CommentsTHE COHEN COLUMN--There is so much wrong with trump's big Afghanistan speech last week, where to begin?
Trump began by going on and on about love and non-discrimination in the military and society at large. But until he categorically repudiates his tweeted threat to rudely expel all trans-gender service members, this is just another pile of insincere words some speech writer loaded into his Teleprompter. Which has an uncanny similarity in that respect to his second and quickly obsoleted statement on Charlottesville mollifying his supporters were he previously gave drew equivalence between the Nazi, KKK, Witless Supremacists and the anti-fascists.
Reference to sexual orientation discrimination was conspicuously missing from Trump's canned speech. Indeed, the biggest threats to unit cohesion are his own discriminatory tweets.
But what is Trump's actual strategic plan for Afghanistan?
It's a new concept in military history apparently . . . to, wait for it, plan to win. We're not going to be losers anymore quacks Donald. Well duh, hitting my forehead with my palm. Why o’ why couldn't any of our four star Generals have thought of this before?
But of course they did. For 16 years in Afghanistan, these same generals have been telling us, one more "surge," one more escalation, and for sure that will do it, that will turn the tide, trust us. They did it under Bush, they did it under Obama, and just like clockwork they are doing the same thing again. Only this time instead of 100,000 troops, they are going to do with what . . . another 4,000 to get us up to 13,000 or thereabouts?
So what are we going to do, stay there permanently? That may be necessary if we want to claim a sort of pariahic victory. But to do so we may need to lose our moral repugnance against killing everybody. That would make us the pariah of the civilized world. Not that the Trump our Commander in Chafe would care.
According to Robert Pape [see: Dying to Win] who has created a database of every suicide terrorist attack in the last hundred years, suicide bombing is a nationalistic response to military occupation by culturally alien democratic power. The reason it’s mostly democracies that are the targets of suicide terrorism is that democracies are more responsive to public opinion than dictatorships where suicide bombing is unlikely to provoke withdrawal from the terrorist’s homeland.
While Trump monopolizes the media he is keeping the public’s eyes off what his admiration is doing on a daily basis set ting the US back decades.
Secretary Zinke has tried to keep his national monuments review a secret, but already details are leaking out.
The Washington Post is reporting that he has recommended that three monuments -- including Bears Ears in Utah -- be "significantly" shrunk. Many more may be opened to oil and gas exploitation.
The Trump administration is handing our public lands over to oil and gas companies -- and doing it as part of a secret, rigged process. We need to have Energy and Natural Resources Committee oppose them at every turn.
Just as lead in our urban environment is bad bad bad, it should be kept out of the recreational environment also. Alas, Zinke has put lead back in after it was banned.
Secretarial Order No. 3346 overturns the recent ban of lead ammunition and fish tackle used on Fish and Wildlife Service lands, waters, and facilities. The order highlights the need for additional review and consultation with local stakeholders. In short the change revoked the ban on the “Use of Nontoxic Ammunition and Fishing Tackle”
For those of us who are still keeping track of Trump’s lies and other non-truths, Trump revises history, exaggerates accomplishments and makes false claims at his Phoenix rally.
For instance ( two of many):
• Trump, who spent a large part of the rally bashing the media, also wrongly claimed CNN’s ratings “are going down.” In fact, they’ve gone up.
• Trump also boasted that he has “obtained [a] historic increase in defense spending.” He hasn’t. His proposed budget for fiscal 2018 would increase defense spending by 5% — far less than the double-digit increases under Presidents George W. Bush, Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter.
But in the meantime, keep the heat on for real policy change in the form of money-saving single-payer health care.
Medicare for All is our ticket back to the majority, with 60% of the country already favoring it, without even a bill on the table in the Senate, but we are trusting Bernie is working on that.
Remember the answer is to always VOTE ...
(Michael N. Cohen is a former board member of the Reseda Neighborhood Council, founding member of the LADWP Neighborhood Council Oversight Committee, founding member of LA Clean Sweep and a contributor to CityWatch.)
-cw
