The Commander in Chief Forum

We watched it last night.

This morning I was out with Harper having a giant diner breakfast at Bob and Edith's on 23rd St. in Crystal City.  So this is now my first chance to put something up about the exalted brooding last night.

I am going to let you all write first as to your opinions before I give mine.

BTW the Gary Johnson flame-out on MJ this AM was memorable.  pl

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Having given people a couple days to comment:

1. I thought Lauer was quite even handed and is now paying the price levied by the band of leftist harpies gathered around HC. You know their names.
2. The audience veterans contained some interesting people; among them former captain Sue Fulton a career LGBTQ activist who left the army to pursue that line of work as soon as possible after graduating from USMA in 1980. Her free education with student pay as well cost the US taxpayer at least $250,000.  She is now a member of the Board of Visitors (regents) there and seems to me to be a likely candidate for something like Secretary of the Army in an HC government. IMO people like big Sue and HC know nothing of war fighting and care little for the actual combat abilities of the armed forces.  They see the armed forces as social engineering platforms and jobs programs for women and minorities. The use of the armed forces for purposes of political symbolism and IR signalling is about as far as they can really imagine the need to actually fight someone.  Michelle Flournoy will fit nicely into that set up as SECDEF.  BTW Fulton and Jack Jacobs led the viewers to believe that undocumented immigrants can enlist in the US armed forces. I think that is not the case with a couple of exceptions.  So far as I know people registered under DACA (dreamers) or people who are legally in the US but not citizens can enlist and become citizens through their service.  An example of the latter would be that a minor brought into the US by legal immigrant parents but never naturalized can enlist. I know of no other present exceptions. Tyler will sort me out on this. Another interesting veteran was the woman who had been a corporal in USMC in some ground aviation capacity. She was described as having PTSD issues but had never been overseas. What gave her PTSD?  Was it the general strain of military life in the states? She raised the issue of military suicides but did not bother to tell us how many of those are old veterans like me or people (like her) who never deployed to a combat area. Don't you think you would have wanted to know that?
3. A navy veteran flight officer asked Clinton a question about the security of classified information. She responded that her e-mail traffic was not "marked" as classified and that she had a separate system for sending and receiving classified traffic. With regard to the first point, it is clear from many accounts that her staff scanned classified documents into file and then edited them to remove the classified markings she said should have been there. They then sent her the edited documents as unclassified e-mail.  there is an existing e-mail message in which she tells them to do that.  They seem to have done this for years. They missed a few markings from time to time and that is why (C) appears as a portion marker on some paragraphs in a few documents. With regard to her second point, it is well established by the FBI director's statements that although the State Department had separate systems to be used for transmitting classified material she did not use it, nor did Powell and C.  Rice.
   
4. The issue arose between Lauer and Trump over what would be done by Trump concerning a PLAN to destroy IS.  Having been intensively trained in doing strategic planning and then having been the JCS designated Planner (a term of art in the JCS) for intelligence matters concerning the Middle East and South Asia on all contingency and other operational plans, I will attempt to school you about how planning works at the national level in the US.  First step - the president/CinC gives planning guidance to the JCS asking them to write a plan, in this case a campaign plan.  In this guidance he tells them what he wants to accomplish, what limits there are on the actions they may want to design and similar broad based guidance.  The Joint Staff (JCS) then writes a detailed plan which is forwarded through SECDEF to the CinC.  He reviews it and tells the JCS what modifications he requires and then approves it when these are done.  The Combatant Commands then write implementing plans based on the national plan.  Before you ask, the CIA plays no role in this process, nor does the State Department unless either or both of these agencies are asked their opinion.  We are talking about voluminous documents with many annexes, appendices, etc.  These concern logistics, communications and the like.  My point is that when Trump says he would ask "the generals" (military planners) to write a plan and that he then would consider it, THAT IS THE NORMAL WAY THINGS ARE DONE!!!
5. Russia is not the Soviet Union.  The Soviet Union no longer exists.  Instead Russia exists.  Russia is from the American POV a middle sized power with a lot of nuclear weapons, some excellent new military equipment products, a weak economy and a desire to be thought of as "one of the big guys."  Vladimir Putin although he once was a Communist Party member is no longer that.  In fact he treats the remnants of the CPUSSR as adversaries within Russia.  A great many Americans seem to think that Russia is just the USSR in disguise.  That is not the case and Trump seems to understand that.  HC probably does as well but the charge that Trump is a Russian tool is just too politically sweet to pass up.  In the last couple of days I have heard TV news idiots refer to Putin as a "communist leader."  This was Cuomo on CNN.  and have also heard Axelrod refer to Russia as the "Soviet Union" on MSNBC.  These were Freudian slips I suppose but you get the point.
   
