Instead of directly deploying thousands of additional ground troops into Iraq or Syria, the sort of precipitous escalation that might get Congress voting on the war, the Trump Administration appears to have decided that the solution is to send thousands of US ground troops to Kuwait, and let the commanders in Iraq and Syria just take what they want.
Early reports of this strategy emerged Wednesday, when officials said there were considerations of sending around 1,000 troops into Kuwait for this operation. Just two days later, the figure was up to at least 2,500, with signs that it is continuing to grow all the time.
While President Obama was micromanaging the escalations, particularly in Iraq, where every couple of weeks another hundred or two troops would be sent, the Trump Administration appears to be throwing the troops into a big pile and leaving the deployments up to the commanders.
This adds credence to the sense that President Trump is going to be a bit more hands-off on his escalations, giving the military commanders additional leeway on actions, and even on troop levels, which is likely to raise further questions about what those commanders intend to do in the war, if they no longer have to get permission first.
Alas I’d hoped that he would dump the Middle East and control terrorism by just preventing Muslim immigration to the US. Silly of me wasn’t it.
He would have controlled terrorism by just dumping the Middle East. If we don’t stop making terrorists we’ll never stop terrorism.
He as in Bush1 not starting the first Iraq war for phony reasons. Same political party, same basic strategy only Trump is probably oblivious to most of it. He will likely be telling his hawks to go out and make America great again and they will figure out how to do it.
Preventing Muslim immigration to the West is racist and isn’t allowed. The US chose Muslims as the enemy so now the US has to face it’s responsibility for the homeless, poor, destitute masses it created. That’s reasonable isn’t it?
Remember when Muslims wouldn’t even have wanted to destroy the WTC? What happened to change that?
Just send some fodder over there and let the generals pick what they need. Support the fodder, er, I mean the troops.
Fodder is not the point. Maybe if more Americans understood that they could start to feel something for the victims. US permanent occupation of Iraq and Syria could result in single digits while hundreds of thousands or millions more will die fighting for their countries.
I was talking about treating humans like fodder. So I guess it was MY point.
March 10, 2017 – Our Age Of Folly
The United States has been growing progressively insane for a long time. For my generation, the realization descended upon us in the 1960s when the military/security complex convinced Americans that if we permitted Vietnamese nationalist leader Ho Chi Minh to unify Vietnam, the dominoes would fall until the Communist World Revolution had us in its grip. This despite the fact that Stalin had killed off the Trotskyist world revolutionaries and declared “Socialism in one country.”
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/46637.htm
Trump’s great endgame is in motion. The generals with which he’s surrounded himself will take care of the details such as this obvious move.
Our antiwar cause has become very grim because huge unstoppable force is the way that Trump sees himself being true to his word of making America great again. And victory will be hugely popular with the American people. They are primed to feel invincible under their new president and an initial victory in Iraq will be the final convincing they need to show that they finally really are.
It would be nice to have Raimondo back on the antiwar side now, but he’s going to have to come back on his own time. The question will bee, when he does come back will anybody even bother to listen to him anymore.
Raimondo is too busy retweeting such anti-war luminaries as Ann Coulter to bother commenting on the US illegally putting troops in Syria.
He’s supposed to be taking a week or a few days off. Maybe he’s giving himself some time to make a decision on whether he’s going to be with the antiwar cause or with Trump?
I have followed Raimondo since the early days of the Bush administration and his soft spot for Trump has made me roll along the floor and writhe with laughter. Where the prior president at least showed some measure of restraint, the current occupant can’t even handle his own twitter account, where he constantly spews vomitous vituperation awash in prodigious prevarications backed by incendiary illogic. I just never saw R falling for a con-artist/provocateur.
Trump is being irresponsible by delegating war decisions to the Generals. These Generals answer really to the military/industrial complex and war is their business model. Unless we have been invited into Syria (privately or publicly) we are doing so illegally. Also, Trump has no authorization or a declared war from Congress so technically Trump is doing this illegally. It never ends.
No, it never ends. And it’s time that we come together on this site to destroy Trump’s manufactured illusion that he has anything to do with peace in the world. This madman is hellbent on much accelerated war in the ME and then quick and convincing victory.
This is something that can be hugely popular with the American people. Quick and convincing victory in the ME, or even the promise of such can’t fail to impress.
It represents odds against our cause that will almost completely eliminate any cause that we want to continue to promote.
Trump did not even bother to ask Congress or tell the American people.
Support the move or not, this is against the Consitution 100%. Constitution is worthless when nobody enforces it. Congress is only interested in billionaire donations and personal perks.
Your brush is a bit broad. There are some in Congress that are working to halt US military imperialism. I wish the number approached 50% but one need only read the news here at antiwar to know that is not yet the case.
http://alibertarianfuture.com/big-government/war-big-government/rand-paul-introduced-tulsi-gabbards-stop-arming-terrorists-act-senate/
Trump is the new Nixon. A pathologically unwell maniac who ran on peace only to deliver more war. If Justin doesn’t take a stand here than we have no choice but to take a stand against Justin and take our site back. I wont sit silent while Justin Raimondo transforms into the new William F. Buckley. No f**king way.
It’s not clear to me what you want that this site is not delivering.
