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Rubio: Mattis resignation shows US headed toward ‘grave policy errors’

Published Dec 24th, 2013.


But yes, a good one . All Hail First Citizen Mattis.

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1. They didn't. Key portions of them voted against Hillary.

2. If Obama's policy of cut-and-run was so bad, why is Trump doubling down on it?

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Especially since majority public opinion does not guarantee common sense or good judgment, select groups lining up on one or the other side of the aisle opposing democrat or republican presidents should not imagine they have better understanding than the elected officials and their scores of advisers elected to make hard decisions.
 








The whole thing is slip sliding away.

Public opinion has always been fickle. One week the mobs were worshiping Jesus in the streets and the next they were clamoring for His execution. Such moronic behavior is common among men.
 

The anti-democratic republic advocated by American Conservatives/Republicans fails when its low intelligensia doesn't know what it's doing and is grossly ignorant besides.

Trump declared Isis defeated on his own, i.e., arbitrarily, summarily, singularly, suddenly. Trump consulted no one other than Erdogan who told Trump to clear the decks in Syria. After Trump stamped this he then pleased Moscow by doing it half-assed in Afghanistan to begin with.

Trump's wild whim of timing and precipitous action came without consultation. Brett McGurk the anti-Isis coordinator on the scene was not consulted in Trump's spontaneous declaration and pronouncements. McGurk had in fact just said to locals the US was committed to remain to assist in the fight. This stuff is the standard Trump Chaos that is his thick signature.

Trump's flash attack on the Pentagon came directly out of his Executive Coloring Book. The book is a gift from Republicans in Congress that's inscribed, "Yours forever." Trump also knows His Fanboys will support him on everything always and forever with rare exception.
 
Public opinion has always been fickle. One week the mobs were worshiping Jesus in the streets and the next they were clamoring for His execution. Such moronic behavior is common among men.

The US armed forces are not a mob.

Neither are they commanded by Jesus.

This flawed thinking is another reason for the failure of the anti-democratic republic advocated by American Conservatives/Republicans who have much in common with Putin. The rule of Putin and the oligarchs is no alternative either. American Conservatives/Republicans also need to get through their skulls Putin is Russian. Putin is nationalist Russian first, foremost, above and beyond everything else in life. America is a sh!thole country as far as Putin is concerned. And its populated by Americans. You might want to chew on that.
 

I can certainly agree that the Vox Populi is prone to demagoguery and over-simplification of difficult issues.

In this instance, however, all those officials and advisors were pretty much unanimous in that this is a strategic error, an unforced self-own, a betrayal of our allies, and a mistake that will leave America less safe, and American interests degraded.

You can't appeal to expertise in defending Trump on this one. Those with the most expertise in this issue are against him.


But I can't help but notice you didn't answer the question? If Obama's policy of cut-and-run was so bad, why is Trump doubling down on it?
 

I dont necessarily disagree with that. My point was aimed at the comments by Stavridis. In his column, he was essentially speaking FOR Mattis or pretending to. And when he injects things like Charlottesville into his narrative, he exposes himself as nothing more than a political hack. If he has an argument for us staying in Syria, he should make it. He didnt. Instead, he just launched into the type of anti-Trump screed worthy or a segment on the Don Lemon Show. I might care what he thinks about Trumps decision to leave Syria. I dont care one bit about his opinion of Trump or why he believes Mattis left.
 
The anti-democratic republic advocated by American Conservatives/Republicans fails when its low intelligensia doesn't know what it's doing and is grossly ignorant besides.

Nonsense bigoted poppy-cockery. By their own dim reasoning the democrats claim the ignorant Americans voted for the 'ignorant' Trump in large numbers to beat the 'intelligent' wicked woman in the last election. That is stupid. The wicked woman was not smart to let Americans know she thought they were stupid and deplorable.
 

I know Putin is evil, just like Hitler, Mao, Marx, Stalin, Castro, Chavez, Obama, Clinton and thousands of public figures were and/or are.
 

Trump may be wrong to bring our troops home instead of keeping them there to attempt to forge and maintain a peace. World unrest threatens all nations in the world regardless of their geographic location, but the US cannot be everywhere at the same time attempting to enforce civilized behaviors in rogue nations.
 

