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I already crossed Trump off of my list – I find so much about his bombastic, rambling blather repulsive and disingenuous, that it’s an onerous chore for me to listen to him. Sure, don’t all conservatives long to make America great again! One man spouting on and on about illegal immigration, as if he’s the only GOP candidate to be aware of that problem makes me wonder if he’s been paying attention for the past 30 years. I bought a Trump book this past week at an antique/junk store for $2, because I figured perhaps I am missing something about him. So before I go on too long with a let-me-count-the-reasons-why “I think Trump is a phony!”, I thought it might be more interesting to post another view.  Of course, I am curious why many smart people like him and since Minta sent me an email with her favorable view of Trump, along with her insights on the rest of the GOP field, without further comment, I’ll just post her views:

I’ve been very impressed with Dr. Carson going to Harlem and talking about the real problems in inner city life, and then down to the border to find out the truth of the situation from the people fighting it. Fiorina, even though she has different takes on her business experience—you can’t tell anything by corporate politics—I love the way she answers questions and makes sense.

I’ve been carefully watching Trump’s speeches and interviews, so I can get a good handle on what he is and what he wants, and I think there are some interesting aspects that people aren’t talking about.

The following is not an endorsement or commercial, but an analysis. There is a lot I like about Trump, and a lot that worries me. So, purely as my momentary judgment, here goes:

My guesses about Trump:

He is probably a-political, in the sense of being basically involved with business and dealing with politicians only when he wanted something or wanted to stay in good favor with them. He probably considered himself vaguely as a Democrat, as that is basically the default position in the world in which he maneuvered, not as an ideology.

He called Clinton the day before his announcement as a Republican candidate the way you might call a friend to give him a heads-up—note that Trump has mentioned Juanita Broderick, the emails, etc., and gone after HRC and the corruption.

He sees that America is in crisis, and that everything he’s done might be destroyed in a Detroit-like depression, and that his children’s lives might be spent in a much more tyrannical USA. Despite having a lot of money, if you are living in a country where you can’t be an entrepreneur or speak your mind, and where companies can be nationalized at the whim of a truly corrupt system—which will come if something is not done—you have a life that is not what “Truth, Justice, and the American Way” preaches.

We live in a country that is no longer honored and loved by freedom-loving people, and is laughed at by our enemies. The inner cities are Hellholes, because the Left needs victims. And we are looking at the making of a “Black Spring” being deliberately whipped-up, and the new illegal aliens getting so many privileges and social services adding to the antagonisms in the streets—the next year could be horrible.

Trump is a pragmatic businessman—it’s in his blood. He decided to do something to bring the USA back to where it is what it used to be: Great. He looks around, like he would at a failing business, and he sees where it needs change: economically, in personnel, in corporate divisions, in rules and regulations, in security, etc. These changes are Conservative ideas. So he announces he is a Conservative—and this is the key: the only way America can be re-established as a great country is through Conservative ideas.

So Trump starts talking about the problems we face, and because he is not a politician, he is doing what a businessman would do: he’s proposing solutions, seeking out experts, selecting and rejecting ideas, etc. Unlike a politician, he says a lot of what he believes, and his views are undergoing changes as he learns more. But because he is a pragmatist, and used to creating enterprises, and actually solving problems to get them done, he is set on rebuilding the military to a great power, getting rid of a lot of regulations, re-invigorating the entrepreneurial spirit, re-enforcing capitalism, and dealing with a lot of other obvious problems.

Whatever he believes in his heart-of-hearts, he knows that only a great, free America will insure his and his children’s future, and he is going after it. The most interesting thing about a problem-solver like Trump is that he wants what works and not what sounds or looks good. Even if what works is against something he otherwise wishes.

I believe Trump loves America. His ego and the greatness of America are joined, and he has the ability to get things done in a practical way: he is on a mission, a crusade. It is this joining of ego and the country that is so intriguing. The One, because he loathes America, has joined his ego to destroying our country; Trump, because he identifies with the ideas that make the American Ideal great, wants America to be a rip-roaring, great, powerful, dynamic country again.

Trump will seek out the pragmatic experts who have a track-record of positive, American-type achievement. The key to Trump is that he views the situation as, if he can make America great again—capitalistic, entrepreneur-friendly, militarily dominant, outspoken, the American as the bringer of freedom and the Shining City on the Hill—then his ego will be served.

