If You Are Looking for Consistency, Trump Ain't Your Man by Publius Tacitus

Christmas came early for Donald Trump. He signed a historic tax cut, kept the Government funded and operating and, to the delight of many in his base, used UN Ambassador Nikki Haley as a mouthpiece to tell the rest of the world to go pound sand. He is feeling groovy. But Donald Trump is still his own worst enemy. And his Presidency will be fatally harmed if he continues with his erratic foreign policy and his empty talk on dealing with the opioid plague.

Let's start with his wildly fluctuating foreign policy. There is no consistency nor is their a theme. When he announced that he was recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, many assumed he was on the Israeli leash and was behaving as any obedient dog would. Perhaps.

How then do you explain yesterday's (Thursday) decision to arm Ukraine as a show of force to Russia:

The Trump administration has approved the largest U.S. commercial sale of lethal defensive weapons to Ukraine since 2014. . . . Administration officials confirmed that the State Department this month approved a commercial license authorizing the export of Model M107A1 Sniper Systems, ammunition, and associated parts and accessories to Ukraine, a sale valued at $41.5 million. These weapons address a specific vulnerability of Ukrainian forces fighting a Russian-backed separatist movement in two eastern provinces.

The people we are arming in the Ukraine are the actual and intellectual descendants of the Nazi sympathizers who helped the Einsatzgruppen murder more than a million Jews after Hitler invaded the Soviet Union. Scholar Richard Sakwa provides the horrifying details on the pro-Nazi ideological foundation of the key Ukrainian political groups we are backing:

“The Orange revolution, like the later Euromaidan events, was democratic in intent but gave an impetus ‘to the revival of the radical versions of [the] Ukrainian national movement that first appeared on the historical scene in the course of World War II and a national discourse focused on fighting against the enemy’.41 ” . . . . 

“In Dnepropetrovsk, for example, instead of the anticipated 60 street-name changes, 350 were planned. Everywhere ‘Lenin Streets’ became ‘Bandera Avenues’ as everything Russian was purged. One set of mass murderers was changed for another. Just as the Soviet regime had changed toponyms to inscribe its power into the physical environment, so now the Euromaidan revolution seeks to remould daily life. In Germany today the names of Nazis and their collaborators are anathema, whereas in Ukraine they are glorified.”

Excerpt From: Richard Sakwa. “Frontline Ukraine : Crisis in the Borderlands.” from the Afterward

At the very moment we are signaling our support for Israel, the country founded largely because of the horror over the Shoah, we are also giving weapons to political groups whose parents and grand parents helped carry out the Shoah. Oh yeah, in the process of doing this we are providing a tangible threat to Russia. Imagine what our reaction would be if Russia decided to step up its weapons supplies to Cuba.

Then we have Trump's tough talk on the opioid slaughter taking place across America. Let me be clear. He is not responsible for the start of this plague. The Obama Administration carries a heavy burden on that front. CBS 60 Minutes has done a magnificent job in exposing the role that the Obama Justice Department refused to play in going after the major corporate opiate drug pusher--i.e., the McKesson Corporation:

In October, we joined forces with the Washington Post and reported a disturbing story of Washington at its worst - about an act of Congress that crippled the DEA's ability to fight the worst drug crisis in American history - the opioid addiction crisis. Now, a new front of that joint investigation. It is also disturbing. It's the inside story of the biggest case the DEA ever built against a drug company: the McKesson Corporation, the country's largest drug distributor. It's also the story of a company too big to prosecute.

In 2014, after two years of painstaking inquiry by nine DEA field divisions and 12 U.S. Attorneys, investigators built a powerful case against McKesson for the company's role in the opioid crisis.

[According to DEA Agent Schiller]  This is the best case we've ever had against a major distributor in the history of the Drug Enforcement Administration. How do we not go after the number one organization? In the height of the epidemic, when people are dying everywhere, doesn't somebody have to be held accountable? McKesson needs to be held accountable. 

Holding McKesson accountable meant going after the 5th largest corporation in the country.  Headquartered in San Francisco, McKesson has 76,000 employees and earns almost $200 billion a year in revenues, about the same as Exxon Mobil. Since the 1990s, McKesson has made billions from the distribution of addictive opioids. 

So what has Donald Trump done? That is the wrong question. What has he failed to do? We are approaching the one year anniversary of his Presidency and Trump has failed to nominate a Director for the Drug Enforcement Administration, a Director for the Office of National Drug Control Policy, a Director for the National Institute of Justice and an Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs . In other words, none of the people who would be on the policy frontline putting the President's tough words into action have been nominated. Not one. And those agencies and departments are drifting like a rudderless ship on stormy seas.

