President Trump has reversed course on Qatar today, speaking to the Qatari Emir on the phone and offering to help resolve the ongoing split between them and other Gulf Arab states. He was said to have emphasized the importance of all the countries in the region working together against terror.
That’s about as far as possible away from President Trump’s position only the day before, during which he not only cheered the other GCC member nations for turning on Qatar, but personally took credit for it, saying that his visit to Saudi Arabia was “already paying off.”
While White House officials insist Trump’s Tweets should be treated the same as any official press statement from them, elsewhere across the administration officials were supporting Qatar, and praising Qatar for hosting America’s largest military base in the Middle East.
Pentagon and State Department officials seemed aware from the beginning that the GCC split was potentially bad for America’s policy priorities in the region, and it seems that President Trump is back on the same page with them after what was a tremendously visible split.
Is this guy for real? My god, what a f**king moron. Anyone who continues to back this psycho is psycho.
We don’t yet know how things will turn out.
To use the S. Korean example: Moon is now temporarily halting THAAD. He might not have done that under Obama.
The outcome matters more than intention.
I’m talking about Trump’s mental state. To say he did a 180 would be an understatement. He’s unstable.
It is concerning. But I’d rather he be in power than any of his chief opponents.
It’s possible Trump could decide to do something dangerous, but look at the results. He’s trying to do things slightly different from the tried and true imperialism. And it never works as well, which is good; because we don’t want the polished imperialism.
Also, it suggests Trump might ultimately take a different position. We might wake up to see Trump exiting NATO, exiting Syria & Afghanistan.
My concern with Trump primarily is that he appears to lack confidence in himself. As a result he picks fancy establishment types and partially follows “America’s course” as it has been set. Then he tries to make his own improvements.
Trump is new to politics, and I think this makes him truly unpredictable. He could do anything, be worse or better in the end.
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Most of those condemning Trump are probably worse. Of course, one never knows. Cruz could have come to power, revealed himself to be Libertarian Man beneath his mild-mannered visage.
Trump would have to do something truly terrible to make him worse than those who came before him. As yet, he’s still better on the foreign policy front.
And in 2020, the Dems will likely have someone calling for more aggressive foreign policy.
What’s annoying is how the Neocons have convinced Trump that his message was to be more aggressive than Obama. That wasn’t Trump’s message. Trump disliked the Iran deal, sure.
A nightmare for me is to have the Dems once again pretending to be the peace party. Dem idea of peace is to call up Europe, go to war together with “global powers” (meaning Europe).
He’s exactly like what came before him but he adds the to it by being an obnoxious bore. He bombed Syria without any evidence. He dropped the MOAB. He has escalated Obama’s stupidity in Yemen deepening the humanitarian crisis. He just got back from an a** kissing visit to the most oppressive regime in the world. During that a** kissing visit he went off on Iran at the same time Iran was VOTING to re-elect their moderate leader. The article we’re commenting on describes Trump’s behavior in a nutshell. He literally bragged about how his a** kissing visit was already showing results before completely doing an about face. He’s an ego maniac who acts like a petulant child whenever he doesn’t get his way. Stop blaming the neocons.
“Pentagon and State Department officials seemed aware from the beginning that the GCC split was potentially bad for America’s policy priorities in the region …”. Gee whatever gave them that idea, since USAF C&C for the ME are run out of Qatar. I’m sure the don was so much aware of that while he kissed Saudi ass a couple of weeks ago. Bet State and the Pentagon are thrilled the don is going to smooth things over.
He must have covfefe’d on it. (yiddish for sleep, per Al Franken)
Isn’t it obvious by now that it doesn’t matter who’s “President”? There will always be continuity at the top. Random person in a Micky Mouse suit could be president and we’d have the same net result. You could make a buffalo president and we’d be in the same place.
There are three elements that determine who shall be our next president:
(1) Who is best liked.
(2) Who is most intelligent.
(3) Who is the best funded.