What an embarrassing day to be an American. This President has made it far more likely Iran gets a nuclear weapon and goes to war with either the United States or Israel. The only thing sadder is that it is not even a Trump issue, the entire 2016 Republican field was just as committed to this insanity.
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Your final sentence is the most devastating aspect of this.
I have been criticized here before for calling them “Collaborators”. I stand by that characterization. Many of the voters who put Mr. Trump in office are deplorable. It should be no surprise that the men and women those deplorable voters send to Washington are themselves deplorable.
If there are people and civilization left to write history 75 years from now, they will judge today’s GOP and Donald Trump supporters just as harshly as we today judge the Collaborators who enabled Hitler.
The time to stop the insanity that produces Trumpism is right now — the GOP advances, rather than rejects, it.
I’ll agree that anyone who still supports this administration is a collaborator but withhold that judgement from anyone who voted for him because they were conned – and I know more than a few.
With that established, I will say, here and now that anyone who votes for any Republican in any election for any position, from town clerk to US Senator is a collaborator because the Republican Party stands for and with Trump.
Yeah, but Trump seems to take the most joy in it. I truly do not understand why there are some people who affirmatively seem to prefer war, or why they see international co-operation as weak. If we truly want to be great again we would lead on this, and other international issues such as the Paris Climate Accords.
All three of President Obama’s signature second term foreign policy accomplishments have been erased by this President. It would be as if Reagan ripped up the Camp David Accords or Carter unrecognized the Peoples Republic of China. One of the reasons Presidents in both parties tend to continue the foreign policies of their predecessor is because the predictability of American foreign policy is the pillar on which the global order rests. We started unwinding this pillar with our arrogant and unilateral action to impose regime change on Iraq, sowing much of the contemporary chaos in the Middle East under the last administration, and have only accelerated American decline under this one.
Opening Cuba and Iran up to Western economic influence was the key way to democratize both of those regimes and denuclearize the latter one without resorting to a devastating war. The Paris Accords were largely symbolic, but it was still an international effort to commit to solving our most pressing global problem. Even the TPP, which I opposed on domestic economic grounds, was a sound foreign policy move to contain China and create a regional economic alliance to balance against it.
This administration is actively trying to retreat from Asia and surrender it to Chinese hegemony. This will inherently introduce instability to the region as Japan and S. Korea start to pursue foreign policies independent of the United States. Europe will likely pursue a separate peace with Iran to preserve the economic gains they have made there while pursuing a separate detente with Russia over Ukraine. The UK is retreating as well in its Brexit hangover, leaving a vacuum the French are having difficulty filling while the Germans are understandably reluctant to become a world power.
We could once count on the Republican Party to pursue a realist Hamiltonian foreign policy based on promoting the national interest. Under the neoconservatives they have become a reactionary Wilsonian crusader and have now adopted the zero sum calculations of a Jacksonian. We are now committed to a dangerous alliance with two expansionist states in the Middle East while allowing our two great power rivals to exert regional hegemonies without containment. John McCain, Bob Corker, and Jeff Flake recognize this danger. Few other Republicans do, and none are willing to admit how they gave birth to this extremism with their dishonest critiques of a Democratic President firmly in the realist Republican tradition.
You give the Republican Party entirely too much credence. Using language like “Wilsonian” and “Jacksonian” obscures the glaring essential truth of today’s Republican Party: It is a foot-stomping three year old throwing a temper tantrum because the world is not flat and heavy objects fall at the same rate as light.
There are no deep philosophical or historical insights to be gained from attempting to analyze these thugs. They are ignorant, delusional, racist, sexist, and xenophobic authoritarian tyrants elected by ignorant, delusional, racist, sexist and xenophobic authoritarian voters.
The danger is urgently real and immediate. John McCain, Bob Corker, and Jeff Flake are just as responsible as the rest. It was, after all, Mr. McCain who put Sarah Palin on the national stage.
This real and present existential threat to America is colored bright red and is a Republican creation from its birth.
I am referring to the foreign policies of the Eisenhower-HW Bush wings of the party. Even Reagan, for all his neoconservative bluster, found ways to reach detente with the Soviets.
Ike warned us against the military industrial complex and the doctrine of preventative war:
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I agree with all of this.
My earlier comment was directed only at today’s GOP. I agree that Mr. Eisenhower truly understood world affairs and pursued a reasoned and informed philosophy. While I differed greatly with George H. W. Bush (in my view, his moral compass was badly damaged, as evidenced by his role in Iran Contra), I agree that he too at least understood what he was doing. I think Mr. Reagan had no clue about anything, knew that he had no clue, and relied on his staff and advisers. The result was that his administration at least created the appearance of some degree of sanity.
