TheFrontPageCover
~ Featuring ~
Trump vs. the Spy Chiefs: Who's Right?
.
Congress’s Vote To Keep War In
Afghanistan Sells Out American Soldiers
by Jesse Kelly
{thefederalist.com} ~ The U.S. Senate cannot agree on anything. They are so mired in partisan gridlock, a resolution declaring the sky to be officially the color blue would fail along party lines... But there is one thing and one thing only they agree on: 17 years of our troops dying in Afghanistan isn’t long enough. By a 68-23 margin, the Senate decided we haven’t spilled enough blood, broken enough soldiers mentally and physically, or spent enough money. All for a now-aimless conflict in a part of the world Americans don’t even care about. What began as an attempt to hunt down Osama bin Laden has now become a generational conflict where sons are patrolling the same areas as their fathers did. This no longer a war. This has become a hopeless mission to tame a part of the world that has never been and will never be tamed. Afghanistan is a rugged, tribal nation with different interests than ours. As with so many parts of the world, the strong will rule over the weak there, and there is precious little America can do about that. That is why we’re now resigned to negotiating a peace deal with the very Taliban we’ve been fighting for 17 years...Jews Complain: The Rabbis are
Sounding Like Christians!
by David Lazarus.
Democrats Want to Strip Trump
of His Nuclear Weapons Authority
{themadpatriots.com} ~ We can’t say this to a 100% certainty, but we’re pretty sure that this is the first time in history that Democrats have sunk so low as to use the threat of nuclear war as a means by which to score points on the sitting president... You would have thought after the disastrous for them results of the 2016 election that Democrats would have learned their lesson. You would have thought all the wild allegations about Russia and all the insane comparisons to Hitler would have stopped on a dime. Sadly, not only has all of this nonsense hit a deafening crescendo in the two years since Trump’s inauguration, it is now beginning to spill over into actual legislation. To wit: On Wednesday, Sen. Elizabeth “Firewater” dinky-Warren (D-MA) joined Rep. scumbag-Adam Smith (D-WA) to introduce a bill that would block President Trump from launching a first-strike nuclear weapons attack without congressional approval. “By making clear that deterrence is the sole purpose of our arsenal, this bill would reduce the chances of a nuclear miscalculation and help us maintain our moral and diplomatic leadership in the world,” the Democrats said in a joint statement. Please. Don’t try to couch this in terms of global morality. Don’t try to pretend you would have introduced this legislation when scumbag/liar-nObama was in the White House. This is a clear and reprehensible attack on Donald J. Trump, and a weak attempt to garner a headline at a time when dinky-Warren is having trouble getting anyone interested in her presidential campaign. It is also deceptive in that it signals to less-informed Americans that the Trump administration has a more aggressive stance on nuclear weapons than prior presidents. While the administration has said that it retains the right to use tactical nukes in response to a major non-nuclear attack, the president isn’t endorsing a “first strike” policy any more than his predecessors. There are conceivable non-nuclear attacks that could easily exceed the destruction caused by a nuclear one. To take a nuclear response completely off the table in such a scenario would be madness...
.
The “Resistance” Narrative Surfaces Within the Democrat
Strategy of the Illusion Border Security Negotiations
by sundance.
Not a Single Lead Role among
the Ensemble of Democrats
by Taylor Day
{americanthinker.com} ~ It doesn't matter how many Democrats are thrown onto the stage for the 2020 presidential candidacy; they are just spending a lot more money than is necessary on many more defeats... The DNC is hoping that the larger the cast, at least one will become the crowd favorite, much as President Trump did for the RNC in the 2015-16 elections. So far, they have all failed. And although I don't really want to risk the enemy discovering the battle plans, there is a tactical reason why none of these candidates will ever be able to reproduce President Trump's charisma that helped win him the highest office in the nation. Trump has a fundamental understanding that the world's greatest leaders are not known for their warm dispositions. Heads of nations should never be held to the standards you would ask for from your priest or a kindergarten teacher. They are brash and merciless, and oftentimes, when they on the global stage, they are needed to be ruthless. That is what makes them great leaders. History reflects this as often as it has been written. Margaret Thatcher was downright hated by the labor unions for privatizing, and President Monroe was notoriously profane. He once chased a secretary with a pair of fire tongs right out of the Oval Office! Winston Churchill, Charles de Gaulle, the great General Patton, Wu Zhao, and Andrew Jackson did not have friendly or agreeable reputations. Popularity has no correlation to leadership. Democrats do not understand this, and we witnessed that already through scumbag/liar-Hillary Clinton's long and painful presidential bids. Celebrity endorsements and anecdotes about children saved from despair by her good graces only revealed her perceivable need to be liked and admired...
