Never Trumper realizes it backfired
Stormy Daniels was supposed to do him in. Michael Avenatti. Michael Cohen. Paul Manafort flipping. Roger Stone. The Mueller Report. Impeachment. And as always, World War 3 was supposed to do him in. All three of them, as well as the Depression of 2017. Make that 2018. No, 2019.
But Donald John Trump is still standing tall as President of the United States of America, land of the free and home of the brave.
David Brooks of the New York Times is beginning to wonder if it is a good idea to leap on every little thing he does and distort it into an existential threat to America.
Today, Brooks wrote, "The events of the past week have shown that the anti-Trump echo chamber is becoming a mirror image of Trump himself — overwrought, uncalibrated and incapable of having an intelligent conversation about any complex policy problem."
In short, calling our president "impulse-driven, ignorant, narcissistic and intellectually dishonest" was projection.
Brooks called for being saner and more selective in denouncing President Trump. Brooks cited the killing of General قاسم سلیمانی (I defer to the Arabic spelling).
Brooks wrote, "Stanley McChrystal, a retired general, and Michael Mullen, a retired admiral, thought it was worth the risk. Susan Rice, a former national security adviser, thought it wasn’t.
"But in the anti-Trump echo chamber, that’s not how most people were thinking. Led by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, they avoided the hard, complex problem of how to set boundaries around militias. Instead, they pontificated on the easy question not actually on the table: Should we have a massive invasion of Iran?
"A great cry went up from the echo chamber. We’re on the brink of war! Trump is leading us to more endless wars in the Middle East! We’re on the precipice of total chaos! This was not the calibrated language of risk and reward. It was fear-stoking apocalyptic language. By being so overwrought and exaggerated, the echo chamber drowned out any practical conversation about how to stabilize the Middle East so we could have another righteous chorus of 'Donald Trump is a monster!'
"This is Trump’s ultimate victory."
His ultimate victory is world peace, but yes, this hands him a political victory in a year in which he seeks re-election.
Brooks wrote, "The world is more complicated than this cartoon. Love or hate him, Trump has used military force less than any other president since Jimmy Carter. When it comes to foreign policy, he is not like recent Republicans. He is, as my colleague Ross Douthat put it, a Jacksonian figure, wanting to get America out of foreign entanglements while lobbing a few long-distance attacks to ensure the crazy foreigners stick to killing one another and not us."
I prefer hearkening to the Monroe Doctrine, but calling it Jacksonian is almost as good.
And the president is not abandoning the Middle East. Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states showed in the Yemen war that they are perfectly capable of policing the area. Israel trusts them, why not we?
They headlined the column, "Trump Has Made Us All Stupid." Reviewing their post-Reagan foreign policy decisions, I would say he merely exposed the stupidity of liberals and Never Trumpers. Come on, they are grieving the death of General قاسم سلیمانی now.
Brooks ended his column, "Maybe once the Inflammatory One is finally gone from the scene we can have an intelligent conversation about that."
Why not start one today? If Kim Jong Un can hold talks with President Trump, why can't Obama and all his pussyhats?
No comments:
Post a Comment