Donald Trump got his moment in the sun and like any egomaniacal dictator he turned it into a moment of satire. I’m speaking, of course, about the Special Forces killing of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi this Saturday night in Syria.
When Obama announced the killing of Osama bin Laden he made a brief, 9-minute announcement and then, as is appropriate, turned the podium over to his Military Chief of Staff. Trump, after making the important announcement turned the whole thing into a 41-minute self-congratulatory election speech about how he, personally, had triumphed over evil and how he got the oil.
Just to prove what an ignorant dolt he really is, he spent a great deal of time thanking Russia, Syria and Turkey, barely mentioning the Kurds who actually had provided the intelligence that set the whole thing up and then as an afterthought, mentioned the Special Forces who actually put their lives on the line and did the job. Of course it was probably difficult for Trump to give praise to the Kurds after he stabbed them in the back.
Then to illuminate his character more thoroughly, he turned the last half of the speech into a diatribe on how it was all about us getting the oil and how important that was, thereby demeaning the killing of one of the most evil men, after him, in the world and admitting he deliberately put our kids lives on he line for financial gain. The importance he heaped on the oil made it clear where his greedy head is at. It also illustrated the reason of his betrayal of the Kurds. He wanted their oil and this was the way he got it. Now he can drain it out of the earth through the handles of the knives he has planted in their backs.
As a sidelight, it seems important to point out again that we would not have had the information we needed to kill al-Baghdadi if we had not been in Syria with the Kurds as our allies.
As part of his bullshit speech, Trump tried to sell the lie that the Turks were only protecting themselves because the area that had been occupied by the Kurds had been the scene of thousands of murders of Turks. That number has obviously been “improved on” by Trump but if any of that nonsense is true it is because those Turks were causing trouble in Kurdish territory, a place they had no business being.
In the end it seems it was all about oil, the betrayal of the Kurds and the killing of al-Baghdadi, and after all isn’t the accumulation of treasure what Trump is all about, even if it’s already a glut on the world market and will continue to fall in value as the nations of the world abandon fossil fuels and move, as they must, to renewables.
One of the worst things about Trump’s hideous announcement/pep rally was his description of how al- Baghdadi died. His image of a screaming, whining coward flies directly in the face of how he ended his life. We all despise the murderous slime that al-Baghdadi was, but cowards don’t blow themselves up. I can’t see Trump assembling the guts to pull the chain in a similar circumstance. It appears that once again, even in his moment of triumph, Trump lies.
*****
In a recent interview, John Kelly, former White House Chief of Staff explained that as he was leaving his former job, he had told Trump that he needed to hire someone who would tell him the truth and not just be a “yes-man” or he was heading for impeachment.
Of course Trump denies this, stating that if Kelly had said that he would have thrown him out of his office. Yeah, fat chance!
Then Stephanie Grisham, the Presidential Press Secretary that never holds press conferences because she’s terrified of the press stated:
“I worked with John Kelly and he was totally unequipped to handle the genius of our great President.”
“The genius of our great President?” This is a line that could only be discovered by someone with her nose firmly up Trump’s ass because that’s the only place it can possibly exist.
Of course, Kelly’s replacement, Mick Mulvaney is fighting Grisham for space up there. He is exactly what Kelly warned against, the ultimate “yes-man”. And guess what? With Mulvaney’s supplicating help, Trump is on a direct line to impeachment. Get out of there little birdbrain. Let Mick have his space. You just stand back and watch Kelly’s prediction come to fruition.
Mulvaney seems to be exactly what Kelly warned, Grisham’s “great genius” about. In fact he’s so dumb and such a sycophant that every time he speaks, he reveals some evidence that is pointing to Trump’s involvement in an impeachable offense.
The real problem here is that Trump is a psychotic egomaniac that really believes that he is a “great genius” and only wants to take his own counsel on any and every subject. As such he has rejected counsel and advice from any of the informed few that wander the White House and listens only to those that buy into his views, often on subjects about which he knows nothing.
