American Thinker by William F Marshall
The title of this column reflects the first thought I had on the news of Steve Bannon's resignation last Friday as President Trump's strategic advisor.
Although I do not know Mr. Bannon personally, the impression I have gotten from reading biographies of him, as well as my knowledge of his enunciated beliefs, his patriotism, and the pivotal role he played in galvanizing Donald Trump's presidential campaign, caused me to believe that he was the one individual with the intellectual firepower, intestinal fortitude, and strategic vision to check the unchecked growth of our government.
Now, with his resignation, I fear that that the barely-begun battle to retake control of the government and pare it back to something resembling sanity, is lost.
Could Britain have survived the Nazi onslaught if Churchill had resigned? Could America have held together had Lincoln quit?
Granted, Bannon was not the head of state. But he clearly had the ability to apply a deep understanding of historical events and inflection points to contemporary trends and issues. Trump, while seeming to have the gut-level instincts to recognize the erosion of the sources of America's greatness, has never demonstrated or articulated a strategic vision to get us back to the societal model envisioned by the Founders: that quaint notion that the government answers to the people, rather than the other way around. He needed someone like Bannon to provide that.
(You see it is not only the people at Breitbart who think that the Deep State has won. There are many of us who fear that nationalism has been abandoned in favor of globalism and Chamber of Commerce capitalist crony-ism. Bannon was not afraid to stand up for the policies that Trump promised as he ran for President. An end to the endless wars. Economic nationalism with a emphasis on bringing China to account. Putting America and the American Worker first. Putting the American infrastructure before Afghanistans. That seem to be out the window.
(You see it is not only the people at Breitbart who think that the Deep State has won. There are many of us who fear that nationalism has been abandoned in favor of globalism and Chamber of Commerce capitalist crony-ism. Bannon was not afraid to stand up for the policies that Trump promised as he ran for President. An end to the endless wars. Economic nationalism with a emphasis on bringing China to account. Putting America and the American Worker first. Putting the American infrastructure before Afghanistans. That seem to be out the window.
An Lindsey Graham and John McCain and the media laugh and laugh.)
28 comments:
Those nasty little Trumplette kids are in charge and that is not a good thing.
Exactly.
Ivanka should concerntrate on breeding.
And Jared needs to go back to New York.
Don Jr is ok.
He should be put in charge of the Alt-right.
Bannon needs to return and the nepotism needs to end. Who the f do they think they are, Amy Carter and Chelsea Hubble?
Perhaps Bannon should run for POTUS in order to test your hypothesis.
This sort of drivel is why I'm starting to think the alt right is a follow up to the Libertarians' miserably failed attempt to claim Conservatism for their own.
Bannon, whatever he was, didn't join the Trump campaign until late August, the same time as Kellyanne Conway, so this blather about "the pivotal role he played in galvanizing Donald Trump's presidential campaign" is just that. The writer with his nonsense about "he was the one individual with the intellectual firepower, intestinal fortitude, and strategic vision to check the unchecked growth of our government" makes him sound like he's Darth Cheney in the Bush 43 Administration, which was also nonsense.
No, Deep State hasn't won, and Trump's policies are still in the works, and the effects of what he's done already haven't been fully felt, and the idea that all his projects, f'rinstance the Wall, hasn't been completed yet doesn't mean he's beaten.
For those who are still rational, put any of the Libertarian and alt right rags right beside ESPN, with their panic over a poor guy who happened to have the same name as one of America's finest men, and CNN who give new dimension to the term, fake news, every day.
Ed you are blind to what is happening.
No, I'm just being rational and looking at the facts as they are.
I notice a lot of the rap against Trump is all the Ivanka-Jared gossip. This is all part of the fake news, but I see a lot of people buy it without question (I think I said that several times in the past). McMaster fires a couple of Bannon's men because they're loose cannons, so it's all a big plot.
To answer a lot of this, I link a Surber piece with column excerpts that should, in rational eyes, put the lie to a lot of this nonsense.
It has to do with the reasons Trump made his decision about A-stan. I particularly want to quote one part in answer to all the people who want to portray Trump's men as the kind of vainglorious generals the Lefty media said were all there were in WWI.
