Watching the World Cup match between England and Colombia yesterday, in which eight yellow cards were issued for brutal fouls, I remarked to my eight-year old son that the two sides really did not like each other and that I was somewhat surprised by the clear hostility of the Colombian team (which received six of the warnings) and of their fans. I said that I’d expect Colombia to feel this way about America but it was Argentina that held a major beef with the English.
Having opened my mouth, I was then obligated to explain the history of American intervention in Latin America and of the Falklands War. And however imperfect my retelling of history may have been, I could at least give a passable explanation because I have passable understanding of history and the way it carries forward to the present to explain the behavior we see in the world. I think it’s reasonable to expect that a president of the United States have a similar degree of knowledge, and that has indeed been the case until the dawning of the 21st Century.
George W. Bush was famously and catastrophically incurious and ignorant about the world–a fault made all the less forgivable for the fact that his father had served as the ambassador to the United Nations, as an envoy to China, as the director of the CIA, as vice-president with a national security portfolio, and as president during the collapse of the USSR. What he knew about Afghanistan, North Korea, Iran, and Iraq could have fit on a postcard, yet he ordered the invasion of two of those countries and labeled three of them the “Axis-of-Evil.”
Still, he knew much more about world affairs than Donald Trump, and he also was self-aware of his own ignorance.
Donald Trump clearly doesn’t care what other countries think of the USA, but he also doesn’t know what they think or why. This has been clear for a while but we now have another appalling demonstration. It starts with a simple question:
As a meeting last August in the Oval Office to discuss sanctions on Venezuela was concluding, President Donald Trump turned to his top aides and asked an unsettling question: With a fast unraveling Venezuela threatening regional security, why can’t the U.S. just simply invade the troubled country?
The suggestion stunned those present at the meeting, including U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and national security adviser H.R. McMaster, both of whom have since left the administration.
Of course, the United States could invade Venezuela if it wanted to, just as it invaded the Dominican Republic, Cuba (Bay of Pigs), Grenada, and Panama within the lifetime of our president. There are reasons of diplomacy why that would not be a great idea in our present circumstances. To put it plainly, American interventionism in Latin America is almost universally resented in the region and no politician would lightly invite our troops to come back in, even to deal with a troublesome neighbor. In response to his initial query, this was explained to the president.
In an exchange that lasted around five minutes, McMaster and others took turns explaining to Trump how military action could backfire and risk losing hard-won support among Latin American governments to punish President Nicolas Maduro for taking Venezuela down the path of dictatorship, according to the official. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the discussions.
But Trump pushed back. Although he gave no indication he was about to order up military plans, he pointed to what he considered past cases of successful gunboat diplomacy in the region, according to the official, like the invasions of Panama and Grenada in the 1980s.
The idea, despite his aides’ best attempts to shoot it down, would nonetheless persist in the president’s head.
In fact, the president could not help himself and the very next day he mused about an invasion in public. He called it “a military option.” This backfired immediately:
For Maduro, who has long claimed that the U.S. has military designs on Venezuela and its vast oil reserves, Trump’s bellicose talk provided the unpopular leader with an immediate if short-lived boost as he was trying to escape blame for widespread food shortages and hyperinflation. Within days of the president’s talk of a military option, Maduro filled the streets of Caracas with loyalists to condemn “Emperor” Trump’s belligerence, ordered up nationwide military exercises and threatened with arrest opponents he said were plotting his overthrow with the U.S.
“Mind your own business and solve your own problems, Mr. Trump!” thundered Nicolas Maduro, the president’s son, at the government-stacked constituent assembly. “If Venezuela were attacked, the rifles will arrive in New York, Mr. Trump,” the younger Maduro said. “We will take the White House.”
Even some of the staunchest U.S. allies were begrudgingly forced to side with Maduro in condemning Trump’s saber rattling. Santos, a big backer of U.S. attempts to isolate Maduro, said an invasion would have zero support in the region.
But Trump could not be convinced that the other leaders in the region would not welcome an American invasion of Venezuela.
Then in September, on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly, Trump discussed it again, this time at greater length, in a private dinner with leaders from four Latin American allies that included Santos, the same three people said and Politico reported in February.
