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What does a TRUMP presidency look like?

Started by FunkMonk, November 08, 2016, 11:02:57 PM

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CountDeMoney


dps

Quote from: viper37 on March 04, 2017, 02:18:47 PM
Quote from: Berkut on March 04, 2017, 01:46:23 PM
Quote from: dps on March 04, 2017, 01:01:29 PM
Quote from: Berkut on March 04, 2017, 09:30:19 AM
Yeah, that is not hypocrisy at all.
Why is it hypocritical to be in favor of legal immigration, but against people coming here illegally?

I am confused by your question. I said it was NOT hypocritical, so why would you ask me how it is?
he thought you were being sarcastic.  I was unsure too at first.

Correct.

Grey Fox

Quote from: derspiess on March 04, 2017, 12:10:18 PM
Quote from: Berkut on March 04, 2017, 09:30:19 AM
Yeah, that is not hypocrisy at all.

Oh, hey Berkut. Are you ever going to tell me what groups I hate?

You hate everyone, DerFurher.
Colonel Caliga is Awesome.

jimmy olsen

If Trump was wire tapped that means a FISA court found probable cause right?  He probably shouldn't have tweeted that out.
It is far better for the truth to tear my flesh to pieces, then for my soul to wander through darkness in eternal damnation.

Jet: So what kind of woman is she? What's Julia like?
Faye: Ordinary. The kind of beautiful, dangerous ordinary that you just can't leave alone.
Jet: I see.
Faye: Like an angel from the underworld. Or a devil from Paradise.
--------------------------------------------
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derspiess

Quote from: Grey Fox on March 04, 2017, 05:25:01 PM
Quote from: derspiess on March 04, 2017, 12:10:18 PM
Quote from: Berkut on March 04, 2017, 09:30:19 AM
Yeah, that is not hypocrisy at all.

Oh, hey Berkut. Are you ever going to tell me what groups I hate?

You hate everyone, DerFurher.

I like you  :cry:
"If you can play a guitar and harmonica at the same time, like Bob Dylan or Neil Young, you're a genius. But make that extra bit of effort and strap some cymbals to your knees, suddenly people want to get the hell away from you."  --Rich Hall

CountDeMoney

Quote from: jimmy olsen on March 04, 2017, 06:52:29 PM
If Trump was wire tapped that means a FISA court found probable cause right?  He probably shouldn't have tweeted that out.

No, it doesn't.

Quite frankly, I'm more inclined to believe any intercepts the government has involving Trump personnel were from surveillance of Russian assets that were under observation.

Grey Fox

Quote from: derspiess on March 04, 2017, 07:26:47 PM
Quote from: Grey Fox on March 04, 2017, 05:25:01 PM
Quote from: derspiess on March 04, 2017, 12:10:18 PM
Quote from: Berkut on March 04, 2017, 09:30:19 AM
Yeah, that is not hypocrisy at all.

Oh, hey Berkut. Are you ever going to tell me what groups I hate?

You hate everyone, DerFurher.

I like you  :cry:

Of course, I'm a white christian male.
Colonel Caliga is Awesome.

Berkut

Quote from: dps on March 04, 2017, 04:45:06 PM
Quote from: viper37 on March 04, 2017, 02:18:47 PM
Quote from: Berkut on March 04, 2017, 01:46:23 PM
Quote from: dps on March 04, 2017, 01:01:29 PM
Quote from: Berkut on March 04, 2017, 09:30:19 AM
Yeah, that is not hypocrisy at all.
Why is it hypocritical to be in favor of legal immigration, but against people coming here illegally?

I am confused by your question. I said it was NOT hypocritical, so why would you ask me how it is?
he thought you were being sarcastic.  I was unsure too at first.

Correct.

No, I was not being sarcastic. I don't think that is hypocritical at all.
"If you think this has a happy ending, then you haven't been paying attention."

