Remember the good old days of Obama’s first term when everything negative was Blamed on George Bush? Heck, even the failure of Obama’s $787 billion Stimulus was blamed on Bush. Now, though, the NY Times Editorial Board decided to spin the wheel of blame and lands on
Syria Is Now Mr. Trump’s War
As a candidate, Donald Trump warned against foreign wars, not least in Syria. A year into his presidency, he is adding Syria to a list of open-ended conflicts that already includes Afghanistan and Iraq.
We know President Trump’s plan not because he asked Congress for authorization and funding for a continuing troop presence in Syria. We know because Secretary of State Rex Tillerson explained it in a speech on Wednesday at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. “The United States will maintain a military presence in Syria focused on ensuring ISIS cannot re-emerge,†he said. “Our military mission in Syria will remain conditions-based.†In other words, without any end date or public benchmarks for success.
As of last month, there were about 2,000 American troops in Syria — up from 500 a year ago — a mix of engineering units and Special Operations units that fight and train with local militias in the battle against the Islamic State. Now that we know they will be there indefinitely, who can say the number won’t go higher and the mission won’t creep more?
So, since Obama kept Afghanistan going, and surged troops, does that make it his war as long as it goes on? Regardless, we can certainly play the blame game, putting a lot on Obama for his red lines pronouncement and failure to follow through, his wishy washyness on ISIS early on, blowing off the Arab Spring, his Secretary of State (Hillary Clinton) calling Asad a “reformer”, his squishiness toward Iran and Russia, and so many other things.
Syria is a complex problem. But this plan seems poorly conceived, too dependent on military action and fueled by wishful thinking.
The United States initiated military action in Syria to confront ISIS, which overran huge areas of Syria and Iraq in 2014. Military operations under President Barack Obama and the Trump administration liberated more than 98 percent of the territory previously controlled by the Islamic State and freed over 7.5 million people from brutal rule.
You don’t defeat groups like Al Qaeda and ISIS through words. You kill them. Period. Even Obama understood that. He wanted no one in detention. He wanted terrorists dead. And good for him on this. He may have been quiet on this, but, the actions he authorized speak loudly. Again, good for him.
Anyhow, the NYTEB goes on and on, proclaiming the way Trump is going on about this won’t work, just like Obama’s method didn’t work when it came to Syria (yes, they wrote that Obama failed). What they do not offer is a better idea. We call that “complaining.”
TEACH risibly typed:
How many years of positive growth after the stimulus? All smart economists recognized at the time that the stimulus should have been 2 to 3 times larger. Republicans thought it should have been 0.
Little guy’s ignorance is staggering.
#ReleaseTheMemo
I agree, it is very difficult to find any subject upon which he has adequate knowledge to formulate an opinion. The guy is nuts.
“Smart” meaning, as usual, “agrees with Jeffy.”
Really? It was President Obama’s economic team, led by the esteened Dr Larry Summers, who told us that passing the porkulus plan would hold unemployment to a maximum of 8.0%. (The CBO guesstimated 8.5%.) Ands we were told that, horrors, not passing the stimulus plan would allow unemployment to reach 9%. So, we passed it, and unemployment topped out at 10.0%!
Given those results, as projected by all of those “smart economists,” the obvious conclusion is that the stimulus plan made things worse, not better. After all, if unemployment (U-3) would have topped out at 9%, then either the stimulus plan made things worse, or the “smart economists” didn’t know what they were talking about.
We were told that the election of Donald Trump would lead to a roughly 10% loss in value of the stock market, and that the smart money really wanted Hillary Clinton to win. Dow futures dropped 750 points as it was becoming obvious that the lovely Mrs Clinton would remain a private citizen.
Oops! Looks like the “smart economists” got things wrong again.
Every month, just before the official unemployment statistics are released, you’ll see on CNN Money and in The Wall Street Journal all of the “smart economists'” projections of what the numbers will show, and they are usually wrong, and not by a little bit. In my observation, the “smart economists” have a difficult time telling us what has already happened; why should we trust them to tell us what will happen in the future?
And just recently, we were told that passing the tax cut package was the wrong thing to do. Instead, we have had major corporations announcing wage increases and bonuses, many of them saying directly that it was due to the tax cut. Apple is preparing to repatriate $350 billion in money it held overseas, to avoid US taxes.
It has been said that if you poll five different economists, you will get six different opinions. The next sentence should be, “All of those six opinions will be wrong.”
Consistent with your ideology you believe that stimulus spending slowed the economy. Interesting.
Regarding the Wealthy Relief Act, any policy that increases the income/wealth gap between the rich and the poor harms the nation in the long run. Apple received a $250 billion gift and shared a bit less than 0.5% with their workers, the people who make it all possible. Apple, like most corporations in a tight labor market, invest the bare minimum in workers to stay competitive. They HAVE to pay more to attract workers… Until the FED engineers the next recession to halt wage growth.
jeff,
Your assessments and statements of fact are all wrong. Get an education.
It is Trump’s war if he lets the CIA and Pentagon run their various schemes. Their Kurdish ploy might lead to an outright invasion of Syria by Turkey and a rupture between Turkey and the US. A Turkish attack on an American base in the Kurdish region is not impossible.
Trump ran on promises to extricate us from all the wars (at least 16 with 60.000 troops) we are engaged in, but there has been a Deep State/neocon coup, and he as reneged on those promises.
bob,
I think Trumps does not want to be in wars, but being in a war is like holding a wolf by the ears. If you let go, the wolf will bite. That is were we are now.
There is a considerable amount of activity going on in Syria and Iraq for which we are not informed. I have people over there and their main job is simply to make sure that the government troops do not lose a battle. They are kept back from the firing line. At times this resulted in unit mortality for the Iraq troops of about 40 to 60%. But we have no knowledge of this at all. Regardless, it has resulted in substantial degradation of the ISIS warriors to the point that they can not raise a fighting force of substance. That does not mean in any way that they can not cause harm. In fact, the fact that ISIS can not for a base in a country means that they are now spread out and will express themselves in individual and small company size hits, exactly what we a seeing.