clear the other day what he position is.”
“Okay,” Tapper concluded wearily.”
http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/296510-trump-campaign-manager-claims-clinton-
campaign
September 18, 2016, 10:22 am
Top Trump aide repeats claim that Clinton campaign started ‘birther’ movement
By Jessie Hellmann
“Donald Trump’s campaign manager on Sunday pointed to Hillary Clinton for launching the theory that President Obama was not born in the United States.
“This started with Hillary Clinton’s campaign…,” Kellyanne Conway said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” — a claim has been deemed false by numerous fact-checkers…”
It’s important that the press and the public do not submit to the 24/7 explicitly racist gaslighting which the Trump campaign continues to try to put over on the public. It’s reprehensible and unacceptable.
Glenn G:
Edward Snowden —
Check out the Inglis question/answer video. A mystery how Inglis advanced in and retired from government service without losing ordinary abilities to recognize facts and use logical reasoning.
Glenn G’s Intercept article
Seems to be an issue of reporting versus the editorial board.
They don’t care about all this. The hope is just to keep POC away from this election. It’s all so ugly, dirty, messy. If the Trump campaign can make a “who gives a shit” attitude among POC and young people, then they win.
And the harder the press pushes, the more they lie and make it ugly. And yell: “rigged, unfair, biased” etc. They are always victims of the press. A wonderful position to be in. Remember “fair and balanced”? Hmmmmmm. The sensible folks are boxed in now.
They may be trying with POC, but I don’t think they’re having much success. They are succeeding with young people. I honestly don’t know what to do when the media can get the populace to see the most honest presidential candidate of recent times as the dishonest one, and an A grade charity as demonstrating profound corruption. It’s like the media can just pull strings and the puppets dance, even left-wingers who should know better.
Trump is having success with Hispanics. Basically turning them off from voting. He only has to keep up the dirty until early October when it may be too late to register. And as for African Americans, even Obama is pleading to get them out to vote (like they voted for him). Look at Florida story today: Trump keeping hold of the white vote and others basically disinterested. I live in NM and as of this morning even it is in play, supposedly. Ugh!
The choices we have are just Oh So Terrible!
#Trump/Pence 2016
The Telegraph — hyperbolic headline – Angela Merkel damaged as German far-Right surges in Berlin elections
Guess it would kill a UK publication to state that the Berlin Greens and Left Party were the big winners.
It might kill THAT one.
Oh my, The Telegraph. When I lived in England, I alternated between The Guardian and The Independent, but every once in a blue moon I would get one of the right wing tabloids like The Telegraph. I guess an analogy is to imagine the Manchester Union Leader being a national newspaper available as easily as USA Today.
Not a comment on Marie3 but on the photo in the linked article. The guy on the left hand side of the photo is wearing a T-shirt with the words, “Wir sind das Volk”, German for “We are the people,” but “people” in a ethno-nationalist sense. Turks and Syrians need not apply. This is the sort of sentiment we see prominently among Trump followers. It’s intriguing that we see this sort of ethno-nationalism described as “far right” when it has to do with Germany, but when we see it among Trumpistas, unless the folks involved are wearing white sheets, it gets put down to “frustration with the political establishment” or maybe, just maybe “racial resentment”.