Is he a clown, who will become more fragmented? Is he a proto-Patton, who will learn quickly and become more focused on workable solutions? I don’t know. There are elements of both in him.

My conclusion:

I’m keeping my options open. All of our candidates will be tested over the next year by events that will absolutely necessitate them being either shattered or tempered by the power of the Left to cause trouble.

So, who knows? The people who are actually taking heavily pragmatic, pro-America stands are Cruz, Carly, Dr. Carson, Trump, and to a lesser, but still powerful extent, Rubio and Jindal. The rest, even Walker lately, damn him!, are mostly political, even where they are or seem Conservative. Trump sounds foolish on a lot of what he says, but then he narrows or broadens those views and it gets more interesting. Unlike the Left, he will not try to do something that can’t be done. His ideas will tighten as he focuses more. What will they become?

How will his outspoken manner affect the other candidates? Already, some words have been reborn.

Right now, because of Trump, issues and ideas and even words are being discussed openly that would never have been spoken about or discussed before. People who ignore politics are becoming interested. I can’t guess where it will go, because the situation has never happened before.

I always listen to the interviews and speeches, etc., of the candidates, so I am curious to see how things change with time.

The Establishment—on both sides—is horrified and antagonistic to the point of almost foaming at the mouth. Their corruption in politics is so entrenched and so dependent upon playing political games while growing their own power and wealth that they view the Trump phenomena with the anger of an aristocracy against an upstart no-one—i.e., a non-politician, a non-intellectual—who has hit them out of nowhere—they NEVER counted on this.

We are in the most dangerous position the world has ever seen, because the enemies of America may choose to strike us because of our obvious weakness, and because we have leaders who are corrupt and hate America, and want to punish everyone who disagrees with them. Will they wait to see if the One keeps his power even through the next election—after all, the time period between the election and the handover of power will give them a striking moment, which they might use if it looks like the “wrong” candidate was elected, etc., etc. There are so many possibilities and windows of opportunity against us, the next year and a half is scarier than any I’ve been through.

The Left will try to deflect, change, or destroy Trump. As long as Trump is The Great American Hope, this is going to be a huge challenge. No matter what, more people will hear more ideas actually spoken about than ever before.

Remember that The One probably has plans to continue in power no matter what.

This is going to be fascinating, as well as scary.

I never expected this kind of campaign.

Okay, it’s not just the Obama administration who chose to believe the “moderate Syrian rebel” line – let’s not forget John McCain and many military “experts” too.  McClatchy DC.com reports

“At another hearing that week, Kerry responded to a lawmaker’s skepticism about the existence of moderate rebels by saying that only a fraction of the fighters were “al Qaida and the bad guys.” Maybe 15 to 25 percent, he estimated.

“There is a real moderate opposition that exists,” Kerry said.

If the skeptical lawmaker was reassured, professional Syria watchers were not. Many were aghast at what sounded to them like either dangerous naivete or an outright lie, given that the U.S. government’s own internal assessments had found from very early in the conflict that al Qaida-style extremists were playing an outsized role in the rebel fight.”

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/national-security/article31018362.html#storylink=cpy

For additional information, check out Elizabeth O’Bagy, former political director for the Syrian Emergency Task Force, former Syria subject matter expert at the Institute for the Study of war, after being fired for lying on her resumé from the ISW, John McCain hired her to be one of his staffers.

https://libertybellediaries.com/2013/09/03/stumbling-upon-some-facts-in-less-than-5-minutes/

https://libertybellediaries.com/2013/09/07/better-than-none-the-leading-from-behind-mindset-refresher-course/

https://libertybellediaries.com/2013/09/08/president-obama-defining-his-foreign-policy-big-picture/

https://libertybellediaries.com/2013/09/12/institute-for-the-study-war-fires-elizabeth-obagy/

https://libertybellediaries.com/2013/09/15/oh-those-pesky-facts/

And on and on and on, I’ve written about Syria…  And at end of the day we are back to what I’ve been saying for as long as these yahoos have been talking about training “moderate Syrian rebels”:

https://libertybellediaries.com/2014/10/11/another-half-baked-cakewalk/

Geesh, why are we paying these “policy experts” so much money, when if you read some American and a few foreign news sites regularly, you could see the lies clearly?  You would also figure out that what the Obama administration and John McCain & friends have been selling us is every bit as flawed intelligence as the Bush WMD in Iraq issue that throws the Democrats into apoplexy.  Time to demand careful analysis of the intelligence and quit politicizing it!!!  Military decisions should be based on American national interests,not partisan political ones.

