War Cries Drown Out 'America First'

"Why would I call China a currency manipulator when they are working with us on the North Korean problem?" tweeted President Donald Trump on Easter Sunday.

Earlier, after discovering "great chemistry" with Chinese President Xi Jinping over "the most beautiful piece of chocolate cake" at Mar-a-Lago, Trump had confided, "I explained ... that a trade deal with the U.S. will be far better for them if they solve the North Korean problem!"

"America First" thus takes a back seat to big-power diplomacy with Beijing. One wonders: How much will Xi end up bilking us for his squeezing of Kim Jong Un?

Trump once seemed to understand how America had been taken to the cleaners during and after the Cold War. While allies supported us diplomatically, they piled up huge trade surpluses at our expense and became virtual free-riders off the U.S. defense effort.

No nations were more successful at this than South Korea and Japan. Now Xi is playing the game -- and perhaps playing Trump.

What is the "North Korean problem" Beijing will help solve in return for more indulgent consideration on future U.S.-China trade deals?

North Korea's nuclear arsenal. As 80 percent of Pyongyang's trade comes through China, Trump believes that Beijing can force Kim to stop testing missiles and atomic bombs before he produces an intercontinental ballistic missile that could hit the U.S.

But what is to prevent Xi from pocketing Trump's concessions and continuing on the strategic course China has long pursued?

Neither could want an all-out war on the Korean Peninsula. For Kim, this would devastate his country, bring down his regime, and cost him his life. For China, war could mean millions of Koreans crossing the Yalu into Manchuria and a disruption of Beijing's march to Asian hegemony.

A continuing crisis on the peninsula, however, with Trump and the U.S. relying on Beijing's help, could leave Xi in the catbird seat.

And now that North Korea has declared its goal to be building missiles with nuclear warheads that could hit all U.S. bases in Asia -- and even California -- the clock is running for the White House.

"It won't happen," Trump has said of North Korea's developing an ICBM that could hit the United States. "If China is not going to solve North Korea, we will."

"The threat is upon us," says outgoing deputy national security adviser K.T. McFarland. "This is something President Trump is going to deal with in the first year."

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Vice President Mike Pence have declared that our policy of "strategic patience" with Pyonyang is at an end.

National security adviser H.R. McMaster said Sunday the U.S. has "to take action, short of armed conflict, so we can avoid the worst" in dealing with "this unpredictable regime."

With a stunning parade of missiles in Pyongyang on Saturday, the North's failed firing of a solid-fueled missile that same day, and the promise of new missile tests weekly, Kim is forcing our hand.

Either he backs away from building atomic bombs and long-range missiles or Trump and his generals must make good on their warnings.

Why, 64 years after the Korean War, a quarter-century after the Cold War, are we still obliged to go to war to defend South Korea from a North with one-half the South's population and 3 percent of its gross domestic product?

Why are we, on the far side of the Pacific, still responsible for containing North Korea when two of its neighbors -- Russia and China -- are nuclear powers and South Korea and Japan could field nuclear and conventional forces far superior to Kim's?

How long into the future will containing militarist dictators in Pyongyang with nuclear missiles be America's primary responsibility?

Another issue arises. Before the U.S. launches any pre-emptive strike on North Korea, Congress should be called back into session to authorize any act of war against the North.

Not since 9/11 have the Afghan Taliban been stronger or controlled more territory. The United States' commanding general there is calling for thousands more U.S. troops. Russia and Iran are reportedly negotiating with the Taliban. Pakistan is said to be aiding them.

To counter Vladimir Putin's Russia, we have moved U.S. and NATO troops into Poland, the Baltic States, Romania and Bulgaria. We have fired missiles into Syria. We are reportedly preparing to back the Saudis in the latest escalation of their war on the Houthi rebels in Yemen.

Twenty-four years after "Black Hawk Down," the weekend brought reports of U.S. troops returning to Somalia.

The promise of a Trump presidency -- that we would start looking out for our own country and own national interests first and let the rest of the world solve, or fail to solve, its own problems -- appears, not 100 days in, to have been a mirage.