6. Oh, yes, "taking the oil."  Asinine.  He does not seem to have any idea of the geography of Iraq.  i suppose that he would want to take over the southern oil fields because of the proximity to sea ports.  IMO all Iraqis would unite to fight you forever over this.  pl

Comments

[Hood Canal Gardner]

A perfect waste of good time.

[Margaret Steinfels]

No surpises. Clinton appeared to know what she was talking about. Trump didn't. This morning walking out my building, I said to my neighbor, "Hey, I have a plan." He laughed. He too had watched Trump.

Matt Lauer should not be hired for this post again. The Times got it right: http://nyti.ms/2bUMt6U

[LondonBob]

I have seen both.

Hillary was her usual mix of unattractive personality selling unattractive policies. Trump did fine but he really had an opportunity here which he missed. How hard is it to come up with some pre-scripted lines to deliver regarding obvious topics that will come up. About Russia that one has to cooperate with them to defeat ISIS, about Putin the importance of personal relationships at the highest level, about incendiary language perhaps Morrell’s comments about killing Iranians and Russians etc., and please drop the take the oil line (although getting commercial contracts does matter). Really needs to prep, and be prepped, better for the debates. Did fine but an opportunity missed.

I guess the left really believe their BS about Trump given their hysteria at his acceptable performance, poor old Matt Lauer, shamefully trying to be balanced.

As for Johnson I thought his answer about Aleppo was great, inadvertently asking the question as to why this should matter so much. As funny as it was the rest of his answer was spot on and it shows what a mess foreign policy debate in the media is that a bigger deal is being made over his what is Aleppo comment than Hillary's nutty and dangerous policy proposals for Syria.

[DC]

So much for Gary Johnson. His battle was uphill before he gave away his foreign policy credentials this morning. Now it's a cliff.

As for the other candidates, both were ridiculous, but can anyone be surprised at that? I'd say Clinton is lower on the ridiculous gauge than Trump, based on what he actually says in comparison to her knowledgeable but off-base policy prescriptions. So he would occupy a portion of Iraq and take its oil. Great stuff from our carnival-barker candidate. What a predicament.

[Jeff Roby]

Check out Moon of Alabama's take on it. Hilarious:
http://www.moonofalabama.org/2016/09/nyt-ridiculing-of-gary-johnson-failed-with-four-major-mistakes.html#more

[Bobo]

So was she right or was she wrong regarding the (C) in the margin without a declaratory header. Surprised that was not in the news this AM.
She is scary while he is less than charming.

[Matthew]

Col: In the spirit of the times, "What is Gary Johnson?"

[Castellio]

My take is this: Hillary says her top priority is defeating ISIS. She says it needs to be fought from the air, on the ground and in cyberspace. But there are to be no US "boots on the ground" in either Syria or Iraq. So.... who is going to defeat ISIS on the ground?

If she had been at all honest, she would have mentioned that the anti-ISIS fighting on the ground is being led by the Syrian Army, Hezbollah, Iran and Palestinian militias. But that honesty wasn't there. So, she has no idea how to accomplish her top anti-terrorist priority other than controlling the web, and will continue to fight those who, in fact, are doing what she says needs to be done. Colossal incoherence for another four years at least.

Trump, who was more relaxed and less strident, did miss opportunities – but he made one important point. The current administration wasn't following genuine intelligence recommendations in foreign affairs. He should have connected that with why he trashed the Generals, but didn't. Nonetheless it is clear he thinks that US foreign policy has been a dogs breakfast, and he's not willing to blame US Intelligence for it. So the fault is elsewhere. In 2016, in Washington, that's a start.

Conclusion: if you want more of the same, vote Hillary. If not, vote Trump.

[Lee A. Arnold]

Trump is the candidate for people who think the world is a simple place, and for whom simple verbal expressions of "strength" and "greatness" are the most important indicator of leadership. Trump will end up having the identical foreign policy of Hillary Clinton -- because the world is not a simple place -- but only after his unpreparedness and incapacities put the whole country through a meat grinder during his learning curve.