Trump has wanted al-Baghdadi’s death ever since he entered the White House. He wanted to kill someone as important as Obama’s score on bin Laden. Of course he wasn’t bright enough to realize that his best chance to get al-Baghdadi was from information he was getting from the Kurds. So he stabbed them in the back. Despite this betrayal, the Kurds being smarter than Trump, understood that their best hope of retaining any kind of homeland still lay with the American military so they continued to feed information to what was left of our command in Syria and that was the end of al-Baghdadi.
Thanks to the Kurd’s information and our Special Forces still in Syria, Trump had his good TV moment but now it behooves him to understand that we need to continue our support of the Kurds both for our honor and their safety.
Trump in his dedicated ignorance is still of a mind to abandon the Kurds but everyone else, especially in our military, understands that the relationship we have with them is one of mutual benefit. Our relationship with Russia is non-existent except for Trump’s enjoyment in kissing Putin’s ass. Our Relationship with Turkey, which was established by our both being members of NATO, seems to benefit both nations in that we have a major airbase in Turkey that services the whole Middle East while Turkey makes a large fortune from that base being on their soil. But when it came to building ISIS it was Turkey that allowed, in fact facilitated, ISIS recruits to use that country as a transit route to the battlefield. In a normal world that would have been reason enough to stamp Turkey out.
We have no relationship with Syria. In fact we have backed many groups that have attempted to eliminate Assad. So the most advantageous relationship we have in the Middle East is the one with the Kurds. Since the troops he pulled from protecting the Kurds didn’t come home but went to Iraq, it appears that Trump’s excuse for his betrayal is nothing but bullshit. Somehow our general staff must convince this ignorant egomaniac that it is in our interest to keep what we have now in Syria and Iraq and stop meddling with the plan that was setup by more informed minds and appeared to be working.
And as a sidelight to all of the above, Trump approaches impeachment as his supporters attack a whistleblower who is, at least for now, completely out of the picture. The whistleblower is anti-Trump, they growl, he’s using second hand material, they plead, but none of that is in the least significant. Everything the whistle blower had said in his complaint has been verified by other witnesses or by Trump or his people live on TV and in Tweets.
There is more than enough believable proof that Trump has committed more than he needs to have committed to be impeached. Now should be the time that Trump should be looking for a strategy that could possibly help him out of his difficulties but he is such a sociopath that even considering that he might be convicted is beyond his ability.
Nixon quit when he got to this point. Clinton admitted what he had done, begged the Senate that it wasn’t up to the level of high crimes and misdemeanors and got off. Somehow, I can’t see Trump doing that. Not with the ego he has to deal with.
On the other hand, quitting would also be a problem for his ego, a problem that would be multiplied when he considered the various criminal indictments he will inevitably face once he is no longer protected by the cover of the presidency. Trump would never be able to face the inevitably of jail but he doesn’t have the guts to put a gun in his mouth so what does he do? The only answer left is stand and fight and that’s what he will do. Not because he has the stomach for it, but because that’s the only choice he will be left with.
Understanding what a sleaze he is, it will come as no surprise when Trump tries to instigate a civil war between the morons who live to support him and the citizens who understand what the United States stands for and how it must be run.
Somehow, the last viable minds extant in Washington must coalesce to stop this from happening and the place to make that stand, once the House issues orders of impeachment as they inevitably will, is in the Senate
****
So we’ve discussed the fact that Turkey is no real friend in any of this, but it’s only about five miles from where the killing of al-Baghdadi took place. Why didn’t we stage in Turkey? Why did we stage in Iraq over three hundred miles away? It’s simple. We couldn’t trust the Turks. Our generals knew that, why didn’t the President? Because he doesn’t listen and he doesn’t read. He is too egomaniacal to absorb any thought that doesn’t come out of his little brain.
But he wants us to think that he is in the know on all things. That’s why he shocked the Pentagon by going into all kinds of operational detail that should never have been discussed on such a public platform. The word around Washington is that the Pentagon went ballistic when he blabbered operational details, but it’s just another example of what he did with the Russians in the White House and what he does every time he wants to impress his audience. It’s past time for Trump to go. In fact it’s long past time. The Senate must get off its ass and indicate that they are ready for a change, even if its Mike Pence.