Trump having more fun

Oh my gracious. Donald Trump suggests that the issues between the US and Russia might have something to do with both countries.

Chorus: Treason!

Then the man notes that Putin denies he interferred with US elections (which he so did) and that Trump is willing to pay attention to the denial and disregard the “Intelligence Community’s” assessment (based on a non-examination of DNC servers conducted by a non-governmental entity so, well, totally true).

Chorus: Double Dog TREASON!!!

And so on.

It is well past time for Trump to release every single document, unredacted, going to the origins of the “Intelligence Community’s” political investigation of the Trump campaign. The originating communications, the FISA applications, the internal communcations in the DOJ and the FBI as well as the documents held by the “Intelligence Community”.

The sources and methods have all, largely, been leaked. There are no secrets here except how the IC and the FBI and the DOJ behaved poorly (and likely illegally) in their efforts to “get” Trump.

Chorus: Double Dog Treason!!! with a Stinky Finger!

And it is time for Trump to tell Sessions to tell Rosenstein to tell Mueller he has until September 1 to provide evidence of a crime directly related to the 2016 election or he’s fired. No more funding and we want all your documents too.

Chorus: Obstruction and Treason and Impeachment!!!

And Trump should invite Putin and Xi to Mar Largo for a few days of golf. Just for shits and giggles. No press, no press conferences, just a few guys having a bit of guy time together.

Chorus: Impossible! Sexist, Racist, Treason, Death to America – ooopps- like Death to the Dictators!

So giddy up Donald…the swamp is not going to drain itself and the MSM are running so fast that they will turn to butter. Like little African American Sambo’s tiger.

Bully! A Splendid Little War

So The Donald has sent in the cruise missiles in response to the Syrian sarin gas assault on its own people.

Sending 59 cruise missiles with conventional warheads and then sitting down to dinner with the Chinese President pretty much establishes Trump as a “tough guy”. But will he be smart enough to leave it at that?

In a very real sense, Trump has redrawn the “red line” which Obama and Kerry allowed to fade to palest pink. Served notice that “there is a new Sheriff in town” to quote an awful lot of pro-Trump blogs. Which, I suspect, most international players had already noticed.

The question is whether Trump is able to enjoy an American casualty free battle and move on to the next thing on his agenda. Obama demonstrated in Libya that regime change may, or may not, be for the better. Generally, it seems to be a bad idea in the Middle East simply because the next regime may be worse than the one you “changed”. During the campaign, Trump seemed to get that. Does he now?

Assad needs to go. Murderous barbarian and all. However, he needs to go when there is some idea of a better thing to replace him. That might be a new regime or it might be the carve up of both Syria and Iraq and the end of the Sykes-Picot travesty which has haunted the Middle East for nearly a hundred years.

Regime change could be accomplished with a lot of money, a few Russian Spetsnaz and a dozen bullets. But what then?

Unwinding Sykes-Picot is a much larger and, strategically, more intelligent enterprise. Defeat ISIS and then carve out the Sunni, Kurd and Shia enclaves being sensitive to the worries of the Turks and the position of the minorities. That is the work of a negotiator and a statesman. And it is something which will involve Putin as well as Trump. No bad thing that.

Right at the moment, Russia is hanging on by a thread. Demographically, economically it is in huge trouble. For Putin to survive he needs to seem indispensable. Trump can give him that. Putin can give Trump essentially nothing. Other than his nukes and his special forces, he is the Tsar of a gradually dying nation and only massive help from America can really save him. Monkeys can climb a very long way up trees, it is the getting down part which is tricky.

Syria offers Putin the opportunity to act as and be seen as a statesman.  With Trump’s help, he can open the book on Sykes-Picot and facilitate the reformation of Syria and Iraq into a loose confederation of ethnically and religiously homogenous statelets. Between the Americans and the Russians, all of the factions can be brought to the table and, with luck, disarmed and sent on their way. None of the resulting states will be heard of again for generations.

Trump has played the first card of a strategy which will likely take a few years to play out. By being willing to punish actions which are against all agreed-upon international norms Trump makes it clear that hard power is a real thing for America again.

Trump knew the world was watching and he gave them a show. Now we’ll see what he does with the attention.

 

Peace through Strength

Our Russian friends have a funny idea about how to conduct a war: they go and bomb and then dig out the people who are their declared enemies. They support their friends. They are not so much winning in Syria as not losing.

America has a rather vast response capacity. Tomorrow morning President Obama could let lose his heavy bombers and flatten, with a week, every known rallying point of ISIS, all of its oil resources and it’s so called capital.

Obama could send in the attack helios and the AC-130s and kill every formation of ISIS on the ground.

Obama could deploy the several thousand special forces personel at his command and shoot up ISIS at a granular level.

Russia does a lot with, relatively speaking, very little. But what Russia has is a strategic vision. It may be brutal. It may accept civilian casualties. But it gets the job done for Russia.

Tolstoy wrote a little less than a dozen chapters at the end of War and Peace on the philosophy of war. He made the point that the will of an Army and it’s commanders turns destiny in its direction. But without that will nothing occurs. All is chaos.

Pugin, outgunned, knows this. He cannot defeat America, but he can defeat America’s pathetic proxies. Hell, he has them shooting each other. Putin understood Tolstoy… I suspect Obama skipped the last few chapters.