A few days ago I posted links to Patrick Poole’s reporting on the embarrassing state of our “training Syrian moderates to be our boots on the ground in Syria project”.  Back in 2014, I wrote several posts on the Syrian moderate project,  here, here, here, here and here.  From “Obama’s mercurial foreign policy”, the following quote from Marc Lynch, director of Middle Eastern Studies and the Project on Middle East Political Science at Georgetown University stated in an article, “Would arming Syria’s rebels have stopped the Islamic State” :

“The idea that these rebel groups could be vetted for moderation and entrusted with advanced weaponry made absolutely no sense given the realities of the conflict in Syria. These local groups frequently shifted sides and formed alliances of convenience as needed. As MIT’s Fotini Christia has documented in cases from Afghanistan to Bosnia, and the University of Virginia’s Jonah Shulhofer-Wohl has detailed in Syria, rebel groups that lack a legitimate and effective over-arching institutional structure almost always display these kinds of rapidly shifting alliances and “blue on blue” violence. A “moderate, vetted opposition” means little when alliances are this fluid and organizational structures so weak.”

It seems obvious that due to the brutal nature of this Syrian civil war, at this late date “moderates” either fled or were killed and hopes that “moderates” will stand a chance against battle-hardened fighters, who pay no heed to the Geneva Conventions or any other sort of international humanitarian pleas rests as wishful thinking rather than rational policy.  Despite the obvious, the Obama administration, some in Congress and even some in the Pentagon remain convinced that training Syrian “moderates” will work.

The neighborhood in that region just became more complicated, while this White House and many in Congress don’t even have any clue as to the history of the region, the complicated dynamics between various factions, or understand how our pathetic strategy leads other leaders in that region to quickly recalibrate their own national security concerns and alliances. After watching President Obama’s mercurial and duplicitous dealings with other leaders in the region, all of those leaders seem to be hedging their bets, because they can’t trust the United States.

Testifying before Congress recently, Ash Carter was asked about the Syrian moderates training, Politico reports:

“We have enough training sites. We don’t have enough trainees to fill them,” Carter told the House Armed Services Committee. The U.S. is applying a stringent process to screen “moderate” Syrians to ensure those fighters who join will be reliable, he said, which is one reason why the process is taking so long.

Carter and Dempsey responded to a question from Illinois Democrat Rep. Tammy Duckworth, who said she had many reservations about the Syrian train-and-equip program for which Congress authorized $500 million last year. How will the U.S. support the “moderate” units once they’re in combat, she asked. Who will continue to supply them with NATO-grade ammunition, she asked, given they’ll be using U.S. or European-style rifles as opposed to Russian-style AK-47s?

Dempsey said the administration is determining the answers to these and other outstanding questions but hasn’t yet arrived at any conclusions.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/06/ash-carter-iraqi-syrian-recruits-fight-isil-119109.html#ixzz3hezxMnHB

Carter also didn’t have an answer for what happens if these Syrian moderates engage with Assad’s forces, a likely scenario given the close proximity.  He didn’t know if the US would offer air support or other support to these Syrian moderates if they engage with Assad’s forces rather than ISIS.  As Patrick Poole reported in recent days, our first batch of Syrian moderates appear to have been captured by Al Nusra.  This first trial run will most assuredly dry up the well of future Syrian “moderates” volunteering to join our fight against ISIS, unless they join as a ruse to acquire US military training and weapons.  This quick capture might be a ruse too and it’s very possible these first volunteers were not really “moderates” in the first place.  The US has already been duped numerous times by “moderates”.  In 2014 Jamal Maaroof was touted:  “Meet Jamal Maarouf, the West’s best fighting chance against Syria’s Islamist armies”.  After receiving US training and weapons, to include TOW anti-tank missiles, Maaroof struck a peace deal with ISIS.

