ONE MORE TIME: DONALD TRUMP AGAIN KNOWS NOT, OF WHAT HE SPEAKS

…The way many people see “The Donald”

 

Trump says he would “renegotiate many fundamental treaties with American allies”.

 

As with many things where Trump has been wrong, a long-time friend of mine brought up a big issue where Trump once again was blowing total smoke.

 

This long-time friend has had a very unique experience with both the US Government and the US Navy, and he has also been closely following the “Trumpster’s” activities.

 

You all might remember, early on in Trump’s quest to say that everyone in Washington was an ignoramus and that if elected he would “seek to renegotiate many fundamental treaties with American allies. This possibly including the 56-year-old security pact with Japan”, which Trump described as “a pretty one-sided agreement”.

 

Trump’s reasoning for this is that according to his vast amount of foreign policy knowledge, when an interviewer mentioned to him that Japan pays more for stationed US troops than any other country in the world, Trump responded with, “They do, but still far less than it costs us.”

 

This response really set my friend off like a rocket.

 

First, he explained that “Of course, it was a one-sided agreement!  This guy is such an idiot that he does not realize that we occupied Japan for 10 years after the war.  And the reason the agreement is one sided is because we won the war!  We wrote the damn agreement when the Japanese government did not have any choice in the matter!”

 

Now, as to who actually pays for our military being located in Japan, my friend also had a unique relationship with this, as he was a civilian fire captain for the US Navy, and he was stationed at US naval facilities in Japan.

 

This friend has said that for all those troops in both Japan and South Korea, the host countries are totally responsible for providing for the cost of housing and feeding all US military personnel.  Claiming that these countries don’t pay for what it costs is, “the understatement of the century. Japan picks up all most all of the costs with the exception of any US equipment and US personnel salaries. All of the buildings are built and paid for by these country’s governments.”

 

While in Japan, this individual’s operation had 525 Japanese personnel working for the Fire Departments at Japanese Naval Facilities throughout Japan.  All but 6 of the 525 were paid for by the Government of Japan. There are tens of thousands of Japanese employees doing every imaginable job you can think of on US military bases all over Japan.  This includes ship repair, facility and vehicle maintenance, base security police, HRO, and all commanding US Naval officers have local government paid-for Japanese secretaries.

 

But Trump’s ignorance doesn’t stop here.  Trump showed his total ignorance of Japan and South Korea by saying that these countries should both have their own nuclear arsenals for their own protection.  He actually said that  if the United States “keeps on its path, its current path of weakness, they’re going to want to have that anyway.”  

United States weakness…..?

 

In the aforementioned interview, Trump also stressed his “America first” policy and said that he would review the country’s relations with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and Arab nations such as Saudi Arabia.  Trump said he was not an isolationist, but described the United States as a poor “debtor nation” that disproportionately funds international alliances such as NATO and the United Nations.

 

Per Mr. Trump to the New York Times: “We have been disrespected, mocked and ripped off for many, many years by people that were smarter, shrewder, tougher.  So America first, yes, we will not be ripped off anymore. We’re going to be friendly with everybody, but we’re not going to be taken advantage of by anybody.”

 

Trump, who has repeatedly called for Middle Eastern allies to contribute boots on the ground in the fight against ISIS, said he would “probably” stop buying oil from countries like Saudi Arabia unless they contributed or reimbursed the United States for its role in the fight.

 

The mogul real estate developer said he would also target the oil that provides a significant portion of the extremist group ISIS’s funding, cracking down on their underground banking channels to cut off the flow of money. 

 

But achieving all of this would be much more difficult than Trump knows.  He has no clue.  You don’t just make statements like this without explaining how you are going to achieve these results.  And Trump never explains how he would achieve anything he says.

 

However, even with all this, my friend finished up with the follow item:  “This is all a clear example of a rich kid that has never had someone tell him no.”

 

Copyright G.Ater  2016