He wanted to be seen as backing up a series of bellicose tweets
Oh god. I suppose I knew this but seeing it spelled out is another story. Trump rushed to bomb Syria so that his tweets would be true.
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis urged President Trump to get congressional approval before the United States launched airstrikes against Syria last week, but was overruled by Mr. Trump, who wanted a rapid and dramatic response, military and administration officials said.
Because he’s mentally a toddler. Rapid and dramatic=illegal and reckless and authoritarian.
Mr. Trump, the officials said, wanted to be seen as backing up a series of bellicose tweets with action, but was warned that an overly aggressive response risked igniting a wider war with Russia.
He wanted to be seen as backing up a series of bellicose tweets with action.
He wanted to be seen as backing up a series of bellicose tweets with action.
Think about that, and notice how doomed we are.
He could bellicosely tweet anything. He could threaten to nuke North Korea or China or Russia or anywhere else. He could threaten to declare war, he could threaten invasion, he could threaten to firebomb Mexico or Iran or Germany or any other country he takes a dislike to. He could, and it’s not even unlikely. He talks smack every single day on Twitter, and now we know he wants to be seen as backing that shit up. Why isn’t this code red everywhere?
What inspired the bellicose tweets in the first place? You’ll never guess.
Last Tuesday — amid reports that the U.S. was considering a strike against the Assad regime, in response to an alleged chemical weapons attack against civilians in Douma — Russia’s ambassador to Lebanon Alexander Zasypkin warned that “if there is a US missile attack, we … will shoot down U.S. rockets and even the sources that launched the missiles.”
The Fox & Friends morning crew took exception to this bluster, with one host arguing, “What we should be doing is telling the Russians, ‘Every Syrian military base is a target and if you’re there, it is your problem.’”
Minutes later, one of the program’s most dedicated viewers echoed that belligerent note.
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/984022625440747520
So Fox News holds everyone’s fate in its evil hands.
This is a third rate proxy version of something like the James Bond movie “Tomorrow Never Dies” in which a media mogul manipulates events and news to spark a shooting war between Britain and China.This version features a media company goading a shallow, brainless, manipulable idiot to do its pointless will. Much more simpleminded script, except this remake has a cast of billions and a budget of trillions.
I have to wonder – seriously, it’s not even hyperbolic – under conditions like this, is a military junta (for example) really a net worse situation from a rule of law or maintenance of responsible democracy point of view? It shouldn’t normally come up, but here we’ve got the use of military force (and so much else) driven by the ego of someone without adult impulse control or anything like a moral compass. There has to come a point at which those political scruples can no longer be served by the rules they inspire under remotely normal conditions.
The executive branch has been taken over by a personality ignorant of and inimical to the rule of law and the Constitution. He should have been struck dead before completing the Oath of Office, since he was never going to fulfill it anyway. The legislative branch has abdicated its “checks and balances” role. They have already betrayed “the good of the country,” to quote a phrase from the above Giuliani post. The judiciary seems to be doing some good. The military has its own institutional memory and its own charge to “support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic…” Trump is a walking, talking domestic enemy to the country’s safety and integrity and too many people who should know better refuse to see this.