Another problem for Trump is his mixed signals on getting entangled in foreign wars. During the campaign he made a point of ridiculing those candidates who wanted to go to war in Syria. Now that he is in office, Trump, along with several members of his cabinet, are threatening Iran on almost a daily basis. The Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity just put out a memo on this very subject (which, I'm happy to note, reflects some of the themes I've written about previously):

Iran has come out ahead in Iraq and, with the 2015 nuclear agreement in place, Iran’s commercial and other ties have improved with key NATO allies and the other major world players—Russia and China in particular.

Official pronouncements on critical national security matters need to be based on facts. Hyperbole in describing Iran’s terrorist activities can be counterproductive. For this reason, we call attention to Ambassador Nikki Haley’s recent statement that it is hard to find a “terrorist group in the Middle East that does not have Iran’s fingerprints all over it.” The truth is quite different. The majority of terrorist groups in the region are neither creatures nor puppets of Iran. ISIS, Al-Qaeda and Al-Nusra are three of the more prominent that come to mind.

You have presented yourself as someone willing to speak hard truths in the face of establishment pressure and not to accept the status quo. You spoke out during the campaign against the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq as a historic mistake of epic proportions. You also correctly captured the mood of many Americans fatigued from constant war in far away lands. Yet the torrent of warnings from Washington about the dangers supposedly posed by Iran and the need to confront them are being widely perceived as steps toward reversing your pledge not to get embroiled in new wars.

We encourage you to reflect on the warning we raised with President George W. Bush almost 15 years ago, at a similar historic juncture:

“after watching Secretary Powell today, we are convinced that you would be well served if you widened the discussion … beyond the circle of those advisers clearly bent on a war for which we see no compelling reason and from which we believe the unintended consequences are likely to be catastrophic.”

Finally, there is the recognition of Jerusalem as the Capital of Israel. I defer to Colonel Lang on this. He believes that this single decision has planted an odious seed that will sprout into a global anti-U.S. sentiment that will reduce our global influence and tangibly damage our leadership on the world stage. While I suppose there always is a chance for a different kind of outcome, I learned long ago not to bet against the old warrior on matters like this.

Taking all of this together I think we are looking at a 2018 where U.S. foreign policy will continue to careen around the globe devoid of a strategic vision. 

 

Comments

[Babak Makkinejad]

Extra-territorial Germans in Eastern Europe enlisted in the Wehrmacht.

[Babak Makkinejad]

I have proposed a much more modest and limited experiment, Freedonia, a reservation for drug users and drug users alone.

[Walrus]

You might like to educate yourself a little more by reading "Black Earth" a history of the holocaust. The peaceful Ukrainians. The Ukrainians happily complied for two reasons 1) To ingratiate themselves to their new rulers 2) to help themselves to jewish property.

[Babak Makkinejad]

Take that family to court.

[Babak Makkinejad]

And all or the substantial numbers of those 60,000 souls that have perished due to opioids were former patient that had been administered those drugs?

[Babak Makkinejad]

They were murdering any Russian or Ukraian male villager who could even barely read.

[Publius Tacitus]

Dear FourthAndLong,
I get it. You hate Trump. Your hatred interferes with your ability to think logically and thoughtfully on his Presidency. Citing Mike Morrell as a source of supposed credibility is laughable. Morrell proved himself to be a shallow buffoon as acting Director of the CIA.

We apparently did pass intel to the Russians and they acted on it. Too bad our own FBI failed to act on info the Russians provided about the Tsarneev brothers. We might have prevented the bombing of the Boston marathon.

[Babak Makkinejad]

How about personal choice?
Or is i: "In the Pursuit of My Happiness, I am entitled to violate all the Laws of the United States, make myself a cripple and myself and my dependents on forced-charity of strangers, and gosh darn it, it is my life to ruin and the hell with any collateral damage."

[Nancy K]

I am not saying that opioid abusers hold no responsibility for their addiction. All that I am saying is the playing field is not level, many have been prescribed drugs that would quickly cause addiction, when lesser addictive drugs could have been used. Also not all pain can be erased, some discomfort must be expected.
Addicts are not happy people, it is a hellish life.

[jpb]

There have been 250,000 deaths attributed to overdose by OxyContin and the perps pay a relatively small fine and do some community service. This is a case example of justice in America!

http://www.unz.com/article/opioids-and-the-crisis-of-the-white-working-class/

"The feds finally sued Purdue in 2007, with Purdue pleading guilty to felony charges, admitting that it had lied to doctors about OxyContin’s abuse potential. Under the agreement, the company paid $600 million in fines and its three top executives at the time pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges—after thousands of deaths as a result of their actions. The executives paid $34.5 million out of their own pockets and performed four hundred hours of community service. It was one of the harshest penalties ever imposed on a pharmaceutical company but how can one take it seriously when the people responsible got away with pleading guilty to misdemeanors at a time when by 2001 Purdue was selling $1 billion of OxyContin yearly. In total, Purdue Pharma has made $35 billion, and the Sackler family walked away with around $13 billion.[20]"

[Babak Makkinejad]

And their mothers are there, suffering silently while their children's life wastes away - all the while remebering that shiny and bright promise that they had nursed.
It is not the addicts made a choice, they made a choice for others too: patents, siblings, spouses, childrean, relatives, friends, and colleagues who remember that which had been.

