There’s a caravan walking at about 2 to 3 miles an hour through Mexico at this moment made up of primarily impoverished families who are escaping the violence and lack of job opportunities in the Central American countries where they are from. Donald Trump is insisting at his rallies, at press conferences, and at brief encounters with reporters outside the White House, that they are a brutal invasion force. They are still over 800 miles from the southeastern border of Texas, but the general direction suggests they are heading toward California which is over 2000 miles from their present location. (They are near a strange place in Mexico that Fox’s Lou Dobbs called ‘Juar-ll-daaaaaaa.' I haven’t been able to find it on a map of Mexico either.) At the rate they are travelling, it will take them at least 2 weeks to a month to reach the U.S. if they come here at all. But to Trump, the danger is now, today, immediately, so he has told Defense Secretary James Mattis to send armed troops…5000, 5200, 10,000, no 15,000…to meet the threat. That’s more than the U.S. has deployed in Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq to fight ISIS.
If you don’t look too closely, the men in that caravan are…(maybe they’re Middle Eastern, who knows?)…of military age, strong and virile (but unarmed, except for some rocks they might be able to throw). Reporters actually travelling with the caravan describe them as mostly thin, underfed young fathers, and teenage boys who are desperately trying to avoid being forced into joining a gang. Trump along with Fox news claims the women are being cowed into marching in the front of this invasion force in order to form a human shield for those men. And even worse, the women are keeping their babies close to themselves, and the young children nestled around them to provide an extra layer of bodies for the mass of terrifying invaders behind them, and those kids are riddled with diseases like smallpox, leprosy, aids, tuberculosis, and even STDs. According to Fox news hosts, Fox news guests, and many Trump supporters, they are all being paid by billionaire George Soros or the Democratic Party. How do they know? They say it is just so obvious and hinting that members of our own congress must also be going down there and urging them on, encouraging them to sweep into the U.S., and make sure to vote for Democrats…so they can rip health care away from law-abiding white Christian Americans, take over our cities, take away all our jobs…and kneel when the National Anthem is played!
These are the dangerous invaders Trump is warning about
From the Oval Office Trump admitted that “nobody knows for sure” whether there are gang members, ISIS soldiers, or Middle Eastern terrorists in among the caravan, but it’s possible…anything is possible. Why he doesn’t say that their pockets are all stuffed with millions in gold coins and they are coming to give it to Americans, free…is unknowable. But isn’t’ that also possible if anything is possible? He says he “tries to tell the truth” but the qualifier is he “tries”, not “does.”
If Trump really thinks this is truly a dangerous invasion force, why doesn’t he use the same tactic that has worked so well for him in the past? The tactic that makes disreputable news anchors wax poetically about how beautiful their launch is, how their use makes him appear more presidential to certain members of Congress, how Ivanka thinks it makes him…I mean, how Melania thinks it makes him more manly and desirable, how the use of them showcases what a strong, powerful, forward-thinking leader he is, all from the safety and comfort of one of his golf resorts?
Launch Tomahawk cruise missiles at them.
Trump insisted that Syria, a country far, far away and no threat to us, deserved to have cruise missiles launched at them…twice. If they were a threat, how much more is a threat just 2000 miles away and getting closer to our border? Since Trump is using the language of war, why not use our weapons of war? Just don’t distract him with a beautiful piece of chocolate cake or he’ll forget at which country he was supposed to launch them. We don’t need to wake up and find we’re now at war with Uruguay because Trump can’t tell the difference between that country and Mexico.
Not just cruise missiles either. Trump has no problem having our military and CIA launching missiles from drones over countries we are not at war with. If U.S. Predators and Reapers can send Hellfire missiles into wedding parties in Pakistan and schools in Yemen, then he can ignore Mexican sovereignty and launch missiles at the migrant caravan, too. Yemen, Pakistan, Mexico…what’s the difference?
But he mustn’t stop there. The world needs to see how tough Trump is. So send U.S. carrier groups into the Gulf of Mexico and down the Mexican Pacific coast to launch air attacks on the caravan. Maybe Trump can even ask for help from the Saudi Arabian Air Force which has lots of experience blowing up kids on buses and in schools in Yemen using U.S. weapons and hardware Trump sold to them. They’ll be able to show our pilots how and where to lay down ordinance to cause maximum damage. U.S. submarines can be included to add their missiles and firepower to the defense of the nation from this dangerous hoard of…poor people trying to escape the same war-like setting in their own countries.