The day before that meeting, Mr. Trump had invited four soldiers who had served in Afghanistan to the White House for lunch. His exchanges with these enlisted men, an official said, left him sober about the prospects for turning around a war that has dragged on for nearly 16 years.
To me, that doesn't sound like a man who's given in to the globalists or the neocons or the alt right or anyone else. It sounds like a man who wants to do right by his troopers, his country, its place in the world, and its security.
I'll just add one other thing. One I said many times last year.
In answer to the title of this post:
You people sure give up easily.
McMaster convinced Trump on Afganistan with this photo. If true they are both idiots.
Ed I think that Trump is falling into the trap that so many politicians fall into. Taking the direction of the generals too much into account.
The only politicians that didn't do that were generals themselves like Ike. He was the one who warned us about the military industrial complex.
Now you are going to tell me Ike was a commie libertarian right?
Wake up.
There is no reason for us to be in Afghanistan after 16 years. Nothing is going to change. Certainly not with the incremental moves they are making.
Either kill all of them or get out. Those are the options.
Everything else is bullshit.
May I remind you Ike was a lot more Liberal than most people remember. He created HEW, extended a lot of the social services set up in the New Deal. And the idea the generals don't take what the generals say into account is illogical.
But the real issue is you refuse to see the lesson Trump has learned that, if we want to leave, let's not make the mistake Pissy did in Iraq. If we're going, let's make sure we never have to go back.
And I heard all the stuff about nothing changes when Dubya went after Al Qaeda. Stephen Ambrose telling us it was the graveyard of armies (for most, it wasn't), how the surge wouldn't work (it did). This is the same old drivel again. And there is no "reserve" for IS to draw, the way there was in North Vietnam. What's there is all they've got, much like Iraq.
This is the same old Libertarian defeatism in a new package.
And, even to kill them all, you still have to ramp up, so you're arguing against yourself.
BTW Trump made the point, "We're killing terrorists", so he's doing what you want.
But you don't want it if it's Mattis' or McMasters' idea.
We won after the surge?
What did we win?
See why I dubbed him Baghdad Ed.
"We won after the surge?
What did we win?"
A Middle east with American power within allies right in the center which would have protected Israel, which prevents nuclear war, which would have contained Iran and forced them into a much worse negotiating position, which would have prevented the incredibly shortsighted Iran deal. We would have won a world without ISIS, which is the worse thing since the NAZI's.
It was all thrown away by Bush and Obama being weak and spineless. Staying in Germany gave us a peaceful, productive Europe instead of a Soviet Hegemony, and staying in Japan stabilized the east. Both of those things produced enormous benefits for our people and avoided terrible costs, becuase we can never escape the world and just close the curtains and go back to bed. That's a fantasy that will just get us killed. History proves what works, and what doesn't. There is not a no-cost option, just more costly or less.
Troop, I have concerns how things are going, but Bannon is not even a close equivalent to Churchill or Lincoln.
As far as Afghanistan, I look at it as the equivalent of Manhattan in Escape from New York. You wall it off, they can do what they like to each other, but if they try to come out you deal with them like Lee Van Cleef did.
In hindsight, what Bush did was a disaster in Iraq, but he did manage to create some semblance of order before he left office. Obama decided to just pull out, creating a vacuum and making things worse.
If you can maintain order with a minimal force and do not engage in nation building, there is something to be said for that. If it is going to end up a quagmire, then figure out what is the best solution for us. With Afghanistan, the best is probably a very light footprint but the ability to bomb the shit out of any target we choose in country. Work covertly with the natural enemies of the Taliban and Jihadis (the other minority tribal groups in Afghanistan) and help they fuck with the Taliban and Jihadis for us.
You could walk away, declaring Afghanistan to be the asshole of the world (which it is), but that is like ignoring a malignant tumor. Eventually it will give you ass cancer.
You do not want to get ass cancer...
We won nothing lasting with the surge and our involvement in Iraq.