The U.S. official said Trump was specifically briefed not to raise the issue and told it wouldn’t play well, but the first thing the president said at the dinner was, “My staff told me not to say this.” Trump then went around asking each leader if they were sure they didn’t want a military solution, according to the official, who added that each leader told Trump in clear terms they were sure.
When even this clear rejection was still not enough, Trump’s then National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster eventually had to “pull aside the president and walk him through the dangers of an invasion.”
Whenever you are pondering the advisability of an invasion, military considerations are obviously the foremost concern. You want to know what resources will be required, how many casualties you’ll likely suffer, and what you’re supposed to do once you win and become responsible for law and order and the basic needs of the conquered people. George W. Bush forgot to worry about the last part with consequences that are still costing tens of thousands of people their lives each year.
But if you look at the broader picture of what you’re trying to accomplish, diplomacy becomes paramount. If regional powers encourage and support your effort, the military part may be easier to accomplish, but without their support the political and humanitarian parts will be imperiled. If important leaders in the region, including allies, do not support the invasion, that should be a giant blinking stop sign.
A prepared president would not need to be told the basic political dynamics of Latin America, the Middle East, or any other major region of the world. And if they were told by experts in those fields, they would listen.
Bush’s ignorance and staffing decisions made him susceptible to ideologues who were willing to buck the consensus of experts in the furtherance of grandiose, unrealistic, and reckless plans. Trump runs the exact same risks, but he’s more dangerous because he thinks he understands the world but he knows absolutely nothing.
In particular, he has absolutely no feel for how other nations think about the United States. He doesn’t know how South Korea feels about North Korea or Japan, or what it meant to tear up the Trans-Pacific Partnership. He doesn’t know why the Russians were so interested in the success of Brexit, although he certainly jumped in with both feet to lend a hand. He doesn’t understand why the European Union wanted to strengthen their economic relationship with Ukraine or why they so strongly object to the annexation of Crimea. He doesn’t know why the Assad regime is opposed by ISIS or why the Turks don’t want us using the Kurds as proxies in the region. He doesn’t know why the Saudis are so angry with Qatar or that we depend on Qatar for our most important military base in the Middle East.
The general pattern has been so disastrous that it appears to all the world like Trump is deliberately following a Russian-inspired plot to alienate America from its allies, weaken NATO, tear apart the European Union, and drive our troops out of both the Far East and the Middle East. More than anything else, it seems this way because almost all the “errors” are pointed in the same direction of undermining Russia’s adversaries.
But is has to be admitted that Trump routinely makes mistakes that are rooted in his own magical thinking and ignorance. His “wall” with Mexico is one example, while his trade war is another. These actions may please Russia but they’re equally explainable by Trump’s racist and superficial understanding of how things actually work.
All I know for certain is that it’s a problem that my eight-year old has an easier time understanding the fraught history of U.S.-Latin America relations than our president, and if France meets England in the World Cup final, he’ll want to know all about the long and tense relationship between those two countries.
Our president will not.
— for an oracle says ‘that a state will come to an end if governed by a man of brass.’
The Dialogues of Plato
. . . But Reality is immensely complex. So his worldview can’t help but be false on that basis alone.
But that’s compounded by the fact that even within his cartoons, many individual elements are themselves objectively false, even beyond the inherent falsity required by the cartoonish over-simplification.
We can all see it’s a problem.
The difference is eight year olds are typically willing to listen and learn, whereas listening only to himself is hardwired in our Child in Chief’s DNA, and that there isn’t anything for him to learn from anybody because he’s like a smart person. In essence, Trump is the very definition of a fool.
Just imagine the embarrassment of those four Latin American allies, sitting with Trump as he goes against his own advisers, thinking he’s smarter when its obvious to everyone but him just how ignorant he is. And that this is the American President.
I tend to think of Trump in similar terms, as the fool who is the fool because he has no clue he’s the fool. But he’s also a tool of the Koch brothers and their ilk, which makes him terrifying.
Martin was right that his best bet would have been to reach out to the middle and find ways of governing in those areas where consensus is possible. But no one around him was steering in that direction and it’s not clear that he could have survived the effort. Short term, he’s needed allies guarding his flanks.
There’s this old limerick my grandparents used to say, which ended with “he who knows not, and knows not that he knows not, is a fool; shun him!” That is the definition of a fool, and it certainly describes Trump.
