Will Trump Trigger a New Major Korean War?

Shooting off one's mouth and being aggressive may work in reality TV, but Der Trumpenführer doesn't seem to realize that in diplomatic circles and dealing with literally insane and paranoid leaders of foreign countries it can have a very serious negative consequence.  Indeed, it may trigger the exact actions that one seeks to stop.  Driving home and listening to a retired intelligence officer on satellite radio, the situation is critical and Trump's loud mouthed braggart routine could be the fuse that lights the fuse for a new nightmare on the Korean peninsula and beyond.  What am I talking about?  Talk being reported on NBC News that Der Trumpenführer may launch a preemptive strike against North Korea if it continues its nuclear development.  This action would play right into the ingrained paranoia of mentally un-tethered leadership of that nation and lead to major assaults on South Korea (including American service members) and perhaps even Japan and beyond.  One of the main problems is that America lacks adequate conventional weapons to significantly knock out North Korea's military capabilities.  Here are highlights from the NBC News report:

The U.S. is prepared to launch a preemptive strike with conventional weapons against North Korea should officials become convinced that North Korea is about to follow through with a nuclear weapons test, multiple senior U.S. intelligence officials told NBC News.

North Korea has warned that a "big event" is near, and U.S. officials say signs point to a nuclear test that could come as early as this weekend.

The intelligence officials told NBC News that the U.S. has positioned two destroyers capable of shooting Tomahawk cruise missiles in the region, one just 300 miles from the North Korean nuclear test site.

American heavy bombers are also positioned in Guam to attack North Korea should it be necessary, and earlier this week, the Pentagon announced that the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier strike group was being diverted to the area.

The U.S. strike could include missiles and bombs, cyber and special operations on the ground.

The danger of such an attack by the U.S. is that it could provoke the volatile and unpredictable North Korean regime to launch its own blistering attack on its southern neighbor.

"The leadership in North Korea has shown absolutely no sign or interest in diplomacy or dialogue with any of the countries involved in this issue," Victor Cha, the Korea Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies told NBC News Thursday.

On Wednesday, North Korea said it would "hit the U.S. first" with a nuclear weapon should there be any signs of U.S. strikes.

On Thursday, North Korea warned of a "merciless retaliatory strike" should the U.S. take any action.

"By relentlessly bringing in a number of strategic nuclear assets to the Korean peninsula, the U.S. is gravely threatening the peace and safety and driving the situation to the brink of a nuclear war," said North Korea's statement.

North Korea is not believed to have a deliverable long-range nuclear weapon, according to U.S. experts, nor does it yet possess an intercontinental missile.

South Korea's top diplomat said today that the U.S. would consult with Seoul before taking any serious measures. "U.S. officials, mindful of such concerns here, repeatedly reaffirmed that (the U.S.) will closely discuss with South Korea its North Korea-related measures," Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se told a special parliamentary meeting. "In fact, the U.S. is working to reassure us that it will not, just in case that we might hold such concerns."

Multiple government officials familiar with the situation say President Trump has talked to Chinese president Xi twice about North Korea since their Florida summit.

China has since sent its top nuclear negotiators to Pyongyang to communicate the gravity of the situation to the North, officials say. On Wednesday, President Xi called for a peaceful resolution to the escalating tensions.

Moscow has weighed in as well: "We are gravely concerned about Washington's plans regarding North Korea, considering hints about the unilateral use of a military scenario" the Putin government said in a press release issued on Tuesday.

The Trump administration, emboldened by their punishing strike on Syria, and by a successful meeting with the Chinese leader, hopes that the Chinese will use their considerable leverage to dissuade Kim Jong UN and his government from moving ahead with their nuclear program. The president also made clear that if the Chinese were unable to defuse the situation, the U.S. would go to alone. On Thursday, he tweeted: "I have great confidence that China will properly deal with North Korea. If they are unable to do so, the U.S., and its allies will!"

The fools who voted for Der Trumpenführer may be about to reap the consequences of their irresponsible, bigotry motivated vote.  The problem is that countless others could end up suffering and even dying.  

Trump Publicity Stunts Aren’t Coherent Policy

As I have made clear, I suspect the ONLY motivation at the White House for ordering air strikes against a Syrian airbase last week was to change the topic of news coverage which, other than chatter about the "nuclear option" to place Neil Gorsuch on the Supreme Court, was about Russiagate and the palace intrigues within the Trump regime.  The stunt worked and most of the feckless media feel for it and granted Der Trumpenführer what he wanted.  This is the same media, of course, which through its laziness and delusions over "balance" and false equivalence helped put Trump in the White House.  It's disturbing that so many in the media are little better than Pavlov's dog. But, as an op-ed in the New York Times lays out, the problem extends far beyond coverage of last week's opportunistic air strikes.  One has to wonder if and when journalists will wake up and get their heads out of their asses.  Here are column excerpts:

Does anyone still remember the Carrier deal? Back in December President-elect Donald Trump announced, triumphantly, that he had reached a deal with the air-conditioner manufacturer to keep 1,100 jobs in America rather than moving them to Mexico. And the media spent days celebrating the achievement.