Our F-117s, F-35s, A-10s, B-1s and B-2s can gain valuable experience dropping bombs on them or flying in low and slow and machine gunning them as they are strung out along Mexican roads. Sure, there will be some collateral damage and unintended casualties of Mexicans who happen to be too near a drop zone or target area, but innocent dead Mexicans is the price we have to pay to be free. Last year, Trump claimed he authorized our military in Afghanistan to drop a 21,000-pound non-nuclear bomb called a MOAB onto a suspected terrorist site. It was never confirmed that it was, but that’s immaterial. Plus, two innocent Afghani civilians were killed by it. However, dead Afghanis mean about as much to Trump as dead Mexicans. He can do the same to these violent migrant people. With a blast radius of over a mile, a MOAB will kill a good one-quarter of the first wave and make the rest of them think long and hard about wanting to come to the U.S. for anything.
Monkey see...monkey do!
It is certain Trump’s base will love this idea. Nothing makes them happier than to think Trump is killing thousands if not hundreds of thousands of non-white, non-English speaking people. They get giddy with the thought that, even with the massive tax cut that added $1.5 trillion dollars to the national debt - and there’s now GOP talk about gutting Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid to make up for some of that debt - that there’s still plenty of money laying around to throw at a military solution to the immigration issue…specifically these immigrants. What difference does a few billion dollars added to that deficit make if Trump can get a couple thousand dead immigrants out of it?
And as a last resort, if any of them do happen to reach the Rio Grande or the New Mexico, Arizona, or California border, and if they can be goaded into throwing a rock, Trump has ordered the 15,000 deployed soldiers there to consider that a weapon and then can now shoot-to-kill the migrants. Because in Trump’s way of thinking, a hand-thrown rock is as lethal as an AR-15 and deserves the return fire from one. That is what happens when you don’t serve in the military and make wild assumptions based on your feelings.
Military genius such as this can only come from someone who avoided service altogether with five draft deferments, suffered from a painful bone spur (or spurs…who knows for sure) in his foot, has never spent a day in the military, but overcame all that, and, using his vast military school background, has deployed the world’s mightiest military force to kill unarmed immigrants walking toward our southern border. We see this in every great military leader down through history. Leaders like…………..well, they must be there because how else would we know how great a military genius Trump is?
Remember, on June 16, 2016, Trump told Bill O’Reilly on Fox News that “No one is bigger or better at ‘the military’ than I am.”
If these migrants really are part of an invasion force, show us you are up to the task of defending the nation by the application of your Constitutional and presidential powers to stop them. Here is your chance to prove you understand it, Trump.
8 comments:
President Trumps military service or lack thereof are irrelevant to this question. A Nation has borders or its not a nation. A nation that has laws but won't enforce them for convenience of some makes a mockery of all the rest that Citizens are required to follow. You've studied history Dad, the failure of past empires to control their frontiers is a fairly sure sign of their eminent collapse. It was true of the Assyrians, Rome, the Mughals, China under every government since the Tang Dynasty at least.
The composition of the caravan is also irrelevant, whether it's composed entirely of photogenic families or military aged men doesn't matter, a large group of people intent of entering another nation against its laws is one thing, an invasion. Either it's stopped, or the United States ceases to have control of its borders, at that point anybody that manages to buy a plane ticket, sneak themselves in, or fling themselves off of a dingy rowboat onto our beaches becomes a "citizen" when their foot touches US soil. At which point "citizen" becomes a meaningless designation, we'd all just be subjects residing within an entity existing on the North American continent.
And yes, if it comes to it, we should repel them with all force needed to completely discourage entry. Because it's an invasion. The Ostragoths invading the northern Roman frontier also had starving children and women. That didn't mean they wouldn't ultimately drive a final nail into the coffin of the nation whom they had wished to benefit from. I'm sure plenty of the people in that caravan have sad stories and personal tragedy and on an individual level I can sympathize with. But there are half a billion people in China, India, and a billion in Africa that likely have equally sad circumstances, shall we admit all of them as well? Are the poor people of that caravan more deserving of being able to flout our laws and benefit from our citizens wealth because of the geographic accident that they can manage to travel here on foot?
And what of the people trying to legally enter America. The people that have taken the time and effort to apply for entry, learn English, learn enough of American history and law to pass a citizenship test and become American Citizens? Are they just Chumps that were too stupid not to make sad faces at CNN or NBC television crews? Is that what we want the world to know, and for legal immigrants to come to the conclusion of? Following US law is for suckers?