.
Trump vs. the Spy Chiefs: Who's Right?
by Pat Buchanan
{townhall.com} ~ To manifest his opposition to President Donald Trump's decision to pull all 2,000 U.S. troops out of Syria, and half of the 14,000 in Afghanistan, Gen. James Mattis went public and resigned as secretary of defense.
Now Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, in public testimony to Congress, has contradicted Trump about the threats that face the nation.
Contrary to what the president believes, Coats says, North Korea is unlikely to give up its nuclear weapons. ISIS remains a serious threat, even if the caliphate has been rolled up. And there is no evidence that Iran, though hostile and aggressive, is acquiring nuclear weapons.
CIA Director Gina Haspel agreed: Iran remains in compliance with the nuclear treaty that Trump has trashed and abandoned. The treaty is still doing what it was designed to do.
At this perceived public defiance, Trump exploded:
"The Intelligence people seem to be extremely passive and naive when it comes to the dangers of Iran. They are wrong! ... They the Iranians are testing Rockets last week, and more, and are coming very close to the edge. ... Be careful of Iran."
Trump added: "Perhaps Intelligence should go back to school!"
Trump then brought up the epochal blunder of U.S. intelligence in backing the Bush II claim that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction a "slam dunk", and was a grave threat to the USA.
Born of incompetence and mendacity, that counsel led to the greatest strategic blunder of the 21st century, if not of U.S. history -- the second Iraq War. Launched by George W. Bush, this invasion plunged us into the Middle East's forever war and got the Republican Party ejected from power in 2006 and 2008.
While it's not unusual for a president and the intel community to diverge on the gravity of threats, what is astonishing is that the intel leaders would declare a president to be flat-out wrong.
Yet the confrontation is not unhealthy, for it reflects reality. On foreign policy, we are divided not only on means but ends.
And the division calls to mind Walter Lippmann's words, after U.S. political clashes and unpreparedness in FDR's New Deal decade led to the early disasters at Pearl Harbor, Bataan and Corregidor.
"For nearly fifty years," wrote the dean of American columnists, "the nation had not had a settled and generally accepted foreign policy. This is a danger to the Republic. For when a people is divided ... about the conduct of its foreign relations, it is unable to agree on the determination of its true interest. It is unable to prepare adequately for war or to safeguard successfully its peace."
We seem to be in just such a situation today.
Indeed, Trump is president because of the foreign policy disasters produced by his predecessors, who leaned on the U.S. intel community, and because Trump, in 2016, appeared to read the nation right.
Yet there is common ground between Trump and the spy chiefs.
Coats and Haspel are correct that the U.S. faces a Russia and China that are closer and more collaborative than they have been since the 1950s, before the Cuban missile crisis, which Mao saw as a Moscow capitulation.
And as we have more in common with Russia, with its historic ties to the West, and Russia appears by far the lesser long-term threat, how do we split Russia off from China? Here, Trump's instincts are right and the Beltway Russophobes are wrong.
As for Iran, the intelligence community is consistent.
In 2007 and 2011, the CIA declared "with high confidence" that Iran had no nuclear weapons program. Now, with U.N. inspectors crawling all over Tehran's nuclear facilities under the treaty, the CIA and DNI are still saying the same thing.
What of the contention that Iran is seeking hegemony in the Middle East?
Really? How? Would a nuclear-armed Israel, which has launched 200 strikes on Iran's allies in Syria, accept that? What would Turkey, with the second-largest army in NATO, Egypt, the largest Arab nation, and Saudi Arabia have to say about that?
How could Shiite Iran, whose Persian majority is nearly matched by its Arab, Azeri, Baloch and Kurdish minorities, gain dominance over a Middle East where the vast majority is Sunni Arab? How is Iran a threat to us over here, compared to the threat we pose to Iran over there?
Iran broke out of its isolation for two reasons. First, George W. Bush came in and overthrew its Taliban enemies on its eastern border, and then he overthrew Saddam Hussein, the enemy on its western border.
As Trump contends, ISIS has been defeated and driven from its twin capitals -- Raqqa in Syria and Mosul in Iraq. But it is also true that ISIS and al-Qaida still have tens of thousands of jihadists living among the peoples of the Middle East.
And the great question remains:
Are U.S. troops necessary over there -- to prevent terrorists from coming over here? Or are they over here -- because we are over there?
Comments
Bonnie
The resistance is Pulosi and scumbag-Schumer who want no border security, no money for the wall.