In light of this slow-motion train wreck, Obama’s war against ISIS policy, comes internal tremors within Turkey with terrorist attacks, rising ethnic tensions, porous border issues, and an escalating refugee crisis.  The Turks finally joined the war against ISIS in deed, rather than just word, but along with bombing ISIS, they’ve targeted Kurds too.  The American simplistic take on foreigners runs something like the Kurds are noble warriors (good guys), despite the Kurds being numerous diverse groups,  religiously and politically.  The PKK, a Turkish Kurdish group, are designated terrorists by both the United States and Turkey and they will be a prime Turkish target.  The Iraqi Kurdish leader, President Masoud Barzani condemned the Turkish attacks, but he also urged the PKK to remove themselves from civilian areas in the region, to keep the battlefield away from civilians.

Courtesy of JK are some helpful links to make more sense out of the Turkish viewpoint and also information on the Kurds:

This is a helpful link that’s basically, “understanding the Kurds for Dummies”

Here’s a May report from the International Crisis Group, “Arming Iraq’s Kurds: Fighting IS, Inviting Conflict”

In typical Obama leading from behind fashion, last week the press reported on Obama’s “safe zone” plan”, to create a zone along Syria’s northwest border with Turkey for Syrian refugees to safely return to Syria.  Of course, the details of who would protect this “safe zone” were like every other strategy from this administration – to be ironed out later.  On  July 28, 2015, Josh Rogin in Bloomberg reported:

“Days after the U.S. and Turkey announced a breakthrough deal to fight together against the Islamic State, U.S. officials are insisting that — contrary to reports — there are definitely no U.S. plans for a “safe zone” inside Syria. In fact, there really is no “zone,” and there is no plan to keep the area “safe.”

This confusion is a microcosm of the disorganized U.S. approach to the Islamic State threat since last summer. Each incremental escalation into which the U.S. gets dragged in Syria seems poorly thought out and even more poorly explained. Until the Barack Obama administration can reconcile the different objectives among the members of its anti-Islamic-State coalition, the various partners will continue to work at cross-purposes. In this case, for the U.S., the Islamic State is the one and only priority; for Turkey, the imperative is protecting civilians from Syria’s Bashar al-Assad regime and eventually forcing its exit.”

Here are three more articles on Turkey and the Islamic State worth reading (H/T JK):

From War on the Rocks:  “What’s eating Turkey? Ankara and the Islamic State”

From World Affairs: “The War Arrives in Turkey”

From the Daily Mail: “Britain’s secret war on ISIS: Cameron gives SAS the green light to launch killing raids on terror leaders inside Syria and Iraq”

So, once again, we have the infamous leading from behind from the White House and the “I was for them, before I was against them” strategic genius emanating from the mist at Foggy Bottom.  No plan, no strategic vision, no clue what’s in this agreement, just like no clue what’s in the agreement with Iran.

My assessment: “FUBAR!”

After writing about John McCain and his dubious foreign policy acumen in my previous post, this headline is too delicious for me to resist:

#BringBackOurRebels: Obama’s 50-Man ‘Vetted Moderate’ Syrian Rebel Army Vanishes After Training in Turkey

Patrick Poole over at PJ Media reports on this $500 million dollar “training of vetted Syrian moderates” project, of which John McCain has been the premiere promoter.  Here’s a clue, he rode his “war hero” status in Congress for decades and by virtue of that he’s accorded this deference as an expert on military matters and foreign policy.  This Syrian moderate rebels delusion was fueled by foreign lobbyists, who escorted John McCain to Syria in 2013, where he is pictured with a man who looks like Abu Mosa, later the ISIS press officer.

On that 2013 “fact-finding” trip, McCain was escorted by the Syrian Emergency Task Force, a lobbying group for the Syrian resistance.  A young woman, Elizabeth O’Bagy, became the voice of expertise on the disposition of Syrian rebel forces, culminating in her appearance as a subject matter expert from the Institute of the Study of War (ISW).  Dr. O’Bagy was exposed as a fraud, who lied about completing her doctorate work at Georgetown. She was fired from the ISW, but who should ride to her rescue – none other than John McCain, who hired O’Bagy as a legislative assistant.   McCain hired a fraud and if you want to really wade into a murky swamp, just do a few searches on Bryan Preston’s research into Elizabeth O’Bagy’s background, but despite her being exposed as a liar, McCain hired her and bolstered her credibility rather than being wary of her foreign ties and loyalties.  I still want to know who Elizabeth O’Bagy’s foreign contacts are – there’s more lurking there, if that swamp is ever drained.