Frankly dad, I'm dead sick of these ridiculous "Controversies" thrown at Trump, 10 years ago no less than Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer made public statements about Illegal immigration that have people screaming BIGOT at Trump for having the exact same stance as they did just two election cycles ago. I have to ask, is this principle, have 90 million odd people really had a complete change of heart in a decade or is it merely if Trump says one thing I have to do the opposite? In which case doesn't he own the minds of his opponents far more surely than he would his own supporters?
As an aside, I completely agree the airstrikes on Syria were stupid, counterproductive, we don't have any interest in the Syrian Civil War, and if anything Bashir AL-Assad was the lesser of two evils in that conflict anyways. I also would disapprove of reinstating the embargo on Cuba, frankly a relations thaw was one of the few bright points of Foreign Policy in the Obama administration. But despite my concerns Trump never expanded our presence beyond those two strikes, and thankfully he didn't order another political assassination as we did to Muammar Ghaddafi. In comparison to every President since Jimmy Carter, President Trump is positively a dove, not a war hawk.
Aside from fruitless staying in Afghanistan long after it was obviously a lost cause, the world is about as peaceful as its been since before I graduated high school.
The U.S. presidency was supposed to be the beacon of moral leadership to the world. Through the years many presidents have not met that obligation, but what do we have today in Donald Trump? The antithesis of moral leadership.
This post was not a reflection on the immigrant caravan; it’s a reflection on the leadership capabilities, or lack thereof, of Trump. That's entirely the point. This is a person who made up a bone spur in his foot to avoid military service yet tells us he knows more about the military than our generals, who lied about providing his tax records before Election Day in 2016, who validated Vladimir Putin’s interference in the election that got Trump elected by siding with him against the ENTIRE U.S. intelligence apparatus, who disparages anyone who is non-white, non-English speaking. (He won’t even put the translating device in his ear when foreign leaders are speaking at the White House, which strongly suggests he doesn’t care what they say.) He brags that he’s a nationalist, even while admitting he shouldn’t say it. He endorses and cozy’s up with authoritarian leaders and denigrates our allies and longtime friends. Where is there any moral leadership in that?
Trump doesn’t have what it takes to be a moral leader. He claims he’s defending us from this dangerous immigrant invasion by using the language of war and sending armed U.S. troops to the border, yet he’s shown from the first week of his presidency that he doesn’t understand military matters at all. SEAL Team 6 Chief Petty Officer William Ryan Owens died in that botched Yemini raid January 29, 2017, after Trump ordered the SEAL team to al-Ghayil Yemen with no preparation or recent reliable intelligence, no backup contingency, or extraction plan. Six other members were wounded, a $75 million MV-22 Osprey was destroyed, and over 20 Yemeni civilians, including 8 children, were killed…along with the loss of Owens, and they got nothing. Where was Trump the entire time? Was he in the situation room monitoring the assault as virtually every other American president has done? No, he was in his White House bedroom tweeting about a TV interview he did for the Christian Broadcasting Network. On February 28 the Defense Department released a report that stated the raid "yielded no significant intelligence." Senator John McCain, who was allowed to read an unredacted detailed account of the operation, described it as a total failure.
Look at how Trump handled the deaths of four Green Berets in Niger on October 4, 2017. He couldn't be bothered to read the release put out by the Defense Department and NSC that night, couldn't be bothered to be at the Air Force base when the bodies were flown home a week later, and then a week after that, got caught in his lie about contacting every family of every member of the military personnel killed in action on his watch, when he hadn’t called any of the Green Berets families at all.
Trump is simply an unethical liar. He is the worst person imaginable to have in office. He shows no leadership. He mocks and denigrates others, and he cries ‘wolf’ over and over again about immigrants. The only threat to our liberty is having this budding nationalistic authoritarian as president.
Dad, how would you handle the immigrant "caravans" if you were placed in his shoes? The control of sovereignty is a vastly bigger issue than one man. It's actually one of the biggest ones revolving around the fate of nations. Frankly it's exhibit A why the border wall should have been constructed long ago so a game of cross border Chicken wasn't inevitable. Because if they keep going the way they claim they intend to its going to come down a simple choice of whether being an American Citizen has any value still or not.
And, for the sake of argument, let's concede these caravans are what they and the US media claim they are: completely organic collections of impoverished and downtrodden people trying to reach a better life. If that were true, wouldn't you be doing everything in your power to sway the hearts of the people in the country you were trying to enter by waving American flags and speaking appreciation for America... And not waving the flags of Honduras and Mexico and making statements that amount to "we're coming and getting in whether you like it or not gringos, you can't stop us". The differences between the approaches makes the difference between a routine law enforcement issue to one of geopolitical importance.
