While the US military already goes around carrying out attacks in places they aren’t engaged in conventional wars a lot more than most, there are actually a lot of rules in place to limit how much they can do this, and a lot of those rules are being respected.
President Trump is said to be looking for loopholes in the constraints put on such attacks, particularly as they relate to the risk of killing a lot of civilians, and is hoping to dramatically loosen the restrictions to allow the military even freer access to carry out strikes around the Muslim world.
The first move to get around the limit in non-battlefields was to unilaterally declare parts of Yemen “areas of active hostilities” so they could carry out attacks there with impunity. Officials say that large portions of Somalia will be similarly designated in the coming days.
It’s not clear, however, that this is either a long-term solution or something which can be credibly expanded across much of the planet, and the calamitous number of civilians killed in Yemen in Trump’s first big raid is likely to make copy-pasting this solution across several continents a difficult sell.
Trump is proving to be every bit as bloodthirsty as Obama, Bush, and Clinton. I’m beginning to wish Hillary had won, if only because we KNEW she would start and expand wars. At least we wouldn’t have held out any false hopes.
Ah, yes, the false G-d of false hope. Hope & Change being the latest failed iteration. It makes a great app for the coming courses of craven capitulation. But, capitulation to what. Not to mention who, what, when and where. It’s like a bad flashback to “Let Regal be Regan”….
Meanwhile back at the tower, the Donald has now been tasked with the inevitable job of managing the diversity and policy chaos his choices have generated. So many fights. So little comaradery and no peace from the ravaging wars by the press division of the warrior queen’s pants suit army.
I tried to warn many (and chuckled to myself while doing it). Presidents come and go but foreign policy remains mostly unaltered. 180 days is a long time for less discriminate drone campaigns in places like Yemen and Somalia (and elsewhere?). Syria, Iran…whatever the hell does this forecast for them? I may make a donation here because I believe in what Justin has been trying to do, but we should get over the illusion that a guy like Trump is anything but the 100th coming of the Bellicose Calvary. He’s nothing more than a con-artist/provocateur not quite in the mold of Milo (who calls him his daddy) but who is nevertheless a bloviating, pathologically mendacious belligerent.
The US was careful not to do this in Somalia. After the Black Hawk Down fiasco, the US used other countries to do the dirty work. It paid for Ethiopia to invade, as one example. It paid Kenya to do a major incursion and occupation of a region, for another example.
The US did not WANT excuses to get more involved in Somalia.
Now it does? Big mistake. When even W would not do it, and even Hillary did not get it from Obama, it takes an extreme fool to rush in.
Jason Ditz, you always make a worthwhile statement every time you use that stock photo of Trump. It doubles the impact of the article into which it leads us!
Feb 3, 2017 – How Trump Filled The Swamp
With promises to “drain the swamp!” still ringing in our ears, we have watched Trump appoint nothing but Goldman banksters, Soros stooges, neocon war hawks and police state zealots to head his cabinet.
https://youtu.be/cs0BfPDvUQg
Brian, I think we have ‘arrived’ with the message on Trump. And so your video reinforces our position. The support for Trump that remains on this site is now negligible, even though it’s taken longer than necessary to put it to bed.
And we now have the opportunity to reinforce it without Raimondo’s interference until Friday.
Ron Paul’s latest, “Rules of Engagement” is a great place to expand on our momentum. Ron Paul doesn’t get any better than that! I urge you and everybody else to check it out.
Welcome to the new crusades where anything goes as long as it produces heaps of dead brown people. Is this better than WW3 with Russia? Does it really matter at this point? Everyone who voted for this scumbag shares a piece of the blame. He’s delivering exactly what he promised. Don’t blame me. I voted for Jill Stein. She may have turned out to be a Russophobe baiting opportunist but at least my conscience is clean of blood spots and brain matter. Can you say the same? If not you need to ask yourself, “How did I get duped? And how do I avoid getting duped again?” Answering this question is your penance for voting with your brain on autopilot.