There’s never a dull moment with the Trump administration, which means: never a moment of rest for the War Party. Trump keeps throwing fast balls at the pundits and assembled “experts,” and they keep striking out, bigtime, as the ball whizzes past their heads and lands, with a thwack!, in the catcher’s mitt.
“Steee-rike one!”
First it was the meet up with Korean leader Kim Jong-un. The media and their attendant policy wonks weren’t ready for Singapore, where the President gave Kim a glimpse of what his country could achieve if it would only come in from the cold and allow the warm embrace of the international community. And while the North Koreans have repeatedly pledged to give up their nukes, that’s not good enough for the universally negative “experts,” some of whom aren’t experts at all but merely former bloggers with history degrees. Now they’re citing fake news from NBC claiming that no less than eight anonymous “US officials” have stated that the North Koreans are covertly building up their nukes at a super-duper top secret site and it’s all a commie trick to – do what? Provoke an attack from an easily provoked Trump? Start World War III? Commit mass suicide?
The icing on the cake is that the author of this nonsense is none other than Ken Dilanian, the former national security reporter for the Los Angeles Times, who was fired for having a “collaborative relationship” with the CIA. Yes, that got him fired from the Times, but it’s a qualification rather than a negative as far as NBC is concerned.
“Steee-rike two!”
If the Singapore summit hit them in an unexpected place – who knew that, months after the exchange of bloodcurdling threats between Trump and Kim, they’d be shaking hands and making peace? – then the Helsinki summit with Putin is the knockout punch. And the howls of pain arising from our hateful warmongering media, the Democratic party politicians they’re in thrall to, and the phony “human rights” scamsters, are getting louder by the minute. We should all revel in their misery.
Trump campaigned on making peace with Russia: he has a mandate to do so. That, however, matters little to the “intelligence community” and their media camarilla, which is up in arms at the very prospect of a Russo-American partnership for peace. The national security bureaucracy and the laptop bombardiers who inhabit ThinktankWorld have a vested interest in maintaining a cold war status quo that should’ve ended when the Berlin Wall fell. They are horrified by Trump’s “America First” foreign policy views, and they are out to stop him by any means necessary – because his victory meant the end of their worldview and their careers.
Our “allies” are in a panic because the free ride is over – that’s why the German Marshall Fund is utilizing their extensive propaganda assets to mobilize elite opinion against the President. This is the kind of foreign “meddling” that’s okay with our media, and, apparently, fine with law enforcement. No one’s asking Laura Rosenberger to register as a foreign agent. But of course she is acting as an agent of all the Euro-weenies who subsidize her “Alliance to Secure Democracy.”
Which is why I was thrilled to see that Trump is raising the issue of the 35,000 American troops in Germany: what, he wants to know, are they doing there? And how much is it costing us? The Washington Post sullenly reports:
“The Pentagon is analyzing the cost and impact of a large-scale withdrawal or transfer of American troops stationed in Germany, amid growing tensions between President Trump and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, according to people familiar with the work.
“The effort follows Trump’s expression of interest in removing the troops, made during a meeting earlier this year with White House and military aides, U.S. officials said. Trump was said to have been taken aback by the size of the US presence, which includes about 35,000 active-duty troops, and complained that other countries were not contributing fairly to joint security or paying enough to NATO.
“Word of the assessment has alarmed European officials, who are scrambling …”
Oh yes, they’re scrambling, the poor dears: not just our gormless “allies,” but also their amen corner in Washington, which is going into an outright meltdown –- and what a glorious sight it is!
“Steee-rike three!”
Finally an American president has woken up to the fact that World War II, not to mention the cold war, is over: there’s no need for US troops to occupy Germany.
Vladimir Putin isn’t going to march into Berlin in a reenactment of the Red Army taking the Fuehrer-bunker – but even if he were so inclined, why won’t Germany defend itself?
So let’s take inventory of our President’s recent pronouncements:
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He wants US troops out of Germany.
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He wants US troops out of Korea, or else he wants Seoul to start paying the bill.
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He wants US troops out of Syria – and this is bound to come up during the Helsinki summit.
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He wants out of NATO, telling our “allies” at the recent G-7 summit that “NATO is as bad as NAFTA. It’s much too costly for the US.”
This isn’t good enough for the formerly anti-interventionist “left,” with the commies over at Alternet declaring that the US getting out of NATO would be “a gift to Putin,” not to mention “insane.”
It isn’t good enough for the tattered remnants of the left-wing “peace movement,” which hardly exists anymore, and spends most of its time and resources either attacking Trump or else bloviating about immigration. If you can find a single mention of either the Singapore summit or the upcoming Helsinki summit on the Code Pink web site, please let me know, because it’s either well hidden or else nonexistent.
It isn’t good enough for Daniel Larison, the weirdly priggish foreign policy commentator over at The American Conservative, who spends many of his waking hours tweeting any and all derogatory material about the President, and sneering at the Singapore summit. (He hasn’t dared mention the Helsinki summit as yet.) I bring this up because Larison’s monomaniacal hatred is a textbook example of Trump Derangement Syndrome: it has so distorted the functioning of his intellect that it has actually made him seem quite stupid – which is definitely not the case. Here is someone who has been a stalwart anti-interventionist for many years suddenly going bonkers because of a subjective emotional reaction – I’m guessing here — although it could be just the normal careerism that is so much a part of the policy wonk scene.
It isn’t good enough for those clueless “libertarians” who think Bill Weld is one of them. These luftmenschen never cared about foreign policy anyway: for the Reason crowd, it’s an afterthought. And with the Koch empire turning left these days, the need to blend in with the warmongering Democrats – who are now on the receiving end of Koch dollars – is imperative.
Ah, but this outpouring of good news from Trumplandia is good enough for me, and here’s why:
For over twenty years, I’ve labored in this particular vineyard, being told I’m an “extremist” for wanting us to mind our own business and institute a foreign policy that puts America first. I’ve been saying it’s time to get out of NATO until I’m blue in the face. I’ve been agitating relentlessly for an end to the Korean standoff. I’ve been saying it’s time to meet with Kim Jong-un, and also time to work with Putin to end the threat of World War III. And when the President of the United States takes up those causes, telling us he wants to bring our troops home from defending the world against itself — I’ll be damned if I’ll react in any manner except for some very loud cheering.
I don’t care about his other views, quite frankly. They are irrelevant. Because if and when he implements his “isolationist” policies, the size, scope, and expense of government will radically shrink. That’s because the rationale for big government will be very much weaker: the political class won’t have the “national security” angle to justify universal surveillance and huge taxpayer outlays to foreign ingrates. If he manages to lift the burden of empire from the weary shoulders of the American people, the federal government will get smaller despite the intent of the Trump administration or its successors: the process will be as near to automatic as any human activity can possibly be.
You have to be blind not to see that Trump wants to radically reduce the US presence overseas – and you’re part of the problem if you find that worrisome. It’s time to get on the Trump peace train – because it’s riding into history whether you like it or not.
NOTES IN THE MARGIN
You can check out my Twitter feed by going here. But please note that my tweets are sometimes deliberately provocative, often made in jest, and largely consist of me thinking out loud.
I’ve written a couple of books, which you might want to peruse. Here is the link for buying the second edition of my 1993 book, Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement, with an Introduction by Prof. George W. Carey, a Foreword by Patrick J. Buchanan, and critical essays by Scott Richert and David Gordon (ISI Books, 2008).
You can buy An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard (Prometheus Books, 2000), my biography of the great libertarian thinker, here.