You can stop your badmouthing of our president while you wait.
I don’t expect you ever to appreciate what he does as you “held your nose” to vote for him.
You don’t see the releasing of our energy from the stranglehold of the Obama adm.? You don’t see EPA being brought into line? You don’t see a Constitutionalist on the Supreme Court? You don’t see our Military released from the bondage of micro management? You don’t see Law and Order returning to this country that had spent the last eight years ignoring or breading our own laws just to “feel” good? You don’t see jobs comingg back to America that the former occupant of the White House said were “gone forever?” You don’t see the coal industry coming back to life and jobs for the rust belt making the American people proud to be working again. The coal industry is coming our of bankruptcy as is our steel industry and a mud puddle on your farm is not going to be subject to the government rules and regulations regarding lakes and rivers any more.
Obviously you have no thinking cap. All of the above, and more, has happened within the three months of the Trump presidency. AND illegal immigration is DOWN ENORMOUSLY and DEPORTATIONS are UP enormously since President Trump is in office and Jeff Sessions is enforcing the law.
You expect a perfect world with the wave of a magic wand. Go back to your dreamland and sleep on until you have something worthwhile to say.

“You don’t see the releasing of our energy from the stranglehold of the Obama adm.? “

Obamacare and Common Core are still the law of the land.

“You don’t see EPA being brought into line?”

*On climate change, and very little else.

“You don’t see a Constitutionalist on the Supreme Court?”

Seems like a good move, but so did other seemingly good picks other GOP POTUSes made. Time will tell.

“You don’t see our Military released from the bondage of micro management?”

Second good move. However, in the same breath Trump saluted the new dictator of Turkey (one of the engineers of the destabilization of Syria, leading to the rise of ISIS there, and while that dictator and the Mullahs of Iran plot the death of Kurdish independence movements in northern Syria). He also is playing with danger sucking up to the Saudis - the other main backer of violent Sunni Islamist outfits in Syria and Iraq, as well as global funds supplier for the spread of uber-radical-Sunni-Wahabi fundamentalist Mosques in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Central Asia, North Africa, Europe and the U.S. Trump is playing into the globalists agendas in the Middle East, when the violence there is largely proxy wars between radical fundamentalist Wahabi-Sunni of Saudi Arabia and the radical fundamentalist Shia Mullahs of Tehran. We have mistakenly always been good friends to the Saudis, while they have never been our friends from their view. Trump has the same Military and State folks that have been ignoring Saudi treachery for 40 years.

“You don’t see Law and Order returning to this country that had spent the last eight years ignoring or breading our own laws just to “feel” good?”

Arresting illegals ONLY if they’ve committed other crimes. It’s a singular issue, not “law and order” writ large.

“You don’t see jobs comingg back to America that the former occupant of the White House said were “gone forever?” “

Most all of them have to do with economic conditions and outlook of companies, not a single policy or reform by Trump or the GOP Congress, yet. The phrase “under president x........x” is vastly over played, both in positive and negative terms, depending on the president and the news source, for events that often have little directly to do with the occupant of the White House at the time.

“You don’t see the coal industry coming back to life and jobs for the rust belt making the American people proud to be working again. “

Natural Gas is replacing and is going to continue to replace coal, EPA policy change or not. It’s cheaper, cleaner, we have some of the world’s largest reserves of it, and can move it in pipelines instead of rail cars. It’s another change that sounds much better than it will be, in the end. It was the right change, but again the gains from it are vastly over promoted.

The biggest threat to this country is the giant progressive edifice of the deep, permanent regulatory state and the powers abdicated to it by Congress. Trump like all GOP POTUS only seeks to manage it his way, not tear it down and out it under the daily thumb of Congress, not allowed to rule on its own.

Before Obama and during Obama we have a DOJ that uses its massive power to shakedown the corporate world, failing to ever prove, in court, the charges they make from which they try to obtain “settlements” - no trials, no presentation of evidence from both sides, no court-judge or jury weighing the evidence and determining if the DOJ is right or not. And the “settlements” amount to agreements on future action of the companies as well, which other companies are inclined to follow just to avoid the DOJ dragnet, and those agreements amount to de facto making of federal law, by no act of Congress whatsoevwer. More abdication to the executive.

We have a regulatory state given powers by Congress to in many cases act not merely as claimant against someone, but judge, jury, prosecutor and pronouncing sentence.

Trump does not see it. He just wants to do what all GOP POTUSes think they should do - merely manage it “better”. In the end, yes, changes will be made, but the Progressive’s great accomplishment, the dictatorship of the “experts” managing the permanent regulatory state will still be in place and still untouched as to its authority abdicated to it by Congress.

Taxes? Major reforms? No. Reshuffling of whose ox gets gored more and whose gets gored less.

Economy. Trump is not a true free enterprise person when it comes to the government. He is acting just like the Chinese - a nationalist mercantilist managed economy. Again, not trying to eliminate the edifice of being intentionally benefited or punished by Washington D.C., just changing who that is.

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