America has never had a president as disastrously incompetent, ignorant, insane, and irrational as Mr. Trump. We have never had a congress that was as willing to enable and empower such nonsense.
In my view, the role of deplorable voters in solving this crisis that they themselves created is among the most important of our several key issues that we must address as a functioning democracy.
I see Wilsonianism as positive and liberal, and largely see myself as one. I’m actually lost for a Jacksonian foreign policy.
I think we’ve discussed this before, but the best foreign policies combine these traditions. Wilsonism, also known as liberalism within international relations terminology, is about adopting a rules based supranational approach to issues to overcome the Thucydides trap and Hobbesian anarchy of the system. So the UN, WTO, ICC, NATO, EU, etc. are all good examples of this. So was the Iran Deal and Paris Accords. The Iran Deal was also realist-it did not seek to change the regime itself only it’s behavior. In that sense it was realist and within the Hamiltonian school (using alliances to defend Americas national interest) and Jeffersonian (power of our example rather than the example of our power).
When one school is in the driver seat we have a problem. Bush II was so overtly Wislsonian that he thought he could launch a jihad for Jeffersonian democracy in the Middle East. Trump is Jacksonian-everything is unilateral and all relationships are zero sum/America First. No nation building only brute force to eliminate an enemy. Jacksonianism is my least favorite school, but useful when we have to wage total war or put our domestic economy before global considerations. Trump is overdosing on it.
Well, that did not take long. Today Israel bombed many Iranian targets in Syria – nominally in response to an Iranian rocket attack in the Golan Heights, but clearly this Israel attack took a lot of planning, and it’s just not credible that it happened merely as claimed on response of an Iranian attack.
The press today (NYT, WaPo, WSJ) all report the Israel side of the story, with little or no independent confirmation.
Yesterday Trump shreds the Iran nuclear deal, today Benjamin Netanyahu is emboldened to take military action in grand style. This is the direct result of having Bolton, Pompeo in charge of national security and foreign policy.
The back story, of course, is that Israel is pretty happy with its status as local hegemon in the region, able to bomb at will any and all sites in relative proximity. But Iran was building up its forces and militias in Syria, supporting Assad, and quelling the Sunni insurgence. Israel does not want Syria’s militias to become as difficult to handle as Hezbollah.
Israel is allied with the Sunnis in this. The Palestinians are Sunni, and are a thorn in the occupied territories that Israel is happy to continue occupying forever. But Palestinians rely on aid from wealthy Sunni gulf countries. Those Sunni countries are in a war by proxy with Iran, and need US assistance in form of weapons and possibly intelligence. For the larger good, the Sunni gulf countries are happy to trickle aid only to ‘quiet’ Palestinians, in order to defeat the more dangerous foe – Iran, who supports the plight of Shia muslims in countries with mixed Shia/Sunni population.
The US reorientation against Iran serves two things: it props economic ties some well connected businesses in the US have with Sunni Gulf countries; and it helps Israel in its regional ambitions. The reorientation does not serve the interests of local population, decimated by civil wars – supports a totalitarian state, Saudi Arabia, and undermines a quasi-democracy, Iran, that was finally headed in the right direction to join the community of nations.
Can you do a face-palm emoji on BMG? Of course Israel has plans on the shelf for how to respond to attacks. If the timing of the exchange of fire is related to the withdrawal from the Iran deal, then surely that’s because Iran chose this moment to attack, right? Anti-Israel bias is, in my view, leading you to make claims that are silly on their face.
If there is a face-palm emoji, your comment deserves it.
America does not claim Iran as its closest ally. America has not pledged the full force and might of our military to defend Iran. Iran and Israel ought to behave differently.
It doesn’t matter to me who started the exchange of fire. The point is that the exchange began immediately after Mr. Trump’s catastrophic decision to terminate the Iran deal. If blame is to be assigned to this giant step towards war, the finger points DIRECTLY at Donald Trump and the American Collaborators who brought this to pass.
You seem to be so eager to defend Israel that you utterly ignore the reality of what is unfolding today. Pro-Israel bias is, in my view, leading YOU to offer commentary that is silly on its face.
Do people really think that somehow the Iranian attack on Israel was an Israeli plot? Because that is what the comment seemed to suggest.
The comment also seems ignorant of the fact that all armies have war plans, so that it’s hardly surprising that the Israelis were prepared for a major counterattack on short notice.
Criticize the Israeli government all you like. I criticize it plenty. But the ideological blinders through which both the far left and the far right view Israel today are, in my view, just bizarre.
