Category Archives: President Trump

01/20/20

The Impeachment

We are on the verge of the first day of the impeachment trial of President Donald J Trump and, thus, I feel the necessity to say something of portent on the subject. I will try to be evenhanded, fair, and like Nancy Pelosi, wield a big hammer.

Fancy Nancy contemplating using her gavel on President Trump’s . . . . ?

This may be harder than I thought.

The Harlem Globetrotters and The Impeachment

The Harlem Globetrotters play the Washington Generals in displays of athleticism, sport, and comedy, but the Harlem Globetrotters always, always, always win. When you go to a Globetrotters game, you know the outcome before the tip.

This is how I feel about The Impeachment. I know the outcome. The Washington Generals will not win. Again. Yawn.

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01/8/20

Restraint — President Trump

When President Trump was sworn in one of the knocks on him was his lack of presidential bearing and gravitas. I thought at the time it was a fair concern though I also thought he would grow into the job.

I don’t hear these complaints today, but I have heard in its place a lament about his lack of restraint. In my mind, it is a balancing act — American restraint being the garden party voiceover for procrastination or the inability to actually accomplish things.

The American Embassy in Jerusalem, Israel — as teaching point

An example I find worthy of discussion is the intransigence about the movement of the American Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. This move was ordered by the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995 with the Senate approving it at the time by a vote of 95-5 and the House approving it with a 374-37 vote. The law demanded the Embassy be relocated by 31 may 1999.

The law provided for a series of six month waivers for “national security” justifications. Presidents Clinton, Bush, Obama, and Trump waived it for 22 years.

Then, on 6 December 2017 — first year of the Trump presidency — President Trump publicly announced the recognition of Jerusalem as the Israeli capital and ordered that the planning for moving the Embassy should begin.

Two big things:

 1. From 1995 until 2017, American Presidents failed to implement the almost unanimous intentions of the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995 — a period of 22 years.

 2. In the first year of his presidency, President Donald J Trump said, “Let’s get on with it. We’ve been clutching our pearls for too long. Now.”

On 14 May 2018 — on the 70th anniversary of the Israeli Declaration of Independence — the US Embassy opened in Jerusalem in what had once been the Arnona consular building. The relocation turned out to be a renovation rather than a new build to suit. [President Trump is a builder and knew value when he saw it, saving us billions of dollars.]

That is the kind of lack of restraint that I applaud. President Trump gets things done that other presidents have kicked down the road for decades (NATO funding, trade, China, North Korea, Iran, immigration) — 22 years, three presidencies for the Jerusalem US Embassy. President Trump got it started in his first year, completed in his second year.

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01/5/20

The Trump Doctrine

Every President in modern times has created a National Security Strategy which encapsulates the foreign policy views of an administration and alerts the world to understand the attitude of an administration to them and their relationship with the United States.

This codification is often created by the press of real world issues at the time. It is often communicated during a State of the Union speech and it provides a guiding light for the White House, State Department, the Department of Defense, and the Congress.

The Monroe Doctrine

The Monroe Doctrine is the granddaddy of all “doctrines” which was spoken for the first time in President James Monroe’s seventh State of the Union Address to Congress in December 1823.

It held the following guidance:

 1. The New World and the Old World were to be considered as two very different spheres of influence.

 2. Any European nation that attempted to quash the independence movements of its Latin American or South American colonies (talking to you, Portugal and Spain) would be viewed as having taken an “. . . unfriendly disposition toward the United States.”

 3. It further stated that European nations that adhered to the Monroe Doctrine could rest assured that the United States would not interfere in their internal affairs in Europe.

 4. The Monroe Doctrine was not called the Monroe Doctrine until 1850, but it was embraced as the policy of the United States for more than a century and influenced the administrations of Ulysses S Grant, Teddy Roosevelt, John F Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan.

