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Iowa braces for a cold Caucus Night and now the Trump, DeSantis, Haley and Ramaswamy teams have their work cut out for them to keep their engines from stalling. Blizzardous conditions are keeping us from visiting, so we asked Jim Geraghty, our man on the ground in Des Moines this week. He provides the scoop, the had-to-be-there insights and some informed speculation.
Plus Peter, James and Rob vent their lack of confidence in this administration to meet this week’s foreign flare up; and have some advice for Sanctuary Mayor Eric Adams.
This week’s sound is from the opening of the Jan. 11th KCCI Newscast in Des Moines. IA
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Party on, James! Excellent!
The thing that makes Vivek special is that he is the first candidate in a long time that talks about the soul of America. Not in some crappy Obama way, but in a true Lincoln way. He is more than great policies, he goes deeper. He wants to address the broken spirit of America. He says a lot of words and people might miss the messaging, but it is there. It is the kind of God-centered healing that you expect from a Mike Johnson, but here it is in the Hindi from Ohio.
I won’t disagree that Ramaswamy talks a lot.
Talk — is cheap:
Trump is tapping into fear and anger; Clinton says America needs “love and kindness”. Trump’s campaign slogan is “make America great again”; Clinton insists: “America never stopped being great. We have to make America whole.” Trump has vowed to build walls; Clinton has promised to break down barriers.
“Hillary Clinton v Donald Trump: the looming battle for the soul of America”, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/mar/05/hillary-clinton-donald-trump-gereral-election-battle-american-future
I’ve always thought of Vivek Ramaswamy as having a bright future (if a dim present) in the Republican Party, but he has hurt himself with his shoddy performance in the debates, as well as idiotic remarks about Ukraine. This helps explain why he has firmly established himself at the bottom of the polls; the polls, that is, that bother to include him.
There are Republicans that voted for Biden.
Then they say stupid things about what a disappointment he has been.
Unbelievable.
Supposedly, ***42%*** of the money they spend on illegal immigrants in New York City is spent on ***private security***.
Biden has let in 8 million illegal immigrants. Only 100,000 of them are in New York City and it costs them $20 million a month.
Hey, those rooms at the Hilton are expensive!
So the boys started out talking about the Houthies and the piracy in the Red Sea and our unwillingness until recently, to do something about it.
Then the discussion went onto whether the U.S. should go isolationist or not, and pull our military out of the world. There are isolationists in both the political left and the right in the U.S. There was some discussion of what we did in Iraq verus World War II and our success in occupying Germany and Japan, and making them successful democracies, at least for a few decades (they are presently imploding because of a demographic crisis, but then China is too).
Here’s the difference between Japan and Germany’s occupation post World War II and Iraq. The U.S. and its allies bombed the crap out of them. The civilian population was devastated when we occupied them. The morale of those populations just plain ruined, and the occupiers were able to almost start from scratch in building it back up.
The Iraqis were willing to surrender to us because we weren’t the Iranians, and our track record was as mostly a benign occupying power. And of course the radical Muslims considered that a weakness. They knew that the post WWII occupiers were a different breed than the occupiers of the 21st century.
Even after the Korean War, even though the bombing of South Korea wasn’t done by the U.S., that devastation did allow for the rebuilding. We installed a right wing authoritarian government, and since it included capitalism, South Korea evolved into a democracy on their own, much like Spain and Chile did. You can probably include the Philippines in that. Communism takes 70-100 years to die out, and there’s a lot more killing and repression in the interim.
Rob Long said some things that I thought were the result of muddled thinking. But the main thing I want to address is the blood and treasure argument.
In Iraq, the U.S. lost 4,431 troops. Most of those were front loaded, and by the time we left, we were sustaining annual casualties in the single digits, meaning to me it was worth staying. Compare that with losses during World War II, Korea and Vietnam.
In today’s western society, where every death is a tragedy (unless it’s drunk driving), we don’t talk about acceptable casualties. But we pay Admirals and Generals to do just that. And like it or not, we should be expecting presidents to do so too. What made the blood and treasure aspect of this a tragedy, was our leaving Iraq, despite the fact that the worst was over. The situation in Afghanistan was similar. There was an uneasy truce between our troops there and the Taliban. And the people there were allowed to live freer lives than they do now.
What would we, as a hegemonic power, gotten out of it? Continued influence in the Middle East, including the ability to brake Iran, whose rulers hate us, and continue to war on us. Instead we have administrations bribing Iran at the expense of our allies there (and I’m not just talking about Israel).
George Bush’s mistake in going into Iraq, is not being honest with us, and possibly himself, that in occupying Iraq we would have to stay there for roughly 50 years to do it right, much like we have with Germany and Japan. But given our opponents in the Middle East versus those in Eastern Europe, we wouldn’t have had to have had as much of a commitment in forces or treasure, as we needed in Europe against the Soviet Union.
We are presently slouching towards isolationism, as we slowly defund our military, while, with fits and starts, involving ourselves here and there in some incidents, and then leaving. It’s dishonorable the way we’re doing it. We might as well leave the field altogether. Because too many people, who sort of kind of want to involve us in some incidents like Ukraine and Israel, don’t have the stomach for it in the end.
Ramaswamy isn’t a real candidate and never was. That means he can say things that real candidates can’t say. His presence in the race is valuable for that reason.
Iraq was never going to turn into German or Japan–never. Germany and Japan have been industrial power houses for a lifetime before WWII. Iraq has been a hot mess for 3000 years.
There is a vast chasm between our current state of having 750 military bases in 80 countries and leaving the field altogether.
Was that total casualties in the later years, or just… “war-related?” Because last I heard, and in Afghanistan too, the deaths were below those ordinarily experienced just in training accidents.
It was a quick Google search. I’m aware that some of the deaths were actually training accidents, that statistically would still have occurred in the states. Yet I doubt that training accidents would have been more than, say 20, during the whole war.
Yet, as our tip of the spear assets, the units that actually do the fighting, go down in number, and our ability to retaliate also goes down, many of those 750 military bases around the world would become vulnerable.
And as we continue to display timidity in using our war fighers, the rest of that overseas infrastructure won’t really be of use to the countries they reside in, except economically, where military personnel and their dependants spend money on their off time, off base.
@alsparks — In Germany and Japan, we could finish off our enemies, because they had no sanctuaries to which to retreat: for training, R&R, and resupply.
Now, imagine us trying to put down a Nazi insurgency in, say, Czechoslovakia, right next door to a Nazi Germany and Nazi Austria which, for political reasons, we can’t invade.
750 bases in 80 countries is what you have if you’re — Team America: World Police.
Other countries will join the posse, but only the “Free World Colossus” can organize it.
One helicopter crash can take out half that number.