He's the Republican front-runner. No wonder the party establishment is freaking out. From Digby:
It goes on to survey the military's reaction:
He is a chicken-hawk -- in fact, he's the chicken-hawk.
It's more than a matter of Trump not understanding the military, its codes of conduct, and the constraints under which it operates. It's that he has no regard for common decency, much less standards of civilized behavior.
And the scary thing is that so much of the Republican base is right with him. Whether Trump becomes president is not really the point -- it's that the uncensored American id is coming out and -- well, remember the book The Ugly American?
Jump that up a couple orders of magnitude: I mean, we're talking about an element that thinks diplomacy means having bigger bombs. I remember one truism from my days as a history minor in college, with a concentration on European diplomatic history: War is the last resort, after diplomacy has failed. And one more, regarding the Pax Britannica, and later the Pax Americana, which gave substance to Teddy Roosevelt's dictum, "Speak softly and carry a big stick": The whole point of having the strongest military in the world is to not have to use it.
I have visions of this cavalcade of idiots, led by The Hairpiece, marching us off to Armageddon. Granted, Trump himself is a cartoon -- he's more than 99% bullshit, but as a figurehead, he's pulling all the scarier elements of the American body politic out of the woodwork. Even without Trump in the White House, wanna bet there will be enough teabaggers in Congress to be pushing that sort of agenda?
Welcome to America in the 21st Century: The Republicans bought it, and now the rest of us are stuck with it.
Huffington Post Highline has put together a comprehensive look at Trump's history and pronouncements about military matters. He's been foolish on these issues for decades, but now he's getting very close to becoming the Republican nominee for president and it's getting serious. Don't read it if you scare easily:
[W]hen Trump has weighed in on national security questions, his remarks often reveal either ignorance or disdain for military expertise and the codes of conduct that govern the armed forces. “I know more about ISIS than the generals do. Believe me,” he boasted in one speech, adding, "I’ve had a lot of wars of my own. I’m really good at war." His foreign policy prescriptions include proposals to “bomb the shit out of ISIS,” to “take out” the families of ISIS members and to torture terrorism suspects. (“Would I approve waterboarding? You bet your ass I would,” he told one crowd. “And you know what? If it doesn't work, they deserve it anyway, for what they're doing.”) When it was pointed out that soldiers couldn’t legally carry out those last two actions, Trump was unconcerned. "They're not going to refuse me. Believe me.” (He walked back that last statement the next day.) The Geneva Conventions, he recently observed, have made American soldiers “afraid to fight.”
It goes on to survey the military's reaction:
Trump’s pronouncements on foreign policy, combined with his years of broadsides, have set off a very real fear within military circles about what might happen were he to become president. In the last two months, I spoke with dozens of people in the national security realm—current and retired officers, veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and former White House, State Department, Pentagon and CIA officials. The words they used to describe their mood: Terrified. Shocked. Appalled. Never before, they say, has a candidate gotten so close to the White House with such little respect for the military.
One former Marine infantry officer described Trump as a “fake-bake-ing chicken hawk.”
He is a chicken-hawk -- in fact, he's the chicken-hawk.
It's more than a matter of Trump not understanding the military, its codes of conduct, and the constraints under which it operates. It's that he has no regard for common decency, much less standards of civilized behavior.
And the scary thing is that so much of the Republican base is right with him. Whether Trump becomes president is not really the point -- it's that the uncensored American id is coming out and -- well, remember the book The Ugly American?
The Ugly American depicts the failures of the U.S. diplomatic corps, whose insensitivity to local language, culture, customs and refusal to integrate was in marked contrast to the polished abilities of Eastern Bloc (primarily Soviet) diplomacy and led to Communist diplomatic success overseas.
Jump that up a couple orders of magnitude: I mean, we're talking about an element that thinks diplomacy means having bigger bombs. I remember one truism from my days as a history minor in college, with a concentration on European diplomatic history: War is the last resort, after diplomacy has failed. And one more, regarding the Pax Britannica, and later the Pax Americana, which gave substance to Teddy Roosevelt's dictum, "Speak softly and carry a big stick": The whole point of having the strongest military in the world is to not have to use it.
I know I sometimes sound like Lindsey Graham on this question but I think it's warranted. A country with as much money, firepower and influence as this one looks like a very dangerous nation to the rest of the world in the hands of a demagogic proto-fasicst like Trump.
I have visions of this cavalcade of idiots, led by The Hairpiece, marching us off to Armageddon. Granted, Trump himself is a cartoon -- he's more than 99% bullshit, but as a figurehead, he's pulling all the scarier elements of the American body politic out of the woodwork. Even without Trump in the White House, wanna bet there will be enough teabaggers in Congress to be pushing that sort of agenda?
Welcome to America in the 21st Century: The Republicans bought it, and now the rest of us are stuck with it.
1 comment:
I'm not just worried that Trump might get the nomination. I'm worried that there might be enough voting Republicans and enough recalcitrant non-voting Democrats that we'd be stuck with him in the White House and, for the bonus question, whoever is his choice for Vice President. I've seen nothing to indicate where his eye has landed for a running mate, but I'm sure to be terrified by it unless the Party as a whole puts its thumb on him.
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