[Bobo]

BM et al,
Yes, responsibility for one's addiction rests with only that individual but it somehow is shared with us as a society. Our government and pharmaceutical companies did not help the situation over the past ten to twenty years and have some culpability.
My little story is the other side of the problem. A family member dealt with an eleven year battle with MM Cancer which required an ever increasing dosages of opioids to the point that the doctors decided addiction occurred and they went on Methodone but that could not ease the pain thus back on opioids again. As the end came Hospice took over but unknowingly their ability to provide the required opioid dosages was limited by regulations and an agonizing withdrawal commenced till recognized by a family caregiver who properly raised hell with all. Fortunately the last few days was a beautiful moment in life for the family while my Brother laid in a blissful doped up stupor.
One would think in todays world Big Pharma could come up with something a little easier on the failing human being but I imagine there is not a great amount of money in that.

[ann]

I would like to know if Nikki Haley is acting on her own thoughts of if she receives a script in the morning. She looks like a Sarah Palin want to be, except she can't see Russia.

[jpb]

OxyContin is only prescribed for intense cancer pain in Europe. The Sackler Crime Family operating as Purdue Pharma lobbied(legal bribery) the medical industry, government regulators, and politicians to allow OxyContin prescription for minor pain in the United States.

Result: 250,000 deaths due OxyContin overdose since it was permitted to be unleashed on the unsuspecting and trusting public.

No, the OxyContin addicts with prescription are not to blame for their unknowing medication with a highly addictive form of a narcotic drug. The perpetrators of this massive death toll are to be found in the best circles of academia, government, and corporate America. The public's outrage is expressed in the Trump presidency, as he campaigned to 'drain the swamp.

Babak, you are blaming the victims in this tragic story!

[Babak Makkinejad]

Thank you for your comments.
Research in schedule 1 and schedule 2 substances is very very difficult by USG funding agencies.

[Laura]

Babak -- As the daughter of an anesthesiologist, I hold the doctors responsible. They prescribe and they give advice to UNTRAINED patients in distress. If a doctor prescribes, they damn well better know what they are prescribing. My anesthesiologist mother was totally responsible for the life of everyone on the operating table --- she read constantly and updated herself at all times on anything new.

Any doctor who does not do the same deserves to have their license pulled. And any doctor who isn't reading the news and watching the opioid crisis unfold over the last ten years and doesn't then look to their own prescribing practices is a dangerous fool....and no physician.

It is the doctors who continue(d) to go on their merry way who are responsible for this crisis.

[jpb]

Laura, the physician is bound by 'protocols of best practice' and medical liability to recommend prescription of certain drugs to certain patients in certain circumstances.

The pharmaceutical industry, academic research, and government regulation have failed to protect pain sufferers from opioid addiction in the case of OxyContin. A deep dive into context will amply show physicians constrained by the corruption of the above named agents.

Doctors are not to blame in toto, but they have abdicated their moral responsibility to 'do no harm', being well compensated to comply with the tenets of their professional credentialed cartel.

As a personal antidote.....my family has a high baseline cholesterol level, as a genetic trait, with no history of heart disease. I presented this evidence along with studies indicating cholesterol level having nothing to do with heart disease to my doctor. She listened to me present and then said, "I agree with you, but I am bound by professional best practice rules to prescribe statin drugs for one with your cholesterol level." The statin industry is based on fraudulent science. Who corrupts scientific research?

It is my observation and analysis that the medical industry has subverted the medical profession in the United States and it is now (IMO) a racket. We are surrounded by rackets masquerading as professions in America, not the least of which is the military and criminal justice professions.

What are we to do when the entire complex structure and narrative is corrupted to protect a few oligarchs who utilize usury, sexual liberation, and identity politics to divide, conquer, corrupt, and enslave common man?

[shepherd]

"There are" in writing. "There're" in speech only. And it's not "correct grammar," it's a colloquialism. Credentials: recovering linguist, 20 years sober.

[Richardstevenhack]

I would have to agree that contrasting Trump's actions vis-a-vis Israel and Ukraine is not correct.

A lot of people have no problem reconciling these sorts of contradictions in their behavior because they focus on one issue in one case and another issue in the other. For Trump, he's against Iran and for Israel so his Jerusalem stand is obvious. As for Ukraine, he probably couldn't care less that there are neo-Nazis there. He probably doesn't even know. If it wasn't on Fox News, he doesn't know it.