Raimondo “is” this site in large part. His influence has to be favuorable to at least 50% of those who come to this site to read information that the accept. How can anyone underestimate the amount of damage that is doing to our antiwar cause?
Raimondo is simply wrong in the estimation of the more well informed. Comrade hermit is one of them. Thomas Knapp is one of them, and so are numerouls others and I include myself.
But I am under no illusion that we are strongly opposed by the Trump supporters.
What the final outcome for this site will be, is anybody’s guess. It’s going to have to go one way or the other and that threatens to split it’s support in half. That’s a big deal.
Personally I never bought Trump’s vaguely positive statements around non-intervention and curbing military spending. Yet for those who did, perhaps they have a greater capacity to hold him to account, if anyone can. On this question I don’t see unity among antiwar agitators as critical. It seems more useful to me to maximize our disunity with the current reality of what the Trump admin is actually doing.
If Justin ceases to be a true voice for the antiwar movement than this sight shouldn’t follow him into the abyss. I’m willing to give him a couple of months to finally get his sh*t together and stop defending warmongers but if he refuses to acknowledge the basic fact that he was dead wrong on Trump than he shouldn’t write here anymore. Justin isn’t the whole site but he is the face of the site. If he switches sides from true non-interventionism to alt-right apologia than he should pick up his sh*t and move to Breitbart with rest of the pseudotarian sell-outs. I’ve been patient but my patience is running thin.
The only trouble I have with that is that a couple of month could be too late and after the fact.
Ditto.
Now that Trump is President the time for cherry picking and performing Talmudic exegesis on Trump’s inconsistent off the cuff statements is over. Trump now has a track record of pro-war, pro-military, racist, xenophobic and anti-libertarian actions that can’t be ignored or papered over. Rather than apologizing for Trump, Justin’s last few columns have commented on the irony of Trump inveighing against deep state repression directed at him when he has advocated even worse statist surveillance and repression toward others. I suspect that when he returns Justin will continue backing away from Trumpism and ultimately realize that the two headed monster war party just grew a third head. As for this site, we don’t need to take it back because the good people who work and write here have mostly not followed Justin into the abyss.
He wasn’t talking about the good people who work and write here. He was talking about Raimondo himself.
And fwiw, he said, “if Justin doesn’t take a stand….”, which you suggest he will do when he returns. How fast, he continues to back away from Trumpism, as you suggest, will tell us how fast or how slowly we’ll have to call for him gone.
The way it’s going, we could see a new war started by Trump before Raimondo does what he needs to do about his ridiculous support of Trump.
“will tell us how fast or how slowly we’ll have to call for him gone”
Oh, you don’t need any indicators for that. I can answer it: You don’t need to call for him gone, and you’ll be wasting your time if you do. He announced his pending retirement months ago. He’s one of the founders of this site and he will be leaving when he has decided to leave, not when you gripe that he should.
Yeah, I know, but he hinted at retirement a couple of more times by mentioning his age.
That which you quoted me saying: If things go as bad as some of us predict with Trump, as current developments are indicating they will, Raimondo can come around to seeing the light. And in the same respect with Trump, nobody in their right mind will continue to support him on this site. And so that would call for retirement.
However, I have enough respect left for the man to say that he won’t go out a complete loser, so that means an awakening.
Don,
This site doesn’t need to be brought back to solid antiwar because it’s never been anything BUT solid antiwar.
You’ve got a hobbyhorse and you’re going to ride it, but as for a posse, not so much.
Thomas, if at any time you consider this kind of talk to be over the top, just say so. I wouldn’t want to see the boss come in with the wrecking ball on JR’s behalf. (it could be starting to get legs)
None of this is a surprise. Try as you might warning those who saw Trump as something different on matters of foreign policy. Drone strikes are supposedly UP, and back-door, creeping deployments look up as well. I’m not sure Trump even knew what they hell JSOC was before he walked through the white house door. All that’s left is to march into Iran. Presidents come and go, but foreign policy just keeps rolling along. If a former Nobel Peace winner couldn’t stop the madness, a narcissistic, pathological liar can hardly be trusted to pull the plug. It is bigger than them both.
And I don’t give a fu-k what your point was. I was talking about our hypocritical politicians who claim to support the troops.
Support the evil they are perping throughout the world all you like. I don’t so I have no compromising position with which to struggle.
Wow, can you read? I didn’t state, or imply, that I even remotely support the troops.
You don’t want Congress to declare war. When they do, we go into full-fledged tyranny, and they confiscate everything in sight.
I do want Congress to vote on a declaration of war. Then the purpose is down in written words and those that support it are nailed down.
http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=declaration+of+war&id=DAB0B5976797D04982D9BF1E86969D446C65A48D&FORM=IQFRBA
With the Saudi (thug) prince just visiting Trump yesterday, I am sure they discussed how they were going to go about regime change in Syria. The subterfuge is deploying thousands of US troops in eastern Syria where they eventually will take over Raqqa. The ISIS terrorists will shed there ISIS identity (if not already) and mosey on over to the so called rebels aka sunni radical jihadists. Then the US will be coordinating with them and back them when given the command to do so. Assad, you are setting yourself up for overthrow.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/4461210b13263a8147fc2c363f06ad920060ea720deb7162a85b02bf929b98e3.jpg