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dps

Quote from: Berkut on March 04, 2017, 08:34:17 PM

No, I was not being sarcastic. I don't think that is hypocritical at all.

My bad, then.  Sorry that I misinterpreted your post.

Ed Anger

Quote7h
Dungeons And Donalds‏ @DungeonsDonald
How low has DM Obama gone to peek over my shoulder during the very sacred character creation process. Bad (or sick) guy!

#BadObama
Stay Alive...Let the Man Drive

Eddie Teach

Quote from: celedhring on March 04, 2017, 06:06:37 AM
The Skeletor face makes her look older than she really is.

Nice knees though.

GF- you're a Christian?
To sleep, perchance to dream. But in that sleep of death, what dreams may come?

HVC

Quote from: Eddie Teach on March 04, 2017, 09:54:40 PM
Quote from: celedhring on March 04, 2017, 06:06:37 AM
The Skeletor face makes her look older than she really is.

Nice knees though.

GF- you're a Christian?

They use that term loosely in Quebec these days.
Being lazy is bad; unless you still get what you want, then it's called "patience".
Hubris must be punished. Severely.

frunk

At this point I'll be thrilled if Trump ends up being the second worst president in US history.  It would mean there are presidents after Trump.

CountDeMoney

Quote from: frunk on March 04, 2017, 11:06:14 PM
At this point I'll be thrilled if Trump ends up being the second worst president in US history.  It would mean there are presidents after Trump.

Meanwhile, as we eliminate entire chunks of the government in order to fund the mobilization efforts, I'm wondering how a superpower is going to get on without a Department of State.


CountDeMoney

QuoteAmericas
Trump's Military Ambition: Raw Power as a Means and an End
The Interpreter
By MAX FISHER
The Failing New York Times
MARCH 3, 2017

WASHINGTON — President Trump's vision of American power, something of a mystery during the campaign, has come into new focus after a week of speeches and budget plans hinting at his ambitions for the military.

They reveal a president fascinated with raw military might, which he sees as synonymous with America's standing in the world and as a tool to coerce powerful rivals, such as China and Iran, which appear to be his primary concern.

He also appears little-focused on the details of America's continuing wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria and globally against Al Qaeda. None of those missions will be resolved by the new aircraft carriers Mr. Trump has promised, and generals warn that they will be set back by his proposals to slash funding for diplomacy and aid.

This may not necessarily be an oversight on Mr. Trump's part, analysts suggest, but rather flow from a nationalistic worldview that is unfamiliar today but dominated the geopolitics of the 19th and early 20th centuries.

That may be revealed most clearly in Mr. Trump's vision of victory.

He has portrayed the military's primary role as winning battles, and winning battles as sufficient for winning wars — two ideas out of favor since at least the Vietnam War. Ever since then, most generals have emphasized that war is driven by political conflicts that can rarely be resolved through force alone.

"We will give our military the tools you need to prevent war and, if required, to fight war and only do one thing. You know what that is? Win. Win," Mr. Trump said this week.

It is perhaps early to say whether his views cohere into a single Trump doctrine. But they suggest a pursuit of policies that seem less suited to any particular strategy or conflict than to a view of military power as its own end.

An Older Way of War

Mr. Trump has mostly expressed his military thinking through calls to build up major weapons systems, such as aircraft carriers and nuclear weapons, designed to fight major wars.

Michael C. Horowitz, a University of Pennsylvania political scientist, said, "That does mean a military force more optimized for potential conflict with China, with Iran and, ironically, with Russia."

Every president has worked to retain military superiority over major adversaries. But Mr. Trump is unusually single-minded in his focus on preparing for great power conflict, which the world has averted since World War II.

This echoes the beliefs of Stephen K. Bannon, a senior adviser whose nationalist ideology traditionally sees great power conflict as inevitable.

"We're going to war in the South China Sea in five to 10 years," Mr. Bannon said in a March 2016 radio broadcast. "There's no doubt about that."