“Iran’s barrage in the Golan Heights—which caused no injuries and only limited damage to property, the Israeli army said—came after suspected Israeli missiles targeted an Iran-linked army base south of Syria’s capital, Damascus, on Tuesday, shortly after Mr. Trump said the U.S. would withdraw from the international nuclear deal with Iran.”
Just read the press, my friend:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/iranian-forces-fire-rockets-at-israeli-targets-in-golan-1525912963
Though the lede at the top of the article indicates instead that Iran’s response was the opening of the hostilities. It’s not unusual in the US ‘mainstream’ press to arrange the sequence of events to make it appear A preceded B, when B came before A.
By the way, the WSJ article at least provided correct information somewhere buried in the middle. The Washington Post and the NYT did not bother to provide that bit of information about Israel’s initial missile attack.
You have this right in part—it’s true that Israel attacked Iranian targets in Syria, though that in turn was in response to Iran sending an armed drone into Israel.
The problem with your comment wasn’t that it misidentified who fired the first shot. Both sides have been shooting at each other in various ways for a long time. The problem is twofold: (1) It wrongly claimed that the speed of the Israeli counterattack showed that Israel had somehow wanted to be attacked, when in fact what it shows is that Israel has an admirably high level of military preparedness. (2) Although it would be entirely normal for any country that had been attacked with a barrage of missiles to respond militarily if it had the capability, your comment attributed mysterious and sinister motives to Israel—its military action was “nominally” (but not really?) a response to the missile attack, and it’s “not credible” to say that the obvious motive was the true motive—there must be something sneaky and underhanded going on.
I did not misidentify who fired the first shot – you did… And, let’s not kid ourselves. This is a major escalation on the part of Israel that must have taken a long time to prepare – assigning targets to pilots, making sure the planes are armed with the right weapons, etc.
Was the twenty-missile barrage also a major escalation?
Not in comparison to the Israeli response.
On the other hand, that has been the pattern since 1948 — Israel always reacts with a ten-fold response to each attack.
It isn’t clear, so far, that the twenty-missile barrage was intended by Iranian, Syrian, or Russian commands. So far as I know, there has not yet been a formal claim of responsibility. It appears that it came from a single mobile launcher and could be the act of a single rogue commander or group.
I’m not arguing that any of this is right or wrong, it just IS.
More did-too-did-not irrelevant noise.
It doesn’t matter whether it was Iran or Israel who was provoked to start shooting by America’s abrogation of the Iranian deal
There is nothing wrong in concluding that Israel was looking for an excuse to pull the trigger on the loaded gun it has been holding for a very long time — that is PRECISELY what happened. Mr. Netanyahu is the same Israeli leader who went out of his way to shame and embarrass Barack Obama because of the deal, the same Israeli leader who has opposed his own more pragmatic defense officials, and the same Israeli leader who has made it clear for pretty much as long as he’s been in office that he seeks to destroy the Iranian state.
Mr. Natanyahu believes that Israel, the US, and Russia can collectively cause the downfall of the Iranian government. He believes that the casualties and costs of all-out war will help accelerate that. He believes that if his war is succeeds, the new Iranian government will be more favorable towards Israel than the current government.
So far as I know, his perspective is shared mostly by extremists.
What America has done is to once again toss a match into a room with kerosene and gasoline on the floor and natural gas in the air. You would have us worry about whether it is the kerosene, the gasoline, or the natural gas that first caught fire.
I care more about what happens after the building explodes. How much of the surrounding buildings burn to the ground with it?
Will we ever hold the arsonist accountable?
It does matter who started this, because the sequence of events indicates there may have been coordination between the Trump’s announcement and the Israel escalation.
We can speculate about all sorts of coordination.
If the evidence eventually shows collusion between Mr Trump and Mr. Netanyahu, then I’ll not be surprised. I also won’t be surprise if this some sort of gambit between Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin.
A great many things are possible.
I’m long accustomed to discounting the reckless foolishness of Mr. Netanyahu. I’m disgusted by Mr. Trump’s eagerness to destroy America’s role in the world.
….And we would not have to speculate if the press reported with some accuracy what is happening.
Well, it’s a good thing the Iranians fired those missiles, then, otherwise the careful planning of the Trump/Netanyahu cabal would have been for nought!
We all know that Mr. Trump doesn’t do anything carefully — especially planning.
I understand that you’re being sarcastic. Still, this is the most intense exchange between Syria and Israel in very long time.
There’s nothing good about any of it.
Ironically, Putin may have more leverage than Trump does in the region to stay both Israeli and Iranian hands. Russia is the only great power with strong ties to both states. A direct result of our failed policies in the region.