Actually, the number of jobs involved was more like 700, but who’s counting? Around 75,000 U.S. workers are laid off or fired every working day, so a few hundred here or there hardly matter for the overall picture.

Whatever Mr. Trump did or didn’t achieve with Carrier, the real question was whether he would take steps to make a lasting difference.

So far, he hasn’t; there isn’t even the vague outline of a real Trumpist jobs policy. And corporations and investors seem to have decided that the Carrier deal was all show, no substance, that for all his protectionist rhetoric Mr. Trump is a paper tiger in practice. After pausing briefly, the ongoing move of manufacturing to Mexico has resumed, while the Mexican peso, whose value is a barometer of expected U.S. trade policy, has recovered almost all its post-November losses.

In other words, showy actions that win a news cycle or two are no substitute for actual, coherent policies. Indeed, their main lasting effect can be to squander a government’s credibility. Which brings us to last week’s missile strike on Syria.

The attack instantly transformed news coverage of the Trump administration. Suddenly stories about infighting and dysfunction were replaced with screaming headlines about the president’s toughness and footage of Tomahawk launches.

But outside its effect on the news cycle, how much did the strike actually accomplish? A few hours after the attack, Syrian warplanes were taking off from the same airfield, and airstrikes resumed on the town where use of poison gas provoked Mr. Trump into action. . . . To achieve any lasting result, Mr. Trump would have to get involved on a sustained basis in Syria.

So what have we learned from the Syria attack and its aftermath?

No, we haven’t learned that Mr. Trump is an effective leader. Ordering the U.S. military to fire off some missiles is easy. Doing so in a way that actually serves American interests is the hard part, and we’ve seen no indication whatsoever that Mr. Trump and his advisers have figured that part out.

One thing is certain: The media reaction to the Syria strike showed that many pundits and news organizations have learned nothing from past failures.

Mr. Trump may like to claim that the media are biased against him, but the truth is that they’ve bent over backward in his favor. They want to seem balanced, even when there is no balance; they have been desperate for excuses to ignore the dubious circumstances of his election and his erratic behavior in office, and start treating him as a normal president.

One might have expected that experience to serve as a lesson. But no: The U.S. fired off some missiles, and once again Mr. Trump “became president.” Aside from everything else, think about the incentives this creates. The Trump administration now knows that it can always crowd out reporting about its scandals and failures by bombing someone.

Real leadership means devising and carrying out sustained policies that make the world a better place. Publicity stunts may generate a few days of favorable media coverage, but they end up making America weaker, not stronger, because they show the world that we have a government that can’t follow through.

And has anyone seen a sign, any sign, that Mr. Trump is ready to provide real leadership in that sense? I haven’t.

Is Trump Wagging the Dog in Syria?

All too often in the past Americans have, with the benefit of hindsight, foolish rallied around presidents when military action is taken abroad.  Rallying around the flag and the president can be a good thing if the motivations are pure and citizens are being told the truth.  The truth, however, is something nearly non-existent in the Trump/Pence regime be it in attempts to sell a health care "repeal and replacement effort" that would throw millions off of health insurance to the worn GOP canard that cutting taxes for the rich stimulates the economy to "raise all boats."  In the case of Der Trumpenführer's sudden air strikes against Syria which are actions 180 degrees from his past pronouncements, one has to wonder about the real motivation.  Was it mere a means to distract the public and media from Russiagate?  Was it a crude attempt to bolster Trump's historically low approval rating?  In a piece in Politico, the former White House Coordinator for the Middle East, North Africa and the Gulf Region asks these crucial questions.  Here are excerpts:

Even for a president known for impulsiveness and unpredictability, Donald Trump’s decision to launch military strikes in Syria yesterday was an extraordinary—and even curious—development.

For nearly six years, Trump has argued passionately against U.S. military involvement in Syria. He has asserted that Syria is “not our problem,” insisted that those who advocate intervening there could “lead us into World War III,” and has instead supported alignment with Russia and Syrian President Bashar Assad in their fight against Islamic State terrorists. Only last week, top Trump administration officials announced that it was no longer U.S. policy to seek the ouster of Assad.

Yet suddenly, after watching the carnage of a chemical weapons attack that killed some 80 Syrians, Trump has proclaimed that his “view of Assad and Syria has changed very much” and authorized the first direct U.S. attack on Syrian military facilities since the start of the country’s civil war. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, in stark contrast to his statement last week that Assad’s fate was up to the Syrian people, now says there is “no role" for Assad to govern the Syrian people and that “steps are underway” to remove him from power.

