So I take it Trump has backed off from his position that South Korea and Japan should get their own nukes?
Who could have known this issue is so complex?
Some foreign policy experts on Twitter were saying that Trump’s policy is identical to W’s, just re-branded with a new name.
W. gave us the first nuclear test, so we know how well that works.
Shorter Trump: You have to be an idiot to think a Military response to North Korea. We should always think of negotiations and sanctions first.
President Donald Trump’s administration would prefer "to take action short of armed conflict”.
So we’ve finally reached the point where what once was taken for granted as mere sanity…
Now passes for breaking news.
Please. Make. It. Stop.
Tweet bluffs. Spray tan. Glare menacingly.
At this point, I’m assuming that the American military is operating without the “informed consent” of this regime. Because, as irasdad said, at any other time, what McM. said would just be considered par for the course. Here’s the problem:
The regime has NO POLICY PRESCRIPTIONS FOR ANYTHING. Therefore, the military is taking matters into their own hands and dictating what will happen. It’s one thing to listen to the generals and another to let them control the entirety of foreign relations.
It’s times like this that it becomes reasonably clear that President Obama pushed back against some of the military options presented to him because he understood, from a civilian perspective, it was bad foreign policy and would engender a bad outcome.
For hammers, everything looks like a nail.
The absence of immediate knee-jerk madness is quite praiseworthy and presidential, dontcha think? On the other hand, so is sending beautiful cruise missiles and MOABs.
Kelly, McMaster, and now Big Orange, out there. A co-ordinated team making a co-ordinated statement, to wit:
“We don’t know what the (bleep) we’re doing!”
But they think they know what they’re doing. They think that a strong show of force is what’s necessary, that Pres. Obama was leading from behind.
This is a new day and America will now lead in front. We’ll probably use up a lot of our arsenal (i.e. using a MOAB to kill 36 Islamists??!).Unfortunately, with no State Dept. there’s no policy to address what comes next after the last bomb has been dropped.
Force without diplomacy gets A LOT of people killed. Seoul will probably take the brunt of any madness that comes about. Shame. This is happening as S.K. just removed their first female President so now they have to deal with installing a new leader as well.
When McMasters says "trump prefers. . . " he really means “I” prefer and donald will go along willingly with him because he has the big brain he’s always seeking for advice.
As it often happens in old-school sitcoms and occasionally even in real life, the North Koreans attempted to assert themselves injudiciously and it blew up, so to speak, in their faces. And usually at least in the sitcoms with Strict but Wise and Loving Parents it’s enough to let the embarrassment be its own lesson. No need to start a major regional war with the potential for millions of deaths over it. Junior has learned a valuable lesson without all that. And I think that’s where we ought to leave it, with everyone pointing and laughing at North Korea and going HA HA LOSERS. And maybe we can all live another day.
OK. It’s Sunday morning and this headline is either;
- A 50 Tomahawks Mother of All Bombs “message” on Orange Pustule Hitler’s head, or,
- An Onion headline.
If we tell 45 that his member is big, will he stop scaring the crap out of us?
It is my fervent wish and hope that McMaster speaks in an “alpha” enough tone for American Fuhrer that he gets listened to. Also that McMaster is clever enough to couch his “advice” to make it seem like it’s mere nudging, or mere logical outgrowth of AF’s “bold and wise strategy.”
No. He’ll find a reason to scare the crap out of us. That’s what he does.
What you and Jared Kushner would prefer is not what the American Nikita Khrushchev wants, General. You serve at that madman’s wildest desires.
Great point re generals. Xcripts of JFK showed he was boss, was not about to let generals do whatever they damned well pleased.
That said, we now know that LeMay tried to push the Soviets into launching an attactk on us so he would provoke JFK into giving his B52’s the codes to go past the turnaround points and drop their loads. LeMay would have his bombers fly past the turnaround points in the hope that the Rooskies would launch a missile or two. “Dr Strangelove” was not too far fetched.
I recall the late Galbraith saying how shocked he was about how casual generals were about nuclear warfare. It had become a colloquial term as in, “Well, if we could nuke them…” as if it were just something routine – just another, but little bigger bomb.
I’m showing my age, but way back in the early 1950s, my late uncle, who happened to be a merchant ship captain and WW2 vet, saying that the biggest danger to us all will be some tinpot dictator who gets hold of what we called “The Bomb” at the time. Now he probably wasn’t any more prescient than may others at the time, but it was an astute insight for me at my young age.
This is what happens when we elect dyslexic Presidents with no intellectual curiosity. TR said, “Speak softly and carry a big stick.” Le Shitgibbon a la Orange read, "Speak nonsense and schwing a big dick."
The Trump Doctrine is the same as the Bush Doctrine. To teach someone a lesson bomb some place else so that you can steal their oil. We should bomb Iran to teach North Korea, China, Russia and Syria a lesson. They have good oil.
America needs a war every 3-5 years so that our military can use and test their weapons, develop design specifications for the next generation of weapons systems and buy new ones from the military-industrial complex and create jobs.