The sad thing (for America) with Trump is, he had an opportunity to break the GOP from its slide towards idiocy, given the hold he had on its followers. Right after the election, a few friends and even some family basically said that Trump would “surprise” us and be the outsider who would come in and not be beholden to the left/right drawn battle lines and boundaries, and shake things up for the better, since this is how he sold himself. They thought that since he said things like making health care better and cheaper, fixing and expanding social security to make it more generous, repairing and rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure, that maybe he was sincere and he would use this leverage to work with democrats to craft legislation that would accomplish some of these things with a mix of mostly democratic and some “moderate” (relatively speaking) republican votes.
I was skeptical, because of Trump’s open racism, his crippling narcissism that drove him to do things not out of conviction but more or less spite; his low character and morals, and his general ignorance. And given Trump’s laziness, it would be much easier for him to embrace the far right, racist elements of the GOP, where he would find a ready made basis to adopt and govern from that fit his own social worldview, rather than build his own framework,since he was intellectually incapable of crafting one himself, and lacked the conviction to even seriously attempt it. Unfortunately I was right.
Looking back after 18 months of Trump its clear the man doesn’t have the temperament, intellect or empathy to do anything truly positive from the heart, for his own family, let alone the country.
I love to leverage US imperialist power in exchange for a few million dollars in the president’s pocket, only for him to declare the metaphorical bankruptcy of said US imperialist power.
Take for example Greenwald talking about having a “debate” about NATO. He and many others aren’t all that concerned about getting rid of NATO sand what happens after, so long as NATO is eliminated. The real debate on the left should be, you know, how we move beyond NATO and WTO for the good of the world, not a Russian agent who just breaks shit for fascist benefit.
As a retired soldier who spent several years sitting in the Fulda Gap waiting for the Soviet tanks to come roaring at us, I believe that NATO is no longer useful. Their expansion up to Russia’s borders, in contravention of the promises they gave, was a serious strategic mistake and provocation. I agree with you, though, that we need to think about what should replace it before we dismantle it. I’m not persuaded that we need anything, but that needs some serious analysis. Unfortunately, the warmongers are in control and are intent on starting a hot war, probably with Iran, possibly with Russia. No good will come from this.
Invasion of Venezuela feels like a remake of the Bay of Pigs with added scenes from Black Hawk Down.
Nice country you had there, too bad you effed it all up.
The progression from Reagan to Quayle to Bush II to Palin to Trump completely confirms that white Republicans don’t prize intellect in any way, shape, or form. Their 1000% commitment to willful ignorance (and proud of it) was bound to reach Trump’s level of juvenality. And there’s no reason to ensure it will stop at that level.
We’ve ( the country collectively) let this happen. We overestimated our capabilities (collectively). We’ve underestimated the level of irrational evil in our fellow citizens and especially in the Republican cult and leadership.
Consequently, we’ve made ourselves an unreliable ally whose judgment (collectively) and commitment to alliances and international norms can’t be trusted.
Torture, waterboarding, rendition/detention/black sites, unregulated crashing financial markets, unwarranted destabilizing invasions, turning our backs on treaties – all of those things happened under Bush II who was also an ignorant buffoon.
Trump is an even more ignorant buffoon and he brings trade wars more racist immigration policies, more treaties/agreements being abrogated and serial sexual assaulting into the mix to turn up the stupid and evil to eleven.
Unless a longer term plan starts shaping up to fix the structural problems in our governing framework this trend will be both recurring and intensifying.
. . . give it a shot:
Who actually did write that? (Yes, someone actually did! Hard to believe, I know! But it’s not made-up!)
Well, you could click the link and see the rest of Simon Maloy’s takedown.
Or here’s a hint: the “author” is evidently not content with his mere 8th place finish in atrios’s Wanker of the Decade pantheon, and this is his entry in going for the, er, “gold” in the current decade. (My estimation: he’s doomed to disappointment yet again. Wankerific though the column be, it’s also superlatively mediocre, not the stuff of decadal “first”-places.)
Yeah, Richard Cohen. He’s been concern trolling before that was even a thing. He’s been doing it for decades.
I don’t know what Cohen thinks “having a proper respect for right wing demagoguery” is supposed to do for democrats, other than keep them from challenging the right based on what is popular with the voters, in ways they have been reluctant to do. Having democrats not fight back really serves the wants of the cohort he ultimately supports, and it ain’t democrats. Which is why Cohen still has a platform.
