We Hold These Truths to be Self-Evident: The US respects no border but its own

            

          In a brazen early morning assault, a special commando unit from what appears to be the PLA slipped into Silicon Valley, destroying a computer business employing several political refugees from the People’s Republic of China, killed over a dozen civilians in the building including six Americans, kidnapped one Taiwanese scientist, and stole high-tech hardware before withdrawing. The U.S. Western Military Command seemed unaware as to how the Special Forces-type group got into the country, although survivors of the attack state two large helicopters were seen lifting off shortly after the raid. The area has been cordoned off by Military Police while Army intelligence officers and FBI agents sift through the debris from the attack. One officer confirmed that two survivors heard Chinese commands being given to the soldiers involved in the assault.  

         In an unrelated report, a large Chinese Jin-class submarine was sighted yesterday 15 miles off the coast of California near Ano Nuevo State Park.

         China’s foreign minister Wang Yi said the U.S. was resorting to “alternative facts” in order to pin the blame on China. He also added that his country had the right to defend itself against American imperialism and intimidation wherever it occurs, and charged the U.S. with cyber-invasions of the PRC and conducting its own state-sponsored terrorism.     

Chinese Jin-Class Type 094 submarine

            If the above account had actually happened, what would be your reaction? Alright, then when is it okay for the United States to conduct Team America: World Police-like invasions of foreign countries?

           On January 25, 2017, President Trump, with son-in-law Jared Kushner and Steve Bannon urging him on, joined by Mike Pence, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, Michael Flynn, and Gen. Joseph Dunford Jr. at an informal dinner approved sending Navy SEAL Team 6 into Yemen on Sunday, the 29th, with a mission to seize cell phones and laptop computers used by Al Qaeda operatives. As it turned out, virtually everything that could go wrong did after inept planning and a series of misjudgments ended with the elite unit pinned down in a withering 50-minute gun battle that also wounded at least three other members of the squad and destroyed a $75 million dollar Osprey aircraft. Wednesday night the Pentagon acknowledged that the mission also killed over 20 Yemeni civilians, including many children. The account from Al Qaeda’s branch in Yemen, confirm the death of the 8-year-old daughter of Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born Al Qaeda leader who was killed in a 2011 drone strike. Chief Petty Officer William Owens was killed in the raid, the first member of the military to die on Trump’s watch. Of course, Trump hailed his first counterterrorism operation a huge success, claiming the commandos captured “important intelligence that will assist the U.S. in preventing terrorism against its citizens and people around the world.” A statement by the military’s Central Command Wednesday night said that the recovered materials may provide some initial information helpful to counterterrorism analysts. But the statement did not provide details, and they declined to characterize any discussions with Mr. Trump prior to the mission.

I will not let George Bush or Barak Obama off the hook either because when in office they both ordered raids into sovereign nations, including Syria, Libya, and Pakistan. The U.S.routinely violates the airspace of nations all over the world with Reaper, Predator, and Global Hawk UAVs or drones as they are most commonly known. Hundreds of innocent people have been killed in missile strikes that our CIA and military blithely refer to as "collateral damage." In other words, their lives don't matter. Yet we are not at war with those people or with the nations where they live.

Who gave the U.S. permission to flaunt the rules of war? To treat other countries as though they were nothing more than our doormat? And to send U.S. combat troops into harm’s way when there is no declaration of war against those nations?
         Does China have the right to do the same thing to us? Does Russia? Does Mexico?

This raid was conducted under the authority of a man who avoided military service in the mid-1960s by claiming he had a bone spur in his foot and when asked in 2015 which foot, he stammered and then said “It’s in the records. You’ll look it up in the records.” I still vividly recall breaking my left hand playing football when I was 15, but Trump can’t remember which foot had such a painful bone spur that he was able to use it as a reason to stay out of the military? He is also on record as claiming those who are captured in wartime are not heroes. He likes "people who weren’t captured, okay", that his Military School background gave him better military training than men and women serving in Iraq and Afghanistan,  that “no one is better at the military” than he is, and – a slap in the face to all veterans - on the Howard Stern show in 1997, compared his sexual escapades of the 1980s to a war experience and made him “.feel like a great and very brave soldier.”

What if Owens had been captured instead of killed? What would have been Trump's response? 
         This is what happens when you don't read intelligence briefings.
         Remember him; Chief Petty Officer William Ryan Owens. He is just the first to die due to Trump’s bumbling, amateurish and dangerous mishandling of our military.