ARE YOU ASHAMED OF WHERE AMERICA IS HEADED?

….Because of Donald J. Trump’s presidential administration, George W. Bush is now being considered a “Genius”.

 

Some are saying that: “Trump won’t be satisfied until he has managed to start a nuclear confrontation with some nation…..or maybe two.”

 

I never thought that after having gone through the Bush/Cheney administration, that I would again be ashamed of what America was doing as the leader of the free world and the last super-power.  But now we have the highly inept Trump administration, and they have been making George W. Bush look somewhat like a genius.

 

The reality of this bullying New Yorker president is that he only knows how to talk tough, and some are saying that “Trump won’t be satisfied unless and until he has managed to start a nuclear confrontation with some nation…..or maybe two.”

 

Trump continues to twist what President Obama was attempting to communicate that even though the US was the only remaining super power, the goal of America was to promote small “d” democracy around the world, not to use its military might for dictatorial regime change.

 

Unfortunately, due to the mishandling of the invasion of Iraq by the Bush administration, it created a vacuum in the Iraqi government, plus the lack of developing any leadership in Lybia with the loss of Muammar Gaddafi.  Then we can’t forget the debacle of al Assad in Syria and the birth of ISIS.  Now Trump has decided that as the US president, he has been given the platform to call the US a “weak sister”, while it was operating under President Obama.

 

Unfortunately, Trump continues to act like a super power king with the world’s most powerful military and he assumes that it is his right to direct a missile, or the “Mother of all Bombs”, at any nation that happens to get in his way.

 

Basically, Trump is doing what he is doing because it’s all that he knows how to do.

 

Bullies are bully’s, whether it’s on the playground, or if they happen to be sitting in the nation’s White House.

 

I find it amazing that well before the new president’s first 100 days in office, (a period that for months Trump had said fantastic things would be accomplished)  but so far haven’t with only 5 days to go, and now he says that the first 100 days for a new president is a “ridiculous limitation”. (Interesting how with Trump, the “worm” always “turns”.)

However, within Trmp’s first 100 days, we today have a president that is being investigated by the FBI, a president that has promised a list of items to be accomplished, and only one has occurred, (the confirming of a new associate justice on the US Supreme Court), and that event was only accomplished when the GOP Senate leadership changed a senate rule using the so called “nuclear option”, on a legislative rule that had originated in 1850.

 

These first 100 days of Trump in the White House, (or at the Florida White House at Mar-a-Lago), they have been amazing and very expensive to the American tax payer.  (Each presidential trip to Mar-a-Lago cost you and I, approximately $3 million for travel and family security, not to mention the public cost to the Palm Beach Florida area.)  BTW: Those Trump costs after less than 3 months have already exceeded President Obama’s travel and family security costs for his full 8 years in office.

 

On one end of the Trump team, we have what appears to be a very competent new UN Ambassador, Nikki Haley, who talks tough on Russia.  All of this while Trump continues to protect his bro-mance with President Vladimir Putin.  And of course, this has nothing to do with a recent Reuters report stating that it was a Russian government “Think Tank” that came up with the plan for Russia’s hackers to influence the 2016 US election.

Many of us breathed a sigh of relief when Trump had finally done a 180° turn and concluded that NATO does in fact, “matter”. But what has happened to that candidate who criticized his opponent, Hillary Clinton, for being “too hawkish”, and who said we can’t fight two wars at once, as Trump is today threatening World War III against both ISIS and North Korea….?

 

On the other end of this team, is Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, who has pounded Iran with one fist, saying it’s not complying with the “spirit” of the nuclear agreement fashioned by his Democratic predecessor.  But with his other hand, he sends a letter to House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-WI) saying that Iran “is in full compliance with the JCPOA [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action]”.  Meanwhile, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, rather than quaking in his boots from Tillerson’s statement, he tweets: “We’ll see if the US is prepared to live up to the letter of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, let alone “its spirit”. So far, it has defied both.”

 

This isn’t to make light of the Iran agreement, about which Trump may be right that it was a lousy deal. But it was the only one possible after months of negotiations with Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council that included China, France, Russia, Britain and the United States, plus Germany and the European Union. Getting that many countries together to agree on more than one issue was impossible, but it was an agreement on the important issue of Iran having no nuclear device for the next 10 years.  What, pray tell, does Trump think will happen if the United States unilaterally shreds the Iran deal?

That’s the start of WWIII.  I guarantee you that to shred the Iran deal, those Iran centrifuges for building a nuclear device would immediately be re-purchased and started up, post-haste.

 

So, at last count, Trump had North Korea threatening a “super-mighty pre-emptive strike;” Russia sending equipment to the North Korean border and China making serious military preparations, just in case. Meanwhile, Iran, which exerts power in nearly every place where the terrorist live and breathe, they would just love for the JCPOA  agreement to go away.  They lived with sanctions before, they can do it again!   Especially if it’s coming from the nation that they call the “Great Satan”.

 

The concept of “good cop, bad cop” may be useful in reducing a prisoner to giving a confession, but the contradictory messages emanating from today’s Washington serve mostly to confuse, and definitely, not in a good way. Trump, by telling allies and non-allies that he’s unpredictable and likely to do anything at any moment, is telegraphing not national strength, but total instability and impulsivity. The sense is that no one is in charge, or at least no one that is not wearing a Trump, foreign-manufactured “Make America Great Again” hat.

 

To thousands of Americans, they feel as though Trump is making the world less safe.  This explains in part, Gallup’s recent poll that at nearly 100 days in office, Trump has the lowest approval rating of any president since the poll began back in 1953.

 

Rather than a master strategist, Trump’s a human manufacturer of tactics that wander erratically in search of someone or something to conquer. The notion that Trump has a big master plan, or that he is just not sharing it would be encouraging, if all the evidence to the contrary weren’t so damn convincing.

 

As it is today, we all may as well believe that Trump discovered his foreign policy strategy in a Chinese fortune cookie left behind by the Chinese President Xi at Mar-a-Lago.

 

If you follow Star Wars and all that they would be saying today if Darth Vader were to be winning against the rebellion, winning against Yoda, and of course against the good side of “The Force”, he would have signaled for Trump’s head to nod in agreement upon reading the message: “Soon you will be the emperor of the Universe.”

My wish God knows is, “That just ain’t going to happen,” but it’s up to the American voters to make that final decision.

 

Copyright G.Ater  2017