If anything, democrats have had way too much respect for right wing demagoguery, since in many cases they have followed the Cohen strategy of not voicing or promoting policies and/or positions out of fear of agitating the right, and got attacked for it anyway. This lesson has been validated time and again.
If there was ever a time they really can’t afford to not learn it, its now.
This is spot-on, and prompts me to repeat my Exhibit A (and longstanding pet peeve with my allies): conceding defeat in the face of Gingrich et al.’s propaganda campaign to demonize “liberal” by slithering away (rather than mount a defense) to pop up over there calling themselves “progressives” instead.
I know, historical “Progressive Movement” yadda yadda. But I defy you to define a significant, substantive set of policies/principles for “liberals” vs. “progressives”, and a discriminant function to distinguish them. I’m convinced any differences simply reflect shifts in circumstances between the time before liberals dropped “liberal” like a hot potato and the time after they started labeling themselves “progressive” instead. Which seems to me a near-perfect example of “way too much respect for right wing demagoguery”.
To be fair, Dems have not only that rightwing demagoguery, but also the Worse-Than-Useless Corporate Media’s mainstreaming of it, to contend with.
Serendipitously, as is his genius, atrios sums it up succinctly:
It’s really frustrating how the democrats routinely cower in the face of right wing attacks, somehow thinking, against all logic, reason and recent history, that if they maintain a low profile, counterintuitively, it will depress the far right and rally their own base.
I hope they stand up for Ocasio-Cortez and push back instead of running from charges of socialism sure to come. Although judging by the initial icy responses to her victory from Pelosi and Schumer and others in party leadership, they seem to be setting the stage to throw her under the bus in the face of coming right wing attacks to endear themselves to the big donors and attract right wing voters, which will never happen. What they’ll end up doing is depressing the base at a time when they need it fired up as never before.
Just read Tom Perez calling Ocasio-Perez “the future of the party.” We will see the whether he is sincere, and the extent to which it is the view of party leadership.
I’m aware of some “anti-incivility” comments from Dems in official leadership positions. I’m not aware of any such specifically directed at Ocasio-Cortez. Welcome linked enlightenment if that’s wrong.
But the quote above is verifiable/falsifiable. Will they “throw her under the bus”? I’ll be very surprised (for one cynical reason: she looks a shoo-in to hold the seat for Dems!). (But I’ve been wrong before! Trump is president*!)
Hell, I’d rather have my horse running things. He generally does what I ask, he’s kind to little children, he’s got a placid and friendly disposition, and he’s a gelding so he doesn’t feel the need to show what a tough-guy stud he is.
President Stupid won election partly BECAUSE of his willful ignorance and lack of understanding of, well everything, but foreign affairs particularly.
As I’ve said before, much of the Republican base, and far too many progressives, see diplomacy as needless bureaucratic complexity and foolishness getting in the way of “simple” solutions to international problems.
Also I sat through a Blood and Soil “presentation” at our neighborhood’s 4th of July breakfast it became starkly clear that the Orange Shit Gibbon is a perfect reflection of the attitudes and beliefs held by Economically Anxious Working Class Abandoned By Democrats (TM). The reek of the Manifest Destiny and White Man’s Burden zombies is overpowering.
Is it any wonder the rest of the world is seizing on the monumental opportunity to reshape a century’s long geopolitical landscape?
Jeez, that sounds terrible. What did people in your neighborhood say when you spoke out against that Blood and Soil rhetoric?
Well, it wasn’t an out of proud Stephen Miller speech, but, without transcribing it, it was full of the dog whistle language the dominant religion/cultural here uses when proclaiming America’s divine origins and holy purpose for Gods chosen people.
And of course it was given in a Honoring the Veterans! ceremony.
SO not only was I outnumbered and would have been required to do the rebuttal in front of an active duty service member in uniform surrounded by veterans…such liberal snowflake “rudeness” would have just hardened their beliefs.
Veterans claim to have fought to preserve the American way of life which most definitely includes the 1st Amendment. Decent people can fall into the trap of playing the role of the “Good Germans” of the mid-1930’s.
In order to successfully fight against this sexist white supremacist militaristic menace of a movement, I’m going to have to be more willing to make myself uncomfortable and to make others uncomfortable.