The real takeaway from Trump's decision to sell Ukraine lethal arms is the fact that his faction in the GOP Party Platform explicitly got that plank removed. He is now doing a 180 on that.

The second takeaway is that Trump's decision to sell Ukraine lethal arms also reverses his desire to "get along with Russia." He would have to be not merely a complete moron but actually brain dead not to see that Russia would view his decision as a face slap. Apparently he doesn't care. This clearly shows that his "get along with Russia' random comments during his campaign were basically just that: random comments to which he owes no allegiance.

And no, it's not just "sniper rifles":

BREAKING: Trump will announce sale of anti-tank missiles to neo-nazi Ukraine government
http://theduran.com/breaking-trump-will-announce-the-sale-of-anti-tank-missile-to-neo-nazi-ukraine-government/

[different clue]

Babak Makkinejad,

I was just barely there for the fading warm afterglow of the Sixties. Granted, I live in something of a cave. Still, echoes of popular youth-culture sentiments about various drugs did reach all the way to the back of my spiritual social cave.

And the sentiments went like this: marijuana and the hallucinogens horrified the Old and the Establishment and were the Drugs of the Youth in part for just that reason. The opiates of that time ( heroin, morphine, etc.) were considered Government Dumm Drugs. (High Times, the magazine of the Marijuana Counterculture, referred to heroin, morphine, cocaine, etc. as the "white death powders".)

If someone who was more "there" than I was finds my sketchy knowledge of attitudes towards the drugs of that time to be wrong, I imagine they will offer a correction to my comment.

And so many decades separate the college youth of Then from the middle and working class non-elites of all ages of Today who became exposed to these opiates for totally different reasons and through totally different pathways . . . that I would need to see a real and detailed case linking the Drug Culture of Then to the Opiate Epidemic of Now. Mere assertion will not satisfy me.

[Fred]

jpb,

"... lobbied(legal bribery)..." You mean SEIU, the UAW, the National Association of Realtors and all the rest are bribing members of congress with their lobbying? Why oh why did these bastions of political power not demand Congress do something about all those deaths. Guess opiods deaths are not happening within their membership. Now back to the topic of foregin affairs.....

[Babak Makkinejad]

A taboo was broken then, the rest are only consequences.
And we will witness analogous consequences as Marriage has been redefined among the Diocletians.

[FourthAndLong]

You're right. It's scrambled my brains. I dislike Morrell myself but added the reference because he seemed to ever so slightly redeem himself in the interview by pointing out how easily someone with Trump's degree of narcissism is vulnerable to being played and manipulated. That was a minor point, one worth making, but not so poorly.

And I am more concerned now reading on Reuters earlier this evening about TOW anti-tank missiles being part of the arms deal. I'm not sure at this point if it's going to amount to more than theater. Maybe the administration wants leverage to use in November 2018. Push back against the evil Rooskies -- foil the Dem's witch hunt. Much as I dislike Trump, it is a witch hunt. Even Jack Matlock, former US Ambassador to the USSR says so. Also says that Flynn talking to Kislyak was not at all improper, and is puzzled how the American people have gone along with thinking so.

And no, Walker, I am not a troll, though I don't blame you for thinking so. I think a stable Russia is fundamental to world security. Neither country, Russian or the USA, has its interests served by a new arms race. And certainly not cold war 2.0 Aside from that I admire them. Publius Tacitus has valid cause for concern. And his Shoah scholarship is top notch. My only quibble is maybe with Sakwa as source. Sure, his CV is excellent. His book did not impress me though.

Trump deduced that politicians have not been able to accomplish things for many years now. They manage perceptions. As does he. A brilliant presentation of that idea is by award winning Adam Curtis in his latest movie documentary "HyperNormalisation" which can be seen in its entirety at:

HyperNormalisation 2016: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fny99f8amM

Curtis was one of the few people anywhere who grasped that Trump was likely to win before he was elected. The movie is brilliant. Starts in 1975 in New York and Damascus Syria and runs them in parallel up through 2016. NY with the municipal Bankruptcy. Syria with Kissinger going up against Hafez al Assad, whose sense of being betrayed launched and unquenchable thirst for revenge. Revelations as to what Reagan admin, and later Bush and Blair, then Cameron, Sarkozy and Obama / Clinton did to Gaddafi are the most comprehensive treatment of the deceptions perpetrated on the world in creating him as evil villain I've ever seen. Very informative and entertaining as well.

[steve]

So you are going to go after only the addicts and let the people who made billions off of illegally selling the drugs just walk? Tell me again how you believe in personal responsibility?

Steve

[Terry]

And your justification for the massacre of the Poles in Volyn and Galicia?