The first thing the president said at the dinner
As a meeting last August in the Oval Office to discuss sanctions on Venezuela was concluding, President Trump turned to his top aides and asked an unsettling question: With a fast unraveling Venezuela threatening regional security, why can’t the U.S. just simply invade the troubled country?
Huh? Huh? Why cannit?
The suggestion stunned those present at the meeting, including U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and national security adviser H.R. McMaster, both of whom have since left the administration. This account of the previously undisclosed conversation, as reported by The Associated Press, comes from a senior administration official familiar with what was said.
In an exchange that lasted around five minutes, McMaster and others took turns explaining to Mr. Trump how military action could backfire and risk losing hard-won support among Latin American governments to punish President Nicolas Maduro for taking Venezuela down the path of dictatorship, according to the official. The official spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the discussions.
But Mr. Trump pushed back. Although he gave no indication he was about to order up military plans, he pointed to what he considered past cases of successful gunboat diplomacy in the region, according to the official, like the invasions of Panama and Grenada in the 1980s.
Plus he’s seen all these movies where a quick little invasion was just the ticket.
He went on talking about it, but his people tried to convince themselves it was just his fun. Then he talked about it to Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos.
Then in September, on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly, Mr. Trump discussed it again, this time at greater length, in a private dinner with leaders from four Latin American allies that included Santos, the same three people said and Politico reported in February.
The U.S. official said Mr. Trump was specifically briefed not to raise the issue and told it wouldn’t play well, but the first thing the president said at the dinner was, “My staff told me not to say this.”
So of course he said it, because listen up, everybody, he is the boss, and those other people are just His Staff, and he can say whatever he wants to.
Mr. Trump then went around asking each leader if they were sure they didn’t want a military solution, according to the official, who added that each leader told Mr. Trump in clear terms they were sure.
Eventually, McMaster would pull aside the president and walk him through the dangers of an invasion, the official said.
And give him his bottle and put him to bed.
The US is often too quick to rush to invasion as a solution; he seems to assume that is the proper way, and people who won’t invade are “coastal elites” who don’t want things to be fixed, who want the world to remain in a turmoil, and who don’t want the Donald to succeed. (I’ll plead guilty to that last one; the things he wants are definitely things I don’t want, so I don’t want him to succeed).
Same here but with the stipulation that I also want him to fail because I hate him.
Someone might want to point out to him how useless the US military has been at invading the entire time he’s been alive… (I know, pointing out anything is pointless)
We spend a lot of money on our armed forces but by all accounts the only thing they’re good at is killing people; they’re terrible at achieving strategic objectives.
He’ll just claim that’s because he knows more about what needs to be done than the generals do. They haven’t been doing it right because he hasn’t been in charge. Remember, he knows things that other people don’t know.
They are trained to kill, so that is what they do. The training is designed to make sure they don’t think or strategize, they only follow orders. I’m not being anti-military in saying this, since the military people I know say it themselves. If it weren’t the case, if they didn’t strip all humanity out of them, it would be disastrous for the military, and everyone…yes, everyone…would die immediately! If we let our soldiers think, we would all be murdered in our beds (I don’t know why our grandparents were so sure murder always happened in your bed, but that’s how they always said it…). I have seen no evidence, no experiments, no studies to support that contention. It is conventional wisdom. Everyone knows it, everyone repeats it, and to question it is to be the one who wants everyone to died in a horrible conflagration that could have been prevented if only our military men had become dehumanized automatons without a thought past following orders.
The US war machine was developed to fight the war machines of other super powers, the Soviet Union now, god help us, possibly China. The US has been successful at achieving strategic objectives, the problem is that successive American governments since the end of WW2, usually have no idea how to set appropriate objectives. If the armed forces of any democracy are used in morally indefensible wars, it’s not the soldiers’ fault, is it? Would we expect them to mutiny if they didn’t approve?
It should also be pointed out that perhaps the most successful part of any military operation has been its PR machine, aided by a willing media that wants to portray USA’s military excursions as smashing success stories. And so the noble sounding strategic goals that were mentioned as the pretext for war are gradually dropped, and the public is lied to (in part because it too wants military success stories) about every such excursion. The Vietnam War being perhaps the most blatant example of this: USA went to war to stop communism, lost domestic support while also realising the entire thing was futile, and withdrew. South Vietnam surrendered and joined the North in communism within what, two weeks?
…VICTORY! We achieved our (completely new) strategic objectives! Time for parades and medals, we won!
Plenty of clever people have been taken in by that, so of course Trump never stood a chance.
Holms @ 6
The Vietnam war is an excellent example of the huge gap between reality and PR. Prof Johan Galtung, in one of his lectures, refers to the Paris peace talks. An American general is supposed to have bragged to a North Vietnamese general —“You never defeated us in a major battle” The North Vietnamses reply was “That’s irrelevant”.
True or not it accurately demonstates two very different strategic perceptions.