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

[Anna]

"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."
-- It seems that saying on the same breath "support for Israel” and “support for neo-Nazis" does not make any dissonance for the US deciders. Considering that any questioning of any claim re Jewish Holocaust during WWII could result in a prison term (at least, in Europe, though the US has been drifting in the same direction), the ziocons' involvement with neo-Nazis should be a bombshell. The ziocons' triumph in Ukraine includes the presence of neo-Nazis in Ukrainian government, the proliferation of neo-Nazi parades in various Ukrainian cities, and the glorification of leading Nazi collaborators. Add to that the numerous instances of desecration of Jewish cemeteries. All these seem to be OK for the ziocons “stink tanks." In the light of this tolerance for neo-Nazism in Ukraine, it will be only logical to stop punishing people for questioning Holocaust “data" (and to stop harassing the BDS activists).

[Anna]

Lazar Kaganovitch survived Stalin; he died at the age of 97, in Moscow. -- A good example of Russians’ tolerance, btw.
The collectivization was the ideological shtick and crime against humanity. One of the side effects of collectivization was the extermination of the most able and laborious peasants and producers; they were branded "kulacks" and they died under the most sadist circumstances. Moreover, the highly suspicious and murderous Stalin managed to kill out the best part of the officer corps of the Red Army just before the WWII. It was the immense reservoir of Russian manpower and moral courage, which saved the Soviet Union during the WWII. The ordinary westerners still poorly understand the enormous tragedy of Bolshevik Revolution.

[Anna]

My point is the apologia of ziocon crimes in the context of the “exceptional and eternal victimhood.” If you had a chance to read Solzhenitsyn documentary “Two Hundred Years Together" you should know that Jews could be as murderous and ideologically driven and opportunistic as any Nazi-SS functionary or any Pol Pot thug. But I doubt that you read the documentary since it was sequestered by all (ALL) publishing houses in the US/UK. (Mind that the author, Solzhenitsyn, was awarded the 1970 Nobel Prize in Literature for his critique of Soviet State).
Nowhere my post mentoned Judaism.
It is highly disturbing to observe the numerous Holocaust Museums, and the continuous milking of Germany for reparations due to Jewish sufferings, while the US wages wars for Israel and while many Jewish activists (Gessen, McFaul, the NYT, WaPo, Atlantic Council, Guardian… the name is a legion) have been accusing Russians in all deadly sins, while not noticing the involvement of Jews in the making of the Soviet Union, including the bloodiest pages in its history such as collectivization and GULAG.

[Babak Makkinejad]

Thank you for correcting me about the fate of Kagnovich.
For the rest, I stand by what I wrote, absent Stalin, USSR would have been defeated and WWII likely would have ended with a cease fire.

[Poul]

Stephen Kotkin (professor in history and international affairs at Princeton University) has a new book (Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929-1941) which covers the Holodomor.

His impression is that Stalin's socialist ideology which caused so much death and suffering.
He finds no evil deliberate intent to kill Ukrainians but instead the brutal implementation of an ideological idea: the collectivization policies.

[Babak Makkinejad]

Stalin was against Collectivization, he changed his position because of the thread of Germany.

[blue peacock]

WOW, @foxandfrlends “Dossier is bogus. Clinton Campaign, DNC funded Dossier. FBI CANNOT (after all of this time) VERIFY CLAIMS IN DOSSIER OF RUSSIA/TRUMP COLLUSION. FBI TAINTED.” And they used this Crooked Hillary pile of garbage as the basis for going after the Trump Campaign!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 26, 2017

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-12-26/trump-slams-crooked-hillary-pile-garbage-funded-bogus-dossier

...while there is a dearth of evidence to date that the Trump campaign colluded in Russia’s cyberespionage attack on the 2016 election, there is abundant evidence that the Obama administration colluded with the Clinton campaign to use the Steele dossier as a vehicle for court-authorized monitoring of the Trump campaign — and to fuel a pre-election media narrative that U.S. intelligence agencies believed Trump was scheming with Russia to lift sanctions if he were elected president. Congress should continue pressing for answers, and President Trump should order the Justice Department and FBI to cooperate rather than — what’s the word? — resist.

PT and others that know how the DoJ works, why is it that Trump cannot or chooses to not, appoint a special counsel to investigate the FBI, DoJ, CIA, NSA collusion to attempt a coup against a legitimately elected POTUS? Is there something preventing him from appointing a presidential commission to look into partisanship, obstruction of justice, lying under oath, self-dealing and corruption at these agencies? Is it possible to fire the lot and take out the entire top 3 layers at these agencies?

