“Tactics is the art of using troops in battle; strategy is the art of using battles to win the war.” — Carl von Clausewitz I started this article a couple of days ago, back before the Syrian bombing. the New York Times had published U.S. War Footprint Grows in Middle East, With No Endgame in Sight, an article about how America keeps expanding our military...
Is Trump smart enough to fake a military attack for political ends? My first thought was that Trump committed an act of war against the Syrian government on impulse. Sure, it his documented ideas were completely isolationist. Sec. of State Tillerson said exactly that. Then Trump saw poisoned children and infants gasping to death on TV, and he twitched the other way. I was actually...
Partisan judicial appointments. We should try to remember what’s supposed to happen under the Constitution. The President nominates people who are more or less acceptable to the nation, or at least to the Senate. If the President nominated people the Senate felt were too partisan, Senate leaders would push back, and asks for someone more generally acceptable. Supreme Court jurists aren’t supposed to be party...
Trump cuts the legs out from under Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. Trump made it clear with his missile attack against Syria that Rex Tillerson doesn’t speak for Trump or the US. Just like every other subordinate, Trump left him to twist in the wind. Trump doesn’t even seem to notice that he’s supposed to let his own people know what he wants. The Secretary...
Empathy? Trump changed direction completely when he bombed Syria. This was how he started his speech: My fellow Americans, On Tuesday, Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad launched a horrible chemical weapons attack on innocent civilians using a deadly nerve agent. Assad choked out the lives of innocent men, women and children. It was a slow and brutal death for so many. Even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered...
Al-Shayrat airbase, as borrowed from an Airbus satellite image. It’s worth mentioning the military parts of this attack. Tomahawk missiles are wonderfully accurate weapons that can drop 1000 pound payloads wherever you want. They fly so low they’re unstoppable even by the Russian-installed anti-aircraft batteries that Syria has in so many locations. If we meant to follow this up with something more, we’d have targeted...
Did Trump actually act in the public good? I’m listening to President Trump (speaking from Mar-A-Lago) make the most important speech of his short Presidency. (The audio is terrible, from which I take an unseemly pleasure.) But this is the first time I can think of, that Trump has acted from anything outside his personal self-interest. It looks like he was legitimately offended by Assad...
Did Trump attack that Syrian airfield as part of a larger strategy, or was this the act of a politician, trying to defuse TV images of poisoned children gasping for air? Does Trump have any idea of what to do next? Until a few minutes ago, the US voices of authority — the Secretary of State and the President — were saying that both Syria...
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