America’s new warlord Donald Trump shot missiles at Syria and dropped the biggest non-nuclear bomb in the U.S. arsenal on Afghanistan. Trump’s “very, very successful mission” killed just 36 people – at $16 million for the bomb that’s a prohibitively costly $450K each. And he then lays plans for attack North Korea before heading off to Mar-a-Lago for a 3-day vacation.
Needless to say, at a time when Trump is doing his utmost to destroy healthcare and starve widows and orphans, such expenditures are obscene, particularly when Trump profited economically from his use of Tomahawk cruise missiles.
Actions have consequences beyond exposing hypocrisy and expensive every-weekend-vacations at the taxpayer’s expense, however. For example, as Bloomberg’s Eli Lake has noted, though Donald Trump ran on an isolationist platform, he also promised to end ISIS and “now he must choose.”
According to Lake,
“White House senior strategist Stephen Bannon has derided [national security adviser, General H.R.] McMaster to his colleagues as trying to start a new Iraq War, according to these sources.”
An arms race at least, according to Russian news agency Sputnik, which reacted with the news of MOAB with the headline, “Russian Senator Warns of New Arms Race as US Strikes Afghanistan With MOAB Bomb.”
Given Trump’s proven suggestibility, this is a real concern. And it isn’t as if Trump is troubled by the world’s reaction to his new militarism.
Former Afghan President Hamid Karzai condemned Trump’s act as ‘brutal’ and ‘inhumane’:
2/2 military. This is not the war on terror but the inhuman and most brutal misuse of our country as testing ground for new and dangerous…
— Hamid Karzai (@KarzaiH) April 13, 2017
Horror at Trump’s actions is not the only consequence of his thoughtless abuse of power. National security specialist Malcolm Nance tweeted this morning,
That is a massive air defense unit heading to Vlad seaport for transshipment. Trumps ineffective TLAM strike has gotten Syria a free upgrade https://t.co/m49mTZgA4D
— Malcolm Nance (@MalcolmNance) April 14, 2017
Because neither Syria nor its close ally Russia is actively fighting ISIS, obviously, a reinforced Syria does not benefit the anti-ISIS coalition or further Trump’s avowed goal of “ending” ISIS.
And even conservative columnist Bill Kristol found the response to using MOAB “creepy”:
I have no problem with using #MOAB if best for military objective. But to be honest, isn't the high-fiving about it a bit creepy?
— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) April 14, 2017
With plans afoot to strike preemptively at North Korea, it is anyone’s guess where Trump’s new militarism will end. Even Vladimir Putin may be wondering what he has wrought at this point.
When Trump attacked Syria, far-right French politician Marine Le Pen reminded Trump that he said he didn’t want to be “the world’s policeman, and that’s exactly what he did yesterday.”
Trump’s hypocrisy is the least of our problems, however. It is where that hypocrisy is taking us, and at an ever-increasing pace.
Chris Matthews said on Hardball recently that “The guy who promised to keep us out of ‘stupid wars’ may have seen an enemy he quite simply wants to fight.” The problem is, he keeps seeing enemies he wants to fight. Literally everywhere.
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