Oh....never mind.
I'm constantly reading and watching the news, and being the current events junkie that I am, this North Korean nuclear crisis thing has become my Super Bowl. I find it fascinating. I've also observed this is a good time to be a retired General as they now have a steady paycheck playing armchair...uh...Generals on TV. But I've played Battleship, and seen Patton three times as well as Kelly's Hero's twice, so I know a bit about military strategy myself. Therefore here's my prognostication on who will be the last man standing:
First of all, there will be NO smoking holes in Korea, North or South, or anywhere else. No nukes will be expended in the making of this crisis. Behind-the-scenes diplomats will find a way to keep violence to a relative minimum.
Did anyone hear the report of the Chinese telling North Korea's Kim Jong Dung that they would have his back if he was attacked, but if he attacks pre-empitively, he's on his own? This is a big deal! I suspect the Chinese are actually rather scared of Kim themselves. The Chinese liked the N Koreans poking the West as it took unwanted attention away from their indiscretions, but now they're realizing the unruly child they enabled has become a nasty juvenile delinquent.
Meanwhile, the only advisers Pres Trump seems to pay attention to, General's McMaster, Mattis, Kelly, and perhaps Sec State Tillerson, will be calming the President down behind the curtain and looking for a way for the Prez to save face, without telling him what they're doing, of course. It's all about stroking his ego.
The mid-August deadline for Kim Jong Dong to fire off his missiles will come and go. The planned US/South Korean military exercises will go on as planned. Kim might launch a test missile into the Sea Of Japan, no where near Guam. Kim will go on local TV and strut his stuff, claiming he has backed down the Great Capitalist Satan.
We'll fly B-1's and B-2's back and forth south of the DMZ during our joint exercise with S Korea, shoot Kim the "Trump bird", and the President will claim on the Fake News Channels his tough talk saved the day.
The Short Fat One and the Tall Orange One will both enjoy plenty of fist bumps and back slaps at home, and things will return to the back burner where they've been for two decades.
Which will still leave Kim Jong Poop with nuclear weapons. We want him to give them up, and he'll steadfastly refuse. To Kim they're his security blanket. With those in his back pocket he knows the rest of the world won't take him out.
Our only hope will be for one of his own Generals to whack him, which we'll soon find will actually solve nothing. The N Korean's have no knowledge/history of how "democracy" works, so all we'll be doing is replacing one dictator with another. And then the new guy...let's call him Dung Slung Shit...will want nukes in his back pocket. *sigh*
Just as we'd rather there not be a nuclear China or India or anyone besides us for that matter, fact is that Genie is out of the bottle. Trump can't put it back any more than Obama or Bush or Clinton before him could. We'll just have to hope that we all understand the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction and sheath our nukes.
OK, so there's my latest prognostication. Maybe one of these days I'll get one right.
S
I feel sorry for my conservative friends who are trying to divert attention away from President Trump and focus instead on what they think is a reasonable agenda. They articulate something worthy of debate, and then the President dumps on their message with his regular 2 am stream of brain dysentery.
Our politicians all combined couldn't lead a 2-car funeral procession out of a parking lot. Our healthcare situation is a mess. The Democrat's answer was ObamaCare, and the best the Republicans can come up with is their ScrewYouAmericaCare. That's it....Plan 1, ObamaCare; or Plan 2, ScrewYouAmericaCare.
Where's Plan 3? "Oh, there isn't a Plan 3" they tell us. That's because we don't have leaders who can count beyond 2! What they've proposed amounts to putting a band-aid on a sucking chest wound. Not only can't they think outside the box, they can't even find the damn box!
Of course we need to control our borders. Every country does. But proposing a 21st Century "Maginot Line"-like wall to keep the "murdering, raping Mexicans" out, and then expecting the murdering, raping Mexicans to pay for it is about the most ridiculous thing I've ever head of. Somebody please enroll Donnie John in a Dale Carnegie How To Win Friends And Influence People course.
Trade agreements need to be beneficial to all involved, but over time they sometime lose their fairness. Calling all parties to sit down together and negotiate a mid-course re-alignment is reasonable, but that won't work if our Negotiator In Chief is slinging personal insults and threats at the other participants. Make that a remedial How To Win Friends And Influence People course!
