All the signs are pointing to a war. Trump is under fire so “Wag the Dog” is an obvious strategy.
I have a friend that lives close to Luke AFB in Arizona. They have a wing of F-35’s and a wing of F-16’s, I’ve been there over many months. The Air Force trains out of Luke AFB. Typically they take off, circle to the west and do whatever they do on the other side of the mountains.
That has changed. They are doing maneuvers that are very unusual. There are cargo/refueling planes flying out of there that have never been there before.
My guess is that Trump will bolster his popularity by making good on his promise to take out ISIS and kill them and their families. That points to Syria. After that, who knows, Afghanistan? North Korea? He will probably use Syria to send a message to N. Korea.
I know I will be poo-poo’d on this but I made a similar observation on some unusual military activity prior to the 2nd Gulf War. I was right. Check back with me in about 6 months.
I said it on a different message board. My son was doing an Outward Bound trip in Oregon. He observed a long train loaded with brand new military equipment (tanks, personnel carriers, Medical vehicles, etc. Brand new.) headed across a valley towards Portland.
I occurred to me that we were preparing for war. A few months later that’s exactly what happened. Wars don’t happen on impulse. After Iraq invaded Kuwait it took 6 months to prepare for our invasion.
The second Gulf War was a foregone conclusion months in advance. Approximately five hundred million people saw it coming at the same time you did. All you had to do was watch CNN.
Fine. I said I would be poo-pood. Have at it. You can call me a fool or whatever you want. I don’t care. What I want most is to be wrong. A lot of innocent people are going to die.
Your observation on the second Gulf War is just wrong. I don’t know where you come up with that. It wasn’t a forgone conclusion. We were at war in Afghanistan and the neo-cons invented the purpose for a war against Iraq, as we saw.
It’s not that I question your premise–I think it is all too plausible that Trump will start a war, either as a distraction from his domestic and Russian troubles, or just because he is a moron who knows nothing of international relations–but I have to point out that the premise of Wag The Dog was that there was no actual war; it was a pageant produced by Hollywood talent on the premise that the American public couldn’t tell the difference between an actual shooting war and the media circus surrounding it. (Willy Nelson’s turn in crafting an anthem for the fake Albanian conflict was a particular highlight, as was Dennis Leary as the “Fad King” who created products to sell promoting the false war.)
Trump and his affiliates, on the other hand, aren’t smart enough to fake a conflict. They will actually start a real war, complete with real threats, real ordnance, and real dead civilians for the purpose of distracting from the fact that he fired the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation–the nation’s primary federal investigative agency–for investigating ties between Trump campaign senior staffers and Russian intelligence. These fuckholes are worse than CREEP and the White House Plumbers, and have the potential to spark regional or larger warfare through a complete lack of forethought and consideration for the well-being of this nation and others.
My nephew works on a nuclear sub. His sub’s been docked and he was supposed to be home for a while. However, he just got put on a different ship and deployed very suddenly. He’s getting married in August, which he was told he *may *be home for.
Now I know this type of unpredictable shit happens in the military, but with the current loose cannon running the show, this rumbling of war doesn’t make me sleep any better at night. Worst part, my nephew’s parents both voted for fucking Trump and still love him to pieces. For me, he can’t get out soon enough-- and I’m talking about both the president and my nephew.
If Trump was looking like he was in serious danger of impeachment I believe he’s perfectly capable of ordering a spontaneous surprise strike on North Korea as a distractions with no thought to the repercussions on South korea and japan.
It does seem fairly clear that Trump has asked the military to give him options on North Korea and to prepare for a possible first strike. Hopefully at the moment it’s just preparations and nothing is decided.
What is it about “National Security” and “foreign agent” that doesn’t raise an alarm that those two terms should have absolutely no common ground. Yet this guy in the Oval Office (I’ll spare the adjectives and pejoratives) can’t see this? It’s all frightening. I’m not worried for my immediate safety but innocent people are going to die.
What is really bizarre is that the Reagan adorationist crowd that sees Trump as being the Second Coming of the Gipper and who are prone to conspiranoia about everything from Hillary Clinton’s purported lesbian sexcapades to millions of invisible undocumented voters apparently have no problem with Trump praising a former KGB agent and head of the FSB or his campaign staff and members of his administration having meetings with Russian intelligence agents and connections with Russian business interests. This is some crazy, beyond-Oliver-North-screaming-and-running-naked-through-camp-firing-his-pistol-in-the-air level bullshit.
A Congress predisposed to be favorable voted to invade Iraq based upon a premise of WMD capability backed by constructed fake intelligence, criticism of which was dismissed and even persecuted, e.g. the Plame affair. We now have a Congress even more inclined to act in the interests of the President and an administration even more willing, if that is possible, to deceive the Amercian public in order to achieve their ends. I will be very surprised if we aren’t in open conflict vy Christmas unless the current administration is so beseiged by scandal that they start seeing mass defection by Republicans in Congress.
Not disputing with the OP as such, but I think Trump will first go for more persecution of Clinton, assuming he can find an FBI director willing to go along with it (confirmed by the Senate, or “Acting”). He wasn’t willing to take her on before - the only thing scarier to a bully of Trump’s stripe than a strong woman would be a strong black - but he’s getting desperate to distract. He’d also like to teach this uppity bitch who dared to think herself as good as a man a lesson.
In sum, I think renewed calls for an indictment, or at least (yet another) investigation of Clinton is nearer. We’ll know more when we see who gets nominated for Director of the FBI.
If Trump’s primary goal is an indictment of Clinton, then it’s going to be awkward for him that he purportedly fired the previous director for being too aggressive against Clinton.