Not every administration from Monroe to the present had challenges in Latin or South America related to European colonial expansion, so the Monroe Doctrine was more important or less important to different administrations based on their current foreign affairs challenges. Today, it is not particularly relevant as there is no real European colonial kerfuffle in Latin America or South America though it is often invoked when talking about Russian or Chinese influence in places like Nicaragua or Venezuela.

I give you this background as I want to set the table to discuss what is an emerging Trump Doctrine applying to the Middle East and terrorism.

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01/3/20

Authorization For The Use Of Military Force

I agree with the decision to kill Iranian General Qassem Suleimani, the commanding general of Iran’s Quds and the overseer of their proxy terror network. He was a ruthless, vicious murderer who ran the Iranian operations — in particular bomb making — for more than 40 years. He was bathed in blood and responsible for the death of thousands, including thousands of Americans.

It is regrettable that this action occurred on the sovereign territory of Iraq, but that is like arguing the merits of a drone rocket v an airplane bomb. We must go where the targets go. [BTW, nice intel get by whoever fingered Suleimani’s whereabouts and travel plans. This is good battlefield intel. Bravo.]

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12/17/19

The Impeachment Paroxysm

This is the first time I have used the word “paroxysm” in a longish time. I may never have used it in this blog before. It means a “sudden, violent outburst; a fit of violent action or emotion.”

It is a word apropos for the impending impeachment of President Donald J Trump tomorrow by the US House of Representatives. [I predict Speaker Pelosi wears pink & pearls. Anybody want to make a small wager?]

“Don’t screw with me, Big Red Car, you rust bucket. I can do things to you you cannot even begin to imagine.”

In case you have been traveling or tunneling toward the center of the earth, the House of Representatives’ Judiciary Committee, after painstaking scrutiny of the misdeeds of our President spread over a couple of days in which we met some actual law school professors, has proposed two Articles of Impeachment which the entire House of Representatives will ponder tomorrow and approve.

[I can tell you they will approve them, because that is part of my super powers — I can see the future.]

Only Democrats will vote to impeach the President. Some handful of Dems will vote against it, but it will be hopelessly partisan.

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12/5/19

Impeachment — Decisive Engagement

Today, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi directed the House Judiciary Committee (Jerry Nadler, Chairman) to draft Articles of Impeachment saying, “The President has given us no choice.”

This decision came after a meeting of the Democrat caucus and a day of riveting testimony from a panel of four law professors. [For those of you whose sarcasm meters are in the shop for holiday repairs after Thanksgiving — this is sarcasm.]

This calls to mind two things of some portent:

If you come to kill the king, make sure to kill the king.

The importance and danger of a decisive engagement.

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10/22/19

National Security — The Catchall Slur Or Justification?

We hear the term “national security” bandied about a lot, but what exactly does it mean at the boot top level?

First, let’s be clear as to what the term “national security” is supposed to mean, shall we? For the purpose of our discussion, it is the protection of the United States from direct attack or preventing any hostile or destructive action against us.

It may entail economic security, environmental security, military security, political security, energy security, or the security of our natural resources.

As to economic security, one could easily see the issue of trade as being an area of interest in the context of national security.

In the machinations of the Paris Accord, the issue of environmental security was obvious. The US was tasked to make enormous changes and to provide substantial funding while countries like China were to do next to nothing because they were “developing” countries in spite of the fact they were the world’s largest polluter. This is how President Trump justified his decision to pull the plug.

Military security is paramount in such places as the Middle East or freedom of navigation patrols in the South China Sea where China is on the rise threatening Taiwan with invasion and militarizing a dozen islands and atolls. Watching how “One China, Two Systems” plays out in Hong Kong is a wakeup call to the US as it relates to China, a vicious Communist regime that thwarts and smashes the yearnings of its people for freedom.

The Russian attack on our elections is an area of focus as it relates to political security.

The sanctity of the free passage of oil through the Straits of Hormuz is an area pertinent to energy security — though less so to us than ever before, because of our own domestic energy production.

The sale of uranium to Russia during the Obama administration is an example of a topic pertinent to securing our natural resources.

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