With the end of the Cold War many of our NATO partners let their guard down. With just a few exceptions they spent their tax dollars on everything but their own national security, thinking America always had their back. Asking them to step up now and contribute more to the alliance is reasonable, but it should be done in respectful negotiations, not by lining up our allies and lambasting them in public. That was cringe-worthy.
We have many serious issues that need attention requiring a top notch team. So who does President Trump choose to be on his team? Gen. James Mattis at Defense....OK, he got that one right. And Rex Tillerson at State....I must say he's doing much better than I expected (although reports are he's about ready to throw in the towel.) But the rest of them aren't worth shooting. Steve Mnuchin at Treasury? Remember the big economic meltdown back in 2008? Then we had a team of outstanding economic minds who, together, pulled us through. Mnuchin was one of those who got us INTO that mess, and certainly not one who has the credentials to get us out of the next one. God help us!
Beauregard Sessions as AG? Does anyone think he'll last the year? And how about Tom Price, the architect of that great healthcare reform plan that enjoys the support of a whopping 17% of the people? And last but not least, Betsy DeVos, Education Secretary only because her family is a mega-$$$$$ Republican contributor. Of all the possible excellent talent he had to choose from, President Trump chose these? *sigh*
As I said, conservatives deserve to have their agenda fairly heard and debated, just as liberals do. But where are today's composed, articulate leaders like Kennedy and Reagan, leaders who were respected if not always agreed with? Even hardcore Republicans who have been chewing on their tongues for months trying to defend Trump are beginning to turn on him. He's an embarrassment!
It isn't necessarily the message*, but Trump as the messenger that is threatening to send the Republicans into the political abyss, to join Nancy Pelosi and her Democrats who have already made themselves at home there.
I feel like we're living one of those movies where both pilots have flatlined and left the plane, and the passengers, to fend for themselves. You think Air Traffic Control will be able to talk us down?
S
* Well OK, maybe some of it is the message. ;)
I remember somewhere back during our recent presidential campaign when Donald Trump referred to Vladimir Putin as a "great leader", and his critics and political opponents went wild. "How could he call Putin, a certified gangster if there ever was one, a 'great leader'" they asked. How? Simple....because Putin IS a great leader.
When we think of a leader we think of someone good and virtuous and kind. Webster stops short of that. It defines "leader" as (1) : a person who directs a military force or unit (2) : a person who has commanding authority or influence. It doesn't say anything about being good or virtuous or kind.
Just like Adolf Hitler was obsessed with restoring Germany to its place at the pinnacle of the World Order (as he saw it at least) after WWI, Vladimir Putin is today obsessed with restoring Russia to the superpower status it enjoyed during the heyday of the Soviet Union. He famously once called the breakup of the Soviet Union "the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the 20th Century."
Everything I've read about Putin suggests this is all he thinks about. If he makes a deal to sell oil or natural gas, for example, he sees it only as a means to an end, that being to return Russia to its glory days. He tolerates his oligarchs because he sees them as influential political allies. He can count on them to stamp out dissent, thereby keeping their fortunes intact, and keeping his dreams of national glory alive.
There is no appealing to Putin's "good side" because he doesn't have one. Dubya Bush said he looked into Putin's eyes and "saw his soul", and felt he was a man he could trust. Barack Obama had his "Russian reset" back in 2010 where he hoped to reestablish good relations with Russia. Both failed miserably. Putin can't be trusted, and he doesn't care about being liked.
Putin's modus operandi is to nibble away at his neighbors by annexing area where he can (like Crimea), just like Hitler annexed Czechoslovakia, and stirring up trouble in other areas like Ossetia (part of Georgia) and Transdniestria (part of Moldova). Many believe he has the Baltics in his sights again, too. He is slowly-but-surely trying to reassemble the old Soviet Union, and he's using his feared KGB persona to "command authority"....Webster's definition of a "leader".
My fear now is that President-elect Trump will try to make Vladimir Putin a partner, like he makes influential foreigners partners in his property deals. He'll expect his Sec of State Rex Tillerson to smooth talk Putin into a win-win "deal". I don't think that's a concept Vladimir Putin can grasp.
The smart money says we would be wise to NOT turn our back on him.
S