Sending soldiers to the border is all that can be done now, considering there's no physical barrier in place to discourage entry... Because congress can find the money to give foreign aid to Turkey and South Korea but not to control the inflow of people which we know zero of their intents.
And why is being a Nationalist a bad thing? I consider myself a nationalist. And think the leadership of any country that has any self respect should be as well. A president, prime Minister, or Chancellors first duty should be the welfare of the people of their nation. I don't want to vote for our President based on how happy they'll make Angela Merkel, the UN General Secretary, or farmers in Central Guatemala. I want someone who's an advocate for their people. And I care not one single damn about what the chattering heads on television and in online gossip columns have to say about Authoritarianism, bigotry, or fascism when they have love ins for Raul Castro and Maduro and cheer on the torturous murder of foreign leaders by ISIS thugs,while taking a paycheck from a transnational media conglomerate that has absolutely no interest or stake in this country any longer.
And for the record, and this is what aggravates me about the knee jerk conflating of Nationalism, authoritarianism, and militarism. A nationalist could be either of those its true. But in the context of the modern United States being a nationalist is literally the most non-belligerent political stance you could take. America is self sufficient, and certainly since the fall of the USSR, all the military actions we've taken, the trillions wasted, the tens of thousands of soldiers dead has been done in the name of someone else. Kuwait, Bosnia, Saudi Arabia, Columbia, Eritrea. And on and on. John McCain, Obama,George W Bush, Mitt Romney, Bill Clinton and Hillary all were more concerned about the interests of people that had no love of America than they were about the citizens they extracted that wealth from to waste. You know what, if these "allies" need other people dead so badly from now on I think they can do research and development themselves, and field their own soldiers. We shouldn't even be doing "technology transfers" to anyone that's not Australia or Britain.
Which is also why Trump insulting our "allies" actually amuses me, they've had our soldiers killed fighting for and protecting them while condescending their own morality,and in practical terms Trump could walk up to Emmanuel Macron and backhand him across the face an there's nothing that would come of it, because when you get down to the ugly truth that's the relationship they've voluntarily asked for and submitted to.I think everyone forgets history hasn't ended, human nature hasn't been overcome, and the only reason our "allies" are called "allies" is an accident of geopolitics that could have shaken out completely differently had Franz Ferdinand not been shot or Woodrow Wilson not been the US president.
Again, the issue is NOT the migrants. Immigrants have been coming here for 500+ years, most of them illegally. Unless we copy the former Soviet Union and set up an Iron Curtain, sown with landmines on both sides of the wall, with guards in towers that shoot people trying to get out and trying to get in, we aren’t going to stop them. The only way to reduce the number is to make this country so vile, dangerous and unappealing; no one will come here again. Would that be a good way to approach the issue? Shooting them, or threatening to shoot them, is about as totalitarian as one can get.
Yet that’s Trump’s response. I have to wonder…what danger are these people? If their predecessors haven’t successfully gutted our economy and decimated the nation already, when will they? Fear seems to be Trump’s only selling point. Fear is not what this country was founded on.
If, as you write “sending soldiers to the border is all that can be done now”, then what I argued in my post stands. Use the weapons of war. Launch cruise missile at them, drop MOAB bombs on them, strafe them, kill them before they get anywhere near the border, collateral Mexican dead be damned. And my whole problem with that is that Trump has never shown any understanding of how to use the military correctly, how to formulate a sound border policy, understanding diplomacy, or the limits of his presidential powers. He uses fear, pure and simple. Trump can’t even figure out how to use an umbrella. What makes anyone think he knows how to use our military?
Nationalism, as described by Merriam-Webster, is a geopolitical group pursuing its own self-interests at the expense of all others, and the group in question is usually smaller than the entire nation. It is not to be confused with patriotism. An extreme form of nationalism is especially marked by a feeling of superiority over other countries. It is synonymous with xenophobia, chauvinism, and jingoism. I don’t find anything admirable or desirable about that. It’s like loving your country while hating 90% of the people in it.
Since America became a sovereign entity, most immigration hasn't been "illegal". And Dad, let's not mince words, until the Immigration and Nationalization Act of 1965, the *vast* majority of immigrants that came to America were people of European ancestry. Which goes back to your comment about them "not gutting the economy", take a look at median wage growth VS inflation in the decades before the INA and after. It goes flat and declines...for decades. Correlation does not equal causation, but it sure is something to make you ask questions.