This seems flawed to me: “…such liberal snowflake “rudeness” would have just hardened their beliefs.”
Those Americans who would have their publicly expressed racist beliefs hardened by dissent expressed honorably and thoughtfully in whatever form we choose to express it are not persuadable at the moment anyway.
A much greater danger than hardening someone’s racism by dissenting is our silence being understood by others as agreement. If racist statements aren’t responded to in a group setting, universal agreement is actually a completely reasonable and intuitive conclusion for people to draw.
. . . And moccasins?
I confessed here to a somewhat similar choice in a somewhat analogous situation. (If anything, I was in a stronger position to speak out than Trent described, as the other half-dozen or so of us there outnumbered the one avowed Trump voter — who I didn’t mention at that link was also the host in his own home.)
So, yeah, we need to be willing to speak up and confront, including sometimes outside our comfort zone. This doesn’t extend, imo, to that being always the only “correct” course of action. I wasn’t at Trent’s breakfast, so I don’t have an opinion on it. (The description of a lot of jingoism-couched-as-patriotism rhetoric at a formal, public July 4 event is completely unsurprising to me, though.)
I wasn’t at Trent’s neighborhood event, either. It may have been difficult to impossible to have his dissent well heard. My point remains, particularly at this point in our history: silence is most reasonably seen as implied consent.
One of the strengths of this horrible political movement is their shamelessness. Using a salute to veterans as an opportunity to blow a racist dogwhistle is a very disrespectful thing to do in the name of veterans, a body of citizens who are disproportionately non-white. Acolytes of the conservative movement do it nonetheless, and when we are silent we are complicit in their claimed definition of “patriotism”.
If I were to state my dissent to a loud racist dogwhistle during a salute to our military, it isn’t me who would have acted out most uncivilly in that scenario.
Being outnumbered makes it more difficult. In the wake of Kiddie Koncentration Kamps, we clearly have to be willing to do more difficult things if we want to lead the way to a better America.
Acceptance is poison right now.
“….such liberal snowflake ‘rudeness’ would have just hardened their beliefs.”
No offense, and I wasn’t there, so far be it from me to judge whether challenging them at that time and place would have been the right thing to do.
Many of these people are hardwired into Fox and other right wing sources. They literally hear nothing else. In some cases, given how its said, challenging these people with the truth instead of the jingoistic American exceptionalism they only know, may be enlightening. Or maybe not.
But I believe that the risk of “hardening their beliefs” is a risk we may have to start taking, for lack of any other way to reach them, IF reaching them is something that has to be done. I qualify the “IF” only because I am not convinced we need them to win anyway, and maybe just focusing on motivating our own — a majority, is all we need.
Heading into 2018, in my own little end of the world, I think the most effective strategy is mobilize our own voters. I’ve been and will continue to canvas to try and do this.
The state Republican voter here are complacent and the state party is even indulging itself in infighting and “special interest” purges that aren’t playing well with the public.
The last thing I want to do is given them a rally point and mobilize what is likely going to be a significant conservative undervote this year.
One of the shocks to Bush’s 2004 re-election was how could so much protest the RNC in New York that year covered so closely happen and he STILL win. The answer is each guy with a Buck Fush T-Shirt shown on TV put 5 Republican voters in the booths in Ohio, Florida, etc.
I wrote that here a year ago. Thread derailed into a discussion on what is and isn’t the fault of the US. My point was that if you look at what the US does, it is rather predictable. When the US start lamenting the undemocratic nature of a government, that doesn’t mean that the US just found out, but that groundwork is placed for conflict.
Note that while Trump may be alone in wanting to send in the marines, there appear to be bipartisan consensus on squeezing their economy until it screams.
I’m so glad to see someone else finally admit that the fact that Trump’s actions seem to benefit Russia IS NOT PROOF that Trump is following Putin’s orders. I consider the probability very low, and am still waiting for some evidence that the DNC server was actually hacked.There must be some reason why, after all this time, they have never released any evidence, and “protecting sources and methods” is unconvincing. Anyway, this is some welcome clear thinking.
oui will consistently support the peculiar services you are attempting to provide on this thread to the deeply kleptocratic actions of Trump and Putin and their governments. That’s how oui rolls these days.
We’ll see what the rest of our community makes of this hogwash which comes straight from the Fox News/Breitbart cult.