Israel can take care of itself if we do not hamstring them the way the Obama administration did with the Anti-semitic Deep State and State Department. Bibi would have ended the Iran nuclear problem quickly. Plus Israel has the bomb and Iran knows if they touch it off the hebes are not afraid of giving it right back. Much more so than the Americans.
I certainly don't think Bannon is Churchill. That is this writers hyperbole.
I think Bannon and Miller and Gorka are the only counter weight to the globalists and the Deep State and the Democratic wing of the Republican Party that has all of the staff positions in the White House.
Think about this one. Even the Republican establishment wing represented by Prebius and Spicer were ousted. Now you only have war mongering general and globalist capitalists from Goldman Sachs running things.
Bannon had been at Goldman Sachs and rejected them. He knows how they operate and could be an effective counter argument.
There is nothing there to offer the other side other than Miller.
"You could walk away, declaring Afghanistan to be the asshole of the world (which it is), but that is like ignoring a malignant tumor."
How do you get rid of a tumor?
You don't hang around and make it bigger.
You use radiation to kill it.
So if you are suggesting we nuke it and kill all the Afghans.....well I would sign on to that. But you know that can't happen.
So you cut the tumor out of your life. Period.
It is worth noting that although Churchill saved Western Civ, he did not succeed in his overriding goal of preserving the British Empire and, in fact, he may have hastened its demise. The only worthwhile lesson to be drawn from the study of history is that you cannot draw any worthwhile lessons from the study of history.......Maybe we'll pack it in or maybe the Taliban will. My life has not been radically altered, one way or another, since our incursion into Afghanistan. It's made a big difference for most Afghans though. They have some good reasons to call it a day with jihad, but maybe they'll stick it out for another two or three centuries. Your guess is as good as mine.
Trooper York said...
Ed you are blind to what is happening.
To what? That cocksuckers like Mitch McConnel and Paul Ryan are putting victory into the mouth of defeat with their NeverTrump passive aggressive we'll put off legislation until such and such time which really translates to "we're not going to do a fucking thing because FUCK YOU TRUMP for calling us out on our bullshit?"
Troop, you are misplacing your annoyances on this one. Trump was told by guys like McConnel that they were going to implement his reforms, but never thought he would win until he did and they back-peddled. Their eight years of squawking about Obama and his agenda of conceit and how they were going to reverse it if they only. had. power. and. a. majority. It was all lies. All of it. That's who you should be blaming.
Troop: Afghanistan was used as a staging area for Osama bin Laden to launch 9/11. So while I would be perfectly happy with ignoring Afghanistan forever, we unfortunately live in a world where Afghanistan is something we do have to deal with.
My proposal would be very light. Let Afghanistan operate on its own. No Americans in Kabul. We have a remote base out in the desert where we can send in an airstrike if we need it. We can give support (in terms of limited aid) to tribal forces that hate the Taliban and al Qaeda.
We also do not want a vacuum that sucks in the Chinese, Arabs, Pakis, and others.
And walking away from Iraq (after getting rid of Saddam) was a mistake. We gained nothing by the surge because we walked away from it. Again, the model should have been very light.
Evi, The whole point of being in Afghanistan now is to secure mineral rights by protecting the heroin trade for the Afghani government. The Taliban basically wiped out the heroin trade there and a vast majority of heroin that comes into this country and Europe is coming from Afghanistan.
Now, how much money in minerals are there in that giant shit dump of a country? Last time I talked to a geology buddy of mine who's been over there several times for the last five year, about $3-6 trillion. The afghanis have no use for it. They don't mine, they don't have any industry of note, but these minerals are a direct competitor to the Chinese who have heavy metal minerals used in modern electronics that we simply don't. Afghanistan is that gateway to securing it. The whole landscape of why we are there now has shifted.
I hold no brief for Ryan and McConnell. I would give them two behind the ear tomorrow if I could. I would support anyone who ran against them or any of the so called conservatives like McCain and Graham and Flake and all the rest. But they did not force Trump into foreign adventures.
They are dismal failures thats for sure. But the involvement in Afghanistan will be one for sure. More of our guys will die for nothing. To shore up a government of homo kid touchers and opium salesman. What the fuck? How can you defend that shit?
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