The United States of America was, as it was founded, a nation of immigrants true, but one forged from a common history of European politics and warfare. The structure of the US government and Constitution was an amalgam of many of the best ideas of 2000 years of European history from the Senate of the Roman Republic, the Athenian democracy from before the Peloponnesian war, the British Magna Carta, and philosophy of Locke and Descartes. It wasn't just a rootless mish-mash of everyone on Earth as visualized falsely now.
But honestly, I'm really not concerned about the ethnicity of the people who immigrate to the US legally. Until the modern day political madness America was quite good at instilling a since of being an American first and foremost among the people that came here from the Italians and Irish to Chinese, Hmong, and Viets. I've entrusted Mexican doctors and nurses with my life, I've spent 2 weeks in Communist China and 3 weeks in Japan. I have no hate for any of them, but I also don't want what made this nation have it's own identity erased either because we've become so paralyzed we can't say "we have a unique history and culture too that deserves to be preserved."
As for fear, some authoritarian dictatorship we are, we can't stop people from trying to get here. Kind of the opposite problem that the Warsaw Pact had isn't it? They had to post pre-pubescent teenagers on barbwire walls to keep people from fleeing. We have to put battle hardened soldiers on our border in attempt to not have people come in.
But again, do we control who enters or don't we? Is everyone on Earth an American Citizen that just hasn't managed to buy the plane ticket to the continent yet? I recall the extremely darkly humorous line from Full Metal Jacket that the Colonel makes to Joker "...Inside every gook is an American trying to get out!" Strange then that modern political dogma from many in America now completely agrees with him from a twisted angle.
And yes, America was founded on fear, among many other things of course. Fear of being dominated by a central power far away that had no concern for the colonists well being. Fear of the natives and their French allies in the interior and a need for mutual security. Fear of becoming yet another domineering Tyranny as in the Old World and a desperate attempt to make sure American citizens would never be turned back into subjects and then serfs.
I'll finish saying this, America did have an ethnic identity, it largely does not anymore. But an American identity can be forged and maintained from a shared set of beliefs, culture, and language. But America divorced from an ethnic identity, common language, common religious beliefs, and political ideals of free speech and self defense can't and won't survive. It simply can't, what holds it together, what provides the center? And THAT is why I object to even considering letting these migrant caravans in, it spurns the people that America should embrace, people that would cherish the Constitution and being a citizen, in favor of people that declare what they REALLY want is Mexico Del Norte.
I’m at a loss to understand why I need a history lesson on the United States. Or ancient and medieval cultures I’ve studied most of my life. I’ve lived here for almost 66 years. I have seen some of the highest highs, (the U.S. moon landings) and the lowest lows, (the assassination of a president) of this nation during that time. We are NOT a nation built on or enhanced by fear.
The issue is Donald Trump’s competence level, his propensity for using fear, and his dishonesty. If our border is so insecure, why didn’t Trump show us exactly how he was going to get Mexico to pay for it and already issue construction orders on day one of his administration, which he promised to do while campaigning? The GOP, which does his bidding unchecked, controls every branch of the government. Except for previously scheduled repairs to the existing wall, not one square inch has so far been built. Why should Americans now be saddled with the bill if it was so damned important to Trump? He doesn’t mind illegals in this country. By his own admission in his deposition of June 16, 2016, he hired 200 undocumented Polish workers in the 1980s to tear down the Bonwit Teller building where Trump Tower now sits. If these migrants in the caravan all wanted to come here and work at Mar-a-Lago, what’s the problem? Trump hires very few Americans to work there anyway. He specifically circumvented his “Buy American, Hire American” executive order on April 17, 2017, when he allowed B-2 Visas for Filipino girls to be hired instead of American workers. His own propaganda arm, Fox News, reported that many of the groundskeepers and other low-paying positions at his golf resorts are not Americans.
Because Trump fears what he doesn’t understand, and he doesn’t seem to understand a lot, he gins up this scary migrant invasion to distract from his real agenda, enriching himself. Why not punish that bastard regime in Saudi Arabia for killing Jamal Khashoggi who did nothing more offensive than write an article Bin Salman didn’t like? Because he doesn’t want to interrupt the flow of money he makes off the Saudi government. Why not condemn Putin for interfering in our election? Because he still hopes to open a Trump hotel in Moscow. Why not take stronger action against China for stealing most of our technology? Because they gave him $500 billion for his golf resort in Indonesia. The migrant issue is a “shiny-metal-object” he hopes will get people to ignore how much he’s fleecing the American public.
Trump isn’t in it to make America Great. He’s in it to make his bank account great.
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