[LondonBob]

Fact remains Trump is the reason lethal aid hasn't been provided already. Here is L Todd Wood interviewed on it.

https://twitter.com/LToddWood/status/945694568103727104

[A.I.Schmelzer]

Concerning Ukrainians in WW2:

I wish to state the following:

1: "Holodomor" killed around 2 million in total, Russian peaseant areas in Kazakhstan were actually hit harder, in terms of relative loss of population, then Ukraine. I see it as a campaign designed out to wipe out rich peasants, irrespective of their ethnicity. Saying it was a genocide of Ukrainians means one denies the quite sizeable amounts of Russian, Byelorussian, Volga-German and Kazakh victims.
2: Vast majority of Ukrainians fought with, not against, the Red Army in WW2. UPA was pretty much Galicia-Volynia only. Collaborators of course existed everywhere, including in Russia (f.e. Vlasovites, Lepiel "republic"), famed sniper ace Lyudmilla Pavlichenko is more representative for Ukraine then Stepan "dumb traitor" Bandera.
3: I think that, in many cases of Nazi collaborators, these people simply collaborated first, and then became Nationalists later in order to gain some type of "legitimate reason" for their collaboration.
4: One should also add that the more Ukrainian Kiev and Odessa military districts performed better in the dark early stages of Operation Barbarossa then the more "Great Russian" Central, Leningrad and Baltic military districts.

Concerning current situation is roughly as follows:

"Pro Western Oligarchs" and outright Nazis are the 2 major powers. The current Oligarch clique rode the Nazi tiger into the Rada, and cannot exactly get off it without getting at least bitten. They also regard the Nazis as a good bet against Russia. After all, if Russia would remove the current Oligarchs, they would have to deal with the Nazis.
The Nazis know this, and are currently embarked on a major campaign of increasing the economic heft. They do this in a variety of ways, be it by gaining financial inroads into sublegal activities (f.e. amber smuggling, which is quite a thing in Galicia), be it by converting dissapointed Oligarchs like Kolomoisky to their cause, be it by infiltrating and gaining key positions in the security apparates (f.e. Kievs police chief was second in command of Azov). This is on top of their usual "beat up realtricant workers" stick, and there general "be a violence provider for Oligarchs" stick.
"Pro western liberals" are basically just makeup on other peoples Ski Masks. They do not have their own military forces, nor do they command any sizeable degree of economic power.

The Oligarchs hope to win somewhat like this: Somehow get rid of the Nazis by making them commit suicide by Russian army, without the Russians also blowing them up.

The Nazis hope to institute a totalitarian barracks state by making everything else fail and presenting them as the true radical alternative.

I think Russia is waiting for an incoming Backstab of the Nazis by the Oligarchs, with the real Maidan shooting perpetrators (it is pretty obvious that it wasnt Berkut) being the "Casus Backstabbi". A golden bridge will be built to help the heroic backstabbers back into Mother Russias embrace.

The thing is, both the Russians and the Oligarchs see the Nazis as a loose hand grenade and plan to make that hand grenade detonate in someone elses faces. I am somewhat afraid that both may be heavily underestimating the Nazi strength. The situation for common people in Ukraine is so dire that "radical final solutions" could become seen as acceptable.

Ukrainian conventional army is a wild card. Some type of Bonapartenko is possible, although post Soviet forces dont do much couping.

[Anna]

My “point” was not published here for some reason. -- In short, Jews are no different from other people. The concepts of "eternal victimhood" and "superior morality" of Jewish people are not supported by the hard facts. This is not about religion.

[Jane]

Trump lost his older brother to alcohol addiction. His reaction was lifelong abstention. His advice to the addicted is don't start. Which is not much help to those who become dependent in the course of medical treatment.

[GeneO]

A. I. Schmelzer -

You left out the Russian collaborators from Lokot in Bryansk. They formed the 10 to 12,000 strong Russian National Liberation Army (RONA). They butchered the Jews of their area without any help or encouragement from the SS. They murdered Red Army POWs. When Soviet Partisans attacked German rear areas, RONA conducted bloody reprisals against civilians when they could not track down the partisans.

Later they were made part of the Waffen SS. They participated in putting down the Warsaw uprising where 150,000 - 200,000 Polish civilians were killed. And they conducted anti-partisan operations in Czechoslovakia.

Eventually they were incorporated with Vlasov's Army. But they were never former POWs like the majority of the Vlasovtsy.