When Mr. Trump said this week that he would equip the Navy to "win" a war, he probably sought only to demonstrate his faith in the military. But the comment has deepened the impression that Mr. Trump may consider modern great power conflict to be winnable, an idea that has been out of favor since the first years of the Cold War, when nuclear deterrence made it unthinkable.

Mr. Trump's focus on great power conflict and military might may come quite literally at the expense of unconventional wars, which the United States is still fighting in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

To fund his military expansion, Mr. Trump has asked to cut billions that would probably come out of State Department and foreign aid programs. This would gut American strategy in places like Afghanistan and Iraq, which relies on diplomacy and political efforts such as building schools and training police forces.

It is unclear whether this is because Mr. Trump plans to withdraw from those wars or because he rejects the underlying premise of those programs: that war is primarily a political problem and can be won only by solving the underlying political issues — for example, in Afghanistan, the absence of a strong, central state.

Instead, Mr. Trump seems to take an older, more nationalistic view, in which might is the final deciding factor in any conflict. He has not articulated how this will lead to victory in the grueling counterinsurgency campaigns across the Middle East.

Weaponry as Stagecraft

Most administrations arrive at military spending priorities through a three-step process: Identify what problems they want to solve, determine the strategy that will solve them and, finally, buy the equipment necessary to enact that strategy.

Mr. Trump appears to have run that process backward.

"I don't think we should assume that Trump's military spending is linked to a military strategy," said Erin Simpson, a national security consultant who served as an adviser to the military in Afghanistan.

Why not?

"He hasn't had time to conduct a full strategy review," she said. But Mr. Trump has nonetheless called for building new aircraft carriers and nuclear capabilities.

This may help explain why he has not articulated strategies for fighting Al Qaeda or the Islamic State, or for containing China: Military might, in his view, translates directly into power, and power into victory.

This would dovetail with Mr. Trump's emphasis on showmanship, stagecraft and above all negotiation.

"I think he sees force as performative. The utility of force is in its demonstration," Ms. Simpson said.

American doctrine has long called for deterring war through military dominance, what ancient Romans termed "peace through strength."

But Mr. Trump has called for proliferating high-priced assets such as aircraft carriers and nuclear weapons without always articulating a specific goal, suggesting he sees them as ends in themselves.

In this view, it would not be necessary to explain what capabilities the United States acquires with an expanded Navy or how those capabilities can be brought to bear in, say, Somalia. Nor would it be necessary to develop strategies for the complex information and cyberwars of tomorrow. Strength itself will prevail.

Symbols of Strength

Mr. Trump's emphasis on great power conflict and high-priced assets also solves, deliberately or not, a political problem that bedeviled both the Barack Obama and George W. Bush administrations: Fighting insurgencies is messy, costly and often unwinnable in any traditional sense.

Strategists will long debate the best way to tackle those conflicts, but politicians in both parties seem to have given up on making them anything but political millstones.

Instead, Mr. Trump has chosen a battle that the United States, as the world's richest country, can more reliably win: that of military buildup.

But his planned $54 billion spending increase appears to be "a budget in search of a strategy," Ms. Simpson said.

Unless the spending is the strategy.

He has called for a nuclear "arms race," for instance, though even in the Cold War, arms racing was not a deliberate strategy but rather a byproduct of a nuclear competition neither side saw as desirable.

Mr. Trump, though still a novice in policy terms, has shown a flair for symbols and showmanship. By building the world's most expensive weapons systems, he repurposes them as symbols of power.

That performance, Mr. Horowitz suggested, might be for American adversaries as well as Mr. Trump's own supporters, to whom he has promised a return of American strength and confidence.

"When he thinks about the military, he probably thinks about the tangible representations of the military," Mr. Horowitz said, calling the advanced weapons "signals of strength."

He added, "I suspect that's not so different from the way that a lot of the American public thinks about military power."