Tuesday’s chemical weapons attack was certainly horrific, and a strong case can be made for taking action and punishing the regime responsible for it.  . . . . What is puzzling today, however, is that nothing in Trump’s past suggests any sensitivity to these sorts of humanitarian concerns or support for the view that it’s the United States’ role to protect civilians abroad or enforce international norms. When President Barack Obama considered military strikes in response to the 2013 attacks—which used the same chemical agent as Tuesday’s assault and killed 15 times as many Syrians—Trump strongly lobbied against any military response and said it was “dumb” to have issued a red line in the first place. More recently, when Assad was indiscriminately bombing civilians in Aleppo—including targeting hospitals and schools—Trump again opposed U.S. military action. . . .

The idea that after Tuesday’s attack he suddenly decided it was imperative to protect vulnerable women and children also seems inconsistent with his absolute opposition to allowing into the United States even a small number of the refugees—predominantly women and children—fleeing Assad’s barrel bombs.

It is hard to avoid wondering whether the purpose of the strikes was less to defend a red line that Trump had never supported than yet another effort by the president to distract the media’s attention and change the subject from his problems at home. After all, ever since the investigations into possible Trump campaign collusion with Russian efforts to influence the U.S. presidential election picked up steam, Trump has gone to extraordinary lengths to deflect attention onto other issues. . . .

With his popularity falling to unprecedented lows for a new president, and major legislative goals on health care and immigration blocked in Congress or in the courts, it’s not hard to believe that Trump would take a step that would dominate media’s attention, win plaudits from many in his party and some key allies abroad, and might even have some substantive merit.

The pattern—on this as on so many other policy issues—suggests a willingness to strongly and publicly advocate whatever position seems most politically convenient at the time, based on his own narrow, short-term interests, and with no compunction about reversing himself 180 degrees.

That approach may have served him well as a pundit and a candidate with no responsibility for his actions. But as a commander in chief who has just ordered American forces into military action, it is dangerous in the extreme.

Do I believe that this military action was taken to distract the media?  Most definitely.  The sad truth is that Trump doesn't give a damn about anyone but himself.  I suspect in the right situation, he'd quickly throw his own children under the bus.  The man is a liar, amoral and should never be trusted - ever. 

Were Trump's Syrian Air Strikes A Ploy to Distract from the Fact He's in Bed with Putin?

There are few people I trust less than Donald Trump, a/k/a Der Trumpenführer.  Of those who is even less trustworthy, Vladimir Putin would head up the list.  It seems that I am not the only one who wonders about the true motivations behind Trump's air strikes against one Syrian airbase - taking out all of them would have been a more effective deterrent against future chemical weapons attacks - after apparently giving notice to Russia of the coming attack.  Anyone who believes Putin didn't have word passed immediately on to Syrian Dictator Assad is simply delusional.  So what was the real motivation?  Some believe that it was to change the narrative and interrupt the non-stop reporting on Trump/Russia ties.  And, true enough, Putin has played the game and outwardly challenged America actions and a gullible media is in some instances reporting an "end" of a Trump/Putin bromance.  The Independent, a British newspaper looks at this cynical - and probably accurate - analysis.  Here are highlights:

Donald Trump's air strikes on Syria could be a "set piece" concocted in collusion with Moscow to '"kill the narrative he's in bed with Putin", MSNBC political analyst Chris Matthews has claimed.

The Hardball anchor suggested the attacks might have been set up or staged, in the hope of undermining Democratic claims that Russian hacking and espionage swung the 2016 US Presidential election in Mr Trump's favour.

An agreement to prevent clashes between Russia and America in Syrian airspace has now been suspended by the Kremlin, in response to the cruise missile bombardment which destroyed at least nine jets in a Syrian airbase.

[S]peaking on MSNBC, veteran analyst Chris Matthews said: "Maybe it's cynicism but i thought... if there was a way for [Mr Trump] to kill the narrative he's in bed with Putin it would be this.

"Take on Putin's warm freshwater port [in Tartus], take on his satellite, his loyal ally Assad. And that would be a way of saying I was never in bed with this guy, i never planned any kind of coalition in Moscow."

The Russian naval base in Tartus gives Mr Putin vital access to the Eastern Mediterranean basin, allowing for Russian warships and submarines to pass from the Black Sea into Western waters and potentially providing a route to untapped natural gas resources.

It's the only Russian naval base on foreign soil, and maintaining control of Tartus was perhaps the principal reason for Mr Putin's entry into the Syrian arena of war. 

Mr Matthews continued to speculate that Mr Trump and Mr Putin may have "have had a phone-call this evening, and they worked this thing out, and it was a set piece that was not meant to be particularly antagonistic to Moscow."

Russian forces were admittedly warned of the strikes 30 minutes before they took place, using the so-called "deconfliction line" used to prevent clashes between the two superpowers in Syrian airspace.

No Russian casualties have been reported, though their personnel were stationed on the base where six Syrian soldiers lost their lives, along with nine civilians in a neighbouring village.

Am I being too cynical?  Putin and Assad have no problem having people murdered and, in Assad's case that includes children.  Add in malignant narcissist, Trump, and sadly, I believe almost anything foul and duplicitous is a possibility.