Monday, February 6, 2017

Moral Equivalence?



President Trump was on Bill O'Reilly's show before the Super Bowl and of course he said something that freaked out the cucks and pussies of both the left and the Rhino right. When O'Reilly said that "Putin is a killer" and Trump said "There are a lot of killers. We've got a lot killers. What do you think? Our country is so innocent."  

This freaks out the NeoCons and the left who both seem to want to start a war with Russia. Super cuck  Paul Mirengoff  spouts off at Powerline:


"Trump was now suggesting that there is a moral equivalence between the U.S. and Russia under Putin. Would he back this up with specifics; if so, which ones?
The U.S. isn’t entirely innocent. Trump might have cited our treatment of the American Indians in the 19th century, for example. Andrew Jackson can be thought of as a “killer” we respect.
But this isn’t what Trump had in mind. Instead, he cited the Iraq War, and repeated his false claim that he opposed it from the beginning.
The Iraq War may have been a mistake — it was, in all events, fought under a mistaken premise. However, fighting that war in an order to rid Iraq of weapons of mass destruction does not make the U.S. and its then-president “killers.”
This was not a war of territorial aggression, like the one Russia wages in Ukraine. Nor did it involve the systematic and wanton bombing of civilian populations, as Russia does in Syria. And Bush’s political enemies didn’t die mysteriously, as Putin's do."

I am conflicted about President Bush. I supported him to the hilt when he was President because I thought he was on the right side in the war in Terror. Even though I thought he made a horrible fundamental mistake after the terrorist attack on 911. His first instinct was to protect the Muslims instead of protecting America. He started this bullshit of how we can't tell  the truth about the death cult that is our mortal enemy because we need to not offend the non-existent moderate Muslims. He made the same mistake we made in Vietnam. He didn't fight to win.  Sure he invade Iraq and Afghanistan. But he started the collateral damage nonsense and the micro managing that got us to were we are today. 

What President Trump is saying about Putin is that he is a strong leader who does what he thinks he has to do to protect his people. We had a President who suspended habeas corpus. Closed newspapers and jailed reporters. Shot deserters instead of trading terrorists for them. Killed spies and traitors out of hand. His name was Abraham Lincoln. 

In history there are many leaders who were ruthless in the pursuit of what they thought were their national interest. Mao. Stalin. Hitler. Churchill. FDR. Lincoln. When you examine what they did in the light of day it would make the snowflakes melt and set their hair on fire.

What President Trump is saying is that the United States is not operating with clean hands. We have killed our own citizens with drones. Set up proxy armies to do our killing for us. Manipulated governments to our own ends. Invaded other countries. To take their land like Mexico. Or just to stabilize a situation that was too close to home. Cuba. The Dominican Republic. El Salvador. We have done things no different than what Putin did in the Crimea and the Ukraine. What is especially amusing is that this is the mantra that the Red Diaper babies imbibe with their mothers milk but when Trump says it they lose their minds.

There is a strain of moral superiority in American Diplomacy. The John Kerry, John McCain, Lady Graham style that thinks our shit don't stink. This the culture of the permanent establishment of the Deep State in the foreign policy portfolio. Fancy pants tea sipping elitists. There is another strain that is more realpolitik. Henry Kissinger. Leonard Wood. John Foster Dulles. You take the world and it's leaders as it is not as you wish it to be. Sometimes you have to make a deal with a bad guy. You don't get on your high horse and act like you are the Sun God. You know like the last President did to the universal disgust and hatred of most of the leaders in the rest of world who saw him a weakling and a mark. Putin is a bad guy but who are we to say we have clean hands? In fact why should we have clean hands? If we are going to destroy ISIS we are definitely going to get our hands dirty. There will be plenty of photos of dead civilians. Including women and children. "We got a lot of killers." Our guys are not going to be worried about trans-gender rights and womens equality when they are going after ISIS. They are going to kill people and break things. It ill behooves us to lecture people who we want to help us destroy an existential threat to our existence. Let them worry about their country and their sphere of influence. That is what President Trump set up with his Cabinet Picks. He didn't pick a lady lawyer to be Secretary of Defense. He picked a Marine General named Mad Dog.