So many hot button issues swished on by while I was spending time with my four granddaughters, 2 Supreme Court decision flops, of course, the Confederate flag flap, and Donald Trump flapping in the wind about the taboo subject of illegal immigrants in sanctuary cities.

The Confederate flag flap brewed up quickly after a young white man, Dylan Roof opened fire in a historic black church in Charleston, SC, killing 9 people.  Roof has been linked to having some connection to a white supremacist group, the Council of Conservative Citizens, but it appears he acted alone in committing this heinous crime.  The political left in America lies ready to pounce, so according to Think Progress:

“As journalists scrambled to unearth more information about Roof on Thursday morning, one piece of damning evidence emerged: A Facebook picture of him on top of his car bearing a license plate with different versions of the Confederate flag. In case it wasn’t clear, the flags were surrounded by the words “Confederate States of America.”

To drive the point home further, Roof reportedly told one of his old roommates before the shooting that he “wanted to start a civil war.”

Within hours, social media was flooded with posts and tweets about the Confederate flag, and the word “Confederate” quickly became a trending topic on Twitter. Pieces decrying the flag’s presence on the South Carolina State House grounds began popping up everywhere: Vox’s Zack Beauchamp railed against the historic symbol of the Confederacy, calling its placement on the government property “an insult to Charleston’s victims”; Ta-Nehisi Coates penned a blistering critique of the flag in the Atlantic, aptly titled “Take Down the Confederate Flag—Now”; and The Boston Globe published a scathing political cartoon.”

In what has become the typical cowardly, politically correct response, a few days after the church shootings, Republican governor, Nikki Haley called for the removal of the Confederate flag from the grounds of SC’s state house.  She stated:

“Today we are here in a moment of unity in our state without ill will to say it is time to remove the flag from our capitol grounds,” said Haley, a Republican and the state’s first non-white governor, while flanked by a diverse group of South Carolina politicians.

“This flag, while an integral part of our past, does not represent the future of our great state,” she said.

Quickly, many private companies rushed to remove Confederate flag merchandise to comply with the new PC edict, but this is only the beginning.  In the near future, expect a high-profile campaign to remove Confederate statues and memorials in the South and of course, the founding fathers who owned slaves must be repudiated too, so their names must be scrubbed from the public consciousness.

I am a Yankee, who has spent most of my adult life in the South.  My ancestors fought for the Union in the US Civil War, but I certainly believe the South paid dearly in that war.  This knee-jerk activism to piggyback the Confederate flag controversy onto this hate-filled killer rests as the standard strategy of the leftists – banishing inanimate objects and words from the public square.  You either comply to their group-think or you are labeled a hater and a racist.

For the thousands upon thousands of Southerners who view the Confederate flag as a symbol of Southern pride and their unique history, being cast with a fell swoop as racists and being ordered about by activists, most of whom don’t even live in the South does nothing to bridge the racial divides in America nor does it have anything  to do with Dylan Roof’s heinous crime.  Whites in the South remain a regional group that it’s fine to stereotype and ridicule as backward redneck racists.

One of my children tried to provoke this debate with me, stating that the Confederate flag shouldn’t be flying over any state houses in the United States and he went so far as to tell me that anyone who wants it there is a racist.  That sort of blanket judgment and avowal, that if I disagree, then I am a racist irked me.  What can you say to someone who already labeled you a racist if you don’t agree with him?  As a Yankee who believes in the US Constitution, I feel very strongly that the good people and their elected representatives in these states need to decide that issue, but as for me, the Confederate flag seemed more like a grits and black-eyed peas on New Year’s Day tradition – a benign part of the cultural flavor of the South.  I don’t care for grits or black-eyed peas and I don’t fly the Confederate flag, but it never bothered me at all that many Southerners do.

Those who want to remove words and history stand prepared to replace it with their own words and a revised history, so save your books on American history and keep an actual dictionary in your home library, as the thought police advance.  What they’re after isn’t to right the wrongs of slavery and our country’s blighted history on race relations.  Their agenda seeks to enslave our minds to an Orwellian model, the terms of which will be fed to us by our PC minders.  I hear rumors, whispering on the progressive wind,  that Washington, D.C. needs to be renamed and the Jefferson monument removed, because we shouldn’t honor slaveholders.  Of course, George Washington freed his slaves in his will, after grappling with the slavery issue throughout his life, but let’s not let facts get in the way of the leftist agenda.