December 24-25, 2018: "Merry Christmas"...If the Salutation Applies

 

12/24-25/18: “Merry Christmas, everyone!” Unless you’re a Jew, a Muslim, etc., or not religious at all. 

Then: “Happy Holidays.” 

Well, here we are on Christmas Eve, and the president has made it safe to say, “Merry Christmas” again. 

Unfortunately, we learn that Secretary of Defense Mattis thought Trump was kind of a nut. The Washington Post explains: 

Mattis reportedly told the commander of the Strategic Command to keep him directly informed of any event that might lead to a nuclear alert being sent to the president. He even told the Strategic Command “not to put on a pot of coffee without letting him know.”

 

Mattis will soon be gone, and Trump will have his pudgy finger on the red button. There are almost no responsible adults left in the White House. There’s no one to tell him not to sit on the button by mistake or drop a nuclear bomb on the headquarters of CNN just because he thinks reporters are the enemy of the people. 

 

POSTSCRIPT: We do get a snippet of good news, albeit symbolic. The family of Otto Warmbier, the young man tortured and killed by the North Koreans, triumphs in a federal lawsuit. A judge awards the parents $500 million in damages against Kim Jong-un and his regime. 

Fred and Cindy Warmbier know they’ll probably never collect. Still, they tell reporters, “We put ourselves and our family through the ordeal of a lawsuit and public trial because we promised Otto that we will never rest until we have justice for him.” 

Kim is a murdering despot – and his regime has tortured tens of thousands of its own people. 

Still, our president loves him. (See: 9/29/18.)

___

12/25/18: While the Christian world celebrates the birth of Jesus, it would be harder and harder, even for the Son of God, to walk on water in modern-day Israel. In the last 60 years, the Israelis, Jordanians, and Syrians have depleted the Sea of Galilee and the Jordan River, sources of the Dead Sea. 

The surface area of the Dead Sea has shrunk by a third. 

It’s too bad Trump never worries about environmental degradation because there are warning lights blinking round the world. 

 

* 

THE DAY DOES END on an up note when President Trump and the First Lady secretly fly to Iraq to greet the troops. It’s his first trip to a war zone in almost two years as Leader of the Free World. 

Then again, any goodwill he might have garnered is marred when he gives a campaign-style speech to the troops. They’re soldiers. They have no choice but to stand and listen while he babbles on in Babylon. 

Trump’s main points appear to be: 

A)    Other countries are ripping us off and they should pay more to help us fight all our wars. Because that’s why we fight. We want to end up in the black. 

B)     You great young servicemen and women (and not so great transgender service persons) haven’t had a raise since the winter at Valley Forge. I got you “a 10% raise” this year. 

C)    America has been played for a “sucker” for years. Other presidents were “suckers.” We were “suckers” for going to war in Iraq. 

D)   I, the Great Donald, am not a “sucker.” 

 

Lying to the troops and bragging – what Trump does best. 

There are numerous problems with this speech but for the sake of sanity, we’ll stick to two. First, here’s what Trump said to his audience of soldiers, sailors, air personnel, and Marines: “Is anybody here willing to give up the big pay raise you just got? You haven’t gotten one in more than 10 years. More than 10 years. And we got you a big one. I got you a big one. I got you a big one.” 

This had to leave many in the audience checking their wallets to see if perhaps they had more cash than they remembered. 

The troops received a 2.6% increase in pay in 2018. Not 10 percent. Trump lied again when he said there had been “no raise for ten years.” The Department of Defense could tell Trump that the troops have seen a pay increase every year since 1983.

Even worse, you had a president telling troops who are still fighting and have been fighting terrorists for seventeen years that we have been “suckers.” First, Trump had to brag about all the progress made defeating ISIS since he took charge. As he told the tale, there was zero progress before he took over. 

Then he said this: 

While American might can defeat terrorist armies on the battlefield, each nation of the world must decide for itself what kind of future it wants to build for its people, and what kind of sacrifices they are willing to make for their children. America shouldn’t be doing the fighting for every nation on Earth not being reimbursed, in many cases, at all.

 

If they want us to do the fighting, they also have to pay a price — and sometimes that’s also a monetary price — so we’re not the suckers of the world. We’re no longer the suckers, folks. And people aren’t looking at us as suckers. And I love you folks because most of you are nodding your head this way. We’re respected again as a nation. We’re respected again.

 

The first paragraph starts off well enough. Yes, we do want other nations to do their own fighting. But did he intimate that we’d be okay getting our troops killed and maimed so long as we were “reimbursed?” 

The second paragraph is a five-alarm mess. Trump attacks, one must assume, an array of predecessors. You know he burns and itches to name Obama. He hates him. George W. Bush must be on his mind since we weren’t paid to invade Iraq. You could blame Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon for Vietnam. George H. W. Bush was a “sucker,” too, since we saved Kuwait, and Reagan was a “sucker” because while he was in office, he spent a lot to keep the Russians from taking over Europe and armed the Taliban to fight the Russians in Afghanistan. (Okay, that did backfire.) We can go back to Ike, again, and Harry Truman, who led the battle to save South Korea in 1950. Then there’s FDR, who led us into World War II. 

Did we get paid for stopping Hitler and the Japanese? 

We did not.

John McCain - one of the first "suckers" Trump insulted.

Shot down over North Vietnam; spent years in an enemy prison.

 
Sen. Tammy Duckworth lost both legs in Iraq.

President Trump attacked his own Secretary of Defense, Gen. James Mattis.

Called him the most-overrated general ever.

Couldn't serve in an earlier generation; Trump wanted to ban transgender individuals.

A Muslim-American who died under the flag. Trump later insulted his mother.

 

If we follow the Trump Doctrine (see: 7/11/18) all those presidents were suckers and not nearly as great at leading the nation as Trump claims he is. 

It was implied that the men and women who listened to Trump on Christmas night, who believed in the mission laid out by his predecessors, who had been doing the bleeding, who had carried the great burden for years, were the biggest “suckers” of all because they had and still would. 

Trump doesn’t understand self-sacrifice and never will.

A GALLERY OF SUCKERS?

Sgt. Samuel Smith, and family - 1863.

Capt. Eddie Rickenbacker, 1918.  

Lt. Tim Viall, in Vietnam, 1971.

No bone spurs to get him out of going.

Molly Hays, a.k.a. "Molly Pitcher" - Battle of Monmouth, 1778.

Dorie Miller, USN, hero at Pearl Harbor, 1941

Sgt. Cory Remsburg, left, wounded in Afghanistan in 2009.

Admiral William McRaven, right - Trump insulted him.

Pete Buttigieg - Trump mocked his looks.

Capt. Beau Biden - served in Iraq.

First Marine Division enjoying a winter outing in Korea, 1950.

Landing craft: June 6, 1944.

Ira Hayes, a Pima Indian, who helped raise the flag at Iwo Jima.

Robert Mueller of the Mueller report - decorated combat vet.

Trump attacked him dozens of times.

Johnny Clem - the drummer boy of Shiloh.

Teddy Roosevelt leads the charge up San Juan Hill, 1898.

The Vindman brothers, Alexander and Eugene.

Trump retaliated against both brothers after Alexander testified under oath.

Unidentified Marine, 1945.

Gettysburg dead, 1863

The captain and crew of the U.S.S. Constitution destroy HMS Geurriere, 1812.

General Washington, fought without pay, 1775.

George H. W. Bush, shot down over the Pacific in 1944.

The blogger joined the Marines on 12/28/68.

He volunteered to go to Vietnam, but was never sent.
His service was lame, but he wasn't too lame to serve.