Things are going to different. It is not the Bush administration that is worried  about placating the Muslims and especially the Saudi's. We are not going to worry about the opinion of the Europeans. They are in their own period of transition where Nationalist leaders are rising up to defeat the scourge of Islam. They will be deporting and vetting and doing what needs to be done. Without apology. Without moral preening and virtue signaling. 

Just doing what has to be done to keep America safe. For Americans. It is as simple as that.

10 comments:

chickelit said...

What kind of dye do the Saudi royals use to color their facial hair? It always looks so fake -- like it has been added to photos with a sharpie.

windbag said...

When I heard Trump say that, I knew that many on the right would soil their knickers. There ain't no insult like the truth, eh? We've stuck our nose into places we shouldn't, and under circumstances that we wouldn't tolerate if the tables were turned. We've experienced 60 years of undeclared wars that end up being endless conflicts with no objective. Time to clarify who we are.

ricpic said...

W and the Saudi "prince." Very oily. On both sides.

Didn't Barry O brag openly about his murders by drone? Of course there have been American leaders who were killers. We were all raised in the language of a republic. But we were all born into an empire. An empire's rulers kill. The imperative of a republic is to keep the lid off. The imperative of an empire is to keep the lid on. And for that, killing is a necessity. But your average walking around American - like me - internalized the republican ethos so he's shocked! shocked! by the actions of the empire he lives in but doesn't quite accept the reality of.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Hillary killing Qaddafi willy nilly - then sending an innocent film maker to jail as a scapegoat for a lie.

edutcher said...

Stalin was a killer, too, but winning WWII without him would have meant a much longer and costly war.

FWIW at the time the campaign in Iraq was mounted, the presence of WMDs was accepted globally and, in fact, they were there. They're being used by IS as we speak. The goal of geopolitically encircling Iran was valid and we'll never know if it would have worked since Pissy and Senile Joe tossed both Iraq and A-stan away in the name of the ROP.

Just sayin'

ricpic said...

Didn't Barry O brag openly about his murders by drone?

You got it. He prided himself on being a killer.

Leland said...

It wasn't one of his best comments, but it has some benefit of truth. Whatever his reason for the statement, I'm happy Trump isn't trying to taunt Putin into a war. There is nobody in the media that needs to tell me how bad Putin is, when all of them pretty much looked the other way when Russia shot down a civilian 777. That's after Russia annexed with force Crimea.

Since then, Putin has done pretty much what he has always done to mess with the United States, but he's done nothing to warrant a shooting war. On the other hand, Russia hates Islamist terrorist as much as I do. Putin has shown a willingness to kill them where they live, rather than tell Russians they can absorb attacks. I think that's the reason the left has decided to hate Putin, that and they can't admit Hillary always sucked as a candidate because she is an overt die hard progressive.

Methadras said...

I am laughing my fucking ass off at the hang wringing twats on both sides of the aisle at the language that Trump is using to accurately describe the situation posed between the US and Russia. Everyone wants Trump to use the duplicitous language of diplomacy to somehow make them feel better and safer. He will do neither other than making sure the country is safer from those that want to attack it and dealing with the scum within wanting to do the same.

edutcher said...

The issue is a war with the Russkies gains us nothing at this point. Poot right now is more useful as an ally against the crazies (what the Lefties really oppose) and will remain so in the foreseeable future unless, of course, he pulls something stupid.

Stirring up the Western Desert and the Fertile Crescent has only bought us trouble when we had things pretty well in hand.

Why make the same mistake twice?

The Dude said...

Shoe polish, CL. The complete lack of color variation is very off-putting.

Kind of like how Coach K's hair looks, even from the uppermost row in Cameron Indoor.

Synova said...

I get the argument that it's not the same, but I also get the argument that, well, what are we not supposed to deal with "killers" then?