[Ghostship]

From the rest of his reply, it was pretty obvious that Gary Johnson knows about Aleppo but doesn't regard it as solely or even largely as a matter for America to resolve. He certainly knows more about Aleppo than the New York Times does.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/09/08/new_york_times_aleppo_story_inception_but_for_corrections.html

[The Beaver]

On the Rachel Maddow's show after the forum , Col Bacevich had this to say:
Among the questions Col. Bacevich said he did not hear:

— What have you learned from our unsuccessful wars of the past couple decades, and how would you apply those lessons?

— How do you feel about the Obama administration’s plan to spend a trillion dollars modernizing our nuclear weapons?

— How do you measure military power in a cyber age?

— What is your understanding of the complexities of the Syrian civil war?

“Those are the items that ought to be on a commander-in-chief’s agenda, and they weren’t even asked,” he said.

[toto]

So much for non-interventionist Trump, I guess. Even among those who somehow managed to overlook his previous support for both the wars in Iraq and Libya, I suspect "just take the oil" will make the cognitive dissonance much harder to maintain.

After this mess, is there any reason to vote for Trump that doesn't sum up to "kicking out Mexicans, even if that means putting Bozo the First in charge"?

[Swami]

South 23rd in Crystal City? Many many moons ago I lived nearby--used to go to a couple of Italian restaurants right around there. Glad to hear it hasn't all been torn down for office buildings.

[AEL]

Did you see that the NYT, lambasting Mr. Johnson for his Aleppo failure, first called Aleppo the de facto ISIS capital, then issuing a correction, labeled it the capital of Syria, before getting it right in a second correction.

WASF.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/09/us/politics/gary-johnson-aleppo.html

[turcopolier]

Swami

Yes, inexplicably all those little restaurants are still there. This place is across the street from Portofino. pl

[Matthew]

toto: He won't start a war with the Russians. That is enough for me.

[Swami]

Ah yes, Portofino! Many a semi-drunken night spent there. There was also a not-upscale Italian place right across the street. Back in the day they had a buffet style lunch on weekends. Fond memories.

I guess the "gentlemen's club" a couple of blocks down, same side as Portofino on 23rd just past Eads going towards the high-rises is gone? Used to run into all kinds of military and Hill types there. LoL

[Castellio]

Having said that: I don't have the option of voting, but if I did, I would vote Jill Stein. Just saying....

[turcopolier]

Swami

Yes, the more down-scale Italian place is still there. Past Eads St. would be between the B&H Bank branch and the Chinese Restaurant (Young Chow)? This was a gay place? Name? pl

[Kooshy]

You wouldn't find that honesty any where in US policy circles/ media. IMO, US and her allies reject and will do all they can not to allow Isis defeat by the axis of resistance.

[turcopolier]

Swami

Ah, you mean this place... http://www.freddiesbeachbar.com/ A few years ago a male navy lt. was arrested by the Arlington PD after a drunken fight in the place. He was described as wearing a white shantung silk sheath and heels which prevented his successful flight from the police.pl

[Kooshy]

," Trump is the candidate for people who think the world is a simple place" and Hillary is the candidate for those who think the world is thier own deeded backyard, namely the Borg.

[Jack]

Sir

It should be clear to even the most casual observer that neither our leading candidates nor most politicians and even the public know enough about history and geography to have any competence in foreign affairs. The partisans will claim their team won. But the reality is that the cluelessness of our leadership should imply that we cease all foreign interventions.

IMO, Trump has the correct instincts although he may not be sufficiently articulate in these debate and interview settings.

"I believe in a foreign policy based on our national interests that focuses on American security and regional stability instead of using our military to create democracies in countries with no democratic history and couldn’t care less about democracy,” -Donald Trump.

[Mark Logan]

I only watched the snippets. Disappointing but it was almost fun to watch the Borg re-enforce each other's utter conviction that we need to be enemies of Russia and they of us.

My other thought is how awful it is when a buffoon is right about anything, and they all are eventually right about something.

[Lee A. Arnold]

If Trump is going to "keep a force in place" to "take their oil" -- his words at the forum last night -- how is he NOT treating the world has his own deeded backyard?