Our troops aren't in Syria to try to forge some kind of peace, though we have certainly been willing to punish the worst of behaviors in Assad (namely, gassing his own civilians), and our position there would have (had we not stupidly decided to abandon it) would certainly have allowed us to shape whatever ceasefire form eventually takes place in alignment with our interests. They are there to keep a boot on the neck of ISIS so that they don't recover the ability to launch attacks in the West, keep our allies from being eradicated by our enemies, and balance their expansion.

Nor is it "trying to be everywhere". It's "being where needed to keep a boot on the neck of Islamist radicals who, if not suppressed, will go right back to launching attacks in the West, including CONUS".

And it's not really a "May Be". It's an "overwhelmingly likely to be". We are choosing to lose the war on ISIS. We are choosing to abandon our only allies in that region, demonstrating the value (none) of an alliance with the U.S. We are choosing to abandon the field to Iran, Russia, and Assad. We are choosing to double-down on Obama's worst foreign policy error.
 

I can understand that. Certainly Mattis made it clear why he left. My point was simply that the portions you are attempting to breeze over aren't exactly an isolated critique.

This is the list of issues he says Mattis has had to deal with:

...The string is long and undistinguished: the denigration of NATO, an institution Mattis correctly reveres; Trump’s response to the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville as Mattis led the most racially integrated organization in government; the fictitious migrant caravan “invasion” and the deployment of nearly 6,000 troops to string barb wire over Thanksgiving and Christmas; the major drawdown of U.S. forces from Afghanistan; the support to an implacable foe of the United States, Vladimir Putin, at a shameful press conference in Helsinki; and the seemingly endless stories of moral failure from the Commander-in-Chief himself...​

Which one of those are you saying didn't happen, that Mattis didn't have to deal with the fallout from?

Because, if all those things happened, and if you think that listing some (and only some) of the history of fires that the President has started and which Mattis has had to deal with is an "anti-Trump screed", then your problem isn't really with Stavridis. It's with Trump, but you're not willing to admit it.

In the end, his point pretty much overlaps' with Mattis'; our President isn't tough with our enemies, and is disrespectful to and betrays our allies, creating chaos in our foreign policy and endangering the nation.


But, then, my point was that it is hardly Stavridis saying that the President is wrong to double-down on Obama's worst foreign policy failure and cut-and-run, abandoning the field to our enemies; rather, it is pretty much everyone who Trump appointed to a national security billet who said that.

The same people who opposed Obama being a weak bitch in front of our enemies are lining up in opposition to Trump's decision here. Why do you think that is?
 
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You may be right - or not. I am happy to leave our foreign policy in the hands of Jesus and pray He will move in our national support to do the right thing and not the wrong thing.
 

But Mattis didnt leave because of those things, so listing them is simply a partisan swipe at Trump. Stavridis can do that if he likes but in his piece he is pretending he is speaking for Mattis when he is not. If Mattis has a beef with Charlottesville or the 'endless stories of moral failure' he should say it, not this hack. And if Stavridis has an argument for staying in Syria and Afghanistan, he should have spelled it out. He didnt. Instead he simply penned another hit piece on Trump which are a dime a dozen. There should be a discussion of Syria and Afghanistan in this country and if Stavridis goal was to start such a conversation, he blew it.
 
Don't make me laugh in your face. $5B ain't **** in a $3.5T budget. :lamo :lamo Dems could afford to fly $150B to Iran. Dems are lying sack of ****, and ought to be flogged.
 

Liked except for the last bit. Nobody predicted a reformed terrorist group in Syria would decide to invade Iraq and create a caliphate. The worry was about not-quite-destroyed terrorist groups within Iraq reforming, leading to another insurgency. That didn't happen. What did happen was very bad, but was not the thing predicted.

One must also note that to prevent this without foresight, Obama would have had to refuse to honor the agreement the previous administration entered. That would have its own consequences, the vast majority unknowable

No matter what is said about Obama, we owe the Kurds. We may need them in the future but that shouldn't decide it. We owe them. They bled with us. I think it is abhorrent to turn them over to slaughter in this fashion. It seems terrible to me, to do this to them.







*ok I can say something about Obama. I find it abhorrent that he/they did not make a massive push for streamlining legal immigration, especially with respect to people like those Afghanis who worked with our troops against the Taliban, only to be dumped into years of red immigration tape, many killed horribly.
 
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So far, I've been unable to find anybody that can make a persuasive argument for us to stay in Syria. Everybody seems to be crying about it, but nobody can offer a compelling reason for staying.
 

Being a war hero does no necessarily make one the best equipped to promote peace.
 
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