January 5, 2020
January 4, 2020
January 3, 2020
Fallout from the U.S. airstrikes in Syria and Iraq
The Pentagon said it was responding after the group fired more than 30 rockets at a US base in the Iraqi city of Kirkuk on Friday, killing an American civilian contractor.
In response, Iranian backed protesters attacked the US embassy in Baghdad in Iraq. President Trump then vowed that this would not be another Benghazi.
The next event in the sequence was that the United States conducted an airstrike in Iraq, killing an Iranian general forbidden from leaving Iraq, as well as Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy commander of Iran-backed militias known as the Popular Mobilization Forces. The U.S. embassy issued a warning to Americans in the region.
President Trump tweeted the following moments ago:
....of PROTESTERS killed in Iran itself. While Iran will never be able to properly admit it, Soleimani was both hated and feared within the country. They are not nearly as saddened as the leaders will let the outside world believe. He should have been taken out many years ago!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 3, 2020
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Media fallout: The media responded with craziness once again. They are willing to overlook that the president did not inform Russia prior to the airstrikes as any good Putin puppet should. Putin is clearly not happy about it by the way.
The left who were freaking out over president Trump removing troops from Syria and Afghanistan are now, predictably calling him a rogue, war monger. I even saw a never-Trumper post implying that the president wants a war to ensure his re-election.
Many articles are saying that the president has fallen into Iran's trap and is being strategically outmaneuvered by the regime.
Geopolitical fallout: This one is going to be harder to predict. Iran is clearly suffering from the ratcheted up sanctions imposed by president Trump. Those seem to be the most logical next step for the president but with players like Russia and China (America's true geo-political foes) not on board
with punishing Iran because it only helps the USA, there may not be much opportunity to increase sanctions more effectively. The long game for president Trump would be to choke Iran economically into nuclear compliance. Don't expect Iran to sit complacently over the economic squeeze. The problem for them is that they do not have much leverage themselves. They can work through terrorist organizations they support to sting the USA. Successful attacks could alter public support for the president. Failure would only gird support for president Trump. But if successful, president Trump would have few choices left other than to continue with more airstrikes.
Many are claiming there will be a rapid escalation but I see this as a more drawn out slow burn just because any escalations take time to plot - Iran doesn't have many cards to play and the USA does not need to escalate anything at this point.
January 1, 2020
Us and Them, redux
Earlier today I posted about the idea of Us and Them. Turns out Jordan Peterson, not surprisingly, beat me to it. This is from 2017:
Joe Biden, climate alarmist (?)
Joe Biden talks climate change and what he says is cause for concern. True, if what he says is what he truly believes he will destroy the economy (um, while he cures cancer at the same time). Except look at how humdrum he is about it. He doesn't believe this stuff. He's an inveterate liar. That's just as much a cause for concern.
It's likely that Joe Biden if elected, would do a lot of damage to the American energy sector, but just enough to placate the green portion of the Democrat voter base. He's lying about it because he's a liar. He probably sees that as part of the job description for being a politician. He probably sees president Trump as a liar and doesn't blink about it because it's part of the job. President Trump is boastful and bombastic and prone to exaggeration, Joe Biden on the other hand is truly a liar. He's an old guard Democrat who thinks he's better than you and therefore lying to you is no big deal.
On the other hand, maybe it's just his motivation that he's lying about. I can't help but wonder if Joe Biden's zeal to eliminate the fossil fuel industry in America is just an attempt to get his son back on the board at Burisma Holdings in the Ukraine so he can continue to line his family's pockets.
Us and Them
Pink Floyd had a song back in 1973 called Us and Them. It's become pretty much everything in politics these days, or more likely, it's always been everything in politics. More generally, it was a song about war and human nature. Individually we like to think we would be fair to people who are different from us, and would treat them nicely. But as a group we end up going to war because it's us or them. That's a fairly superficial take on the song but the essence of it is there to make my point.
It's inevitable that humanity groups itself into like tribes. There are too many people in the world and in early human history we were too scattered to do otherwise. It's what led to the existence of nations. On a smaller level, it's what led to guilds based on skills, it's what led to political philosophies. It also led to ethnic identification.
There are positives and negatives to the concept of Us. It allows for collaboration and collective interests being worked on with a synergistic effect (two heads are better than one). On the other hand, if there's an Us, there has to be a Them. Those two don't have to be in conflict but so often they end up that way. One of the big reasons for that is that some people can take advantage of the Us by demonizing the Them.
It has had unfathomable consequences in human history, with some prime examples being Nazi Germany and later the Cold War. But it has also bled into politics. Democrats have fostered group identity over individual identity in order to harvest voter groups that they can exert sole 'ownership'. It's become dangerous in that conservatives and Trump supporters especially, have been vilified to such an extent that left leaning voters think of them as evil and are therefore in some minds granted permission to demean them, harm them or worse.
As conservatives we are not immune to making this mistake. Granted we are less likely to exhibit hatred of individuals and more of ideas. But we are not immune. When we want immigration enforcement it can be perceived as an Us and Them worldview. It isn't racial (at least for most conservatives, though some are susceptible to that notion). It does get perceived as racial, thereby fueling the Us and Them view of Us by the Them. Wanting the rule of law has somehow become racist. That's an insane outcome of the Us and Them views fostered by the left.
Heck, this post is itself calling out us and them. We are not immune. What you have in common with the Them in America (I say "you" because I am a Canadian, even though I am an American in spirit) is that you are all American. That's still and Us and Them, but it's a bigger, more inclusive Us. That has to be a division that cannot be allowed to be broken - even though it seems as though the Left (and anyone who claims to be a globalist as well) is certainly trying to do exactly that.
How you prevent a breakup of America in this hyper-partisan Us and Them climate is not obvious. But I suggest it must be part of every effort, every debate, every decision going forward. The only way America remains a cohesive nation is if everyone takes on that personal responsibility in their own lives. Don't worry if the Them are not doing it, or the Us are not doing it, You do it. Make it your own goal.
To that end, I thought this video might be helpful to keep in mind.
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